Two products and five steps to tell you: How to plan topic activities for content-based products

Generally speaking, there are two main purposes of topic planning: user growth and enhancing content interaction among users.

For products at different stages, the focus of planning objectives should be different.

1. Topic planning for products in the initial stage

For a product in its early stages, the main purpose of planning topic activities should be to enhance user interaction and their stickiness with the product, rather than blindly pursuing user growth, unless the topic is a "hot-selling type."

After all, new users of topic-based activities are mostly attracted through user sharing and fission. How can a product with a small user base have enough users to help you promote the topic? Therefore, for products at this stage, more attention should be paid to the retention, activation and maintenance of existing users.

For topic activities planned for the purpose of content interaction, we can guide and stimulate users to generate UGC content through sharing, discussion, PK and other forms.

All three forms are common. Take NetEase Cloud Music as an example (of course, NetEase Cloud Music is not a start-up product, but a mature product).

NetEase Cloud Music#One sentence sells a singer Amway# Topic page

NetEase Cloud Music#One sentence sells a singer Amway# Topic details page

As you can see, the topic module in Figure 1 is mostly in the form of user sharing, while when entering a specific topic in Figure 2, the comments below become discussions among users. This is NetEase Cloud Music's simultaneous use of sharing and discussion methods.

As for the PK format, the "dispute between the sweet and salty zongzi party" and the "dispute over whether dumplings should be dipped in vinegar or soy sauce" that were very popular at the time are typical examples of using some harmless opposing topics to trigger debates among users and detonate activities.

Generally speaking, a product with 40,000 daily active users and more than 100 daily effective content contributions will have a better effect in topic planning.

When the daily active users reach 40,000, the user base is relatively sufficient to support the data needs of user portraits . We can also formulate corresponding user incentive mechanisms and carry out more targeted topic planning by analyzing such user behaviors ;

As for products with less than 40,000 daily active users, they can use the community model to accumulate content based on internal topic activities, and use the resources of users in the group to spread the topic outward.

2. Topic planning for mature products

Generally speaking, if a product has 100,000 users, it can basically be judged as a mature product in terms of topic planning.

For this type of product, the core of topic planning becomes "user growth and brand communication." Therefore, in addition to active user interaction, the more important thing for this type of event planning is to trigger it and let more people know about it. There is no doubt that the most eye-catching means of communication at present is to take advantage of the situation. For example, a few days ago, the article "Even if my husband didn't get a penny of shares, in my heart, he is still the most awesome entrepreneur " was published. On that day, I don't know how many self-media followed suit and produced many 100,000+ popular articles.

We define this type of topic planning as " event marketing topic planning."

There are many successful event marketing cases in the Internet industry. For example, the "First Fight in Internet History - Luo Yonghao Dialogues with Wang Ziru" that took place on the evening of August 27, 2014.

"Luo Yonghao VS Wang Ziru" fight incident

Youku took advantage of the topic activity planned for this "fighting incident" and the number of online video viewers that night broke the previous record at once, which can be said to be a significant effect.

However, the biggest drawback of “event marketing topic planning” is that it can easily become the operator ’s self-satisfaction and things can get out of control.

Let me give you two examples here: one is the Alipay Circle incident last year. Although Peng Lei later came out to apologize. But I have always believed that this is a marketing trick. Although Alipay was ultimately successful in promoting itself in the circle, and it can be said that everyone in the Internet industry knew that it had launched such a new function, it ultimately gained a reputation as being vulgar and pornographic.

Another example is Xin Shixiang’s “Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou” campaign last year. It is undeniable that this event was also very popular. It was successful both in terms of the number of participants and the spread of the topic. But if we look at the purpose of this event, it can be said to be a complete mess. As the sponsor of this event, Flight Butler originally intended to attract new customers, but in the end, users only remembered New World View, and no one cared about what Flight Butler was. Judging from the download volume on the app store, this event hardly brought any new users to Flight Butler. You should know that any event we plan has a purpose. If an event fails to achieve its purpose, its popularity will be in vain.

So, how should mature content products plan topic activities? Generally speaking, it can be divided into the following 5 steps.

(1) Create a special “topic activity” area

The so-called opening up of territory refers to sections and tools .

Section: It is a module in the app where topics are exposed and settled. After all, as a content operator, the value of your existence is to make your content liked by users, and the first step to make users like it is of course to let users see it. So in many cases, we operators often have no choice but to beg product managers to set aside a special area for us to display content.

In addition to providing greater exposure for content and activities, a dedicated area also provides a place for content generated by the activities to accumulate. For a UGC content product, the ultimate goal of planning topic activities is of course to allow these contents to flow back into the product and enrich the product content. Such an area provides a place for the content to reside.

The purpose of developing tools is to reduce operators' work costs. After all, as a content-based product, holding topic activities is a regular occurrence, just like NetEase Cloud Music has topics every day, right? Wouldn't it be much more convenient to develop a tool that integrates topic dissemination, user participation, content collection, and data statistics, so that we can reuse the template for each activity?

(2) Topic planning based on predictable hot topics

As mentioned before, although "topic planning for event marketing" has the potential to become a hit, it is also very easy to go wrong, and such phenomenal events are not common. Therefore, we need to prepare a set of predictable and long-term hot activities.

Generally speaking, these predictable hot topics can be divided into the following four categories:

1. Time-sensitive holidays : These are usually statutory holidays, such as Valentine's Day , Spring Festival, and Mid-Autumn Festival;
2. Regular events and competitions : such as the European Cup, the Olympic Games, and the two sessions;
3. Company news : the company's new product launch, anniversary celebration;
4. Original festival creation : This is generally applicable to large companies, such as " Double Eleven " is a festival created by Alibaba itself, and JD.com 's "JD 618".

(3) Implement topic planning preparations

The preparation work mainly includes:

1. The recruitment of volunteers is actually mainly for the Internet, who will help us build momentum later;
2. Channel application mainly involves the purchase of media platforms and contact with KOLs ;
3. Cooperation within and outside the site, joint activities often bring greater dissemination power than the platform's own activities;
4. Of course, there is also the most important copywriting and preparation of related promotional materials.

(4) Warming up: Topic promotion

The basic work has been completed, and the next step is of course to warm up the topic. We need to carry out publicity for the event in advance. This is when the channels I applied for and the KOLs I contacted before come into play. Through multi-channel communication, we can accumulate enough potential energy before the topic officially begins.

(5) Triggering: guiding users to participate and returning content to the product

If the previous steps were all about planting crops, now is the time to harvest the fruits. We use a series of user incentives and features that arouse users' emotions to guide users to actively participate in topic discussions, and ultimately allow these contents to flow back into the product and become part of the product content.

What we need to be clear about is that the core of topic planning is not packaging and distribution, but getting users involved in sharing content.

A successful topic planning must have several characteristics:

1. The topics you plan need to have product characteristics. For example, for a community like Xiaohongshu that mainly targets female users , it is obviously inappropriate to plan topics like NBA and F1 events.
2. If you plan, it must be valuable content that can arouse users' interest in participating and even sharing;
3. The planned topics can eventually be converted into content units of the product and flow back into the product.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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