How do community products build a content system?

For community products, it is particularly important to create good "content". Good content can directly bring value to users, thereby effectively attracting new users, retaining users , and improving user stickiness.

However, creating good content is not an easy task. What is good content, how to continuously provide high-quality content, and how to match content with users are all problems that products need to face and solve.

In order to better understand this problem, I thought of two products: Dongqiudi and Hupu. They are all sports and community products, both are at the top of the industry, and both provide content to users as core value. How do they build community content?

To study this issue in depth, specifically, it can be divided into two parts for discussion:

• Content Production
• Distribution of content

The following article will take Dongqiudi and Hupu as examples and conduct analysis around these two dimensions, hoping to provide some inspiration for answering the question "How to build a content system within the product".

1. Content Production

The content section of a product is often composed of a variety of different forms of content, such as news, in-depth professional articles, posts by ordinary users, etc. Rich content can better meet the diverse needs of users, and in terms of operations , different incentive methods are often used for different content forms.

▌ Know the football emperor

The content of Dongqiudi can be roughly divided into three categories: information content, PGC content represented by columns and Dongqiu accounts, and UGC content represented by circles. The left side of the picture below shows the purpose of the content, and the right side shows the main operating methods.

▲ The content system of Dongqiudi

• Information content

Information content refers to the latest developments related to teams, games, players, etc. Short messages are very important because they can occupy users' fragmented time and have always been an important means for Dongqiudi to obtain traffic .

Compared with other content, information content has strong media attributes and requires timely and accurate release. This requires content providers to have a wide range of content acquisition channels and to respond quickly and sensitively. This determines that information content needs to be provided by the official operation team.

Specifically, information content is updated in real time by the official operation team through human search. The channels through which the operation team obtains information include major domestic and foreign media and social platforms, such as Twitter , Marca, Diario SPORT, etc., covering hundreds of media in various European countries. Of course, in order to obtain some exclusive news, the editor speculates that the operation team will also have some exclusive non-media channels, such as establishing friendly relationships with the team, to obtain exclusive information.

After using information to acquire customers, Dongqiudi also provides other types of content.

• Column + Know the number of football

Columns and football accounts are dedicated to providing professional and in-depth articles, such as tactical analysis of a particular game, or the impact behind player transfers. This part of the content needs to be created by senior media professionals, senior fans or related practitioners, and there is a certain threshold. In order to stimulate the production of this part of the content, Dongqiudi adopted the incentive method of material rewards and traffic inclination.

A few years ago, Dongqiudi publicly recruited part-time writers, hoping to reach people who could provide high-quality content through cash incentives . After a period of development, some of these part-time writers have become operators of columns within the community, producing in-depth content through columns in a relatively fixed frequency and style.

We also interviewed Lao Wei, who joined Dongqiudi as a part-time writer in 2016 and is now the operator of the Lao Wei column. He said that the reason he joined Dongqiudi was because he had always liked Inter Milan. Doing this part-time job is equivalent to turning his hobby into a job. His current writing is relatively free, without clear task requirements, but he does have income from royalties.

In addition to columns, Dongqiuhao is another place for creating in-depth content. The self-media platform "Dongqiuhao" launched in 2016 introduced various official clubs, such as "Inter Milan Football Club", "Schalke 04 Football Club", "Paris Saint-Germain Football Club", etc. These clubs will publish game information and team news, which can be regarded as PGC content. Of course, after the self-media platform was built, it also attracted a group of more grassroots writers to settle in and provide some structured and systematic content.

• Circle + UGC

The format of a circle is similar to a forum , where users post or reply to posts in the circle of their interest. There are various circles in Dongqiudi, including team circles, interest-based circles such as "Music", "College Entrance Examination", "Second Dimension", etc., and regional circles such as "Zhichun Road", etc. The latter can provide a kind of instant social interaction.

Setting up a circle is essentially building a community. Whether based on preferences or geographic location, users can be linked relatively effectively. Once this effective social relationship is established and takes effect, it can effectively promote the production of UGC content.

▌ Hupu

The situation of Hupu is different. We can roughly divide the content on the Hupu site into information content, PGC and UGC.

▲ Hupu content system

• Information content

For Hupu, information content is also indispensable. As for how to ensure that the latest information can be released in a timely manner, the Hupu operations staff who were interviewed by Sanjieke said that Hupu has a development history of more than ten years and has a very professional news team. It can obtain news such as star transfers in the first time through very deep resources and release it quickly in the form of short information.

• PGC

For the creators of PGC content, Hupu officials do not institutionalize operations by providing economic benefits. Of course, the official will also produce some high-quality content in the form of paid commissions.

Most of the high-quality content producers on the site have grown slowly from ordinary users. For example, Zhang Jiawei, a famous influencer in Hupu’s early days, spontaneously produced content within the community and gradually grew into a influencer. When talking about creative motivation, Hupu operators have mentioned the concept of identity many times. It is believed that group identity is the driving force that inspires users to spontaneously output content.

In other words, Hupu did not actively cultivate KOLs , but instead focused on cultivating communities and group identity. Here is a simple example:

The name JR used by Hupu users is actually a name that has been gradually accumulated from the bottom up in the community. When Hupu revised its logo in 2017, it took this into consideration and incorporated JP into the logo. This detail also shows the friendly relationship between the product and users and a close sense of community.

Hupu’s in-depth content has another source: volunteer translators from the translation team. If there are high-quality long articles from overseas, the translation team will spontaneously provide translation for other JRs.

• UGC

In order to stimulate content production among ordinary users, operators will take the initiative to initiate some interesting topics, such as Hupu’s very famous Goddess Contest and Friday Tavern, etc. As long as the official sets the pace, it can ignite users’ enthusiasm for participation.

In addition, Hupu’s positioning directly stimulates content production. The main road of Hupu Pedestrian Street is positioned as a "men's barbecue stall" . There are almost no taboos within the legal scope, and users will post all kinds of new things. For example, having a quarrel with your girlfriend, not knowing what gift to give your girlfriend, or complaining about daily work, and of course there are also comments on some social events. This kind of daily content, coupled with a good sense of community, fully unleashes users' enthusiasm to participate in content production.

If we say that community positioning + close community sense inspires the production of UGC content, it is also necessary to mention Hupu's user entry threshold. Users who want to participate in discussions or post messages need to answer twenty very professional sports questions. This small move actually ensures that only "hardcore players" participate. This is similar to Bilibili , which uses the access mechanism to build a sense of community.

In summary, although Dongqiudi and Hupu have adopted two very different strategies in driving content production - Dongqiudi has adopted a refined incentive method for content producers at different levels, while Hupu has focused on community positioning and the establishment of community identity, both products have built a relatively complete system on the content supply side, solving the problem of insufficient creativity on the content supply side.

After solving the supply-side problems, you also need to make the content appear in front of the right people, which involves the content distribution process. In other words, distribution solves the problem of matching content and users.

2. Content Distribution

▌ Know the football emperor

From a product perspective, Dongqiudi's content distribution follows the following logics:

The information flow page of Toutiao is the entrance with the largest traffic . On this page, Dongqiudi provides traffic entrances for various content forms such as news, column content, circles, Dongqiu accounts, Q&A, etc. It is precisely because of this that although it is an information flow page, it is also a structured information flow page.

However, the content on the football website, represented by information, in-depth content, circle content, and clubs, all have fixed display layouts, which makes the homepage a little confusing and new users need some time to get familiar with it.

Therefore, judging from the display logic of the homepage, Dongqiudi has sacrificed the fluency of content browsing to some extent in order to achieve the richness of content creation subjects, increasing the understanding and adaptation costs for new users.

The second display logic is to aggregate the content by category. There are three types of classification methods. One is based on the type of event, such as the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, etc. Another is based on the attributes of the information itself, such as highlights, transfers, depth, etc. In addition, there is also classification based on the form of content presentation, such as video. Under each category, it is presented in the form of information flow, integrating indicators such as time, number of likes and comments.

The third is based on the logic of the crowd, that is, the circle. The content produced by users in the circle is distributed in a small circle. From the product perspective, it can achieve efficient matching of content and users. From the user perspective, they can also quickly and intensively find the content that interests them.

On the circle page, there is also a "Featured" column, which provides a cross-circle display location for high-quality content, and provides users with content that the official considers to be high-quality through strong operations.

The fourth type is distribution based on personal preferences - users can choose their home team, click the middle of the bottom bar, and see the information of their home team, ensuring that they get the information they care about most in the first place.

▲ Personal home team page on the football website

▌ Hupu

Hupu’s content distribution can also be divided into several logics:

On Hupu’s “Recommendations” page, products send information to all users based on the popularity of the posts . That is, the hot posts are selected based on the number of readings, likes, comments, etc. within a period of time. Emotional topics, animal-related topics, film and television topics, technology topics, and comments on events or stars are the most frequently appearing content. Most of them are "uninformed" contents produced by ordinary users.

Compared with the "Headlines" page of Dongqiudi, the "Recommendations" page of Hupu is not structured and does not provide fixed entrances for certain types of content. Instead, it is displayed entirely according to popularity, which is relatively more interesting.

It is worth noting that on the "Recommendation" page, Dongqiudi only displays the title and number of comments of a piece of information or article, while Hupu also displays a complete popular comment, as well as the number of readings, lights, likes, comments, etc. This display method can help users judge the interestingness of the post, but it hinders the efficiency of users in obtaining information. It is anti-information acquisition.

In fact, it is through this display method that users spend more time in each post, enhancing the sense of community and the possibility of participation.

The second display logic is to aggregate content according to different categories. There are two ways of classification. One is according to events, such as NBA, international football, Premier League, etc. The other is according to the category attributes of the information content itself, such as League of Legends , digital, etc. Under the category of each event, it will be further subdivided into four categories: video, in-depth, transfer, and off-field, to further integrate the content and make a refined presentation.

The third is the logic based on the crowd, that is, the community. Hupu has hundreds of communities covering various fields such as sports, entertainment, daily life and games . In terms of the richness of community types, Hupu is not inferior to Dongqiudi, and it can even be said that the span is wider.

Of course, Hupu also has distribution based on personal preferences, namely the "Follow" page.

Many times, the irrationality of fans' support for a team or their love for a player is similar to that of fans' worship of idols. This emotional connection highlights the importance of following pages. By actively paying attention, users can most efficiently obtain the information they strongly need. In other words, the follow page is the place for precise delivery.

Compared with Dongqiudi, the entrance to Hupu's "Follow" page is not so conspicuous, but according to Hupu operators, the follow page is a very large traffic entrance.

From the perspective of overall distribution logic, Dongqiudi and Hupu seem to be not much different. Both try to use data (strategy), users' active attention, integration of segmented groups and content classification aggregation to provide multiple ways to connect content and users.

However, judging from the homepages with the largest traffic, there are certain differences in the distribution logic of the two products. Dongqiudi has a stronger "operational" color, and it needs to provide traffic entrances for content other than information through distribution, while Hupu is more Buddhist, displaying users' interests based on popularity and inspiring users to participate in discussions.

Conclusion

In summary, as sports products, Dongqiudi and Hupu have very different operations in content modules. The two products ultimately presented very different tones.

Of course, the comparison between Dongqiudi and Hupu also shows that a community product can have many different operating methods if it wants to provide good content.

You can carry out refined operations for users at different levels, or you can focus on creating a community atmosphere and use a sense of identity to drive users to produce spontaneously; in content distribution and information presentation, you need to establish multiple possible paths to link content and users, but you can use different presentation methods to guide user behavior , such as guiding users to efficiently obtain information or participate in discussions on every topic.

These are all ways to build a high-quality content community, and there is no distinction between good and bad.