What exactly connects the PGC and UGC of the community?

Watching the large amount of content being generated is definitely one of the greatest sense of accomplishment in community operations . The generation of content means that the activity of the community is increasing.

When operating a community, there are always problems with content:

1. How to continuously generate UGC?
2. How are UGC and PGC related?
3. Why doesn’t recommended PGC attract more UGC?
4. Many UGCs just can’t produce good PGCs?
5. What methods can be used to connect UGC and PGC when operating a community?

If you lack the mindset of user operation to operate content, you will often see some "strange" UGC and PGC operation ideas:

1. Too many restrictions on UGC

In order to ensure the healthy development of the platform's content quality, control malicious speech, guide new users, etc., many operators will formulate some rules, or directly make settings on the product to perform basic control over UGC, but the main purpose is to guide rather than limit. It’s just that there are so many restrictions that even UGC seems fake.

The main reason why many customized H5 activities are not popular on social media is that they restrict the content disseminated by users too strictly, and there are always only a few labels and a few sets of statements. UGC should encourage individuality and create commonalities in personalization, rather than forcing uniformity. Many web pages with low traffic can be seen from the comments that they are basically full of "good words" in a unified format, while real online comments often only have "bad words" in them.

2. Imbalance between UGC and PGC

The balance mentioned here does not mean equilibrium. Content needs to constantly attract and disperse users in a disharmony. Some operators, when dealing with UGC and PGC, easily go to extremes and use crude operational methods to directly manage them. For example, in order to retain PGC, UGC is forcibly deleted. How can there be interaction if content management is authoritarian and only one voice is retained?

The end result is often that users are not active and cannot gather, content productivity is low, and no amount of motivation (activity incentives, etc.) can make the content continue to grow.

The relationship between UGC and PGC

An operation with control needs to relax content control appropriately and use relatively humane methods to promote the evolution of content. In the process of evolution, the traction and connection relationship between UGC and PGC is particularly important.

A valuable community releases content for group communication. Therefore, the related development trajectory of PGC and UGC will be affected by changes in the social relationships of community users. Observing Zhihu, Weibo, WeChat , and various types of small communities, they are all working hard to promote the relationship between PGC and UGC, increase the number of users, and even achieve ultimate monetization (using PGC content to monetize as shopping guides, etc.).

Content operation is no longer a porter, but a coordination of the relationship between UGC and PGC. Content operation is no longer just a bunch of numbers that can be summarized, it is also important to promote the ups and downs of content.

The trajectory of the association between UGC and PGC

The content will continue to evolve. The former PGC will gradually transform into UGC due to the increase in users of the same type and level and the entry of advanced users. Using products, operations and other means to promote the continuous iteration of UGC and PGC, and gradually turn users in the community into valuable user groups, which is one of the most important meanings of connecting UGC and PGC.

In a gradually maturing community and an evolving user base, there are generally several paths for the connection between UGC and PGC:

I paid attention to a mothers' community. At the beginning, the blogger used IP to attract a group of UGC with original needs (the blogger was the author of parent-child books and asked questions and interacted around the books). The number of fans began to increase continuously, and the interactions became more frequent. With the solicitation of activities/topics, more in-depth and comprehensive UGC content began to appear, including: parent-child issues, cases, etc. Then, a group of people began to contribute UGC at a high frequency, and occasionally some PGC content appeared (which needed to be optimized twice), and bloggers began to recommend these PGCs. Each recommendation could trigger the emergence of more UGC content.

Method of associating UGC with PGC

Based on the interaction guided by rules, PGC and UGC will begin a circular connection process. One of the most important things is to make good use of "social leverage" , including using social operation skills , mobilizing a small number of users to influence a large number of users, using certain types of similar content to activate more fresh content, and so on.

1. Generate PGC in UGC

There are some communities that initially gather based on specific interests/needs, where users will express their needs for content, and this is when the most basic UGC is generated.

(1) Activate high-frequency user interactions

The primary UGC generated by users based on their needs is very fragile. Once the response is not in place, the interest in generating secondary UGC will fade. At this time, some means are needed to activate high-frequency interactions among users, including: screening and integration of similar content, rewarding answers, user diversion circles, etc.

(2) Injection of training mechanism

UGC that only expresses social needs in a one-way manner cannot generate value. Only when PGC that solves needs is generated, a value relationship appears. At this time, it is necessary to operate and increase the PGC cultivation mechanism, which can be: list guidance, points stimulation, medal gifts, and talent development plans, etc. Through activities, rules, customized functions, etc., we guide the production of PGC that can solve the needs of UGC, and at the same time allow PGC producers to continue to actively contribute content because of rewards (sense of authority, privileges, incentives).

(3) Issuing control rules

The emergence of UGC is usually disorderly, and even "deviant" content may appear. Of course, this kind of content is allowed to appear. For operations, what is needed is to control the proportion of these disorderly and deviant UGC. This requires clear and precise rules to be presented and enforced, such as: kicking out of the group, blacklisting, and silencing.

2. UGC upgrade and PGC downgrade

The community is active and generates value; this is a process of dynamic optimization and balance. Primary UGC needs to be continuously upgraded, and PGC also needs to be appropriately downgraded at a certain stage (upgrade and downgrade are based on content quality) so that there will be a possibility of connection.

(1) Recommended rules

When operating a community, the operator is sometimes a rule maker. Through the design of rules, resources can be guided towards the recommended parts. The upgrading of UGC and the downgrading of PGC can be achieved through recommendation activities, opinion leader recommendations, recommendation reward rules and other methods.

(2) Flexible and appropriate adjustments

When the amount of relevant content is sufficient, this is a more appropriate time to boost and coordinate the overall content quality. However, it is necessary to master the degree, including the quality bottom line of the content and the number of adjustments, which are very important. This can be done by hiding some content, recommending speakers or banning them at certain stages, by launching a large amount of content of the same level to dilute the attention, or by comparing with higher-quality PGC to narrow the relationship between high-level UGC and ordinary PGC.

(3) Use PGC to activate UGC

PGC has a certain cohesion, but if it lacks guidance, PGC will be replaced by PGC from a large number of other platforms or channels.

1) Centralization to keep users

After PGC is released, once it attracts a group of people, but this group of people is not settled down for further interactive guidance, then this kind of PGC will ultimately be just a flash in the pan. At this time, if there is a tool that allows users to interact deeply around PGC, combined with social interaction incentives, this will generate a lot of UGC content.

For example, in the process of micro-business operation, there will be online training methods by instructors. The method of using WeChat groups is relatively common and has better effects than the radio method. On the one hand, it is because WeChat groups can better use social incentives. On the other hand, users are more likely to activate and generate some UGC content in a closed environment.

2) Drainage

PGC already has the characteristics of high conversion. What is most needed at this time is to deliver it to target users as much as possible. Traffic generation is very important. The number of readers of Fen Xiaoyuan’s official account is so low (it’s too sad to talk about it anymore). Once I write a few more articles, I will promote it vigorously to attract traffic.

3) Secondary processing of PGC

Many PGCs will attract some attention in a short period of time, but will soon fade away. This is really a "waste" for such scarce PGC (how much time and energy does Xiaoyuan spend writing a professional article...). Therefore, it is necessary to properly process and disseminate PGC. PGC can be optimized through secondary processing, or multiple PGCs can be integrated.

I have operated a health care platform before, and I would do secondary processing and secondary dissemination of practical health care knowledge. For example, there is some knowledge about spring health care that can be recommended from a different angle (even combined with hot topics) in the coming spring of each year, which can also attract new users.