The battle for platform KOL has entered a hand-to-hand fight! How to create “big V influence”?

What do you think? The KOLs on a platform are more or less like the big brothers of a mountain.

In his book The Fanatic, Hoffer has an interesting definition of a mass leader: "It does not matter whether their opinions are brilliant or not. What really matters is that they dare to be arrogant, completely indifferent to others, and are willing to take on the world alone."

Big Vs are natural topic engines. From the online rumor that MC Tianyou spent 20 million to leave Kuaishou and join Huoshan Video , to the "300 Big Vs leaving Zhihu" that sparked a wave of discussion a few days ago, their power is evident. What does a big V mean to the platform? How do they gather influence on social platforms? What kind of relationship is there between users and influencers? In this issue of Quanme ip ai, we will chat with you.

How to become a big V? Timely transformation/selling value/selling knowledge

Napoleon had long defined a leader as: "a person who sells hope." Opinion leaders are also leaders. No matter what you "sell," if you want to play this role well, you need to come up with some business strategies.

Capital is the vitamin of big Vs

媌老板, a Weibo celebrity with 1.12 million followers. On August 30, 2015, Boss Yi published a long article titled "Having a boyfriend who can take pictures, life will really be different from now on." To date, the Weibo post has been forwarded 84,700 times, received 67,794 comments, and liked 82,876 times.

With this Weibo post as a dividing line, the content of Boss Yi’s Weibo posts began to shift from private expressions to public expressions, for example:

It was not until October that Boss Xi announced on Weibo that he would start selling clothing on Weibo, and his Weibo profile was changed to "Share Tomorrow brand manager and Miaopai expert of Hangzhou Ruohan E-Commerce Co., Ltd." In addition to Boss Xi, other celebrities whose names "Ruohan" appeared in their profiles included internet celebrities Zhang Dayi, Pu Se, Wei Yanni and others.

People who are familiar with the internet celebrity economy are probably familiar with the name Ruhan. This clothing company, which started out as an internet celebrity e-commerce company, is essentially a technology service company that provides technical services to internet celebrities. On the one hand, it is responsible for the creation and operation of internet celebrities, and on the other hand, it connects with back-end OEM factories to provide category operation and supply chain management services. Today, Ruhan is already a listed company on the New Third Board, with operating income of 445 million yuan and net profit of 24.1918 million yuan in 2016.

When Ruhan E-Commerce Co., Ltd., known as the "Internet celebrity incubator", appeared in Boss Xi's profile, Boss Xi had already become a true Internet celebrity.

If you can’t sell clothes, you can still sell “three views”

On Weibo, in addition to the above-mentioned marketing -related Internet celebrities, there are also a large number of people who attract similar people by selling their so-called "three views that are always correct." For example, “A somewhat idealistic journalist” (hereinafter referred to as “Li Ji”) has 1.98 million followers on Weibo. Since 2015, the blogger has publicly commented on many hot social issues on Weibo with his passionate expression.

Judging from the micro-index, the last time "Li Ji" was popular was on August 19, which is related to "Lin Da is Wo Shi", the person involved in the "Lijiang female tourist" beating incident this year. "Linda is me" does not want "Li Ji" to mention that she met the other three companions through Momo, but "Li Ji" thinks it is not important what software she used to meet others. What is important is that he thinks the local police mentioned the software she used, which is suspected of "encircling Wei to save Zhao".

As a result, both parties started to quarrel with each other through long texts, voice messages, and screenshots of chat records.

Those who support Li Ji think that "Lin Da is Wo Shi" cannot distinguish between good and bad and do not appreciate Li Ji's kindness.

Those who support "Lin Da is Wo Shi" think that "Li Ji" is just trying to take advantage of the popularity and does not respect women enough.

The above situation is the norm for "Li Ji"'s Weibo. This normal "tearing" represents his continuous output of opinions with strong personal subjective colors. This kind of speech contains what we often call the "three views". Once subjective opinions are expressed, there will be two extreme consequences: a group of staunch followers and another group of equally staunch opponents. For supporters, "Li Ji" is Mr. Right of their "three views".

There are actually many Mr. Rights based on the "three views" on various social platforms, such as "Support rainbows", "Don't objectify women", "Fight back at things you don't like", "Be yourself and ignore others", "Those who ignore other people's feelings have low emotional intelligence", and many similar ones. Regardless of whether they are contradictory or not, they are always active in popular areas of social media .

If you can’t be a “drama queen”, you can sell your knowledge skillfully.

In addition to the two types of big Vs mentioned above, there is also a type of big V in a vertical field. This type is commonly seen on Zhihu. They are more like industry experts and have many knowledge fans in their respective fields. To some extent, because the sense of gain for everyone appeals to the use value, as long as the information is scarce and useful, there will be buyers, even if the alley is deep.

When most people are asked, “Who is your favorite Zhihu expert?”, their reactions are probably as follows:

The repetition rate of the answers can be said to be very low. For example, the "devil's nanny" mentioned at the beginning of the article. If you are not very interested in English, you probably don't know who he is.

This situation is mainly attributed to the growth path of Zhihu experts, as detailed in the following netizen’s answer - "Rapid upgrade strategy under Zhihu game rules"

In fact, any social platform is a stage for users, and Goffman's pseudo-theory will exist: society and life are a big stage, and members of society, as performers on this big stage, are very concerned about how to create an acceptable image in front of a large audience. Naturally, providing users with props for their performances has become the objective responsibility of Zhihu experts.

Where does the influence of big V come from? The “Follower Effect” Gene

In the above, we talked about several different types of big Vs. They naturally cannot represent big Vs as a whole, but we can also make a simple analysis of the factors that influence big Vs from them.

Since Katz and Lazarsfeld discovered “two-step communication” in the 1950s, it has become clear that most people are not directly influenced by mass media, but instead form their opinions based on opinion leaders who interpret media information and put it in context. Opinion leaders are the people who are initially exposed to a particular media content and interpret it according to their own perceptions, while the public becomes “opinion followers”.

There are many factors that can trigger the follower effect. A sense of identification, empathy, admiration, and even fear can become the genes of a big V's influence. But to sum up, the most important points are just two: one is the release of similar signals; the other is the worship of resources under information anxiety.

Similar circles gather a sense of identity

Homophily refers to the tendency of individuals with similar characteristics to choose each other as friends. As mentioned in the article “The “Circle of Influence” Effect in Social Media Communication”: “In social media, the communication relationship is not divergent, but has the hierarchical similarity between the communicator and the audience, forming a convergent and close “circle of influence flow”.

Audiences are also more inclined to provide information feedback to communication levels with similar influence. "The above-mentioned big Vs and those who are influenced by them exist in this "circle of influence", and within this circle, big Vs have a meaning to be fought over. In the influence research of computer science, homogeneity and influence are inherently intertwined, and the degree of homogeneity and the degree of influence show positive feedback.

Big V is a lower-cost way to obtain information

"Knowledge Gap Theory" is a theory about class differentiation in mass communication and information society. In 1970, American communication scholar Tichenor and others proposed a theoretical hypothesis based on a series of empirical studies: "Since people with higher socioeconomic status can usually obtain information faster than those with lower socioeconomic status, the more information the mass media transmits, the more the knowledge gap between the two tends to widen."

For most users, the reason they follow big Vs is to consume content, and this content is used to eliminate information asymmetry. Especially in this era of information explosion, choosing someone you are willing to trust is much less costly than sifting through the huge wave of information.

To give the simplest example, the girl within a 300-meter radius of you cannot try all kinds of lipsticks, but she can find the one that suits her best through lipstick styling by beauty bloggers.

Social influence can only be reflected through interactive activities between people. For example, user A's online posting attracts user B, making the latter a fan of the former, that is, A has an influence on B. When this influence is externalized into platform traffic , it becomes the object of competition among platforms.

Any type of content sharing represents a business possibility, but for the real source of influence - users, the value of use does not come from the platform or from big Vs, but from the content. A very interesting example is that a video recently released by MC Tianyou was not on Huoshan, but on Kuaishou.