Making Money With Your Phone: The Mobile Internet Marketing Revolution

Chapter 6 Content Strategy: Why Users Follow You (2)
2.3 Brands rely on word of mouth, word of mouth depends on stories

There are many types of content released by enterprises. Enterprises should learn to classify and filter: which types need to be carefully planned and recommended, and which types are used to accumulate popularity on a daily basis. Different types of content have different effects.Generally speaking, there are three types of marketing content released by enterprises: brand building, product recommendation, and event promotion.The latter two generally need to be considered at a specific time, such as before the launch of a new product, while brand building content requires companies to focus on it in the usual marketing process.

In the era of mobile Internet, consumers' preferences are fickle, and their favorability for you also fluctuates. Therefore, it is very important to create a stable and trustworthy brand image.To achieve this, businesses must learn to continually build their brand image little by little with branding posts that include high-quality content.

2.3.1 Vividly tell brand stories
Stories are the most acceptable form of content, and the easiest to convince readers.Spreading some stories about the entrepreneurial process and brand values ​​through social media such as Weibo and WeChat is an important way to shape the corporate brand image on the mobile Internet port.This kind of content mostly uses stories as the carrier, vividly expounding the entrepreneurial ideas and gains and losses of an enterprise, and explaining the positioning and persistence of the brand through the real cases contained in the stories.This kind of content has both learning value and entertainment function for mobile Internet users, so it is very popular.

Take Apple as an example. Apple’s biggest spokesperson is its founder Jobs. In order to build Apple’s own image as a "technological innovator" and "industry leader", they continue to dig out stories that can be told from Jobs. The following is a very popular The wide-ranging story about Jobs' entrepreneurial spirit.

In 1976, Steve Jobs' friend Wozniak designed a microcomputer. Jobs noticed the business opportunity and tried his best to persuade Wozniak to resign and cooperate with him to start a new technology company. The name of the company is " apple". In April 1977, Apple launched the world's first real personal computer, the Apple II, and the personal computer industry was founded.That year, Apple's output value broke through 4 million US dollars. In 100, Apple went public in the United States, and its stock price soared.Jobs and Wozniak also became billionaires.By 1980, Apple had 1984 employees and assets of more than $4000 billion.In the same year, Apple launched the Macintosh product, which is the famous Apple Mac machine.

The good times didn't last long, and a dramatic scene happened: Jobs was "kicked out" by Apple, and it was John Scully, the manager he personally invited, who kicked him out.In a fit of anger, Jobs sold his Apple shares and started a new business.Jobs later recalled: "I didn't realize it at the time, but it turned out afterwards that my being fired by Apple was the best thing that happened in my life. Because the wonderful feeling of being a successful person was replaced by the relaxed state of mind of being an entrepreneur. This feeling Freed me to live and thus entered the most creative phase of my life."

At the beginning, Jobs founded a computer company called NeXT, whose main business was to develop new computer technologies. In 1986, he bought the computer animation production studio which was very depressed at that time from Lucas, the father of American film computer special effects, at a price of 1000 million U.S. dollars, and established the world-renowned Pixar company. In the field of animation, in 1995, the 3D computer animation produced by Pixar Company was also the world's first animation film "Toy Story" produced by computer.The birth of this 3D cartoon was not only a great success in the market, but also had a huge impact on traditional animation films.Pixar quickly went public that year, and became the pioneer and overlord of 3D computer animation in one fell swoop.The subsequent success of a series of animated films such as "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" not only demonstrated Pixar's unmatched technical strength, but also reflected a kind of vitality and fresh energy full of imagination.

Just when Pixar was in full swing, Apple was in decline in the new competition, and even changing several presidents could not restore the decline.Jobs' chance came.Due to his deep affection for Apple, in 1996, Jobs sold NeXT to Apple, which was in urgent need of new technology support, so he served as Apple's president consultant. In 1997, Jobs became the president of Apple again.Jobs, who returned to Apple, immediately carried out a comprehensive and thorough rectification of Apple.Under his leadership, Apple developed an iMac computer with a very personalized style and plastic casing packaging in just 10 months, which shocked the entire computer industry and became popular in the market. The long-awaited Apple finally regained its glory.

In 2000, Apple posted a quarterly loss, and its stock price fell accordingly.At this stage of Apple's survival, Jobs once again saved Apple with his genius creativity and unique business vision: he decided to diversify from a single computer hardware production to the digital music field, and launched a personal digital video in 2001. Player: iPod.This iPod has become a "surprise soldier" for Apple to turn around in an all-round way. In 2004, global iPod sales exceeded 45 billion US dollars. By the second half of 2005, Apple had sold 2200 million iPod digital music players.

Of course, this is not the end. In 2007, Jobs led Apple to enter the smart phone industry with a high profile and launched the iPhone, which became popular all over the world. It quickly defeated mobile phone brands such as Nokia and Samsung, and became the only one in the smart phone field.Jobs is a well-deserved leader in technological innovation, because in his bones there is an inexhaustible innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.As Tony Feder, Apple's vice president in charge of the iPod division, put it: "No one knew what color of chocolate candies Jobs had in his box. hall of fame."

This story vividly tells about Jobs' never-ending entrepreneurship and re-entrepreneurship spirit, which is also an important reason why many fruit fans like Apple and Jobs.There are many similar stories, many of which are compiled by Apple fans based on Jobs' biography.For those companies that do not have such a strong fan base, they must learn to write their own articles to tell their own corporate stories.These kinds of stories take much longer to circulate than short Weibo jokes, so they require careful planning and compilation by companies.

2.3.2 Timely sharing of business ideas
Although the business philosophy is a professional content, it does not necessarily have to be described in a professional way.In order to achieve the purpose of making customers agree with their own brand philosophy, and to share some business ideas worth learning with users, companies must learn to use stories to express this idea naturally.

Take Wal-Mart as an example. The following story about the business philosophy of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton is widely circulated.

Sam Walton taught his employees, "Exceed your customers' expectations. If you can do that, they'll keep coming back to you. Just do what they want? No, do more Some. What about customer complaints? Make excuses? No, apologize. Let customers feel that you appreciate them because their suggestions enable you to improve yourself.” There are two slogans in Wal-Mart: “Meet the needs” and “They are still there , they are what set us apart."

Sam Walton's insistence leads to 3 main principles of Wal-Mart's service now:
One is the sunset principle.Sam Walton famously said, “If you can get work done today, why put it off until tomorrow?” So he created the Sunset Principle at Walmart.Wal-Mart requires employees to finish the work that should be done that day, and to finish the work that should be done for the day before sunset.Specifically, the requirements of customers must be satisfied on the same day, so that the daily settlement cannot be delayed.Customers live in a busy world where everyone is running for their own livelihood.As a merchant, only by implementing the sunset principle can the customer's needs be satisfied to the greatest extent. The sunset principle is Wal-Mart's business purpose.

The second is the principle of value-added services.Wal-Mart requires employees to provide each customer with a service that is more than satisfactory.Specifically, for each service, it is not enough to satisfy customers, but we should also find ways to provide services that surprise customers.Sam Walton said: "Let us be good friends of customers, greet all customers who visit our store with a smile, provide them with the service we can give, and continuously improve the service. This service should exceed the original expectations of customers. Wal-Mart should is the best, and it should be able to provide more and better service than other stores."

The third is the ten-step principle.Wal-Mart requires employees, no matter when and where, as long as customers appear within 10 steps of themselves, they should look into the eyes of customers enthusiastically, greet customers actively, and ask customers if they need help.

Therefore, no matter in any Wal-Mart chain store, you can find its strong corporate culture characteristics, and excellent customer service is the biggest feature of Wal-Mart.As Sam Walton once said: "Customers can fire everyone in our company, and they can do it by simply spending their money elsewhere." At Wal-Mart, only the customer is the boss, and the customer Always be right. "To provide customers with more satisfactory services than satisfaction", Wal-Mart has really done this.

Through the introduction and affirmation of the business philosophy of the founder of Wal-Mart, this story indirectly strengthens Wal-Mart's brand image of "focusing on service and respecting customers" in the minds of consumers.And readers are also willing to read and share such stories. For them, this is not a promotional soft article, but an experience sharing.

There are many similar stories. They have built a vivid brand image in detail and completely from all angles, which is an important guarantee for the brand image and fans' word-of-mouth.If you want to keep your brand popular in the mobile Internet era and keep your fans following you, you must start designing your own brand story as early as possible.

2.4 The Bridgehead of Content Marketing: We Media
2.4.1 Self-media has the right to speak
Mobile Internet marketing cannot completely rely on the company's official Weibo, official WeChat and other official accounts. This is the era of self-media, everyone has a microphone, everyone is a reporter, and everyone can become a news disseminator.With its strong interactivity and autonomy, self-media has significantly improved the degree of freedom and individuality of information dissemination.

In fact, no matter whether a company uses self-media or traditional media for marketing, the principle is the same, and they all use the traffic (viewing volume) and credibility of the media.But relatively speaking, although traditional media and official media have high traffic, their credibility is low because they are not close enough to the people; and self-media, although the overall traffic is low, is easier to win the trust of consumers.At the same time, the content forms of self-media are more diverse, more interactive, and more efficient than official media in terms of communication.For example: an official Weibo has 100 million fans, but the number of retweets of each Weibo may only be dozens of times; a self-media has 10 fans, but the number of retweets of each Weibo may reach tens of thousands Second-rate.The picture below is a Weibo post by Weibo celebrity "Genius Little Panda". Because the content is interesting and interactive, it quickly reached tens of thousands of reposts and comments.

(End of this chapter)