9 points to analyze Uncle Kai’s storytelling content operation strategy

In 2014, Wang Kai, the host of "Fortune Story" on CCTV Finance Channel, resigned from his job and started his own business, the "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" public account. In less than two years, the public account has accumulated 4 million fans. In collaboration with Zhu Yifan, who has three entrepreneurial experiences, he created the "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" APP in 2016.

By March 2018, the cumulative number of users reached over 14 million, and the number of stories accumulated on the APP reached over 4,000, of which nearly half were original stories; in May 2017, the flagship hardware product "Uncle Kai's Journey to the West" was launched, and the B round of financing was RMB 90 million; in March 2018, the B+ round of financing was completed with RMB 156 million.

Uncle Kai’s storytelling business model :

1. There are no ads or memberships at the moment, and we will continue to create high-quality topics and pay for individual stories;
2. It took three years to create popular content such as Uncle Kai's Journey to the West, Little Poetry Fairy, Little Ci Fairy and other hardware products - Listen on the Go. It is said that Uncle Kai's Journey to the West sold 25,000 units within 12 hours of its launch, and has sold 200,000 units in total so far;
3. A parent training camp that combines online and offline activities, with over 1,000 courses in the online subscription column and over 80,000 parents paying to attend the training;
4. E-commerce "preferred mall";
5. The offline experience store "Uncle Kai's Bookstore" provides a smooth link from online storytelling and listening to stories to offline selling of storybooks.

Based on the above five commercial profit points, "Uncle Kai's Story Telling" has an annual income of approximately 160 million. The first point, which is the continuous production of high-quality stories, is the core of the entire platform. The last four points are extended from the first point. Therefore, for Uncle Kai's Story Telling APP, continuously producing content while reasonably distributing it to users and generating value is of paramount importance.

This article focuses on how to operate the content of Uncle Kai’s Storytelling to maximize the value of the content.

1. First of all, what is content operation?

Zhang Liang said:

Content operation refers to the creation, editing, organization, and presentation of website or product content, thereby increasing the content value of Internet products and creating operational behaviors that promote user stickiness and activity.

In my understanding, content operation is the process from deciding what content to produce to content processing, and then to matching the right content to the right users, satisfying user needs through content and ultimately generating revenue.

Many people divide the content operation into three parts: production, recommendation, and distribution. However, there are actually many steps to go from the creation of a piece of content to its final distribution. The following figure is my personal understanding of the key nodes of content operation, which can also be called methodology. It should be the most complete path:

Xiao Fengjie's content operation methodology

The entire operation must be a closed loop, and the same goes for content operation. It requires continuous polishing and optimization based on data, and reverse product iterations to better understand products and users and formulate more reasonable operation plans, thus forming a positive cycle.

Below I will elaborate on my personal views on how Uncle Kai’s Storytelling APP carries out content operations at these key nodes.

2. How to operate

1. Understand the product

The stories told by Uncle Kai are mostly in male voices, which is a must-have for many families - it fills the need for a father to be absent. At the same time, Uncle Kai tells the stories very well, and he imitates the different voices of the various characters in a story very brilliantly. Both children and adults love to listen to it.

My child is very active, but he becomes quiet when listening to Uncle Kai telling stories. As long as I don’t restrict him, he can listen all day long without getting tired. He sits quietly on the sofa with his eyes wide open and his ears perked up.

Because I have children at home, my understanding of this product is very direct: Uncle Kai’s storytelling is a necessity for families with children.

2. Understand the target users of the product

The user base of the product "Kaishu Tells Stories" is quite special. The content is aimed at children aged 0-12, but the real users of the product are mainly parents born in the 1980s and 1990s, and most of them are female users aged 28-38 in first- and second-tier cities. Therefore, in content operation, we need to consider not only children but also female users aged 28-38 who have become mothers. The ultimate source of revenue is these mothers.

Currently, Uncle Kai’s Storytelling has started recruiting city partners across the country to promote its products from first- and second-tier cities to the whole country and expand its user base.

The above two points seem to have nothing to do with content operation, but they are actually indispensable tasks: after deeply understanding the product and users, we have basically solved the underlying logic before the operation work begins. We already know very well what product we are going to operate and what services this product provides to whom. Only in this way can we know more clearly what content to produce and how to grasp the user's pain points to recommend valuable content, thereby generating transactions.

3. Content Planning

The content planning of Uncle Kai’s storytelling can be multi-dimensional. The easiest way to think of is to divide it by age and gender. This is reflected in the registration of Uncle Kai’s storytelling APP. In order to obtain stories suitable for their children more conveniently and quickly, parents are very willing to provide their children’s age and gender. The overall content planning is as follows:

• By age: 0-1 years old, 1-2 years old, 3 years old+, 6 years old+, 10 years old+;
• By gender: boy baby, girl baby;
• Functions include safety education, emotional intelligence training, language expression, emotion management, habit formation, character development, etc. Uncle Kai’s storytelling program is very comprehensive, and those who are interested can check it directly on the APP.
• By type: fantasy adventure, reasoning intelligence, early childhood enlightenment, children's literature, etc. Those who are interested can check it directly on the APP;
• Editor's recommendation: free story ranking , paid story ranking, baby boy ranking, baby girl ranking, 3 years old + ranking, 6 years old + ranking, today's latest;
• Personalized recommendations: stories that were not finished last time (if there was a sudden interruption last time, the story name and play button will be displayed at the bottom of the app next time the user opens the app so that the user can quickly and conveniently continue listening to the story), the history of stories that have been listened to, the stories I have collected, the stories I have liked, the stories I have commented on, and the stories that other boys aged 3 and above are listening to (personalized recommendations for similar users).

Except for the functions and types that are currently available on the APP, the others are the dimensions that I think can be added. At the beginning, the classification should be more comprehensive and detailed, and then according to the data, the ones with low click-through rates will be deleted to keep the high-quality classifications. Among them, both boys and girls are very necessary. For example, my boy really doesn’t like listening to stories about princesses.

Click on each category to enter the content list page, which can be sorted by dimensions such as latest, number of clicks, number of comments, etc. The default sorting is by latest, which basically completes the content planning. Daily updates will be updated according to this classification framework.

4. How to produce stories

Regarding content production, the following aspects need to be considered for Kaishu’s storytelling APP:

• 4.1 Story selection
• 4.2 Story Manuscript Preparation
• 4.3 Recording
• 4.4 Post-production
• 4.5 Online

As a content operator, you must follow up the entire process of each story from scratch to production optimization and finally to uploading to the backend. You must follow up strictly throughout the entire process. Every finished story must be listened to word for word from beginning to end. All aspects must be strictly reviewed, including mistakes, omissions, noise, incorrect music effects, etc., to ensure that there are no mistakes before it can be put online. This is the minimum respect for users.

5. Build the story management backend

The work in this link seems to be completed by technical personnel, but in fact it must be proposed and followed up by content operators. Content operators must know very clearly what kind of background assistance is needed to carry out their work, and they must have product thinking and know how to put forward requirements for technology.

For Uncle Kai’s storytelling, the content editing backend includes at least the following functional points:

Basic functions of content management background

Give the story content a stable home and manage it well. This content background is equivalent to the heart of Uncle Kai’s Storytelling APP. All content presented on the APP is operated and published by this background, which is flexible and safe.

6. Tag your stories

The so-called labels are some general words or phrases used to describe certain content. One content often belongs to only one category, but can have multiple labels.

I think that as a content product, when uploading each content by category, it should also be labeled. For example, there are 7 stories in Dinosaur Continent, and each story has different content. A single content includes the following elements: pictures, titles , story length, number of clicks, and then labels. Refined operation requires that each story has its own label, because the content of each story is different, and the labels are naturally different. The labels extracted from the first episode of Dinosaur Continent based on its content can be: Looking for New Horizons, Little Triceratops Lost, and Dinosaurs Fighting. These three labels basically cover the entire story.

However, the existing labels are not specific enough and are similar, which does not provide a very good experience. This step can be refined while preparing the story document to reduce repetitive work.

Individual stories require personalized labels

What is the purpose of labeling content?

• First, it can solve the need for "discovery". With massive amounts of content, consumers need to find content that interests them, and tags are the most reliable form. For content producers, tags are a very effective means of collating, organizing, and managing content. They can also attract users through appropriate tags, making it easier for users to discover.
• The second is that tags help to tap into the value of data. Through technical mining, we can obtain tags of Weibo users, tags of product reviews, tags of reading interests, etc., and make intelligent recommendations to enhance the experience while conducting precision marketing .
• The third is to achieve self-operation of the product. For example, NetEase users can label other people with labels such as "regional dog", which helps maintain the community discussion atmosphere and the tone of the content.

Labeling content is the life-saving straw for content explosion. Tags can be used to organize, manage and discover massive amounts of content. Tags can also realize the value of precision marketing - they are the foundation of Internet big data .

7. Content Distribution

Content distribution mainly includes two forms:

Content distribution format

7.1 Scenario-based: Distribute content based on the scenarios in which users use the product.

For example, when a user is telling a story about the dinosaur continent to a child, the user can be reminded that dinosaur toys can be purchased in the preferred mall, so that the child can learn about dinosaurs by listening to the story and then have a deeper understanding of dinosaurs through dinosaur toys;

For example, if a user wants to listen to a sleep story for his child, the user can be recommended to listen to the Little Poetry Fairy sleep-to-sleep artifact;

For example, when a user listens to a story about character development or habit formation for a child, the user can be recommended a parent training camp course to teach parents how to raise their children. The basic logic diagram is shown in the figure below:

The profit model of Uncle Kai’s storytelling is to distribute the content to four other different products through the story listening scene.

The same logic can actually be applied to many other products, such as Maoyan Movies . When users buy movie tickets on Maoyan Movies , they will have many other scenario-based needs after the purchase. Cinemas are generally located in shopping malls, so after placing an order for tickets, users can be recommended taxi services, movie reminders, film highlights, business district information, etc., which are all valuable to users, thus forming an effective path from products to industrial chains.

7.2 Personalization: Based on the different situations of individual users, refined operations are carried out in two dimensions, as shown in the following figure:

Personalized content distribution logic

The first dimension of personalization is exemplified by the user life cycle :

• Retention of new users: There are more than 2,000 free stories in Uncle Kai’s storytelling app, and a large number of stories are classics that have won international picture book awards, such as "A Different Carmela" and "Puss in Boots", which are familiar to many mothers. Even if you don’t buy these internationally renowned picture books, you can still listen to stories for free through Uncle Kai, and often listen for more than half an hour. The high-quality content attracts users to stay and use the product repeatedly.
• User conversion : By transforming the content to create popular products that children can understand and have positive values, such as Uncle Kai's Journey to the West, Uncle Kai's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Uncle Kai's Pronunciation and Rhythm Enlightenment and other high-quality topics attract users to convert and pay.
• Multiple consumption: Currently, Uncle Kai’s storytelling attracts users to consume multiple times through different products in different dimensions. For example, by purchasing high-quality and exclusive stories and distributing them in a scenario-based manner, it extends the e-commerce, parent training camp, Uncle Kai’s bookstore and other industrial chains.
• Decline awakening: In addition to continuously creating new content to recommend to users to create a sense of freshness, simple promotional discounts can be used to stimulate users to become active again.
• Lost user recall: By analyzing the reasons for loss, on the one hand, we improve and optimize product functions, on the other hand, we enrich product content and use marketing activities to attract users to return.

8. Consume content

Currently, the organizational structure of Uncle Kai’s Storytelling is divided into four major sections: Children’s Content Division, Parents Content Division, Strategic Cooperation Department, and E-commerce Division. Most content products on the market adopt a membership system, but Uncle Kai's Stories and Dedao are relatively special and do not offer membership services.

I have seen a speech by Tuo Buhua, CEO of Getui, in which she mentioned a theory:

Someone has compiled statistics on the consumption values ​​of all categories of e-commerce and found that products priced below 200 yuan have the highest purchase rate, so the price of online products should not exceed 200 yuan. For users, small payments can more easily stimulate them to complete transactions. So you will find that many special topics are priced at 199 yuan.

The same goes for Uncle Kai’s story. If the annual membership fee is definitely higher than 200, then when users spend money on the subscription, they will be very concerned about not making any consumption in the end.

By the way, let me explain according to my personal understanding why video content products such as iQiyi are membership-based, and why Uncle Kai’s Storytelling does not require membership?

I personally think this:

Film and television content is a typical consumable. Once you watch it, you’re done. It’s hard to watch a TV series of more than ten episodes or a two-hour movie a second or third time. If it’s not worth buying them individually, becoming a member allows you to watch as much as you want, and users will find it worth it.

On the other hand, when Uncle Kai tells stories, children can buy a story or a special topic and listen to it over and over again. If they listen to Journey to the West today, they can listen to it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. In this way, users can make small payments of less than 200 yuan or even less than 50 yuan, which makes it very easy to generate consumption behavior. On the basis of continuously providing more high-quality topics, users can make repeated consumption decisions faster than members and have a higher AR PU value.

Therefore, when providing users with ways to consume content, you must think clearly about the consumption scenarios. You cannot become a member just for the sake of membership, for the sake of points, or for the sake of levels.

9. Data Analysis

Data analysis is a basic capability for operations personnel. Weekly, monthly and quarterly reports on operations are all reflected through data. Usually, data analysis reports are summarized first and then divided. This is also the process of breaking down project core indicators into detailed indicators. This organizational method can more logically divide the business into combined modules, making it easy to see the problems in a certain module. Generally, the analysis and organization content can be carried out from the following aspects:

• Product overview: Several core indicators, such as DAU, total payment volume, revenue, etc., are used to determine whether the product is healthy.
• Product segmentation module: analysis of key operational indicators, mainly observing new users, sources of new users, and retention (next day, 7-day, and monthly retention); analyzing by product experience link, extracting user behavior data on product operations, and monitoring the conversion and loss trends of each link to understand whether the product experience is smooth.
• User stratification or thematic analysis of certain specific user behaviors: This part is generally done to conduct in-depth analysis of a certain user behavior or problem of the product, such as user portrait analysis , user churn rate analysis, analysis of the difference in behavior between holiday users and non-holiday users, and also includes the story update volume, click volume , length of stay, forwarding, collection, likes, comments and the conversion rate of the story browsing path "click-listen to the story-share".
• Summarize and analyze the conclusions: Identify problems from data analysis to provide optimization suggestions for the next operational strategy and promote the improvement of data-oriented operational planning capabilities.

Through data analysis and summary of daily operations, we can identify problems and make optimizations and iterations. This is not only an optimization of the content operation itself, but also requires optimization and iteration in conjunction with the product.

Before the end of this article, let’s drink some chicken soup and share the four basic capabilities that operators must have:

1. Learning ability, always stay curious, and pay attention to hot spots.
2. Teamwork ability. Operations cannot be separated from the support of partners in product, development, design, etc. Through multiple collaborations, we can summarize experience and find a suitable way to get along with each other.
3. User thinking, think about the scenarios in which users use the product, simulate and experience user psychology through scenarios. If you were a user, would you pay for the content you edited?
4. The ability to reflect on yourself, review yourself regularly, summarize your shortcomings and iterate yourself.

Finally, here are a few small problems I encountered when using Uncle Kai to tell stories:

1. The time for listening to stories is currently set according to the length of the story, such as automatically stopping after 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 60 minutes. This may cause the child to make a fuss if the story is suddenly stopped in the middle of a story, and clamor to finish the story. Therefore, you can set it from another dimension: it is recommended to set it according to the number of stories, such as automatically stopping after listening to 5 stories, 10 stories, or 20 stories. This way, you can fully control the time.
2. If you still don't understand a story after listening to it once, you need to loop it like music. Currently, there is a setting to loop N stories together, but there is no option to repeatedly play a single story.
3. There needs to be a pause of at least 5 seconds between stories. For example, after listening to story A, it is best to stay for 5 seconds before starting story B. The current situation is that after listening to story A, story B begins before the child has reacted. There are two problems with this: from the child's perspective, after listening to story A, they immediately move on to story B without any aftertaste, thought or pause, which makes them tired easily; from the parent's perspective, this creates an opportunity to indulge the child, which is something parents do not want to see.

Uncle Kai’s storytelling is a necessity for families with children. I hope more and more children can hear Uncle Kai’s stories. Every story he tells is great!

The author of this article @小凤姐Kelly is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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