How can one operate a product like Xiaokaxiu on his own?

Recently, a friend asked me this question:

"I'm planning to make short videos on Meipai . You 've run Xiaokaxiu before. Can you help me think about how to increase my followers?"

"What kind of content do you want to create? Who are your target users ? Do you have a finished video? Send it to me and I'll give you some reference."

"Well, I want to do something related to food, because I love to eat. I haven't thought of anything else yet. Tell me how to gain fans first, and then I'll do something else."

How is this possible?

I don’t know what kind of food you are going to create, Chinese food, Western food, or children’s food ? The positioning is also unclear. Is it focusing on health, appearance, or spiciness ? Each positioning corresponds to a different video production style and different user groups. Only after figuring out all these, can you think about how to acquire users.

Acquiring users is only the last step in operations . Before that, we need to sort out the strategy clearly. Executive-level work such as writing copy and doing promotion only serves our strategy . However, most people spend most of their time thinking about how to write a good article and how to get one more fan, and most companies use this as their KPI.

I can conclude that if we write pornographic copy, the data of new users will definitely look good, but think carefully, are these users useful? Is this indicator strongly related to our business model ? These users come for sex , and once there is no pornographic content, they will leave without mercy, and all previous efforts will be wiped out in an instant.

This is actually a strategic failure. Before the operation, we did not do a good job of positioning and formulating strategies.

01 Prepare the meal before inviting guests - Execute the obedience strategy

After 7 months of operation, I think successful operation should go through 4 levels:

• Current situation layer: What is the market situation facing the products we want to promote? What are the competing products and user characteristics? It is like military analysis in war, providing intelligence for formulating combat strategies and executing strategies.
• Strategic level: What is our strategy? And find a good data indicator for our strategic implementation. (For example, our food short videos are positioned as healthy children's meals, and the data indicator is the ratio of comments to the number of views of each video)

The current situation layer and the strategic layer are the most critical in operations, just like preparing meals, and attracting new customers and retaining customers are like entertaining guests. Only when we prepare the meals well and then entertain the guests will they be satisfied. Instead of inviting guests first and then buying groceries and cooking.

• Executive level: What do we need to do to achieve our strategy and data indicators? (For example, what kind of avatar to choose, what kind of nickname to give, where to advertise, how to interact with users...) The execution layer is like entertaining guests. Most of us operators spend 80% of our energy on entertaining guests instead of preparing meals.
• Iteration layer: The food and the entertainment are ready. The next step is to adjust the taste of the food or the entertainment method according to the guests’ performance.

In the process of operating Xiaokaxiu, I spent a lot of time studying the current situation and conducting SWOT analysis, and then formulating strategies and data indicators. Finally, by implementing various operational measures, my user retention rate reached over 60%.

The sudden growth in March was due to a series of correct ways of treating guests.

Through the current situation analysis, I have come to the following simple conclusions (more detailed analysis reports are not listed here):

• Women account for more than 70% of Xiaokaxiu users, and there are a large number of post-95s.
• More than 50% of Xiaokaxiu users are from third-tier cities
• The works of male users are mostly entertaining and funny.

Based on the current situation and an analysis of my own strengths and weaknesses (for example, I am not good at being funny), I developed a strategy to produce youthful and sunny short videos and acquire female fans born after 1995 who like youth idols (it needs to be refined to specific types of stars, and I chose TFboys, which had a large number of fans at the time). I chose the number of new users and their activity (including comments, likes, and co-performances) as data indicators. These two indicators best reflect the strategic goals I set.

02 Operational skills - comprehensive use of various operational marketing methods

The series of operational measures I adopted

As mentioned above, my strategy is to produce youthful and sunny short videos to gain female fans born after 1995 who like youth idols. Therefore, the approaches I take at the executive level are in service of strategy.

In terms of content design , I took the following approach:

All videos are youthful and sunny, and the nicknames, introductions, and avatars are carefully designed according to the characteristics of the target users. To be honest, when I was running Xiaokaxiu, I was ridiculed and mocked by many “classmates and friends”.

Avatar, nickname, profile

"How old are you? Are you a man? You actually like a dung boy."

This was something I heard often at the time, but I didn't need an explanation and didn't feel ashamed. Everything I do serves my overall strategy ( studying my operating model ), and all visualizations are just expression layers that serve to achieve the strategy.

Here, I would like to say something off topic to all operators. No matter in operations or life, once we have formulated our own strategy, the actions we take are all in the service of achieving the strategy. These actions may bring you some bad evaluations and comments, but please persist, because only we ourselves know best what the strategy behind the behavior is, and others only see the expression layer. A retreat on the battlefield is not a real retreat, but perhaps just a strategy to lure the enemy deeper into your territory . Li Jiaoshou once said: "Children only look at the content expression, adults only look at the strategy." Strategy is the essence of operation.

In terms of user acquisition channels , I mainly adopted four methods:

1. In the comment section , my users will definitely watch the videos and popular content they like, and when watching the content, they will definitely read the comments. Therefore, the comment area is a natural traffic pool and can find target users most accurately. I have done an A/B test and found that the comment section channel brought me more than 70% of users.
2. Search management . Search is mainly reflected in nicknames. Users will search for their favorite stars. When searching for the three words "Wang Junkai ", my nickname ranks in the top 5. The importance of the avatar is reflected in this link because it determines whether the user will click on your homepage. This channel brought me about 5% of fans.
3. Social media promotion refers to sharing videos on social channels such as Weibo, supplemented by Weibo's unique promotion channels to bring back users through Weibo.
4. Artificial viruses refer to special methods that allow your information to spread like a virus. The core is to create highly contagious viruses, such as the famous growth method of Drophox, an email service that thanks users for inviting others to register. In Xiaokaxiu, I adopt co-performance, which means two people perform a piece together in Xiaokaxiu, which will be exposed on the homepages of both people. Co-performance with big V will bring a lot of exposure to someone like me with few fans. The collaboration is an artificial virus I created, which brought about a 10% increase in users .

The comment section, search management, social media promotion, and artificial viruses constitute the main framework of my Xiaokaxiu method of attracting new users.

In terms of user retention , I mainly adopted two methods: reciprocal influence and CRM management :

Reciprocal influence comes from the “Godfather of Influence”, Robert Cialdini , a famous social psychologist and world-renowned authority on persuasion and influence research. People all have a desire for reward, so if you want to influence others, bringing them certain value first is an effective method. Lao Tzu of my country also said: "If you want to take it, you must first give it." When I am operating Xiaokaxiu, for those users who follow me, I will often go to their homepages to comment and like their works.

With CRM management, users may not necessarily open Xiaokaxiu every day. They may even leave the platform after the novelty wears off, making it difficult for you to recall them. Therefore, after operating for a certain period of time, you can choose to publish your own social accounts such as WeChat to establish long-term relationships with users.

03 Conclusion

Many successful operations, on the surface, are the result of attractive content and good advertising, but in reality they are the embodiment of a good strategy. Now that you have prepared the food, are you still worried about not being able to invite suitable guests?

Successful operations should include four steps: current situation, strategy, execution, and iteration. Most people see the execution layer, but what really works is the strategy behind it. Strategy is the way of operation, and execution is the art of operation .

When talking about operations, don’t just talk about the operations themselves, and don’t be blinded by a single leaf and lose sight of the overall picture. What you really need to think about is the current situation and the strategic level.

Prepare the meal first before inviting guests . This is an operational method that I have spent 7 months testing and verifying. I hope it can be helpful to everyone.