How do community apps stimulate users to produce high-quality content?

The product chain of a community product is: "content production-distribution channel - community - business model " . This is the standard chain of community products. From the output of high-quality content, to the distribution of content, to the realization of the business model, each link is crucial, but the output of content is the foundation of the entire chain. Without content output, there will be no subsequent series of actions. Therefore, in this chapter we will analyze the output of content separately, and how a community product can stimulate and encourage users to continuously produce good content in order to maintain the ecological balance of the entire community.

Before the content begins, it is time to popularize operational expertise: the difference between UGC and PGC (friends who already know the relationship between the two can skip this)

UGC (User-Generated Content) is content originally produced by users, such as pictures and texts on WeChat Moments , Weibo, articles on Zhihu, music on Changba, and various videos on Miaopai , most of which belong to UGC. PGC (Professionally-produced Content) is a source of professionally produced content. Simply put, all authoritative content produced by professional individuals and teams belongs to PGC, such as TV programs, newspapers and periodicals, media information, etc.

Compared with PGC, the biggest feature of UGC is the high level of active user participation and larger interactive space. Usually, after users produce content on their own, they will easily spread it spontaneously for the second time, attracting explosive attention and following, creating a viral effect. Compared with the CCTV bid winner more than 10 years ago, spending money on advertising in resource channels (crude marketing is gone forever), users' forwarding and sharing (word-of-mouth marketing) is the best help for brand promotion.

One rule we must follow when operating community products is the "80/20 rule", that is, 20% of the people in the community serve 80% of the people (just like there are only a small number of actors performing or a singer singing on the stage, if it suits the users' taste, they will applaud enthusiastically and even sing with you), and as an official, we should try our best to serve these 20% of people better.

1. The first impression of the community determines whether your users will continue to stay and watch or produce content

For a user, when he first starts using an app, his attention is focused on the interface design (UI\UE) . Whether your product conforms to my aesthetic standards and whether it is simple and elegant are the reasons for users to judge whether they will continue to stay. At the same time, users will be exposed to the core functions and gameplay of this product. How is the content of the product presented? Is the browsing method novel enough? Are there any other interesting features and gameplay? This is like when you meet a girl, you will first look at her appearance (appearance association), if she looks okay, you will think about staying to get to know her more, such as her personality, character and other inner things. Therefore, the product’s basic gameplay, functions, UI, and UE are the first step in attracting users. There is no even any talk of settling down. This first step is a foundation.

Baidu Pie interface

Even if your product looks very similar to a community product, and users are not aware of your core functions and gameplay, their interest in you will not last long. It’s like the Baidu Pi that Baidu recently launched (I was invited as a seed user at the time). It is a high-quality topic discussion community under Baidu. When you enter it, you will feel as if you have seen it before (because it looks so damn like Zhihu). So the first impression it gives me is greatly reduced.

2. The active atmosphere of the community’s vertical interests can keep the target audience to produce content

Many people are not eager to speak out as soon as they join a community. Instead, they will wait and see for a while to see what everyone is saying, slowly understand the community culture, become familiar with the community atmosphere, and evaluate whether the community meets their expectations. Only then will they produce content with the mentality of "I have officially joined."

Why is Bilibili so popular among those born in the 90s and 00s?

We all know that Bilibili is very popular among the post-90s generation of the second dimension. So why is it loved by so many people born in the 90s and 00s?

Mr. Rui, chairman of Bilibili, once disclosed the user age data of Bilibili. Among Bilibili's more than 100 million active users, users under the age of 17 are the absolute majority, followed by users aged 18 to 24, and users over 25 years old account for less than 10%. Among college students and middle school students in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, more than 50% of them are Bilibili users. Therefore, Bilibili's target users are teenagers who like ACGN culture and Tucao culture. In order to meet their needs, the official website of Bilibili provides them with content that they are interested in.

For example, the first impression of Bilibili’s homepage is that it is lively, or in the words of the second dimension, it is very exciting , and the layout is relatively dense. Bilibili creates this lively atmosphere and attracts this group of young people. However, for older people, they may not be used to this style.

Just as Mr. Rui, the chairman of Bilibili, said: Bilibili is not a group that creates content, but provides services and platforms for those who create content. Establish links between producers and users, and let people who love personalized and diversified culture regard Bilibili as their paradise.

3. Identify a group of opinion leaders who can continuously produce content

As your community continues to develop and mature, you will need to fine-tune the grading and classification of community users, so that content producers have room to continue to grow and output content.

For example: open up the user's attention chain and cultivate celebrity users. Content consumer users can follow those who follow these celebrity users in various interest areas. This can further encourage these users to improve content quality and professionalism, cultivate a healthy community content positive cycle, healthy producer competition, etc. Celebrity users, due to their idol burden, will be more willing to maintain the neutrality of the content. These are the scenes that a UGC community is most happy to see.

The lively atmosphere of Station B

Let’s take Station B as an example (you can study the construction of Station B’s UGC ecosystem when you have time)

If you are familiar with Bilibili or are an in-depth user, you will know that Bilibili has a group of UP hosts who specialize in producing content. These UP hosts publish content, which can be animations, dramas, ghost videos, etc. Attract users to browse through content. The attracted users return the feedback to the UP host by posting barrages and comments, inserting coins, sharing collections, or even contracting these behaviors. UP hosts will be motivated to continue creating.

What Bilibili mainly does is to maintain and create the atmosphere formed by the loop from UP hosts to content and then to users. The most critical role among these three is the UP host, which not only determines the quality and quantity of the content, but also affects the user activity and acquisition of new users. By strengthening the protection of UP hosts in product design and business logic, we can also attract more UP hosts with the same interests and hobbies to join.

4. Zero tolerance for advertising, provide users with a clean environment and establish a controllable management mechanism

Every community will have advertisements, so every community will have a relatively complete management mechanism. Take Jianshu for example. When many Jianshu users first came into contact with Jianshu, they were attracted by its relatively clean environment and high-quality content (like me). At least there had never been such a feeling in any writing community before. So many users quickly fell in love with it and started producing content (writing articles).

However, a community is actually very concerned about the issue of advertising. Especially for UGC communities that are just starting out and whose users are not active enough, the difficulties are:

1. Behavior identification is not a simple matter. We cannot simply assume that the act of selling goods must be dealt with.

For example: promoting a certain facial mask can definitely be handled immediately; but what about promoting the organic food produced by your grandparents, or advertising the unsaleable fruits from your hometown?

2. Even if it is identified as an advertisement, what should the user do?

For those who start posting as much as they can as soon as they join the community, of course they can be banned directly, but for this kind of people:

Active female users , do you occasionally post things about WeChat business? Even if you delete the posts of such users, you may lose a high-quality user. The consequences of these spam messages are easy to understand.

It reduces user activity. Almost all users, regardless of gender, dislike this kind of content, which will reduce the attractiveness of the community. The processing method can be:

First, determine whether this promotional activity is of a commercial or public welfare nature. Public welfare nature directly green light;

Users who only post micro-business information and commercial advertisements will have their posts deleted and their accounts banned;

Establish a mechanism to suppress posts. For users (mainly female users) who post both small advertisements and content that users are interested in, suppress the commercial advertisements posted by the users (only the posters can see them, not others), and green-light other content.

Establish a red and white list mechanism, and put those users who have been active for a long time and have not posted small advertisements into the white list. Any posts can be displayed normally. When other users post, the text posts with text on the pictures or containing a large amount of numbers and English will be blocked first (still only the poster can see it, not others), and then manually reviewed. If the user is on the red list, each post must be manually reviewed.

Recruit active users to assist in handling the issue. Many communities already have reporting mechanisms in place, so there is not much to say. As for the handling mechanism, it is recommended that seed users be recruited in the later stage, such as setting up a team leader. Give group leaders enough privileges so that they feel respected, and use them to help deal with micro-business and advertising activities. Everyone desires to be recognized. Sometimes, if you give him a title that is insignificant but not given to others, he will be touched and willing to produce more content. Motivation between people is also two-way. As a community operator, many times the encouragement you get at work does not come from your boss or a salary increase, but from this group of lovely users who are like friends. Learn to enjoy the sense of security they bring you.

When a community can continuously produce high-quality content and user activity remains at a fairly stable level, monetization will be a natural outcome.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

The author of this article @艺林小宇 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!