Product Operation: How to build a closed loop of content ecology?

Have you ever had this experience: you just started operating a product user group, and everyone was chatting well at the beginning and contributing a lot of content and feedback to the product. During this process, although you were very tired, as an operator, you felt a great sense of accomplishment.

When there are more people in the group, you start to find that no one talks much, and their contribution to the product content even decreases. No matter how you operate it, the situation is like a derailed train, getting worse and worse, and gradually losing morale.

The most terrible thing is that you may open a new group and repeat the above primary operation rules...

All this is because: you have not created a product ecosystem , which is also the second core value of operations.

First of all, we need to understand what it means to build a product ecosystem. Let’s take products that rely on user-generated content as an example.

That is: building an ecological closed loop of user contribution + content consumption. This definition can be applied to most products.

If you continue to analyze it, you will find that the underlying logic of this definition is: the interactive behavior brought about by users' consumption of content is the most effective incentive for content production.

Having said all this, you may have some questions. For a new operator, how can you put this definition into practice in your actual work? Next, we will use several classic operational cases to teach you the core value of operations: how to create a closed-loop application of the product ecosystem.

Case 1: Baidu Tieba-Finding key people

For experienced operators, finding a Key boy can help them solve most of the problems in most operations. Building a product ecosystem is no exception. Baidu Tieba has understood this rule very well. They regard the "bar owner" as the core operation object in the operation of Tieba.

All operational work conforms to the 28th law: 20% of the group produces 80% of the value, and Baidu Tieba applies it to the fullest extent.

First, they divided all the forums into core forums and ordinary forums in a ratio of 28:28. Ordinary forums do not consume too much energy of the official operators and are operated by the forum owners themselves, just like herding sheep, and only do some simple maintenance.

The core forums are their main focus , which are divided into three types of forums: opinion forums, plastic forums, and super forums.

• Public Opinion Bar: Mainly factual hot topics, such as some large international conferences, used for establishment and promotion;
• Plastic Bar: Specially maintain some potential forums, and support them as candidates for super bars in the future;
• Super Bar: Like Diba, there are dedicated people to maintain and monitor it. Specific activities and bar owner relationships need to be maintained, which can promote the effect of the entire product iteration.

Everyone's energy is limited, especially for community operations. If you treat it as a sunshine policy, the operation limit is often around 100 to 150 people. If the operation can find the key people among them, focus on maintenance, and establish a corresponding user management system, it can have a multiplier effect . We will have the opportunity to open a special topic to discuss this in detail.

Case 2: Maoyan Movies-Pyramid Layering

Maoyan Movies is one of the best in China in terms of the application of the pyramid layering theory.

For such a tool-oriented product, only content generated by users can form a product barrier, and Maoyan Movie uses five levels to divide users.

They are: celebrities, kols, experts, active users, and ordinary users. Let’s take a look at their definitions.

• Celebrities: The main groups are directors, screenwriters, and stars – who can attract attention and provide endorsements;
• Kol: The main group is influential PGC producers in the industry - to enhance their own brand professionalism;
• Talents: UGC producers who can produce high-quality content but do not have a professional background - they are the subjects of content contribution;
• Active users: active but not consuming content, mainly content consumers, and the basis of producers;
• Ordinary users: users who neither produce nor consume.

For users in different strata, their product demands are also different. Operations can analyze users’ product needs through stratification results, and then conduct targeted intervention and guidance to create an ecological closed loop for the entire product.

Here we give two application examples:

1. After investigating the "experts", we found that they care about the platform's recognition of themselves. Therefore, product solutions such as official badges and V-added can enhance their continued contribution to the platform;
2. Movie celebrities all have the need to promote movies, so it is easy for 1v1 people to invite them to write reviews and so on.

Users of different products can be divided differently. The main thing is to find the different needs of product users, and then intervene in operations in a targeted manner to guide users to create product value.

Case 3: Practical case study of community products

This is a community product that I personally experienced from 0 to 1, starting in 2016 and lasting more than a year. In the early days, the entire business team had a size of over 120 people, and its members came from all over the place, including NetEase, Alibaba, YY, etc. It could be said to be a very luxurious incubation project, which is why I joined it.

At that time, I was mainly responsible for user operations, and a few friends worked together to build the tone and closed loop of the entire community. Although everyone has participated in this business from different project groups, I understand that the business logic and working methods of this team are extremely mature.

In such an environment, the most important thing is work logic. Pure hard work can easily be optimized.

So after much discussion, our team members decided to use the 28 rules and pyramid stratification strategy to revitalize the entire community product. The actual operation of the entire business line is briefly described as follows:

1. Export the top 1% of content producers on the entire platform

• The judgment criteria mainly refer to several dimensions: content quantity, content length, content quality, and content interaction effect.
• In addition to some fixed numerical screening, the judgment of content quality needs to be determined based on the tone of the entire product. For example, our requirement for the tone of the content is that it can help users find truly fun games, so when we manually screen user content, we will lean in this direction.

1. Connect and gather them through various means

This is a test of operational skills, because in the actual implementation process, we found that our core users have various identity labels.

There are editors of well-known websites, industry KOLs, forum moderators, primary school students who simply love to write, and so on. For such a variety of people, our four sets of pre-selection plans can basically achieve full coverage.

Formal email + certificate + trophy:

These are given to users who cannot be brought together through material and ordinary connections, mainly some well-known figures. Their demands are simple, they need to be respected and recognized by the official, and they need a full sense of ceremony, so these materials for providing the ceremony need to be specially customized.

Identification within the product:

These are given to users who are well-known in the industry and demand more industry endorsements. An official product identity is extremely tempting.

Material rewards:

These are mainly users who do not have such strong social needs and have no intention of continuous content production. A little bit of warmth is enough to care for them, and the materials here are best exchanged for official peripherals, so that users will be more receptive.

Official Contact:

This includes phone/QQ/app push. Some users are very happy as long as an official lady talks to them. They are mainly young users with high product loyalty.

1. Differentiated incentives after user stratification

Here I will mainly talk about the non-1v1 user group, which is the main user group we will face. We will mainly use 3 tricks to win over users and motivate them to continue producing content.

A system:

It is a set of user behavior guidelines, including group positioning, names, values, personnel admission and elimination standards, how to be promoted within the organization, how to obtain corresponding titles, etc.

Once a group system is in place, official operators only need to connect with the main core members within the Q group, and can continuously replicate such an organizational structure. After the actual implementation, we were able to smoothly allow a high-quality user group of 5,000 people

One cycle:

This iteration of the cognitive cycle within the entire user group is also an iterative way to activate the content output of the product.

Only when the entire user group has a concept of cycles, will this user group have vitality, and users will pay attention to your operating methods and develop a habit;

For example, if you choose this node when giving out awards, giving out prizes, or announcing the settlement date of an event, users will naturally enhance their perception. When the incentive of a Q group is redeemed on Monday, multiple Q groups can alternate this redemption cycle to achieve a positive cycle of content production.

An activity:

Whether it is a spiritual activity or a material activity, every one-to-many group must have an activity theme within the cycle. Only in this way can the group have cohesion, and the form of activity should be replicable. The activities we adopted at the time were combined with the product value. The underlying logic was: users produce content and we give rewards, but the form is different each time.

1. Get rid of the influence of people on the organization

This is the most difficult and most important environment. Maintaining a community through people is definitely not as effective as maintaining a community through systems.

To give the simplest example, if an operations staff leaves, it is very likely that the entire operational results will collapse, and human uncertainty cannot give the team certain expectations in such an important matter.

Based on this, we have optimized the organizational structure of the community, linking each other with hierarchical relationships. Each Q group owner influences 50 to 100 people, and every 10 group owners connect with 1 senior user. In the end, each official operator is left with only a few countable senior users.

Of course, the premise is that your initial operating system model is in line with such a system framework. If there is any deviation, your operating model will eventually be bottlenecked by the upper limit of personnel and will not be able to be carried out.

Summary of the main points of the full text:

(1) Core value of operation: building a closed loop of content ecology;

(2) Two sets of theoretical support: the 28th Law and the Pyramid Theory.

Source: Jiudianxueshe (ID: jiudianxueshe)