The function of soft articles is determined by their nature, simply put, it's about publicity and promotion. According to the mainstream needs in practice, Brother Bao specifically categorizes soft articles into four aspects. First, building and maintaining brand image. Large well-known enterprises regard the carefully cultivated brand image as life, and growth-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises are all sparing no effort to enhance the brand influence and reputation. By planned release of soft articles reflecting the positive image of the enterprise, especially those that can reflect the status, strength, as well as charity, public welfare, and love, etc., can effectively achieve this purpose. Currently, almost all enterprises adopt this method. It can be said that many of the positive messages about enterprises and brands on the Internet are produced in this way. For example, Brother Bao won't give examples, but careful observation can reveal them. Of course, the enterprises referred to here are non-monopoly enterprises that still face competitive pressure, such as CNPC which doesn't need any soft articles. No matter how the whole people comment, it remains unmoved with privileges in hand, why? Because they have thick faces and black hearts! Second, promoting products and guiding consumption. This type can be further divided into two categories. One is for products in the market development stage, which need soft articles to inspire consumer demand. For example, Jiu Yang soy milk machine initially mainly focused on the benefits of drinking soy milk in the morning and the advantages of making soy milk oneself when issuing soft articles. The other is in the fiercely competitive field of similar products, where product differentiation is needed. For instance, currently in the highly competitive soy milk machine market, Jiu Yang's soft article direction is to highlight its leading position in the industry and the comparative advantages of its products. In short, the purpose of this type of soft article is to guide the public to recognize the product and stimulate purchasing desire. Now, the soft articles of weight loss products flying all over the sky, and health products that can make DD longer and thicker are also for this purpose, but Brother Bao does not write these kinds of products' soft articles! The reason is an issue of professional integrity. Third, hyping topics to ignite hotspots. Hype first needs a story, and secondly, the story needs to be spread through various channels (mainly the Internet). Therefore, in almost all hype planning cases, more than half of the content is the plan for writing and publishing soft articles, such as according to the hype progress, at a certain time period, what themed articles to publish on what media, etc. The myriad attentions on Sister Feng and Guo Meimei are all the results of carefully planned hype, where soft articles play a significant role! It should be noted that under the current environment where media generally vulgarize, the soft articles of topic hype are more often like a spark, when burned to a certain degree, various media will swarm in without spending money and help for free! Of course, how to ignite the spark has much to talk about. Fourth, optimizing websites to improve weight. This kind of soft article usage has a relatively low level in the soft article domain, and the requirements are also simple, timely releasing articles with keyword hyperlinks on high-weight portal sites, its essence is external link optimization. Brother Bao once did this kind of soft article for three months for Long Hong Vision TV stick. Within those three months, when searching for TV sticks, Long Hong Vision TV stick official website was always ranked first. Later, due to the relevant departments' crackdown on TV stick products, Brother Bao actively implemented the official instructions and terminated this order. With the increasing restrictions on hyperlinks by portal sites, doing this kind of soft article now is very inconvenient. The reason why some people still want to do it is because they want both publicity and hanging external links. In fact, Brother Bao does not agree with this practice.