Some people say that soft articles are also a kind of advertisement, and indeed they are. You should know: advertisements are annoying! So, how can you write soft articles that customers will accept and even like?
1. First, you need to understand yourself better than others!
Someone once said that the hardest person to understand is actually yourself. How do you understand yourself? Ask yourself several "what", "how", and "why": What is my website? What is the website name? What are the keywords? What kind of people will come to my website? Which of them will become registered users? Among the registered users, who will further become my customers? Who among the customers may be willing to pay? Is the registration process simple? What issues might cause user complaints? How to solve them? Through this series of questions, you will have a clear understanding of your website's positioning, profit model, which traffic is high-quality and worth striving for, which is dispensable junk traffic, and what SEO strategy should be adopted. You might ask: what does this have to do with writing soft articles? Of course it does! And it is crucial! If you don't even know yourself, how can you recommend to others?
2. You need to understand the audience of your soft article.
Who might see your masterpiece? Who is he? What does he need? Why does he need it? Will he visit my website after reading the soft article? After entering, will he "realize he was deceived" and leave immediately, or continue to browse other contents on my website? What feast should I prepare accordingly? Grasping this information will help you target effectively. With the above two steps, you will know yourself and your opponent, laying a solid foundation for your success! But talking without practicing is fake. Let's start writing!
3. Topic! What to write? It should be in line with the type of website where the soft article will be published and the audience of the soft article.
For example, if it's a website-building related soft article, it should be posted on webmaster websites, not entertainment forums. Conversely, if it's decided to be posted on webmaster websites, the most popular content would be "tutorials". According to my research, webmasters are not very interested in commentary articles unless they are written by famous writers like Liu Huafang or Liu Xingliang. Helping others is helping yourself, which is the purpose of tutorial soft articles. Of course, nothing is absolute. There was once an article on a webmaster website titled "Female Webmaster Seeks Boyfriend for Rent", which went against the norm. Although it looked like an announcement, it was actually a classic soft article. It attracted many people to comment, report their height, weight, and measurements. It achieved great results. In fact, the author of the soft article had thoroughly understood the nature of personal webmasters: mostly male, and often lonely.
4. Title, the title of a soft article consists of two parts: the main title and the sub-title. The main title must catch the eye at first glance, it should be shocking and unconventional, not dull and ordinary. A title like "80 million people with knives in their bones" is absolutely a masterpiece of soft articles. The sub-title should explain the problem, be highly summarizing, divide the long article into several parts to enhance readability.
It is particularly important to emphasize the importance of the title of advertising soft articles because only when your title is recognized by consumers can it attract the increasingly picky and noble gaze of consumers, making it possible for them to accept your advertising content. Therefore, you must carefully design your title. The titles of advertising soft articles generally have several forms:
1) Direct style: straightforwardly presenting the theme of the soft article, commonly used for over-the-counter drugs and health foods; if your title cannot clearly convey the benefits needed by your product's target consumer group, it is best not to use this title form.
2) Indirect style: using methods such as asking questions, metaphor, exaggeration, and personification to subtly mark the title, inducing consumer interest, thereby accepting your advertising content; this type of title is common in soft article cases because this title form is more closely aligned with the function and nature of soft article advertisements themselves.
3) Thunder and drizzle style: This title form combines the above two ways, designing a main title and a sub-title, the main title usually being thunderous, and the sub-title usually being drizzling. Everyone pays attention to the clamor of natural forces when there is thunder, and gentle rain always leads people gradually into a beautiful realm.
The form of the title of advertising soft articles must be creative. As long as you attack the consumer's curiosity, you can receive unexpected returns.
5. Body. At the beginning of the body, it is best to be straightforward and directly present your insights, then elaborate point by point.
1) Pursuing flowery language enters a misconception. Easy to understand! That is, not obscure and hard to understand, making people confused. But it shouldn't be too plain either, otherwise readers skim through it. This way, they might overlook the entry to your website, wasn't all your effort wasted? Insert a few witty remarks in the article to catch the reader's attention. What is a tutorial? It's written for those who don't understand. This requires you to be familiar with what you're writing about and have your own insights. Or what you write is interesting. In short, it must be useful to everyone, so it's worth reading. Avoid empty talk at all costs. Tutorials are the most attractive and the most likely to be reprinted. The more they are reprinted, the more the role of the soft article is revealed! Finally, you need to hold back something. If you tell everything, why would readers visit your website? This is similar to the marketing effect of blogs.
2) The core content of a soft article is still a sales proposition USP, meaning there must be a core selling point, a reason that deeply resonates and drives sales, either convincing through logic or touching through emotion, with the ultimate goal of achieving sales. Absolutely avoid academic-style soft articles (too rational, lack of appeal) and whining (lack of interest and sales power).
3) Soft article writing has one central feeling (or experience) as the center; two basic points creating demand and guiding consumption. What is meant by feeling as the center, taking the health care market as an example, it is necessary to highlight the consumer's personal feelings, the feelings of being sick, treatment, and using the product (from auditory, visual, tactile aspects), it is essential to write about the customer's deep pain, to guide the target audience into the thinking circle you set through these feelings. Conversely, without these feelings, no matter how rigorous your thinking or how real your emotions, it is difficult to make the customer's needs urgent. Creating demand and guiding consumption are the purpose and essence of soft articles, and also the details to grasp in writing soft articles. How to turn feelings into reasons for consumption, weak demand into strong demand, requires working from the content, layout, thought, and color of the soft article, making it a tightly reasoned and scrutinizable thought system.