Wu Xiaobo: In the era of We-Media 2.0, what is more important than the number of users and 100,000+?

The development of self-media today, like the current development of all virtual economy or Internet economy, has become more and more real. Wu Xiaobo believes that "monetization" is an important reality that every new media will face this year or next year: in this field, it has not entered the cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter. It has completed a structural change and needs to continue to move forward.

In Wu Xiaobo's view, the so-called "monetization is more important than anything else" refers to whether the people attracted by the content can eventually settle into a kind of commercial value and business interactive relationship.

At the private meeting, Wu Xiaobo shared his views and suggestions. He said that the 1.0 era of self-media has ended and the 2.0 era has begun, and professional influence and profitability are the key. In the 2.0 era, three things have changed:

1. "User relationships" are more important than "number of users";

2. "Million-dollar products" are more important than 100,000+;

3. What is more important than ranking is “first in category”.

In addition, regarding the three commercial cash-out models of advertising, physical e-commerce , and knowledge payment , Wu Xiaobo also shared six experiences from the practice of Wu Xiaobo Channel in the past three years:

1. Traffic and empowerment.

2. The trend of paying for knowledge.

3. Products, products, products.

4. Without big data , everything is zero.

5. Advertising is the cutest “old money”.

6. The expansion of information-based self-media into physical e-commerce.

On March 25, the 2017 Keqiao District Cultural Industry and Datou CLUB Forum opened, hosted by the Keqiao District People's Government of Shaoxing City, and co-organized by Toutoushidao Fund, PwC Capital, and Wu Xiaobo Channel. Zhu Jianming, member of the Standing Committee of Keqiao District and Executive Deputy District Mayor, and Yang Weiqing, member of the Standing Committee of Keqiao District and Minister of Propaganda, attended the meeting. More than 100 founders of more than 40 cultural enterprises invested by Toutoushidao Fund attended the event.

The following is an excerpt from Wu Xiaobo’s speech at the event, edited by B12:

The development of self-media today, like the current development of all virtual economy or Internet economy, has become more and more real. I think "monetization" is a topic that every new media will pay great attention to this year or next year.

I remember someone discussed something last year: Did self-media go from spring to autumn and then to winter? In fact, I think that in this field, it has not entered the cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter. It has completed a structural change and needs to continue to move forward.

Self-media began to appear in August 2012. There is no corresponding development model in the world. Chinese media has long been controlled by the government and is a knowledge market that requires a license. Self-media has essentially liberated the "newspaper ban" and solved the licensing issue in the media industry, thus allowing communication to enter a state of reconstruction. Other developed countries do not have a media licensing system, so their industrial structure and profit model are different from those of China. China's self-media has entered an unprecedented state of development.

After several years of development, by the end of 2016, the so-called 1.0 era has ended. We have now entered 2.0, a new stage of development. But it does not mean that we have entered autumn or winter. This is a phased development change.

After 2.0, some new things emerged. When I was working on the Wu Xiaobo Channel and communicating with some self-media classmates, I also felt that our judgment and evaluation standards for self-media had changed.

The "new rules" in the era of We-media 2.0

In the era of We Media 2.0, three things have changed:

First, user relationships are more important than the number of users.

I started my own media more than a year ago, and one of the questions I asked everyone was how many users and fans you had. This is a particularly important thing. But in the 2.0 era, this data has become not particularly important. That is to say, even if there are 500,000 users or millions of users today, these are no longer the data that determine the true value of self-media. So what if we have one hundred users? So what if we have three million users? What does it mean?

I think what is more important than the number of users is the establishment of user relationships. Last month, because I have a paid product called "Hear Wu Xiaobo Every Day", I did some cooperation with self-media and asked them to interact and publish articles. Finally, I discovered that some self-media have a very large number of fans, two or three times larger than our Wu Xiaobo Channel. We are not small anymore, we have 2.7 million fans. But the result is that after you put the article in there, there is almost no user activity after you interact with it, and almost no sales are generated. On the contrary, only some self-media with 200,000 or 300,000 users can generate sales, and their users are willing to pay for you.

This is the real situation we see. The so-called number of fans does not correspond to the actual user interaction relationship you have. Everyone here is engaged in self-media, and you will find that when your number of users reaches 500,000, your headlines have 50,000 or 70,000 views, and the opening rate is around 10% to 15%. By the time you have 1 million fans, your headlines will only be 60,000 or 70,000. User activity and interaction are not directly proportional to the growth of your user base.

Our current headlines have around 200,000 to 220,000 views per week. Maybe we had already reached this number when we had around 1 million users. I did not achieve a year-on-year growth just because I had more than 2 million followers. This shows that many users have settled down and many users have become "zombies", so the number of users itself cannot reflect the real user relationship of a self-media.

What is the real user relationship? The first is the identification of values. How many users share your values? On the first anniversary of Wu Xiaobo Channel in 2015, I proposed: "Recognize the beauty of business, advocate self-struggle, be willing to share and contribute, and oppose Diaosi culture." That’s when we started to establish our own values. Without values, all users combined are just a mob and have no value.

Secondly, whether a community and interactive relationship has been formed in your self-media, and whether users are willing to pay for you, like you, and comment on you. User relationships are greater than the number of users we see now. This is the first change. We need to re-establish our relationship with users.

Second, what is more important than 100,000+ is the "million-dollar item".

In the 1.0 era, everyone is the same. The first thing is how many fans you have, and the second thing is how many articles you have with 100,000+ views. But in the future, I think whether a public account can produce more than 100,000 articles has become a prerequisite, not the most important indicator of the value of self-media. The most important thing is how much impact these 100,000+ articles will ultimately have on the business. We are no longer responsible for the process.

If you are just doing it for fun or as a personal enthusiast, then it doesn't matter. It's very fun. The happiness generated by the process itself has already absorbed all my work.

If you are a professional self-media, you have obtained financing , or we want to become a commercial organization in the future, or want to go public in the future, and want to become a target of acquisition, then our number of users or our 100,000+ is no longer a result, it is a process, a process for a commercial organization to complete productization.

Therefore, what is more important than 100,000+ is the commercial value that your article, or a series of 200 or 500 articles with 100,000+ in a year, can ultimately realize. This requires rethinking the relationship between the content itself and the final result.

Today, I think what is more important for a self-media than generating 100,000+ views? What is more important is whether your article or a series of articles with 100,000+ views can potentially generate a product with RMB revenue of millions. It may be a knowledge-based paid product, a travel product, or a product that interacts with a brand. Is it possible to produce a product with sales of 1 million? This matter becomes even more important. The iteration from media to productization is a difficult upgrade in the era of self-media 2.0.

Third, what is more important than ranking is “first in category”.

At the end of last year, when Wu Xiaobo Channel completed its financing, it was estimated at 2 billion yuan. A friend of mine said, "Teacher Wu, your ranking is outside the top 300, so how much should the valuation of those ranked ahead of you be?" To this day, we are not the one with the largest number of users in China. Many of those present here have larger users than us.

I think they are all good and everyone has done a great job. But I think what is more important than ranking or number of users is your influence in a single category after the entire pattern is formed.

Today, the characteristics of China's social stratification have been directly projected onto self-media. The growth of self-media is the result of social stratification. The entire public market has been deconstructed, and mass brands have been deconstructed. Self-media simply attracts users through content. The so-called "monetization is more important than anything else" means whether the people attracted by the content can eventually settle into a kind of commercial value and business interactive relationship.

The principle is the same, shopping malls attract people to the mall through advertising, and we simply attract people through content. Then there are questions about value, class, and commodity demand. After it settles here, is it possible to turn it into commercial value? This is the most natural logic for the growth of self-media.

When this becomes a premise, where is your value? Your value lies in that after the mass market is deconstructed, Chinese society enters a circle system. In this circle, you rank compared with the same category, so category becomes the most important.

Even if you are making a wine, like our Wu Xiaobo Channel which produces financial knowledge content, where can you rank in the country in this category? Being number one in the category becomes something more important than the number of your users. Only when you are number one in the category will you be selected.

Why did Cao Guoxiong just say that the overall pattern has been determined from August 2012 to the end of 2016? Because the pattern in terms of product categories has most likely been determined. Those who are ranked in the top three today are all having a pretty good time. But beyond the three, it becomes increasingly difficult.

So today, for all self-media operators , it is a question of professionalism: do you have the ability to make it into the top three? When you are in the top three, whether you have the ability to build a high enough moat or wall is a question that goes back to corporate competition itself.

The above are my three judgments on the so-called 2.0 era.

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