Ten thousand words of useful information! Core user acquisition and operation strategies (including Xiaohongshu and Zaixing cases)

Introduction: This article is the second 10,000-word article written after "Content Operation from Scratch". It focuses on the topic of core user operation, and tells about the 7 ways for products to acquire core users, 4 types of user operation strategies, and 7 methods of retaining core users. If you read this article carefully, you can also see a lot of practical information about the core user acquisition and operation of Xiaohongshu, Zaixing, and Baidu Tieba.

This is a topic about core user operations that I shared at Tencent University (for internal employees) and on an online training platform. Because the feedback was quite good, I wrote it down. I hope that this article of nearly 10,000 words can help entrepreneurs and user operations experts establish a systematic core user acquisition and operation method.

1. What is a core user?

Before talking about how to acquire seed users or core users, we need to first clarify the difference between them and ordinary users: core users are users who can "sprout" and have the potential to grow into towering trees. Referring to the individual character rule of the tipping point, users who have a positive impact on the product can be divided into the following three categories:

1) Insiders: You can think of them as the group of seeds who are willing to share content for the product. A typical feature is that they often do not obtain information passively, but actively collect first-hand and second-hand information, process and compare the collected information, and then share it on the product without hesitation so that more people can know about it. Just like my relationship with Maimai, I have published 49 articles in the Maimai column since November last year and received 3,314 likes.

2) Contacts: These are the seed users who can spread the product. They may not be good at creating content, but they know a lot of people, and the people they can connect to are definitely not limited to one or several fields, but should be of different ages, occupations, lifestyles, and even nationalities. Some special occupations are areas where contacts are densely distributed, such as Internet operations, WeChat business, journalists, lawyers, etc.

Following this definition, I would like to share a cold start case about "You Have Food" that I heard at a Tencent salon. Since Guan Yijing, one of the founding team of this product, is the head of public relations at a well-known investment bank and knows journalist friends from various platforms, they made use of these free media resources and often invited journalists from various portal magazines and newspapers to dinner. The only thing the journalists needed to do was to post to their Moments after the meal, saying that this was a dinner organized by the "You Have Food" product team! Isn’t it a smart way to take advantage of people’s love for showing off good things and make full use of their contacts?

3) Salesman: Contacts help you let more people know about your product, while salesmen are the ones who persuade more people to use your product. Salespeople generally have a positive and optimistic nature. They are very keen on exploring new things in depth. They always have a happy expression on their faces when they speak. They are very confident in the views they express and pass this confidence on to the audience. They are good at "interacting" with the audience, etc. Under the influence and persuasion of the salesperson, consumers will be more impressed by the information they receive and find it more credible and willing to accept it.

Based on the principle of pragmatic sharing, Xiaoxian will tell you another case here. In December 2015, for the Orange Gift Box marketing campaign of Tiantian Orchard, he not only managed the contacts, but also mobilized salesmen. For example, my good friend Xiao Liu is a very good salesman. He takes the initiative to send invitation codes in his WeChat editor learning community and personally teaches everyone how to redeem the code. Then, he, who is usually aloof, will take the initiative to care whether you have received the gift box. Because he and I have quite a lot of friends in common, my circle of friends was basically flooded with Tiantian Fruit Garden for a few days in December.

(Mr. Orange Project of Tiantian Orchard)

The above is the definition of core users with reference to the individual character rule. The demand emphasis for these three types of core users is different in different product stages, and operations need to make competitive core user acquisition and retention strategies.

What is needed during the early stage of product pre-operation is experts and a group of "quiet" users who are willing to share and interact. In a public speech at the University of Hong Kong, Ma Huateng revealed that in the beginning, no one chatted on QQ, so in order to retain users, he had to chat himself, and sometimes even changed his avatar and pretended to be a girl to make the community look lively. Products in the rapid development stage require more salesmen and contacts. These people can usually be found by paying through opinion leader intermediary platforms. Of course, it is also possible that someone is attracted by your high-quality products and helps you spread the word for free.

(Learn to operate core users according to the actual product stage)

Below I will combine my operational experience on Xiaohongshu and Baidu Tieba, plus some methods that I have seen and think are good, to talk about how to acquire core users. If some old colleagues see this, I'm sorry to make fun of them.

2. How to obtain core/seed users

I will divide the readers of this article into two categories, one is male and the other is female. Of course, this division is always correct, but the most appropriate division for this topic scenario should be the operation of mature products and the operation of new products.

There is no standard in the industry for defining mature products and new products. I will just explain it based on my own understanding. Products with less than 100,000 users are called new products. Their functions and users are relatively simple and they are in the idea testing stage. Products with more than 100,000 users are considered mature products in terms of functions and user structure. They have developed extended functions based on core functions and have a certain user base.

Core user acquisition for new products

Compared with mature products, if new products want to quickly acquire core users, we need to clarify the product positioning before starting promotion. Only in this way can operations know where to acquire core users and how to attract them.

(Precise positioning of new products)

The more precise the positioning of a startup product is, the better. In a nutshell, it is about what functions should be used to meet the needs of what users in what scenarios. The first product of Xiaohongshu was the Hong Kong Shopping Guide, which was positioned to provide urban women with the latest product discount information, shopping mall information, and user experience information in Hong Kong. The product positioning of a mother and baby community is "to use videos to guide mothers on how to make their babies eat more healthily." This short sentence not only explains the selling points that can be used to acquire users during the promotion process, but also clarifies the attributes of our target users.

①Age: 23-40 years old

②Gender: Female

③Income: middle and upper class

④Hobbies: Childcare

⑤ Identity: Mother

⑥Others: Baby-related diet topics

⑦ Frequently visited forums: BabyTree, Lamamabang, Mamabang, Yaolan.com, Cui Yutao, Kaishu

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