5 operational lessons learned from Sina Weibo's second rise

Regarding Sina Weibo , let me first show you three simple statistics.

NO.1: 154 million daily active users (DAU);

NO.2: 340 million monthly active users (MAU);

NO.3: Total revenue in 2016 was US$650 million , a year-on-year growth of more than 70% .

I believe this data will surprise many people. We often hear people ask in surprise: "Weibo is still alive? Why are people still using it? Who are using it?"

This is normal. After experiencing a major crisis in 2013, Weibo underwent a complete rebirth. Today's Weibo is no longer the same Weibo as it was back then, and its user structure has undergone fundamental changes.

• The users are getting younger. Users aged 16 to 25 (middle school students, high school students, college students, and young people who have graduated from college two or three years ago) account for 70% of Weibo users and are the core group. Old users before 2013 have been basically completely diluted.
• The user base is sinking. Originally, Weibo users were mainly from first- and second-tier cities, but today users from third-, fourth-, and even fifth-tier cities account for more than 50% of monthly active users.

It took us about four years to create a vibrant new Weibo. It should be said that the adjustment of operational strategy played a key role.

What I want to share with you today are 5 operational experiences in the second rise of Sina Weibo.

How is the competitiveness of a platform established? It’s actually about how you build the core space for top users.

The top groups on Sina Weibo are stars and celebrities. Its characteristic is that the startup flow is very large .

No Internet product has users that fall from the sky; all products need to expand their user base. When Weibo was first launched, its most important task was to attract customers, that is, to occupy the market. This played a core role in Sina's early days.

It took us half a year to quickly and monopolize large-scale coverage of top users. This is very critical for the cold start of social products. The launch of other competing products will face huge barriers: the user migration cost is very high.

But please believe one thing: users stay and use your product not because of the top. We are often confused by the top, thinking that if we have completed the top, user retention and activity will be ok.

These are unstable flows.

Before 2013, what did everyone, including ourselves, think of Weibo? It is a public platform where you can watch celebrities and participate in discussions on social hot topics. To date, these two points remain the two strongest attribute labels of Weibo. We never think there is anything wrong with these two labels.

But what exactly have we suffered during this period of silence since 2013?

First, WeChat came out. Many people can’t tell the difference between WeChat and Weibo. A large number of users, including celebrities, face a choice when posting information: Should I put my stuff on WeChat or Weibo? Due to the stronger user stickiness and sociality of WeChat, a large number of users are shifting to WeChat.

Second, as a public platform for discussing social hot topics, a large number of big Vs on Weibo have been blocked.

Weibo has encountered a " content vacuum " - a large amount of content is being withdrawn, but new content cannot be replenished. When the content available for users to consume is not rich enough and diverse enough, users will feel that the product is not fun anymore.

When we did user research in the past, users would ask which celebrity they followed and who else they followed. In fact, the latter sentence is the product's competitiveness.

Celebrities are a traffic entrance. But it is definitely not the stars who can really retain users.

Whether a product has the opportunity to survive the bottleneck stage after a period of rapid development and become a high-viscosity product, its core lies in the middle layer. When users consume your product, there is often more than one point. For example, in addition to celebrities, he also follows several COSERs (role-playing) in the animation industry, several game anchors, etc.

Why was Weibo able to achieve a complete turnaround starting from 2015?

After encountering a bottleneck in 2013, Weibo began to carry out operations to expand its user base, marking the beginning of Weibo's verticalization. This decision "saved" Weibo.

Before that, the areas that ranked high in terms of Weibo readership were only celebrities, media, and social affairs. Other areas cannot be said to be zero, but they are close. Small and medium-sized Vs contribute a lot of content to Weibo, but have not formed a brand.

Therefore, a big part of our work is to adjust our operational direction and product structure to support the growth of small and medium-sized Vs, so that Weibo will no longer be a platform dominated by big Vs alone.

Taking this as an opportunity, the phenomenon of Internet celebrities emerged.

So far, Weibo has a total of 55 vertical fields, such as animation, photography, comedy, food, cute pets, games, fashion, beauty, dance, etc. In terms of internet celebrities, Weibo has only successfully developed two areas: clothing and beauty.

Many people have no concept of internet celebrities and think they are still people like Sister Furong who tried to gain fame in the past. But the concept of Internet celebrity now is completely different from the past.

Internet celebrities have two characteristics:

First, it comes with precise crowd flow. Why can internet celebrities have such strong complementarity and connection with Alibaba ’s e-commerce platform? The reason is simple, traffic is valuable and needs money to be obtained.

Second, large-scale monetization can be achieved online in a sustainable manner. The top 10 internet celebrities ranked by Sina, especially those in the fashion category, have annual transaction volumes of over 1 billion. During the Double Eleven period, 7 of the top 10 clothing sales on Alibaba were from Weibo celebrity stores.

In fact, because Chinese internet celebrities are so popular, we think we are ahead of the world. When we went to the United States a while ago, we realized that we were actually many years late. In the United States, internet celebrities are on par with celebrities: a large number of high-end luxury goods and fashion brands will choose a celebrity and an internet celebrity when selecting their spokespeople.

Internet celebrities are an ecosystem, and it has just begun.

I firmly believe that there are still a large number of areas among these 55 vertical fields that can develop an internet celebrity ecosystem. For example, we are working in the parenting field this year. After completing our work, many parenting big names can also earn continuous income by selling some parenting products.

There is still huge opportunity for exploration and growth here.

Based on the operation of user sinking, Sina's reading structure and user composition have also changed.

At present, there are more than 20 fields with Weibo reading volume exceeding 10 billion, and users are paying attention to a wider range of fields.

Weibo has become a "interest-based social networking" product that builds social, consumption and interaction habits based on user interests. This form will continue to generate very strong explosive power, and it is completely different from WeChat, which is mainly focused on communication.

For example, the vertical field with the highest reading volume is animation, which makes many people confused. In fact, the reason is very simple. The user's consumption structure and content supply structure are highly correlated. Now Weibo is completely a platform for young people.

Sina Weibo's eight years of growth illustrate a complete growth cycle: how to launch new products - how to break through bottlenecks - how to enter platform operations.

What is a platform? The platform has three characteristics:

• User-generated content: Your service or content is generated by users, rather than by yourself. When there are no users entering your ecosystem, you will always be closed.
• Large-scale category operations: If there is only one single product on the platform, its scalability will be very low and it will be difficult to become a platform.
• Enterprise/institutional operation: If there are institutions willing to enter this platform for ecological operation, it means that this platform can make profits and generate new business opportunities.

The sinking of users is the key for a platform to establish competitiveness and build barriers. For example, a video website that relies on purchasing the copyrights of top movies and attracts users only by relying on those few movies and TV series, whether it is a platform and whether it has competitiveness are both debatable.

Once you have made the decision to move your users to lower-tier cities, if the target population changes during the adjustment process, your product direction and operating rules must also change.

If nothing changes, it will just be a slogan and cannot be implemented.

After carrying out user sinking operations, we did the following things.

When we first started verticalizing, the biggest problem we faced was fans. At that time, fans could already be purchased on some e-commerce platforms, and eventually the price dropped to just a few cents per fan.

What's the point of having such fans?

Therefore, in the process of our transformation from big V to small and medium-sized V, the operational direction is to reshape the value of fans. If fans are not valuable, there is no point in working hard to manage content.

We proposed the "Junk Fan Cleanup Plan" at that time. For example, if you originally had 1 million followers, 980,000 of which were fake, then after we cleaned them up, there would only be 20,000 left.

On the surface, this matter is just about cleaning up the garbage fans in history, but in fact, in terms of underlying logic, it is a huge support for the company's product positioning and ecological support.

It is a start-up link.

We faced a lot of skepticism at the time. The most common calls we receive every day are: "Why are you reducing my followers?" "I will not play if you reduce your followers again." "No one plays on your platform, you are finished."

But optimizing the ecology is what must be done during the transition period. It may look small, but it is the heart of the engine and the difference between life and death.

If the way we support small and medium-sized Vs is to give them fans, then everything at the underlying level is false. All the work you did before will go from 10 points to 1 point.

The portal has many channels, so there is also a lot of classification operation work. However, to operate such a portal, one needs to develop a team of 700 to 1,000 people. Otherwise this job cannot be done.

This is actually designed for the "block access" product form of the PC era. On the PC side, reading by section is the most efficient.

But now is the era of mobile Internet . The operating model of most Internet products adopts the " information flow " push method, such as Toutiao .

Therefore, when we are developing mobile Internet products, the original product structure and operation structure should change. If I were to make a content product and still have a bunch of editors and a bunch of departments, I wouldn't be able to do this job.

When Weibo started to pursue verticalization on a large scale in 2014, it also fell into a misunderstanding: each vertical field has its own professionalism and different ecology, but we used our own operations team to do it. Work on animation today, travel tomorrow, and food the day after tomorrow. I found that I really couldn't do it.

Later we found a model.

First, we operate two or three vertical fields ourselves to find an operating method - using a big V to drive a structure.

Simply put, it means becoming a big V in all vertical fields.

In fact, this is not only the case with Weibo: all traffic nodes follow the big Vs.

For example, if your advertising and marketing does not follow the big V, it will definitely not be effective. Why is OPPO so successful in endorsements? They really treat their spokespersons as big Vs.

Many advertisers sign spokespersons by simply paying a "revolutionary" sum of money to shoot an advertisement and that's it.

That's not the case. Every big V has his own traffic. You need to consider what kind of traffic you need and whether your user structure matches this traffic. The reason why OPPO is so successful is that they hire their spokespeople to shoot music videos or short films of various scenarios instead of commercials.

This is a development program. You need to turn the fans of big Vs into your fans. When we first started, there were only 20,000 to 30,000 big Vs in our vertical field. But you can’t imagine what kind of explosive power and life cycle the 5-fold or 10-fold growth of top users will bring to this platform.

Second, vertical open team.

After four or five years, Weibo's operations team now has only 10 people. However, these 10 people drive a team of 400 to 500 partners.

In each vertical, we selected a team with deep industry understanding and resources to work with. We will apply the operational methods we have mastered to every vertically open team. They are responsible for formulating rules, unifying directions and goals, and providing tools (such as Weibo certification) in this field.

This operating model is inspired by the currently popular MCN (Multi-Channel Network), which is the content manufacturer model.

MCN was actually originally an institutional role in YouTube . Like Weibo accounts, YouTube has tens of millions of channels. Therefore, some companies have emerged to serve these channels. In the past few years, some of the top MCN companies each served tens of thousands of channels.

In 2015, when Weibo started making videos, it implemented the MCN plan and further opened up in vertical fields. We have established a rule - Weibo will no longer contact big Vs on its own. All expansion and operations are handed over to the cooperative institutions.

Therefore, in an open system, more and more top users of Weibo are now operated by a large number of institutions. There are currently more than 1,000 partner companies in the vertical field of video alone, working together to build this platform.

Third, stick to the basics and leverage the strengths of the collaborative team.

If you are working with a vertically open management structure, be clear that the work you do may be very basic. In the Weibo operation team of more than 10 people, there are always people complaining to me: "I do basic work for others every day, but I don't feel fulfilled. Is this fun?"

Also because there is no sense of accomplishment, our team is also as fluid as flowing water. The stability and turnover rate of this team is the same as that of the assistant position - I have to rush in and do the work myself, and I will succeed when I finish.

But in a platform, formulating rules and basic systems is the most important thing.

You have to be able to endure loneliness and you can't do it alone, even if you know you can definitely do a better job than your partner.

You have to teach them your operating methods and let them learn them. And on the premise that he has learned it, he can give full play to the advantages of his resources and professional influence.

In the operation of a platform, it is important to have people who are responsible for building such basic rules. The most important thing is to control your own hands and not do it yourself. When it is time to let others do it, you must boldly let go.

If you don't let go, you will be the bottleneck.

The final result of all operations is commercialization. You say that your platform does not make money, but that is all lies. When Weibo is working in each vertical field, it must consider the industry's ecology. The most critical thing in the industry ecosystem is the business model .

Weibo covers more than 50 industries, each of which has its own ecosystem, and it is difficult to summarize it with a business model. However, the core role of the platform remains unchanged.

Therefore, to establish a vertical business ecosystem, we need to think clearly about three issues:

• What is your role?
• How do you make money?
• Who to cooperate with?

Let’s take the interactive TV industry as an example.

What is your role?

What is Weibo's position in this industry chain? It is a communication and interactive platform. This means that in this industry, Weibo only does this. Therefore, in the field of television, Weibo is the largest and only communication platform. WeChat won’t work because it is private and cannot be used.

Also, who else is in this ecosystem?

• Broadcasting platform: TV stations, video websites
• Content producers: TV stations, program producers

This triangle constitutes a business ecosystem. Therefore, when we operate in any industry or think about a business model, we must first think about this triangle.

How do you make money?

In the television industry, the most important thing is definitely the TV station. If you don’t cooperate with them, you can’t do anything.

But you need to think about what you can bring to the industry. If you can't bring anything new, why would anyone want to work with you?

So, in the field of television, what can Weibo do to help TV stations?

• Ratings: Our rule is not to make long videos. Because once I do this triangle, it will be ruined and Weibo will compete with TV stations. So for TV stations, our job is to address their demands and help them increase their ratings.
• IP value: The program’s influence is enhanced through communication and interaction. Sponsors need quantifiable data. The amount of discussion about a program on Weibo not only affects the program, but also the customer market.

What did Weibo gain?

• Traffic interaction: A large number of comment interactions can provide activity for Weibo.
• Business ecology: After sponsors place advertisements on TV, they need to expand their advertising, but they cannot place their sponsorship on the TV station’s competitors, that is, video websites. Therefore, they will give this money to Weibo and let Weibo expand its marketing.

Who to cooperate with?

After you choose the TV station, the next step is to consider who to cooperate with.

All business models will eventually fall into a company, or even a department or an individual within a company. For an industry to truly develop, it is not about figuring out what the business model is, but about ultimately implementing it.

When it comes to execution, all of it will be implemented by people, departments, and companies. Whether these can be connected is actually very critical.

When we think about the business ecosystem, it is actually related to our product mechanism, operations, business thinking, etc.

As a product operator, you need to think about problems in a big pool. When you formulate strategies and operations now, you should look two to three years ahead to see the end result. The results will be completely different.

Because if you don't look, there may be a very obvious pit in front of you, and you jump down seemingly naturally, and then you're finished.