Everyone is talking about UGC operation, but do you know what the core of UGC is?

UGC is the abbreviation of User Generated Content, which means content produced by users.

UGC is one of the most important fruits of the Internet, especially web 2.0. It can be said that the history of the development of the Internet is the history of the development of UGC. The blogs, forums, communities, and self-media that we cannot do without are all UGC.

Currently, typical UGC products are: Zhihu (community), Jianshu (blog), Lizhi FM (audio radio)... It is very difficult to leverage users to produce content for the platform, but if the UGC mechanism is successfully established, it will also put the product into a positive cycle.

The core issue of UGC is how to build a user incentive mechanism to allow users to produce content.

1. How to find the first batch of angel users ?

The " 80/20 rule " (Pareto principle) that people often talk about does not apply in the UGC field. In fact, the number of users who are truly willing to produce content for the product is less than 2%.

For example, the number of registered users of the famous question-and-answer community reached more than 60 million by the end of 2016, but less than 1% of them actually asked questions/answered questions.

Not to mention content-based products, the same is true for social products that are closely related to users, such as QQ Space, Weibo, and Moments . Do the daily posting and interactive behaviors account for 20% of the number of people in everyone’s address book? There must be none.

The reason is that users who are willing to produce are always a minority, and most people still consume content as Internet spectators.

Therefore, in the early stages of the launch, finding a wave of “angel users” is the most critical task, which directly determines the life or death of the product. This is why they are called “angel users”.

The most effective and commonly used method is the " invitation system ".

Based on the product positioning, find a group of "experts" who match the tone. First of all, they should be people with production capabilities who can produce high-quality content. Secondly, they should be people with willingness, who identify with the product and are willing to contribute content to us.

When it comes to operating an invitation-based system, Zhihu is the most successful.

Founded in December 2010, Zhihu adopted an invitation-based registration system in its first two years, strictly controlling the first batch of users entering the community . Zhihu is positioned as a high-quality question-and-answer community, so when it was launched, it invited the highest-quality users on the Internet: industry leaders, programmers , product managers , writers, etc. Early people included Kai-Fu Lee , Lei Jun , Zhang Xiaolong , He Caitou and a group of other high-quality users.

Not only are they capable of producing high-quality content, but they are also heavy users of the Internet and are willing to contribute content to the online world. It is precisely because of the "selfless contribution" of this group of users that Zhihu has firmly established a "high-quality" brand impression, which in turn attracted more users willing to contribute high-quality content, forming a virtuous circle.

The advantage of the invitation system is, first of all, maintaining control over the product tone and content. Those who receive the invitation have undergone certain official screening to ensure quality. By controlling the users who generate content within a small range, it is also possible to control the direction of the content in a timely manner and prevent it from losing control. In addition, from a marketing perspective, the invitation system creates "scarcity" and is also an effective promotion method .

So how do we find this wave of angel users? Next, I will briefly talk about some actual cases I have worked on.

1. Start with the people around you

When doing the audio live broadcast business, we hope to find a group of high-quality DJs at home and abroad as content producers in the start-up period, establish a high-quality tone, and then form word of mouth to attract more outstanding anchors to join.

So you can imagine that the number of DJs that meet the requirements is actually very small, which is both a disadvantage and an advantage.

The advantage is that it is relatively easy to find them. At the beginning, we took stock of the people we knew and invited them to be the first batch of users to test the live broadcast function.

Starting with personal connections is the most efficient way to start a business, because through friends, they have enough trust and willingness in the product.

For example, our team is engaged in the music industry, so it is not too difficult to find a few music DJs we know, and based on our usual business cooperation, they are also willing to try our new features.

2. SNS channel mining

Open social platforms and self-media are also important channels for inviting seed users . I often receive private messages from Zhihu, inviting me to experience and register their products.

SNS channel is a very convenient place, why? For example, if we want to invite a radio DJ, we can search for relevant information on Weibo and official accounts and find them quickly. Then send them the invitation information through private messages or backstage messages.

However, on such a public platform, big Vs receive a large amount of information every day, so they are likely to ignore your private message. Then the invitation information should be concise and make it clear: Who are you? What do you want me to do? What benefits can I get ? What should I do? After "washing" through the SNS channels, those who are interested will naturally respond, and those who are not interested don't have to spend energy to hook up with them. After all, it is difficult for them to become ideal content contributors even if they are pulled over reluctantly.

According to experience, generally speaking, no more than 50% of people will reply to the message, and only 10%-20% can actually be converted . Although the conversion rate is not very high, the base is large after all, and the final conversion number is relatively objective. To put it another way, for products without background, this is already the most efficient means.

3. Explore from competing products

As the saying goes "standing on the shoulders of giants", I believe everyone has done this to some extent: poaching competitors' products.

For homogeneous products, poaching from each other is a natural and fast and efficient channel. For example, Xiami initially poached a large number of users from Douban , and when Xiaomi started out, it also attracted a large number of enthusiasts from major mobile phone forums. Like SNS channels, among competing products, you can also use the private message function to focus on inviting expert users.

However, you need to be mentally prepared, as you may encounter extremely loyal fans who may not only be difficult to poach, but may also be treated coldly or even verbally abused.

Therefore, when choosing who to invite, it is best to be sensible and don't target the die-hard fans of your competitors. For example, if you want to create a new question-and-answer community and plan to poach Mr. Zhang Jiawei from Zhihu, the possibility is almost zero. It is also a good method for ordinary users with average loyalty, because competitors have accurately aggregated the users you want.

4. Mutual recommendations from users

After using the above methods, we have been able to find a wave of seed users. Next, we can use a cost-effective "killer weapon", which is to let existing users recommend each other.

First of all, according to the nature of birds of a feather flock together, there must be our target users around the existing users, and there may be more than one, but a group.

Secondly, when we make decisions, we tend to trust friends’ recommendations more easily. If a friend invites us to experience a product, it is more credible than an inexplicable private message from a stranger.

As mentioned above, we have found a group of excellent DJs through our connections and various channels. After using it for a period of time, there will be some DJs who are very convinced of the product, and then we will invite them to let their DJ friends try it out. In this way, we can expand a group of high-quality DJs. A large number of anchors and DJs use this method, through mutual recommendations between anchors.

2. UGC incentives: How to retain angels?

In the book "Cognitive Surplus", Clay Shirky's core point is that in the Internet age, people use surplus time outside of working hours to share and create, creating valuable wealth for human society.

So why do people create content on the Internet?

Motivation theory holds that the reasons why people engage in various activities can be divided into external motivation and internal motivation. External motivation refers to the motivation generated by an individual under the influence of external demands or pressure, while internal motivation refers to the motivation caused by an individual's internal needs.

Generally speaking, external motivation can be understood as: job requirements and material incentives. For example, a journalist may publish articles because of job requirements or because of the royalties. Internal motivation can be understood as a sense of accomplishment, the value of self-realization, etc. For example, I did not earn any money from writing this article, but if readers agree with it, I will have a sense of accomplishment and feel that I am a useful person.

In short, UGC incentives can also be summarized as: material incentives and spiritual incentives.

Okay, now that we have discussed some obscure theories, how do we implement them in our products?

1. Spiritual motivation

I believe that a successful UGC product must be one that can stimulate users’ internal motivation, that is, self-driving force. Users produce content out of internal motivation, which means that the product is valuable to them and solves their needs, and they also recognize the value brought by the product. Only when such a mutually beneficial relationship is formed between users and products can the continuous output of users be guaranteed.

For example, in the blog era around 2010, everyone who wrote a blog did so because they wanted to express and record their thoughts on the Internet, not because they could get paid for their work. The fact that their blog posts can exist and even gain recognition and feedback from friends and netizens makes them feel their own value, and this is the greatest motivation. Without this relationship, no matter how much effort the government puts into operations , it would be impossible to create the prosperity of the blog era.

Subsequently, Renren , Weibo, and Moments were also based on this, satisfying users' basic social needs. Users can interact with their relatives and friends in these communities, forming a powerful "spiritual opium" that stimulates them to constantly update and consume social network status.

Interest communities also rely mainly on the self-motivation of users to ensure continuous content output, the most famous of which is Baidu Tieba . The author has some star-chasing friends who constantly produce content in their idol forums , day after day for years, without any compensation and without any utilitarianism. Such high stickiness is purely due to their love for their idols. In their own words, in this community, they can hang out with a group of people who share the same idol feelings as them, and feel a strong sense of belonging and pride, and spontaneously want to make more contributions to such a community.

2. Material incentives

So are material incentives useless? not really.

In the commercial world, reasonable material incentives are also a good way to maintain content output. Material incentives include fame and profit. As the saying goes, "all the people in the world are busy seeking profit. All the people in the world are busy seeking profit."

For non-social content products, what can you provide to users? When I was doing UGC user incentives, I always had this problem. Finally I figured out the answer: either give resource recommendations or give money.

Resource recommendation is a common method used by major products. Zhihu and Jianshu will recommend excellent articles to popular websites and their own SNS channels to provide authors with greater exposure. This is a means of both spiritual and material motivation, because it not only satisfies the user's sense of honor, but also helps the user gain more attention.

Money, the easiest thing to understand. Sometimes, due to the limited energy of the big V or different personal demands, spiritual motivation and resource recommendations are of no use. At this time, the only thing to do is to spend money. However, since it is purchased with money, it does not seem to fall within the scope of UGC discussion. We seem to have never seen any UGC product spend money to purchase user content.

Just because the government doesn’t give money doesn’t mean they won’t get paid. There is a product form that is called "borrowing flowers to offer to Buddha", which uses a reward mechanism to let readers (content consumers) pay for authors (content producers). For example, appreciation of WeChat public accounts , gift giving of live broadcast products, etc.

Not getting an immediate return now does not mean that you will get nothing in the long run. Many content contributors are looking to the future. They are constantly creating content, practicing, and accumulating in the online world, just for the day when they will break out. For example, some users write answers on Zhihu and update articles on public accounts, not out of selfless dedication, but to build their own personal brand. Some authors who continue to produce not only gain more career development opportunities, but also accumulate enough fans to monetize.

In addition, many companies use peripheral products and souvenirs as "material incentives" and mail them to content contributors. I think this is also an auxiliary means of spiritual motivation, because compared with the content produced by users, these peripherals worth a few dollars are really insignificant.

To sum up all the above material incentives, only by ensuring that content producers obtain satisfactory benefits can we support their continued production.

3. Core Work of UGC Operation

In the early days of many communities, operators would maintain close contact with daily users and even ask about their well-being. I think such emotional maintenance methods are effective in the short term but useless in the long term. In other words, they may work wonders in the early stages, but they are not a sustainable strategy.

When the live audio streaming business was just starting out, I was also a "personal customer service" and actively solved various problems for early DJs, ranging from product experience to some problems in life, hoping to make them feel the dedication of the official staff, so that they would stay in the product and contribute more content. Like all communities, this strategy is indeed effective. Many angel users are moved by the staff's efforts and become more willing to contribute content to the product. Therefore, I also suggest that operators in the startup period devote more energy to the maintenance of early angel users.

However, this is not a long-term strategy, because human energy is limited after all, and it is impossible to always be a caring and considerate person to maintain angel users. More importantly, evergreen trees cannot grow in the soil based on personal feelings. Just like the relationship between men and women, only being touched is not sustainable. The maintenance of the relationship between products and users should be based on the exchange of value between both parties. It is impossible for angel users to continue to contribute just because the operations staff is good. If they don’t get anything valuable from the product, the relationship will end sooner or later.

Therefore, as an operator, the core work should be to design a reasonable UGC incentive system so that the product and users can form a mutually beneficial relationship, so that the product can survive and grow.