4000-word KOC expert operation strategy

This article wants to talk about KOL/ KOC communication in operations. I have had several practical project experiences before, including communicating and following up with appearance-based KOLs, resource-based KOLs, creative KOLs, etc., so I have accumulated some experience. Next, I will explain the relevant experience in combination with some specific scenarios.

This article briefly explains from the following aspects:

1. What is KOL/KOC?
2. Why should operators communicate closely with influencers?
3. Analysis of communication scenarios of experts;
4. Follow up on the experts’ notes.

1. What is KOL/KOC

Here is a glossary of terms:

• KOL: Key Opinion Leader, that is, opinion leader.
• KOC: Key Opinion Consumer.

KOL is relatively authoritative, while KOC is relatively authentic. Both can be said to be the treasures of operators. It is best to have both. If you can only choose one due to funding issues, then analyze it in combination with the specific scenario. The following is an easy-to-understand example.

Suppose you want to promote a Cordyceps product that is suitable for students to supplement their nutrition, then your target group is basically families with school-age children . The closer it is to the middle school entrance examination/college entrance examination, the easier it will be to achieve the promotion goal.

At this time, the head teacher actually plays the role of a KOL. Why? Because he is deeply loved by students and parents because of his excellent teaching ability. I believe most people have experienced such a scene:

The head teacher said: The test papers are all similar. I suggest you buy test paper A. The next day, test papers A were sold out outside the bookstore.

At the parents' meeting, the class teacher said that at this stage children should be encouraged rather than denied. You will find that even if you fail the exam, you can still eat braised pork at home.

The reason for the above scenario is that the role of the class teacher has a certain authority. So no matter what he recommends or suggests, it will more or less affect the parents' judgment.

So in the above example, who is the KOC? The mother of the student who got the first place in the class is the KOC. Cordyceps is used to supplement nutrition. Supplementing nutrition is assumed to give you more energy to study. The result of having more energy to study is improved grades. So getting first place in the exam is actually a good proof of improved grades (or maintaining first place). If the student who gets the first place in the class often eats this kind of Cordyceps, I believe most parents will also go and buy it.

What are the reasons for the above scenario? One is the time and the resonance of the scene (every family has children who need to take exams, so it is assumed that they have the same purpose). The second is authenticity , because it was an acquaintance who bought the product and recommended it. Subconsciously, the trust in the acquaintance was transferred to the product, which is similar to the effect of endorsement.

The above is A Deng’s understanding of KOL/KOC. In fact, the distinction between the two is not that clear. KOC is a term that has become popular in recent times. They may not have many fans, but they have many target users around them and have strong stickiness. For the sake of convenience in the following explanation, KOL/KOC will be uniformly referred to as experts.

2. Why should operators communicate closely with influencers?

Many people may not be particularly familiar with operations work. In fact, operating it involves a wide range of work, such as community operation, event operation, user operation, data operation, etc. It is also divided into industries, such as operations in the education industry, operations in the gaming industry, operations in the social industry, etc. Operators will use a series of go-to-market actions to make more people aware of the charm of their products.

There is a key in the above sentence: more people , and experts can help us better influence and even cover more people. Correspondingly, we can also provide influencers with traffic or cash support from our own platforms. This is an act of mutual help and empowerment. A good operation should be able to effectively discover key influencers and interact with them to achieve the desired results for both parties.

3. Analysis of the communication scenarios of experts

Different industries have different operating methods, and naturally there are different types of experts. The following is a brief description of several scenarios:

Scene 1

Our needs: We want to enter a certain industry resource group, become a key figure in the resource group and distribute product information, thereby directing traffic to our own products.

The above statement is a bit too official. Let me give you an example that everyone can understand.

Xiaobai's company specializes in job hunting and has its own official account. Xiaobai is now responsible for the promotion of the official account. He realized that the target audience of the official account is job seekers, so he made a preliminary plan: find many job hunting groups and send tweets from our official account to them. Then he discussed it with his colleagues and felt that if he blindly posted tweets, he would be kicked out of the group. He should find a way to reach an agreement with group members, so that everyone would read his tweets and his fans would naturally increase.

The plan is made, so what Xiaobai needs to do now is:

• First, find some job search groups;
• Second, find a way to become a key person who can chat with group members;
• Third, by distributing tweets, personal accounts can gradually establish connections with a large number of users.

The first and third steps are not difficult. Let’s talk about the second step: how to make others get along with you and trust you in a strange group in a short period of time. It's very simple. Let's think about it from the user's perspective. When we are completely strangers, who do we trust the most in the group: the group owner and the administrator.

It is unlikely for the group owner to do this (unless Xiaobai's company pays to buy the group), but the administrator can still give it a try. So Xiaobai took the following measures:

Send out words in the group to guide the group owner to actively add yourself - communicate with the group owner - offer to help the group owner operate the group chat for free, send out industry morning reports every morning and answer group members' questions in a timely manner (the requirement is to be able to send your own tweets in the group) - continue to follow up on operations until being added as an administrator.

So why should the group owner agree? The reason is very simple. If it is a group organized by an individual, the basic intention of the group is for everyone to communicate and discuss with each other. There is no one who specializes in operating the group chat and providing effective content for the group chat. If someone is willing to send high-quality content such as industry morning reports to the group every day to attract group members to discuss and does not need to pay any related fees, then for the group owner, why not do it?

In summary, Xiaobai has completed his own operational tasks. To summarize the above case, we hope that the experts will give us a certain power in their own resources (above refers to the power to distribute tweets in the group), which is basically harmless to their own resources, so the willingness to agree will be relatively high. The targeted measure at this time is actually to think about what they need from their perspective, to meet their needs, and thereby put forward the points that you hope to be met.

Scene 2

Our needs: The company has just established a content platform and hopes that more people will publish articles on it.

In this scenario, there are actually many operational methods that can be used. For example, you can go to the campus and ask the campus ambassadors to help you organize activities. For example, you can specially train a group of new writers and then let them create. But the quickest way is actually to let those already famous writers publish on your platform. Since they have their own fans, let me tell you my thoughts.

Where are the people we are looking for: There are many resources in various communities, competitive platforms, public accounts specializing in submissions, and in the hands of people related to publishing houses.

What we want them to do is: create on our platform. There is no requirement for first release and exclusivity in the early stages. This means that authors can resubmit their previous works, and the threshold has been lowered.

What we can provide: Most companies will have some cash budget and traffic support.

Okay, now that the framework is roughly set, the next thing is to deal with operational issues in terms of execution and details, such as the script, which needs to be prepared in multiple segments; the communication time, which needs to cater to their free time; cash incentives, which need to be fair, just and open; and traffic support, it is best to let them feel the benefits of the platform in the early stages to ensure retention.

Here's an idealized example:

Xiaobai found Xiaohei on a competitor's platform. He sincerely invited Xiaohei to his platform. Xiaohei took a look and thought the platform was too small, so he declined. Xiaobai persevered and gave Xiaohei the same cash incentives as other writers on the platform this month. Xiaohei was a little tempted. But there was no reply to the message. Xiaobai continued to persevere. He carefully watched Xiaohei's work style on the competing platform, analyzed the matching degree with his own platform, and gave Xiaohei multiple benefits.

Xiao Hei was moved by Xiao Bai's sincerity, so he posted an article of his own that had not been popular before on the platform. Xiao Bai immediately contacted colleagues across departments to feature this article. Xiao Hei found that the effect was quite good and the profit was decent. For him, it was just a matter of distribution, so he promised Xiao Bai that he would continue to distribute it later.

In summary, Xiaobai has completed his own operational tasks. To summarize the above case, we hope that talents will create on their own platforms, and what we need to consider is the cost of talent creation. Therefore, from the perspective of experts, we should try to minimize the creation costs as much as possible, such as providing creation templates, timely customer service replies, one-click synchronization, creation courses, medals of honor, etc., to the greatest extent possible demonstrate our sincerity and the benefits given, optimize each step, and the conversion rate will be improved.

Scene 3

Social e-commerce has been very popular recently, and there are many types of e-commerce, including those based on software such as Douyin and Kuaishou, those that sell goods through live streaming, and various private domain traffic distribution and coupon rebates. So this time, I want to talk about distribution.

Distribution can be said to be one of the operational activities that requires the most influencers, but one thing that is different is that in certain scenarios, most influencers are not "passively" converted, but actively become such based on the powerful factor of the "product". However, in the early stages, a small number of experts are still needed to detonate the event and carry out a wave of fission-type publicity. The following is still an example given by Xiaobai.

Xiaobai's company is in the knowledge payment business. Their company is about to publish a new book about the workplace, and now they want to build momentum for the book. The company has a relatively complete set of internal distribution tools, so what we need to do now is to find influencers to communicate with and carry out a collective wave of publicity at a certain point in time.

So Xiaobai wrote down the following plan in his notebook.

New book positioning: content related to career growth

Applicable people: Newcomers in the workplace or people who are confused about their own positioning and development

Expected goal: Sales volume reaches XXXX

Then Xiaobai broke down this goal. While ensuring his own "product", what he needed to do was to find a group of workplace experts and guide them in distribution.

So where can we find workplace experts? Or to put it another way, on which platforms are workplace experts generally active?

Thinking in this way, the idea becomes much clearer. There are a large number of professional elites in Zhihu, Zaixing, Qianliao and other places. By establishing connections with them and inviting them to endorse the product, when the work is distributed, it is actually also increasing their popularity accordingly.

After completing the communication with the first batch of influencers, Xiaobai believes that the next key point is how to guide ordinary users to participate in distribution, because Xiaobai cannot reach the second batch of influencers, and it is the coverage and influence generated indirectly after the first batch of influencers spread out. So how to make everyone willing to participate in this distribution activity after seeing the poster/applet, Xiaobai summarized the following points:

1. The color of the poster needs to stand out and echo the brand;
2. Endorsers (i.e. the first batch of influencers) need to have relevant fame and preferably have their own traffic;
3. Write down the target group and outline content to make it more professional;
4. Emphasize the rules and benefits of distribution, so that users can understand that they can participate in distribution without purchasing;
5. Other details (such as free extra courses/real-time data updates/leaderboard creation);
6. Users who are willing to participate in distribution will be placed in the group and their related questions will be answered in a timely manner.

In summary, Xiaobai has completed his own operational tasks. To summarize the above case, this was a distribution activity initiated by the initial group of influencers to trigger other influencers. For the initial batch of influencers, we hope that they can endorse the product itself and help spread it. The focus of communication will be on mutual exposure. When guiding other users to participate in distribution, the focus of communication can be on distribution revenue and the content itself. This also involves some knowledge of refined operations. After many attempts, you can naturally make a complete operational SOP.

4. Things to note when following up with influencers

I have summarized the following points and hope they will be helpful to you.

(1) Think carefully about whether to put all your eggs in one basket

Resource-based experts have a lot of resources. If you have a weak connection with the other party (refer to scenario 1 above), your relationship is not actually close, and both parties are likely to terminate the cooperation due to their own development problems.

At this time, if you want to gather all the experts in one group for the convenience of operation and management, the risk cost behind it is actually very high. Once the communication with a certain expert is unclear, the whole group of people may be affected, resulting in a crisis of trust, which is what people often call an "operational accident."

Therefore, it is recommended that if you want to create a group or unify management, it is best to clarify the group rules in advance, and strive to turn weak relationships into strong relationships, so that they may bring you other resources.

(2) Emphasize professionalism in communication

Experts are different from ordinary users. Whether they are KOLs or KOCs, they are essentially people with good social relationships. The people on your company's platform want to cooperate, and there must be people from other companies who want to cooperate as well. At this time, good communication skills and perseverance may be helpful, but what can really convince people is a professional attitude. Only by thinking about all the other person's concerns from his perspective, then solving them one by one and stating your own position can you gain long-term trust in others.

(3) Success in attracting new customers is great, but retention is also important

Refer to the second scenario above. After much difficulty, you sign a contract with an expert to publish articles on your own platform, but he stops updating after a while. At this time, it will be more difficult to persuade the author to come back. We should pay close attention to the author's writing data in the early stage of attracting new users, inform them of the platform's recommendation rules and related benefits in a timely manner, and invite them to become internal test users of new businesses to increase the influencers' favorability towards the platform.

The above is roughly A Deng’s summary of communication among experts. I hope it will be helpful to everyone.

Author: A Deng Notes

Source: A Deng's Notes