The secrets of UGC community content operation are all here!

Almost all trading products also want to build communities, because communities plant seeds and transactions pull them out. You plant first and then pull out, and the traffic is in the hands of the community, which always makes me feel uneasy. Whether it is to strengthen barriers or reduce traffic costs, the community seems to be a good solution. And if you are an entrepreneur, it will be smoother if you build your own reservoir and cut transactions from the community.

Almost all content consumption products envy the community because the community can solve the problem of content supply chain. Look at iQiyi and Youku, they spend so much money on copyright purchases every year, while Douyin and Kuaishou have a much smaller burden.

The community is such a great product.

But community is also a complex product.

Why should the community do UGC instead of PGC? After all, PGC looks better, right?

Does it mean that as long as there is a community product function, it is considered a community? If no, why? What does it take to form a community?

Why are the contents produced on Tik Tok and Kuaishou so good?

What is the essence of community?

How exactly does a community grow? What does the operation need to do?

But what is the essence of community? What constitutes a community? What is the relationship between producers and consumers in the community? And, most importantly, what role should operations play in the community?

Two years ago, I wrote two articles about the community: Ten thousand words of useful information | The secrets of UGC, all here. And the social nature, Douyin’s dilemma | short video UGC. Try to answer these questions. Two years later, my understanding of the community is more concise, using only 3,500 words compared to the previous 10,000 words.

Note that there may still be problems and errors, or there must be errors. A completely self-consistent system must be an incorrect system.

Community: Connecting people with content

What is the essence of community?

If we say that IM completes the connection between people. The media connects people with content, while the community connects people with content.

This definition makes the community feel a little awkward, as if it is an intermediate state and will sooner or later become media or IM.

So we can discuss that.

First, what is the difference between community and media?

Some people say that 99% of the people in the community are pure consumers, 1% produce content, and the vast majority of people just come to read the content, right? Then just give the best looking content. What is the best content? PGC.

If UGC is replaced by PGC, wouldn’t the community become a media? If it is the media, what's the problem if I spend money to subsidize the content?

Indeed, the vast majority of users consume content. But what they consume is not just the content, but more importantly the people behind the content.

Most users read the news and don’t look at the comment section. But when I look at the community, I will click on the comment section. Why?

Because the comment section represents people, consumers, and the atmosphere of the community.

For example, when you click on the comment section of TikTok, you will see people criticizing the sanctimonious bitches (there are usually highly praised comments like this under various videos of killing: That’s too cruel… remember to fry it with chili and send it to me), criticizing the busybodies (if you cook without wearing gloves, there will usually be someone commenting: Why don’t you wear gloves? There will definitely be a highly praised reply below: You’re finally here), and criticizing excessive feminism (warnings about having children, warnings about doing housework).

If you open the comment section on Weibo, especially on celebrities’ posts, you will see a large number of fans praising and criticizing each other.

To give another example, the same ghost video will be completely different if you watch it on bilibili and on Youku. Because the barrage on bilibili is so hilarious. There are lots of silly netizens trying to make you laugh, and all kinds of jargon.

And the gathering place for straight men - Hupu.

Second: Will the community become IM?

Since communities also connect people through content, IM also connects people. And IM is real-time, so will IM be the ultimate form of community? Or how about socializing? After all, each community has its own private messaging system.

This question is even simpler. If you send a private message to Kris Wu, will he reply to you? Will it?

Won't.

Some of us are born with high social potential. The highest position is held by celebrities. Even if they post a punctuation mark, there will be a bunch of fans interpreting it below. The lowest are ordinary people, some of whom have to rely on self-abuse to attract attention (think about the early days of Kuaishou).

So this kind of link must be one-to-many. There are two types, synchronous is live broadcast, and asynchronous is community. Therefore, live streaming and posting updates (whether text, pictures, or short videos) are almost standard features of every community.

In summary, the community will not become a media, nor will it become an IM; it is an independent product form.

Community is a manifestation of group consistency

When we understand the independence of communities, we are still confused.

There are some products in this world that can work just by copying them exactly. But for some products, even if their functions are exactly the same, they may not work.

The community is the latter (manually circle the key points for Zhang Chaoyang)

There are too many community-based products on the market, but most of them cannot be called communities.

What does it take to form a community? A very important manifestation is group consistency. The essence of consistency is the unity of values. Externally, it is a community atmosphere.

As we just talked about, this kind of group consistency is particularly reflected in the comment section. For example, the Diaosi atmosphere of Pipixia, Chicken You Are So Beautiful of Bilibili, Big Bowl of Wide Noodles of Hupu, and even the early riser Li Yi Bar heading to Facebook.

It is precisely the existence of this group consistency that leads to the obvious exclusivity of the community. If you are not one of them, you cannot get in, and even if you get in, you cannot have fun playing there.

The community is a very efficient content collaboration system

How does this consistency come about? Through the network effect of the community.

Before we explain, let's review the corresponding definition of the network. I believe that most people often mention it but don't know what it means.

Network Effect Definition:

If there are only a few users in the network, they not only have to bear high operating costs, but can also only exchange information and usage experience with a limited number of people.

As the number of users increases, this situation that is unfavorable to economies of scale will continue to improve, and all users may gain greater value from the expansion of the network scale. At this point, the value of the network grows exponentially. This situation, in which the value of a product to one user depends on the number of other users who use the product, is called a network effect.

Within the community, there is a network effect between producers and consumers, with producers providing content and consumers providing positive feedback.

There is also a network effect between producers. If A's content is popular, B will immediately start to learn and draw on it. Therefore, it only takes a few days for a routine in the community to go from being popular to being boring.

There is also a network effect among consumers. By liking and commenting, consumers express their positions and establish a sense of identity with other consumers.

This multifaceted network effect results in several characteristics of the community: extremely high efficiency in content production, group consistency, good long-term retention, and an exclusivity ceiling.

Strengths and weaknesses of the community

High content production efficiency

Here, we can apply the model of "deliberate practice". The key to deliberate practice is three steps: refining the model, deliberate practice, and timely feedback.

In the community, this is too easy. As a content producer, it is easy to learn models or routines. For example, in the "fishing at the beach" video on Kuaishou, Xiao A creatively made a small bottle and let the mantis shrimp crawl into it by themselves, which is quite fun.

Little B saw it and quickly completed the first step of refining the model (it’s just putting a bottle there). That night, I shot an identical short video and completed the second step, practicing deliberately.

Through distribution, the video was quickly exposed, and compared with the previous one, Xiao B indeed received more likes and comments. Then he looked through the comments, thinking about how to improve it. This completes the third part, please provide timely feedback.

Tens of millions of old friends are running in small steps on Kuaishou, iterating quickly, practicing deliberately, and constantly producing content that satisfies the 200 million old friends.

Who has ever done this? TV station? Official account? No, not even close.

Group consistency

This has been discussed in detail above. The best examples of group consistency are transfer-type communities such as bilibili and Pipixia. They don't even have their own unique supply chain, and they have become a community simply by doing transportation and secondary processing.

Long-term retention & exclusivity ceiling

The stronger and more complex the network effect, the better the long-term retention. But the exclusivity is also getting worse. This is the A and B sides of the network effect. On the one hand, it enhances the value of the community, and on the other hand, it becomes the ceiling of the community.

So you will find that although Kuaishou now has 340 million monthly active users and Douyin has 270 million monthly active users. But there are also many more vertical communities.

To give another example, on the eve of Station A being acquired by Kuaishou, after all the twists and turns, it still had nearly 1 million daily active users and was reluctant to let go.

Operation, helping the community evolve

How to build a community? What is the role of operating in it?

The community is an ecosystem, an exclusive ecosystem. Imagine if you wanted to build an ecosystem. What is the most critical?

Even the extremely simple eco-bottle bar. It also has very clear placement order and requirements. If you put the fish in without adding aquatic plants, the fish will die from lack of oxygen.

In nature, it takes many years to evolve from grassland to bushes to forests, and it is easy to collapse if things are done overnight.

Communities need to be nurtured, and the order and patience of nurturing are very important.

This is also what operations need to do, to master the rhythm of the community. Help the community evolve.

It’s useless to just increase the DAU and KOL numbers right from the start. From small to big, you must first have a very solid core.

Why do we need a kernel?

A community without a core is just a mess, there is no group behavior, and it cannot be called a community.

On the other hand, if you are a new product, you must find a sharp enough point to cut into and break through the sky with one shot. You need to be more efficient, have better content, and be more distinctive in at least a very small area, which also requires you to find a strong enough core.

For example, the core of Tik Tok was initially music and cool camera movements. This is the result of the operator's own selection. The core of Kuaishou was originally rap, which may be the result of users' own screening.

This is the community from 0 to 1.

After having the core, we can help it become more solid through activities, KOL operations and traffic diversion. But on the other hand, be careful about fringe content. As long as the efficiency of the community is high enough, there will always be users who provide some content outside the core. Through algorithms, we can discover some non-core content that is still popular among some users. At this time, you can use operational means to cultivate more KOLs on the site and discover more KOLs outside the site to develop this category.

In order to facilitate the growth of marginal content, the community will provide some small structures, such as topics on Kuaishou, circles on Huoshan, activities and music on Douyin.

As the categories expand, the core of the community will also change and become broader. For example, Tik Tok has evolved from the initial music + camera movements to comedy, and then to life entertainment for young people.

This is the community from 1 to 10.

At this point, your community is already relatively large, and the possibility of discovering and expanding new categories by relying solely on operations is relatively small. It's time to hand over the baton completely to algorithms. And what you need to do is continue to improve the efficiency of the community. This efficiency refers to the efficiency of helping KOLs make money.

If a KOL who fits your profile can accumulate fans on your platform at the fastest speed and make enough money on the platform. Then your community will continue to grow and attract new KOLs. And the more decentralized a community is, generally speaking, the better its retention is.

So you will find that Douyin and Kuaishou are both working hard to engage in e-commerce and live streaming.

Off topic: The future of short videos

The most popular communities right now are the short video communities, Douyin and Kuaishou.

What will be the future of short videos?

Content consumption is a huge basic need. Text → picture → video, the video is just better looking, there is no going back. Video consumption is not a temporary trend, but a long-term trend.

Short videos are short, have low barriers to entry, and can cover everything, so they have created such a large community product. Kuaishou has 340 million monthly active users, Douyin has 270 million, and Huoshan has 130 million. The exclusivity of the community determines that it is difficult for Kuaishou and Douyin to swallow each other.

The key to vlog is not to make the video longer, but to make the short video professional.

In the future, some content will be specialized into medium- and long-length videos such as PGC and vlogs, but the short video community will still exist for a long time.

At the same time, short videos will become like water, becoming the basic function and basic content form of almost all content-related products.

Products with closed transaction loops will focus on vertical short videos, such as Dianping and Mafengwo. But if we remove transactions and just turn it into a vertical short video community, it would probably be difficult for it to survive.

Related reading:

1. Content operation, how does Bilibili operate the UP host group?

2. Content operation, how does Bilibili operate the UP host group?

3. Content operation: 3 major driving forces of high-quality UGC!

4. Content operation, how can we achieve both traffic and sales?

5. Content operation: How to achieve sustainable growth through content?

Author: Jinlong Chat Operations

Source: Jinlong Chat Operation