Analysis of user fission growth in Internet communities

With the development of my country's Internet environment, social networks have also ushered in explosive growth. The spread of influence between users has become an important way of network communication today, and user fission in the mobile Internet has become the main means of user accumulation for Internet products. This has caused a sharp drop in the marginal cost of user growth and also created the high growth potential of user growth for Internet products.

In recent years, all platforms have been actively developing user communities, the functions of various social platforms have become increasingly complete, user stickiness has continued to increase, social networks are developing into an ecological platform that "connects everything", and the influence of media communication has also increased significantly, becoming an important communication force with fast information dissemination and strong interactive functions. At the same time, social-based marketing and advertising have become the most active areas. By combining with functions such as social circles, content dissemination has become more precise, becoming an effective traffic entrance for the platform to acquire new users.

1. Fission growth principle

The propagation path of fission-like growth is shown in the figure, where A: propagation source (official accounts, Toutiao accounts, Weibo, etc.); B: stimulation layer (fans, family, friends, etc.); C: fission layer (friends’ social circle). The entire communication chain can be very long, but the first three layers are the ones that play a real role in communication, gradually building up a larger user base. When the user base reaches a certain number, the fourth layer of user fission activates the community in a way that accurately meets user needs and begins to fission. That is, after each user's needs are met, there will be large and small communication fissions based on the influence of needs, resulting in community fission that hits the pain points of the crowd.

2. Promote the integration and application of big data and small data

In the process of community fission, the roles of users will continue to change. "Seed users" will become ordinary users, and "protesters" will become key opinion leaders (KOL). These changes are all aimed at allowing the community to reach the critical point of fission. The critical point of fission is mainly two aspects:

1) Critical point of population. The effect achieved by community fission is related to two aspects: one is the number of people affected, and the other is the quality of the content. The quality of the content is often evaluated by the number of people affected. Therefore, effective fission can only be triggered when the number of people affected reaches a critical point.

2) Value critical point. The critical point of value includes the degree of identification with the community, the pursuit of interests, etc. The emergence of the critical point means that the corresponding users have already reserved the power of fission. For example: During a live quiz, "seed users" develop expectations for their own bonuses based on the prizes won by participating users. At this time, any dissemination and sharing will trigger fission.

When fission reaches the critical point, a suitable fission driving force is needed. The most direct way is the incentive of "social currency". Social currency will encourage users to be more willing to engage in multi-dimensional interactions, and interaction is the main way to activate fission. If users in the community have assessed the value of social currency and begin to want to obtain more social currency, fission behavior will be more easily activated. For example, many users will engage in fission behaviors such as inviting and sharing in order to earn points, collect likes, and get discounts. Therefore, we build the value of social currency in the community and use social currency to activate users' willingness and behavior to split.

The new 4C theory proposes: "In a suitable scenario (Context), for a specific community (Community), through the use of disseminable content (Content) or topics, and through the fission of connections (Connections) between people in the social network, rapid diffusion and dissemination can be achieved, thereby obtaining effective dissemination and value." User fission in the community is mainly divided into the following three steps:

1) Attract new customers. First of all, existing users will recommend new users through word-of-mouth sharing. The recommended content we see every day has its value in the minds of old users, which arouses the curiosity and experience of new users in the next step. At the same time, not every old user will take the initiative to attract new users, which requires interest motivation. Common methods include: using special invitation codes to attract new users to obtain rewards, new benefits, etc.; voting activities, support activities, etc. to induce new users to continue to spread the word to new communities.

2) Retention. If you want to attract further users to spread the product after new users have "met" it, there needs to be a further process of "getting to know each other", which requires improving user retention. Newbie guidance, promotion push, event check-ins, interactive rewards, etc. are all effective methods.

3) Fission cycle. After new users develop into mature users, they can actively inspire new users and enter a new round of fission, which is the effective community fission. This enters the fourth level of fission-type propagation, and even goes deeper into more layers to gain more incremental users.

2. Advantages of community fission

Community fission can mainly make participation wider, convergence more "timely", precision higher and marginal cost lower.

1) Wider participation. The famous 1:25 fission law shows us: if you know one person, then through him, you may know 25 people. In the world of the Internet, this communication effect is even more obvious. There are no restrictions and everyone can share and participate. The mobile Internet itself is a huge self-organization, and the possibilities it generates are beyond our imagination. At the same time, a clustering effect is easily generated in the community. The community’s stable group structure and relatively consistent group consciousness become a good basis for user fission, allowing more users to participate in it in a more standardized and continuous manner.

2) The results are “timely”. Internet thinking itself satisfies people's pursuit of instant and massive information. In the mobile Internet environment, our common behaviors and connections between people spread as soon as they occur. The fission propagation in the community accurately grasps the characteristic of "fast", which shortens the fermentation period, makes the feedback behavior more timely, and seizes the initiative.

3) Higher degree of precision. There are still solid and visible social relationship chains in Internet communities, which makes the same community not just a simple collection, but a gathering based on a point, some common needs, or the same hobbies. This makes it easier for users to find similarities and commonalities during fission propagation, allowing them to more accurately find target user groups and facilitate the effective dissemination of content.

4) Low marginal cost. The development of mobile Internet has made community formation and communication very convenient, and the time and economic costs are becoming lower and lower. Now, the investment costs of many activities that trigger user fission are far lower than the advertising investment costs themselves. As the amount of user fission increases, the marginal costs of fixed investments such as human resources and hardware facilities are dropping sharply.

3. Summary

The convenience brought by the mobile Internet era has led to an explosive growth in communities. The user fission growth based on Internet communities has become an effective way for people to stimulate user growth because of its low threshold, great results, and “fast, accurate and stable” characteristics. For example, the "Ice Bucket Challenge", "A4" waist, WeChat charity, live answering questions, etc. have become popular social topics due to their fission-like spread in the community, creating an "Internet celebrity effect." However, looking at the current status of the entire Internet community fission, most of them are still in their infancy and there are some practical problems that need to be solved based on actual conditions.

Author: Talking about data

Source: Talking Data