Online event operation: How to make a "hot-selling micro-course"?

In this era of paid knowledge , whether you are a BAT , a large state-owned enterprise, a startup , or a self-media , as long as you have something that others don’t know, you can share it and create your own style. Perhaps this can really alleviate the anxiety of some people.

As the most convenient form of expression, "online micro-courses" neutralize the mismatch between region and cognition, and are loved by KOLs and the middle class.

I have some useful information and if someone wants to listen, I can just give a micro-lecture!

Micro-courses are indeed a good way to cold-start and attract fans. It is easy to say, but its essence is an online activity. At present, it seems to be a " traffic " business.

I have run some online micro courses before and listened to quite a few of them. This article will discuss "How to make a hit micro course" from five dimensions.

First, put a formula on top:

Hot-selling courses = scarce big V x high-quality content x massive channels x precise audience x surprising price,

These are arranged in order of priority, in descending order of importance, so let's break them down one by one.

01 Big V, the shortest way to relieve anxiety

To relieve anxiety, it is more accurate to say that people are paying for the fame of the big V rather than for knowledge and content .

“Scarcity makes things valuable” has been a truth since ancient times. There may be nothing in other parts of the course, but as long as there is a big V willing to speak for you, the traffic you will bring will be huge.

Here I would like to talk about a course from a certain society. In a micro-class in June this year, they invited Teacher X from Dark Night. A total of 14,000 people attended the class online. There is no doubt that the appeal of this fashion blogger is enough to cover most of the new media operation circle. Before this, most people just browsed Teacher X’s official account and articles.

• Look at how attractive the titles of other people’s articles are;
• Look at the pornographic articles that people read that have instantly exceeded 100,000+.
• Look how beautiful the layout of other people’s articles is.

All of the above are just what you observe on the surface, and anyone who has paid attention to Dark Night can see it.

But before, there were not many pictures, texts and videos of Teacher X speaking in person on the Internet, so Teacher X became a rare big shot.

At this point, fans’ attention will be highly focused on the teacher, and they generally won’t care too much about other factors. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit more expensive, or if the content shared is not that valuable. What’s important is that I participated in teacher Dark Night X’s micro-class, and that’s enough.

This kind of guest is hard to come by, and your network of connections has to be accumulated. If you cannot get an invitation, then participate in more online and offline activities in the industry. Discovering resources from industry partners is the most accurate and fastest way, and this all depends on execution.

If you can't get these top resources, you can also try to contact employees with experience in large companies such as BAT, or executives of well-known companies in vertical industries to support you. The effect is still good.

Since they are knowledge KOLs, most teachers generally have their own signed books and other derivative products, which are very attractive to fans. If some interactive sessions such as answering questions and giving away books are added to the course, the effect will be better. After the course, chat with the teacher more, have meals with him/her, and that’s how you maintain your personal connections.

What needs to be noted here is that big Vs usually have high attainments in their original industries, and may not be very good at giving lectures. This requires the operations staff to develop a complete process description document for teacher introduction, testing, teaching, and precautions, so that they can understand what to do in each link after reading it.

In addition, big Vs are generally busy, and they may forget what they promised a month ago when the time comes. This requires having a Plan B for everything. You must have a teacher database to allocate resources at any time, or invite other colleagues in the teacher's company to explain on his behalf. You can also find a time to record the course in advance, and try to avoid making temporary substitutions one hour before the course starts.

02 High-quality content should be able to quench your thirst

Only when the vertical quality is multiplied by the horizontal width of the audience can a relatively strong content potential be formed. It is not necessarily the knowledge shared by big Vs that is considered high-quality content. I personally think that the knowledge based on the experience summarized from actual combat is high-quality content.

For example, when it comes to how to run an event, a big V may only talk about how we achieved millions of exposures without spending too much money, how many people participated, and what the conversion rate was. These are all brief points, and they sound very grand on the surface, but most of the successful experiences cannot be replicated. If your company or team does this, you may not achieve the same effect. This kind of content will only be a good inspiration for your thinking, and you will not have the urge to take notes.

How can activities be run to achieve more significant results? I'm afraid only the front-line operators know this. Although they may not be big names, they will share with you a complete event planning and execution process. There are also details such as how to use physical objects to motivate top users to sprint in the later stages of the event. For such cases that can be put into action immediately after listening, I really take notes on every word.

When it comes to which fields of content are popular, topics in the fields of marketing , Chinese studies, parenting, English, primary, middle and high school, and investment are in the first tier. If the courses you operate are in these fields, the number of people attending the lectures should be considerable. The above phenomenon can once again verify the above content: the knowledge that users want is not necessarily so high-end, they just want what is useful to them.

Either it is top-notch or down-to-earth . There is not much room for survival for intermediate-level content. Whether you are operating a course or listening to it, you must make a distinction.

In addition, content operations accompany the entire course. During the course warm-up phase, you should find an article written by the teacher to reprint. It must be related to the topic being shared, and a course preview should be placed at the end of the article. During the course, you should also write down what the teacher said in text form, and then organize and send it out after class to create a secondary dissemination. If you have the energy, do it yourself. After all, it is a good opportunity for deep learning. If you don’t have enough energy, find a third-party partner to cooperate with.

03 Content is important, but it also depends on channels to lay the foundation

TO C business is originally a traffic business. The audience of micro-courses mainly comes from the following three channels:

1. Big V brings its own traffic
2. Partner Channel
3. Self-built traffic

It is not easy for a big V to be willing to stand up for you, and it is a bit difficult to leverage the resources behind him. What we can do more is to use the popularity of big Vs to promote ourselves.

Regarding the choice of live streaming platforms , I personally recommend that startups choose ready-made tools and don't reinvent the wheel. Tools such as Zhihu Live, Qianliao , Lizhi Micro Class , WeChat Groups , etc. are all fine. The purpose is to quickly display knowledge and let everyone have a certain understanding of your platform as soon as possible.

Working for others for a long time is not a long-term solution. If a company has the technical capabilities, it can develop a live broadcast tool or website. After all, it is your own product, the data can be retained , and you feel a sense of belonging when operating it.

Try to find industry-related platforms to exchange partner resources. The more precise the positioning, the better. It is also best if the cooperative relationship is reciprocal, so that after I help you, you can also help me. Sometimes it is not justifiable to cooperate with a promotion and marketing platform for a new media operation course.

The preferred partner channel is WeChat public accounts , and try to push it on the headlines, because it can be conveyed to the audience most directly. It can also be featured and recommended on the homepage of the course live broadcast tool. If an article and a header image are posted on the partner website, the effect will definitely not be so obvious.

It is better to rely on yourself than on others. More often, you have to rely on building your own traffic. If you don’t have any good ideas, @ing everyone in your original self-created group is an effective method. Be sure to place social robots in the newly created group to let them manage new listeners for you and guide everyone to help you forward the course links. In this way, high-quality content will be forwarded by people in the circle, and there will be more and more people in the group, and each group will be your traffic entrance. The method of mass bombing does affect the user experience a little, so the frequency of promotional nodes and guiding words must be controlled. In comparison, issuing more personal invitation letters and course task invitation cards is a relatively benign measure.

04 Accurate audience matching and surprising prices

The prerequisite for an accurate audience is to first consider and understand the business positioning of your company. If the positioning is the new retail industry, the content shared must also be related to new retail. Topics such as convenience stores, fresh food, and O2O are acceptable.

If the theme this time is new retail, and next time it is changed to other industries, in this way, the actions of recruiting audiences will also be independent. I believe that there will not be too many people who will intersect between the two, and it is impossible to form effective content and brand sedimentation, and the combined force is too small. Therefore, the content of the course should have an overall continuity so that it can be matched to more precise users.

When it comes to charging, if the company or platform does not rely on courses as its main business, micro-courses often play the role of a value-added business and generally play a supporting role. Therefore, don’t expect to make a lot of money from micro-courses. Sometimes you may not make as much as you would from selling a product.

So should micro-courses be free? In theory, this will increase the number of people attending the lecture, but the quality of the audience will be uneven, and sometimes it will even cause unnecessary trouble. Therefore, fees must be charged in order to set a threshold, 9.9, 19.9... You have to decide the specific price yourself. This way, people who really want to learn knowledge can pay a certain price, and everyone will cherish it more. Signing in, listening to lectures, asking questions and other aspects can be relatively controllable.

Here is another suggestion for everyone. If you can do a series of courses, don’t do a single course . The reason is that the two are mainly different in the following two points:

• The time and effort invested are actually pretty much the same. If the series of courses are held 1-2 times a week and the course cycle is one month, inviting guests and doing graphic and text promotion will take some effort in the beginning of planning the series of courses. If you do it well once, it can take a month, and the input-output ratio is still quite high.
• The brand potential is strong. Several big Vs share around a course theme, which has an excellent packaging effect and is more likely to obtain selected recommendation support from major channels. The rewards obtained are much greater than those of individual contributions.

As a reminder, the course series should not last too long. Either you adopt a more general study week format with classes every night; or you have classes 1-2 times a week. If it lasts for a month or longer, few people will buy the last few classes, and there will not be that many people coming to attend the classes and check in, which is not acceptable to the teachers.

A hit course requires a combination of the above factors. It doesn’t matter if you can’t do it in a short time. Listen more, learn more, do more, and summarize more , and you will always gain something. The above are some experiences I have summed up in operating micro-courses. I hope it can help everyone who is doing knowledge payment. Finally, let’s review this formula. The courses that everyone praises depend on it:

Hot-selling courses = scarce big VX high-quality contentX massive channelsX precise audienceX surprising price

Paying for knowledge, we can do better!