4 aspects of UGC community operations that are easily overlooked!

User operation is a people-centered operation method that aims to get close to users, unite users, and guide users. Different types of UGC communities have different user characteristics. During the user operation process, the author has witnessed the rise and fall of multiple UGC communities. He has also witnessed how the products he operates have persisted step by step to this day. He has witnessed success, but also witnessed too many pitfalls. Some pits can only be understood more deeply after digging and filling them by himself.

Below I will summarize my actual work experience to talk about the four aspects of UGC community operation that are easily overlooked

1. Obsession with sexual topics

Sexual topics are like opium, which is the most difficult to control in the early stages of a UGC community. Food, clothing, sex and men and women are all basic human needs, and they are rigid needs. The rigid needs for food and clothing in the UGC community are obviously not met, and they are not urgently needed by users. In most cases, topics about sex and men can partially satisfy sexual needs (mainly visually) and sometimes even completely satisfy them (you know). Users also have such expectations, so sex-related topics can stimulate heated discussions among users. It can even be said that the more explicit the topic, the more heated it is, but it is also the easiest way to go astray.

1. Unknowingly lowering the taste of the entire community

Users will become more and more looking forward to explicit topics, and they will consciously or unconsciously create content in that regard in order to gain attention. User operators will also easily follow the users' lead and create content that users need. In the end, high-quality UGC content will almost disappear, and high-quality users will also disappear. The entire community will slowly decline.

2. Excessive consumption of female users leads to loss of female users

Men obviously pay more attention to sex topics than women. Even if women do pay attention, they are relatively secretive and express it in a concealed manner. For example, when I was following up on the ground promotion , as long as I linked our product with Momo, most female users would run away. At the same time, topics related to sex are more likely to show disrespect or even insults to female users. Such topics are often the most likely to spark a heated discussion and activate the atmosphere of the entire community. This seems to be the desired result, but it will cause extremely serious consequences, that is, a large number of female users will be lost. Can a community without women and full of male losers be attractive to users? (The gay community is not included) How to deal with it:

• Adhere to the first principle - moderation. Any sexual topics that are too extreme or too explicit must be put out in a timely manner;
• Give more care to female users. For example, directly using official accounts to express concern to female users, especially high-quality female users, to show respect and attention to female users, especially when female users are subjected to personal attacks;
• There are differences in content display between men and women. Some topics that may easily offend female users are selectively hidden from them, leaving the male losers to vent their feelings on their own.

2. Hesitation in dealing with WeChat merchants and advertising

This is actually a very difficult problem for UGC communities that are just starting out and have insufficient user activity. The difficulty lies in:

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 the user is identified as a WeChat merchant, how should this user be handled?

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. The DDVP in an out-and-out UGC community will reduce the attractiveness of the community. On the treatment method:

1. First, determine whether this promotional activity is of a commercial or public welfare nature. Public welfare nature directly green light;
2. Users who only post micro-business information and commercial advertisements will have their posts deleted and their accounts banned;
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

3. High Tolerance for “0”

The author has experienced many start-up UGC communities, and found that most of the posts had 0 replies, 0 likes, 0 participation in activity pages, and 0 followers on personal homepages. Some products that I think are excellent make me shake my head in this regard. Now Baidu Tieba and Baidu Knows are criticized for one thing in terms of user operation: from time to time there will be some replies (replies) that have almost nothing to do with the topic. Why do users criticize this phenomenon? This shows that users care.

It is easy to deal with this kind of problem at the beginning, but when it develops to a small size, many worrying problems will arise:

1. Time-consuming and laborious. At the beginning, when the number of posts is small, it is easy to manually like, comment, and follow them one by one. However, when the user scale reaches a medium-sized stage, it becomes a real headache and will take a lot of manpower and time.
2. It interferes with the real data. Large-scale likes and comments will make the relevant data look much better than before, but it will interfere with the real data and make it difficult to accurately judge the real activity level of the community.

From the user's perspective, the consequences of tolerating a large number of "0" are easy to understand:

1. Discourage user enthusiasm. No user comes to the community to post just for themselves. No user will feel good if they see 0 replies, 0 likes, and 0 followers. In the long run, users will inevitably lack the motivation to post.
2. Causes users to worry. This aspect is mainly reflected in related activities. People are lazy, but they follow the crowd. Users rarely click to enter the event page to study the event carefully. Users always just want the simplest way to judge whether the event is worth participating in. It is often so simple and crude - look at the number of participants. There is always only one person who is willing to be the first to try it. If they see at a glance that the number of people who have registered for the event is "0", most users will either continue to wait and see or give up directly. No matter how well you describe your event, you should at least offer a 50% discount. After all, who would believe that no one would participate in such a good event?

The author's summary of the processing method is:

1. Robots like comments, sign-up replies, etc. For example, Momo used this method when it was first launched;
2. The data separation mechanism separates user behavior data from data generated by user operators and machines;
3. Establish an automated recommendation mechanism to take care of active users and increase the number of followers of active users;
4. If you don’t have enough technical skills, just use the simple and crude method:

Hide the relevant numbers or directly support the background configuration of relevant data. In any case, this is better than showing "0".

4. Content push is all the same

In order to ensure the frequency of clicks, background push messages are almost standard in major UGC communities, but after experiencing it for so long, I feel annoyed. I even figured out the routines of our competitors, which are nothing more than divorce, abortion, and mistresses. It feels monotonous and I will get tired of it after seeing it too much. However, the content that I am really interested in is hidden very deeply. To avoid this situation, a personalized push mechanism is essential, but this is undoubtedly the most difficult for the UGC community:

1. The threshold for active users is high, and personalized push notifications are basically meaningless if the daily active users are less than five figures;
2. It is difficult to obtain the integrity of user data. After all, at a time when everyone attaches importance to personal privacy, users are still quite vigilant about their personal privacy.

The consequences are as I mentioned before:

If the content is all the same, users will get bored in the long run. They won’t get what they really want, and it’s only a matter of time before they leave.

It is quite difficult for any UGC community to achieve accurate push with rich user data like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Toutiao. It is even more difficult for UGC communities that have just started. However, it does not mean that personalized push should be abandoned. The author's suggestions in actual operation are as follows:

1. Start with regional differences

As mentioned above, the basis of personalized recommendation is not necessarily sufficient user volume and comprehensive and rich big data, but it does not mean that differentiated push cannot be done from the beginning. One of the easiest data to obtain among relevant data is undoubtedly geographic location data. It is recommended to start with the geographic location differences between users. For example, when I directly operated the bulletin board, I delivered different content to different regions:

(Note: The left side shows the content of the Dongguan area, and the right side shows the content of the Shenzhen area)

Such differentiated push will undoubtedly greatly narrow the distance between the community and users.

2. Differentiated push notifications for men and women

After all, male and female users have different concerns, and gender is also a very easy data to obtain.

3. Encourage users to improve relevant data

This is mainly to lay the foundation for future development. There are various incentives, such as points, honor points, gold coins, lottery, etc.

4. Lean on the thigh

Try to cooperate with other large platforms to obtain richer user data. There are a lot of words written, so let’s summarize the author’s ideas below:

Finally, the author would like to emphasize that operational work is ultimately centered on users and that problems should be considered from the user's perspective. Different UGC communities are aimed at different user groups, which will inevitably lead to very different problems. For example, Douban's operational methods obviously cannot be applied to Maimai. After all, the former's user groups are mainly literary and artistic, while the latter's are mainly urban white-collar workers. Similarly, the above operational experience summary comes from the author’s personal experience summary of operating the blue-collar community - Big Mouth. The limitations of the user group and one’s own capabilities will inevitably cause this article to have its limitations. Therefore, the above is just personal opinion, and welcomes exchanges and corrections.