Content operation: How to build a complete UGC content ecosystem?

What steps are needed to build a complete UGC community? In the early stage, the focus is on content production, in the mid-term, core users are maintained, and in the later stage, a closed loop of content ecology is formed.

A colleague asked me a soul-touching question:

"Having an active community can certainly make users more active and retain more users. But why don't you tell me how to build an active community and how to get users to produce content spontaneously?"

So let’s solve a problem today: How to build an active UGC community?

Operational tools needed for community operations

Before starting operations, we need some common community operation tools: vest function, message/like/collection function, incentive tools (points, treasure chests, lucky bags, special benefits, etc.).

Let me briefly tell you why these operation tools are needed:

Vest functions: maintaining the community public opinion environment, guiding topics, disguising as users to publish UGC content, and maintaining core user relationships all require vests. It can be said that vests are the most essential operating tools of the community.

There was once a famous saying about sock puppet operations: "Don't look for it, there are no users. The entire community is just me and my sock puppet."

Message function: When a post is commented on or liked by a certain user, it can be sent to the user via a message, which can effectively wake up and recall the user.

Like/Collect function: basically the simplest social interaction behavior. I suggest that “Like” be designed at the product level as “Administrator accounts can like unlimited times”.

First of all, user behavior needs to be guided. Before any user likes a post, the community operators can like it themselves and guide the community's atmosphere of likes.

Secondly, you can expose high-quality content by clicking likes (similar to how the most liked replies on Zhihu are ranked at the top).

Incentive tools such as points, treasure chests, and specific rights: Incentive tools are a very important part of the UGC content ecosystem. What kind of content and what kind of prizes are rewarded directly determine the direction in which users will produce content.

In the early stages of the community, we should focus on content production

Without users, who will produce content? Without content, how can users visit the community?

This seems to be a chicken and egg problem.

From my experience, in the early stages of building a community, you have to focus all your energy on content production, and this content can only be produced by yourself, and you cannot rely on external forces.

The purpose of a community's first batch of content is to set the tone for the community. What kind of community is this? What will be discussed? What kind of content will be rewarded? What kind of content will be penalized?

Users will understand the community through content, and then do what they think is right in the community based on their own understanding.

If you are a community nested under your main business, the first batch of content in the community must be strongly related to your main business.

Through this content, you need to tell users: The value of this community lies in helping you better understand this company and the services it provides.

The content discussed in the SoYoung community must revolve around its main business: medical aesthetics and plastic surgery.

The content of Hupu Community must revolve around its main business, basketball.

Many people would think that if I don’t restrict content, everyone will have more content and topics to produce and consume. This is an extremely wrong idea.

The reality is that without proper guidance and constraints, users will not post any content, or only a small number of spam users will post advertisements.

Because users don’t know what they can do in this community and what this community can give them.

Some community operators will also look for industry-related KOLs to provide content, and regard these contents as the first batch of content for the community. This is also the wrong approach.

Although KOLs can provide content (forwarding content from subscription accounts and Weibo to the community), the vast majority of KOLs will not interact with users. Moreover, it is impossible to ensure that the content is 100% relevant to the main business.

You might be thinking, it's ok for me to post some industry information, right? This is actually a wrong approach. There are many apps for reading news, and there is no reason for users to read news in your community. But you can combine information and services provided by the business to produce content.

For example. P2P has been plagued by controversy in the past two years, and the supervision of the entire industry has become increasingly strict. If a new regulatory policy is issued today, the content that is valuable to users is not the information, but the impact of this regulatory policy on me as a p2p investor. What impact does this policy have on this P2P company?

Information that has not been interpreted from a user perspective is meaningless to the community.

I admit that the initial content construction is very difficult, but this is the foundation of the community and we have to do it ourselves.

How to maintain your core users in the mid-term community

If you have completed the early content production work of the community, then congratulations, your community has surpassed 50% of the communities on the market. In the middle stage of the community's development, what we need to do is to continuously update the content while exploring/maintaining the core users of the community.

Core users should meet these requirements:

(1) Have a sense of identity with the community/platform itself;

(2) A certain amount of free time can be guaranteed to visit the community;

(3) Have a certain level of writing ability.

Find these users and grant them certain special rights (recommendation, blocking, etc.) and special identities (moderator, zone moderator). Carry out key maintenance in WeChat groups or QQ groups.

Because they identify with the community, these users will naturally speak from the perspective of the platform. Because they have special rights and special identification, they have a say in the community.

As a community operator, you need to know very clearly the gender, age, job, city, interests and hobbies of these core users.

Only after you understand these clearly can you operate your core user base well and ensure the activity of these users and the production of high-quality content.

Core users are also cultivated from ordinary users, and the entire cultivation process is very fragile. If a potential core user posts a long message but no one reads it or replies to it, the user will be easily lost.

You need a complete plan to discover and cultivate core users. Here is a method I often use.

Step 1: Start a topic activity in the community. Arouse users' desire to express themselves.

Step 2: All content that participates in the event and is of decent quality will be exposed and recommended. It means that the community recognizes your views and content.

Step 3: Follow up with targeted replies. Use 5 to 10 aliases to comment/reply to content posted by a potential core user. It means that users approve of your content and opinions.

Step 4: In the third step, the pseudonyms that participated in the reply will republish content to reversely guide potential core users to reply/comment. Create a weak social relationship between core users and vests.

Step 5: The official administrator will follow up, issue an invitation to become a community moderator, and add WeChat/QQ for targeted maintenance.

To run a community well, there are many things to do. You need to have a group of core users who follow you wholeheartedly, help you maintain the community, produce content, and organize activities.

If you cannot find these core users, then your community will only remain at the most basic level. I always disguise myself as a user to produce content and cannot extricate myself.

The later stage of the community: building a complete UGC content ecosystem

If you have completed the first two steps I just mentioned, it is basically enough for a community nested under the main business. Vests and core users produce content, and ordinary users consume content and make actions such as likes. Such a community can already be operated in a process-based manner.

But we have higher aspirations, we hope that more users can participate in content production. For ordinary users, it is indeed unrealistic to produce a long article full of useful information. But we still hope that users can post some high-quality comments/replies.

Just to give an example:

Tfboys Wang Yuan posted a Weibo. The content of the Weibo post is:

"I learned how to serve rice, just to tell you, and today, #YouthHostel 21:40 new time, you know it!"

The reply below this Weibo post is:

"He has learned how to serve rice at the age of 17. This kid is really awesome!"

One of the great pleasures for users browsing the community is to see these amazing replies. So what can we do to get more valuable content and wonderful replies in the community?

Use small rewards to encourage high-quality content, thereby building the entire UGC content ecosystem.

What we reward must be high-quality content. I once made a mistake by packaging posting and replying to posts into tasks, hoping to guide users to post more high-quality posts.

After going online, I found that I was wrong. This kind of reward that simply guides users to post content will only stimulate users to post spam on a large scale. Large-scale spam posts cannot be handled in a timely manner, which greatly affects the browsing experience of normal users.

After reflection, we repackaged the task, completely from the perspective of content quality, and no longer considered the dimension of quantity.

So how do you define high-quality content? My experience is this:

For long posts, high-quality content can be considered from two dimensions: "number of views" and "whether it is recommended to the homepage."

For replies/comments, you can consider it from the dimension of the number of likes.

Think of rewards as the operating costs of the community. After the reward mechanism is launched, you will find that the overall quality of the community will be qualitatively improved.

Of course, the setting of rewards is also very sophisticated. It cannot be too difficult for users, otherwise they will lose interest in participating. If it is too simple, it will become a universal reward and will not improve the quality of content.

The threshold is set at 30% of users who publish content seriously and have a high probability of getting rewards. We have to admit that many users are unable to produce high-quality content, and clicking likes is already their limit.

Once this level is achieved, the complete ecosystem of the community has been built. In such a community, converting users for the main business, reaching users for the main business, and retaining users for the main business can all be accomplished efficiently.

Conclusion:

The community may be the product that currently tests comprehensive operational capabilities the most. You have to consider the content, the users, the activities, and the products. If any aspect is not done well, the community will be incomplete.

Running a community is not easy. So when building a community, please be mentally prepared. This is a product that is made through slow and careful work.

Although I have written simply what needs to be done in the early, middle and late stages of a community, if you have actually put them into practice, you will know how many pitfalls you need to fill in these seemingly simple things.

Currently, many communities on the market have not even solved the problem of product positioning. Even if the positioning is clear, the community may be half-dead due to various mistakes and cognitive biases in actual operations, not to mention the complete ecology of the community.

Finally, please do not share this article with blockchain practitioners. Thank you everyone!

Source: Chief Effectiveness Officer