Product Operation: How to cold start a product? Share 4 steps!

The product has just been launched and needs a community cold start. What should I do if I don’t know where to start operations? Don’t panic, in this article, the author will give you an in-depth analysis in four steps: the most common way to cold start a product - centralized operation, to help you solve your problems.

Recently, many students who have just entered the industry have given me feedback with similar questions: Professor, the new product has just been launched, and the community urgently needs a cold start. However, we finally found 100 users to join the QQ group, and after half a month of operation, it is still a mess. Now we are criticized by the boss all day long. What should we do?

The difficulty in cold-starting a product is a difficult point in many operational tasks. Most people cross the river by feeling their way across the stones, but are eventually drowned by the rushing water and gain nothing.

The key point is that the knowledge framework for cold start in the user operation section has not been established.

Today, we will combine 4 cases to give you an in-depth analysis of the most common gameplay in cold start: centralized operation.

What is centralized operation?

First of all, we need to understand: What is centralized operation?

Centralized operation is an operational means to build an organization with rules and goals. Members within the organization have strong demands and sense of direction, and the members of the organization can empower products and improve product indicators.

This operating method has its own distinct characteristics: it is suitable for the initial stage of product cold start and adopts the PGC model.

And meet the following conditions:

• The user scale for cold start is generally within 200 people, and the information of individual users must be relatively complete. For example: user contact information, age, gender, personal preferences, product demands, etc. Only by mastering the full portrait of core users in the cold start phase can we provide a basis for setting the tone of the product and driving user output.
• It has very standard operating specifications, including: user access standards, elimination standards, user rights and responsibilities, etc. Producing high-quality products in small quantities, normal staff flow and the creation of a sense of identity are indispensable means to revitalize the organization and avoid it becoming stagnant. The target group of initial operations is often professional or high-quality users.
• Moreover, members within the organization have unique identities, which is the prerequisite for organizational recognition. The unique title, positioning, and in-product mapping display method, this barrier established through recognition, is a very valuable point for later user operations.

Analysis and case study of the 4-step process of centralized operation

Part 1: Establishing an organization

This is the preparatory stage for centralized operations. At this stage, some basic elements need to be clarified to lay the foundation for subsequent organizational operations.

First of all, the centrally operated group, whether in a QQ group/WeChat group or other places, must be a group that gathers around a certain interest or attribute. The more segmented it is, the more it helps users understand, and this is the most core difference.

It is specifically manifested in: organization name, solgan, homepage details, access portal, rules and regulations, user list, etc.

Let’s use 3 simple cases to compare the following organization names of various products to see which one can help you quickly understand the organization.

• Product 1: Movie community - movie review vs movie lover group.
• Product 2: Mobile game—report bugs and get benefits vs. official feedback group.
• Product 3: E-commerce — Latest offers synced vs core user base.

The above is only about the impact of the organization name on users. I believe you have made your own judgment. In addition, the core of the organization must meet three conditions:

Organizations must enable products to:

Case 1: Taptap

Taptap initially successfully completed its cold start-up goals by gathering a large number of independent game enthusiasts in China.

How did they do it?

For Taptap in its initial stages: high-quality game reviews are extremely important.

Therefore, in the initial stage, they concentrated on operating a large number of high-quality independent game review enthusiasts through invitation, contact and dissemination. Keep their communities active and continue to motivate them to produce high-quality review content. By fully aligning the operating organization and product revenue, Taptap can develop into a community for discovering great games.

Communicate a clear organizational positioning:

Case 2: Meituan Waimai

This is an organization built by a group of domestic white-collar workers who are distributed all over the country. They are very clear about the positioning and value of this organization.

It’s a bit sad to talk about it, so let me share the red envelope from Meituan Takeout.

During the more than one year from the establishment of the entire organization to its full staffing, everyone reached an amazing tacit understanding and unity - only Meituan red envelopes can be sent here, and they will be shared here every time, with everyone helping each other.

When this level of tacit understanding reaches a certain level over time, human intervention is no longer necessary.

The organization has a sense of mission:

Case 3: ofo

This is often related to the positioning of the product or company. If a company or product has no vision and sense of mission to the outside world, it will be difficult for such group operations to achieve the corresponding level of cultural identity. For example, Wikipedia’s vision is to “become the most complete encyclopedia for all mankind that anyone can participate in.” Using vision to guide user behavior is the highest level model.

Ofo initially had a spontaneously organized charity group, which was mainly participated by some philanthropists. They would maintain the yellow bikes for free, such as removing private locks on the bikes and so on. Members of the organization have highly unified values, and they hope to gradually influence and improve the social outlook through similar small actions.

Part 2: Introducing users

Conventional introduction is divided into two modules: one is introduction within the product, and the other is introduction outside the product.

In-product introduction

There are generally 2 ways:

1. Through R&D, we export corresponding user information, filter user data, and find user groups that meet the requirements. And build channels for communicating with users within the product. Common methods include: Push, system messages, SMS, customer service messages, banners, pop-ups, etc.
2. Release a recruitment activity page within the product to attract users to actively participate.

Product introduction

Who is the user?

• During the cold start-up phase, Xiaohongshu introduced some big-name beauty bloggers on Weibo.
• When Zhihu sets the tone early on, it also chooses well-known opinion leaders in the industry.

So, you must first be clear about who the users you need to introduce are.

Where are they?

Knowing the main gathering places of the users you are going to target can save a lot of operation time.

• During the cold start-up period, the users of Jianshu APP focused on products produced by foreign content such as Instageam.
• In the early days, Keep was looking for men and women who often posted pictures of themselves working out on Weibo.

A directionless search only means that you don’t know your core target users well enough.

How to introduce?

There are two questions involved here: Why should users accept your introduction invitation? And, what communication methods will facilitate their participation?

In fact, the most fundamental reason for users to join is: because of the value your product can bring to them.

for example:

• Meipai app can make me look better.
• Zhihu app can enhance personal influence and so on.

Therefore, you need to know clearly: what kind of user demands can your product solve? And provide them with value.

Knowing this, you will know how to introduce it.

When introducing users, pay attention to the three elements of information delivery:

1. Easy to read
2. Highlight the other party’s benefits
3. Provide enough information

This is a communication method that most users can easily accept, and it is also a summary of experience.

Many students who are doing user operation introduction work talk a lot to others, but in the end no one knows: Who are you? What to do? Why did he do that?

Speaking clearly and highlighting the key points are the core of communication.

Case 4: UC subscription account

This was an email sent by UC Subscription Account a few years ago, inviting me to become a high-quality author. It completely meets the introduction communication elements mentioned above.

Part 3: Organization and Management

It is mainly divided into 3 parts:

Clear organizational system:

The rights and obligations of users are usually emphasized, preferably through pictures and activities.

Case 5: Alipay - intuitively explains what needs to be done and the possible benefits.

Reasonable structure:

If you only need around 200 core users, there is absolutely no problem in connecting with them through de-structuring and emotional connection.

However, once your user organization hopes to support a larger number of users, the architecture design must be sufficient to support large-scale user operations, and this operation model must support multiple reuse.

A typical example is the pyramid management model, which is more like the feudal system during the Zhou Dynasty. Each level is only responsible for the people in the next level, thus forming a pyramid-shaped organization. Generally, the hierarchical relationship is divided based on two dimensions: user background and output value.

Case 6: Weibo

When Weibo is doing user segmentation, its main goal is to increase user activity and the number of users who post on Weibo.

Therefore, they divided users into four levels: celebrity users, professional users, contributing users, and effective users.

There are only contribution output and user background, and no hierarchical relationship is adopted. Through the blessing of identity identification, users are encouraged to continue to produce content.

• Celebrity users: 1v1 invitations, sometimes gifts are given in person, and celebrities are invited to open a Weibo account.
• Professional users: People in vertical fields with professional endorsements who need the platform to endorse them.
• Contributing users: They are the largest content output entities and are incentivized through identification/rights such as Weibo experts.
• Effective users: Users who have uploaded avatars and personal profiles, and are mainly content consumers.

Clear division of labor:

This is common in small-scale communities, and is mainly about ensuring that people participate and execute every aspect of the organization.

Generally, there will be an observation period, followed by a trial period after communication, and finally becoming a formal administrator.

This sense of ritual will strengthen the spiritual resonance among users. Take a QQ group of 100 people as an example: 4 administrators can be set up to be responsible for activity, management, guidance, and activities, which basically covers most of the functions.

Part 4: User Activity

There are three main operating methods:

1. Through the system: 2 reviews must be produced every week, etc.
2. Through activities: a way of re-skinning the system, for example, the top 10 users who produce the most reviews this week can get rewards.
3. Stimulate demand: display user-generated content within products or communities, obtain the privilege of direct dialogue with officials, etc.

If the organization's positioning is not sufficiently segmented at the beginning of the preparation stage, or the number of people in the organization continues to increase, there may be a polarization between silent and active users, emotional maintenance will become increasingly poor, the turnover rate of personnel will increase, and the speed of new additions will not keep up with the speed of loss.

Because people's emotional energy will not expand as the social scope of the group expands. As topics become more diverse, new small groups will continue to emerge. At this time, the operation needs to follow the trend and give play to the advantages of this segmentation to help them form their own new interest groups, generally around 10 to 20 people, and then expand into new small groups to complete the fission of the user group.

Source: Operations Professor