Click the image for details Introduction: The era when you could just run ads and get good communication impact, and easily do marketing, is truly over! In the traditional era, the communication principle was the "funnel principle": by advertising on authoritative media with top influence and trust, based on "perception over facts," a portion of the audience would flow out of the "funnel" into your frame, becoming your consumers. After mobile internet, communication is in the "ripple era": you must be the wave source yourself, influencing those around you who can receive the wave, and through the chain-like secondary dissemination of mobile internet, gradually expand your influence outward, only then can you make them receive and possibly accept your commercial information! Fragmented Era It should be said that anyone doing communication now is more or less trapped in indescribable anxiety and confusion. Some bosses even say: "I have communication budgets in hand, I want to invest in some ads, but I just don't know where to invest!" Especially in Q4 2016, WeChat's crackdown on fake read counts and likes for official accounts further dampened companies' desire to build influence through advertising. The communication industry has entered an era of helplessness! And for business owners, the situation where shouting could sell products and achieve performance may be gone forever! All this is entirely due to the fragmentation brought by mobile internet. What is the fragmented era? Simply put, it means source fragmentation, time fragmentation, and processing fragmentation. Communication sources are fragmented, making it hard to have top-tier sources. Even if there are large platforms, the time audiences receive information is fragmented, making it hard for them to systematically receive systematic communication, because the next wave of different information from different sources arrives. Audience absorption of information is also fragmented; their brains find it hard to systematically process corporate information to form purchase decisions, and the fragmented information from multiple sources creates immunity and barriers to one-sided communication. So, fragmentation shatters the path of attention, interest, desire, and trial that communication should create for audiences! Whether to rebuild the audience's acceptance path or to construct the original path in new ways is a profound topic. Lack of Top-Tier Resources in Communication Due to fragmentation, it's now hard to obtain top-tier resources in communication. Although reports say Toutiao's 2017 advertising revenue may surpass CCTV and become the largest beneficiary of ad spending, we must say that the advertising effect achieved with these fees is not comparable to what was achieved with CCTV ads. Similarly, reports say P&G, the biggest advertiser, after analyzing its precise online ads in H2 2016, found that despite significant investment, returns were likely unsatisfactory, and it turned back to traditional channels, indicating a mismatch between precise online reach and final purchase influence. From the rise of Weibo in 2009, Toutiao's launch in 2013, to 2016 when various news clients like Tencent News, Daily Express, Baidu Baijiahao, NetEase, Sohu, UC, and 1Point all rushed to grab self-media articles for ad revenue, in other words, to attract businesses to advertise. With fierce competition, it's still unknown which one or ones will become top-tier resources. Internal fraud, entertainment-to-death, and overwhelming junk information also increasingly discount corporate communication effects. Undoubtedly, business owners miss the traditional TV era! Watching TV is a closed, non-choosable environment. During ad breaks, you are fully engaged in watching ads; the ad information basically reaches your senses. Over time, consumers unconsciously remember ads and make purchases. In the mobile internet era, the information you receive from these new media is likely to be ignored, skipped, or even unseen. That is, even if the information is precise, it may not input to your senses, and even if it does, it may be ignored or not easily remembered at the time of purchase. Without top-tier communication resources, and possibly never having them, is definitely a major concern for companies! User Information Acceptance Habits Completely Disrupted Lack of top-tier resources is the first knife mobile internet brings to corporate communication, but another deadly knife is: consumers' information application habits have been completely disrupted! 1. Image-Reading Era Although text is still a main way to convey information, image-text information is continuously conquering territory. This is probably why official accounts have grown to tens of millions of registrations, right? An article without an image is now unimaginable. Some news clients have explicitly reminded self-media that three images compared to one are better for promotion and reader acceptance, and without an image, it definitely won't be promoted. Some even require four or more images! The image-reading era clearly raises the bar for companies to publish information. 2. One-Screen Era Due to small phone screens, the largest being 7-inch pad-style phones, one screen can only hold a few hundred characters. To read an article longer than one screen, you need to click to continue, which adds an extra burden for audiences. According to Baidu statistics, over 55% of readers may choose to abandon flipping and only read the first screen. So, if the first screen doesn't attract, and the content doesn't prompt a second click to read the full text, your carefully crafted communication content may be wasted. 3. One-Second Era Even more frightening than one-screen reading is one-second reading. That is, in many cases, even if interested, people only read the headline or glance at the content and close it. So, in the mobile internet era, people become "knowers" rather than "intellectuals"; mobile reading and fragmented reading make it nearly impossible to form "intellectuals," and getting audiences to focus deeply on your information is incomparably harder than before! 4. Comment-Reading Era Comments are not only interactive but also have a "fresh" feel, not so dull and rigid, making them a scene where audiences like to stay and participate. Interaction itself is a core element of mobile internet. However, your commercial articles often struggle to stimulate audience enthusiasm for commenting. And for the hottest topics like politics and entertainment, if you try to blatantly ride the wave, audiences have developed thick calluses to defend against it; they see at a glance that you're vulgarly advertising, somewhat fooling them, and may even unfollow, turning from fans to haters! Some articles, after reading the first screen, audiences scroll directly to the comments. Your important content is missed again. Despite seemingly high click-through rates, the actual content transmission effect is pitiful! The audience's automatic filtering mechanism is a big pitfall! 5. Keyword Era Clearly, we are in the algorithm era. Media platforms first use keywords to see if something is hot, and audiences often use keywords to understand if an article is relevant to them. If keywords are missing or poorly used, your communication content may hardly get disseminated. The keyword and algorithm era is also a double-edged sword for companies: it only recommends what you're familiar with, and what you're not familiar with or haven't been recommended before is hard to get recommended! Thus, audiences find it hard to receive new things, so your new information struggles to reach them. 6. Video Era With the arrival of 4G and 5G, and lower data costs, mobile video is direct, simple, requires no complex operations, and engages audiences through multiple senses like sight and hearing, making it an important way for audiences to accept content on their own terms, hence its explosive rise in 2016. Live streaming, with its directness and popular interaction, pushed video to a climax and continues to develop. For businesses, this means each company needs to recruit more professionals, purchase equipment, and prepare venues, presenting a series of challenges to solve and upgrade. 7. Secondary Communication Era Single-point contact, without seed audiences' secondary communication, is another challenge for corporate communication in the fission era. If there's only primary communication, the seed source may become a communication barrier rather than a fission point! In short, the biggest disruption by mobile internet is in communication. Haven't you seen print media frequently closing and traditional editors and reporters frequently changing jobs? Communication industry issues have become a major constraint on business development. All the above makes corporate communication truly unimaginably difficult! And where is the way out? There are no successful experiences or mature routines to follow yet. Perhaps it's time for us, as innovators, to step half a step ahead and explore through practice! -END-