I’m no online celebrity, but I’ve been around the internet long enough to offer my perspective on social media and “self-media” (we-media).

This isn’t a how-to guide for becoming a successful content creator. It’s about the reality of online content creation. Before you dive in, you need to grasp the fundamentals.

The Essence of Online Communities

Know Your Battlefield

Whether it’s TikTok, Douyin, Zhihu, or Bilibili, they all share a common core: they’re content distribution platforms, or communities. They connect creators with consumers. Creators get exposure, potential income, and fulfillment; consumers get information, entertainment, or simply a way to pass the time.

It’s a marketplace, driven by supply and demand. If creators aren’t producing what consumers want, nobody benefits. Creators lose motivation, and consumers move on.

Every community is a content marketplace, connecting creators and consumers for profit. Their aim is to efficiently match supply with demand. Creators reach a large, relevant audience; consumers consistently find content they enjoy. This leads to revenue for creators, and the platform takes a cut – like a mall charging rent. The internet industry is essentially real estate, but stores open for free, and rent comes later.

Creators accept this because platforms offer efficient distribution. Without them, profits might be lower, even after the platform’s cut. It’s a win-win.

All Communities Compete

Don’t Be Limited by Content Format

Communities want to retain both creators and consumers. Consumers have limited time; time spent on one platform is time not spent on another. It’s a scarce resource. Creators have limited energy. While they can post on multiple platforms, each has its own rules. Unless you’re already famous, you need to focus on a specific community to build a following.

Creators and consumers are finite resources, and since all communities connect them, they’re all in competition.

This means Zhihu and Douyin are rivals. It seems strange – one is for Q&A, the other for short videos. But the format doesn’t matter; it’s easy to adapt.

Common formats include text, images, audio, video, and live streams. Each community has a primary format or two. But for creators, content is king. They adapt to any format, seeking the most efficient match between supply and demand.

Text seems cheapest to produce – anyone can write. But creating text on a visual platform like Xiaohongshu? Easy. User-friendly editing software has lowered the barrier. Pick a background, some music, a text template, and you’ve got a decent short video, maybe even animated. Many popular Douyin videos are text-based “pseudo-videos.” Another option: appear on camera and read the text. Converting text to audio is similar.

And those are just the basics. AI tools are even more powerful. AI can create images from text, animate still images, generate realistic voiceovers, lip-sync photos, and even write the text itself. Even live streams have tools for beautification and special effects.

Creators with a clear vision aren’t constrained by format. To grow quickly, they prioritize a platform’s efficiency in matching supply and demand.

Two Types of Matching Mechanisms

Distinguish the Type and Nature of the Battlefield

Speaking of efficiency, let’s talk about Toutiao. It revolutionized supply and demand matching.

Before Toutiao, communities relied on search and following. Consumers searched for what they wanted or followed creators in specific fields. This was the search engine era. “Recommended” features existed, but were secondary. Search and following were central. I call this the “manual mechanism.”

Toutiao, Bytedance’s first major success, prioritized recommendation algorithms. Their engine powers all their products. For consumers, recommendations are more convenient than search – no typing needed. The platform learns your preferences. Browse casually, and the recommendations become increasingly accurate. You don’t even need to follow anyone. I call this the “automatic mechanism.”

The manual mechanism requires action from consumers – they tell the platform their interests. The automatic mechanism requires nothing extra. Recommendations are inherently more efficient.

My own content creation isn’t stellar. I have around 5,000 Weibo followers, with posts getting tens of thousands of views but few likes. On Xiaohongshu, I have almost no followers, yet some posts get thousands of views and dozens of likes. Views show distribution; likes show accuracy.

That’s the automatic mechanism at work. Bytedance is the only Chinese internet giant to truly conquer overseas markets with its software, leaving competitors behind.

Seeing Toutiao and Douyin’s success, other platforms are adopting the automatic mechanism. It’s now about the balance between search and recommendation.

• Platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu are recommendation-heavy. But users also search within them, replacing Baidu.
• Zhihu’s core is Q&A, with significant traffic from Baidu and Google. But the homepage also recommends content based on your preferences.
• Specialized communities like Xiachufang (recipes) have users searching for specific dishes and browsing for ideas. It could easily be a 50/50 split.

What Creators Are After

What Kind of Success Do You Want?

Recommendation engines are efficient, but they can lead to homogeneity. They often tag creators, consumers, and content. Matching tags connect consumers with creators. Creators with similar tags compete based on “weight.” A niche creator gains higher weight than a generalist, leading to large accounts with narrow focuses. This is a byproduct of specialization, but not the same.

Two types of creators thrive: experts with high-quality content and those who mass-produce popular content cheaply. One focuses on quality (gross margin); the other on quantity (turnover). Self-media is a business, and businesses pursue these two goals.

The first path is challenging. Experts often assume their audience shares their knowledge, making content inaccessible. They need to explain complex topics simply, a rare skill.

The second path is more common, but risky. How can humans compete with machines in output? How can original content beat copied content? Large accounts often have systems for collecting, copying, and rebranding content. They gather quality content, copy it formulaically, make minor changes, and add their branding. Anything that builds their persona and isn’t low-quality is used. The creator might not even understand or agree with their own posts. Self-media becomes a job, and the algorithm their boss.

Some creators aren’t after fame or money; they just want to share. Their profiles feel genuine, unlike the monotonous feel of most accounts.

Creators who prioritize authenticity can ignore all this. But authenticity and large followings are often at odds.

The Mindset Creators Should Have

Making Your Content Creation Journey Easier

Most platforms use likes to measure influence. But likes are a result; focus on the cause: comments.

Why?

Comments are the highest-effort interaction. Likes, saves, and shares are binary: like/dislike, useful/not useful, fits my persona/doesn’t. They’re distinct. Only comments are open-ended, capable of replacing the others (even sharing, by @-ing friends). If the other interactions aren’t enough, users comment.

Existing comments can also discourage new ones. Commenters want exposure. If a post has many high-interaction comments, new commenters are less motivated. Likes, saves, and shares don’t have this issue.

So, except for posts designed to provoke, comments are usually the fewest, representing the highest-value interaction.

To boost comments, reply actively, keeping the topic alive and the algorithm engaged. This also encourages potential commenters. But the online world is extreme. Behind screens, people unleash negativity. Unfriendly comments are a cost of growing a large account.

How to mitigate this? First, define your account’s purpose: career or hobby? Fame and fortune, or personal expression?

If it’s a career, treat it like a business. Consumers are data, like chickens on a farm: feeding, temperature, egg production. Interactions that boost comments and likes are valuable. A hater sparking an argument is more valuable than a supporter saying, “Well written.” You might even fuel the fire, then disappear, letting it continue.

If it’s a hobby, distinguish between human voices and noise. Abusive commenters are one-dimensional binary creatures. One-dimensional: they grasp only one variable. Binary: they see only black and white. They’re background noise. When the noise is low, focus on the human voices. When it’s loud, put on headphones and ignore everything, even the human voices. This is your space. For information, use your homepage feed, not your comments. And you don’t have to be both creator and consumer on every platform. Post here, consume there.

Conclusion

The world of self-media isn’t a free utopia.

The idea that experts producing great content automatically succeed is a rare, feel-good story. The reality is, driven by platform interests, the system doesn’t encourage authenticity. It encourages creating a persona, targeting popular topics, and churning out content.

Mentally, you must be machine-like, abandoning normal etiquette and acting like a customer service line: “Press 1 if it’s useful, hang up if it’s not.”

If you’re still undeterred, congratulations. You’ll gain more than fame and fortune. Content creation is a learning experience, and that might be its greatest value.