3 ways to run a social network!

In 1960, Theodore Levitt published his famous article “The Marketing Shortcomings” in Harvard Business Review.

In his article, he pointed out that the reason for the decline of companies is that they value "products" rather than "customers". Products are just an existing means to satisfy customers' enduring needs. Once a better product appears, it will replace the existing product.

As a result, industries producing “existing products” declined. This means that compared to products, companies should pay more attention to "customers". So how should they pay attention to customers?

——Currently, the community is the most efficient configuration that values ​​users, no doubt about it.

After the release of "Three Axes for Social Networking", readers kept leaving messages saying that they had heard so many truths, but still couldn't run a good community. It seems that what everyone says makes sense, but few people can form a system model, "peaks appear from the side, ridges appear from the front, and they look different from different distances and heights."

The difference between experts and ordinary people is whether they can look at the industry from outside the industry. "One cannot see the true face of Mount Lu because one was born in this mountain." The biggest difference between experts and ordinary people is whether they can see the essence of things, discover the laws of evolution, and form model structures.

For many group owners, the most headache-inducing problem is how to achieve sustainable operation of the community. I think the solution is that the community must form a closed loop and a self-circulating system.

How to form a self-circulating system? The sustainable operation of a community is inseparable from community content and community activities.

1. Community content: From a mob to unity

Community content is achieved by producing and publishing valuable content relevant to the target audience to attract the target audience, change or strengthen the target audience's cognition and behavior, and achieve commercial conversion goals.

1. What kind of content should companies produce?

In general, we can think about it from the following four aspects:

1) Tell the story of how the product was created

For example: "The Art of Craftsmanship" shot by Li Zongsheng shot by New Balance, and "The Artistic Journey of a Steel Plate" released by Xiaomi 4. An ordinary steel plate was turned into an art blockbuster by Xiaomi.

2) Describe the founder’s original intention and feelings

For example: Apple’s promotional video “Think Different” and the phenomenal Lao Xiangji press conference during the epidemic.

3) Tell the story between the brand and the user

Which users have experienced changes in their lives and careers as a result of using the product?

For example: Zippo lighter. An American soldier saved his life by blocking a bullet with a Zippo during the Vietnam War, which made Zippo lighters famous.

4) What is the user’s experience when using the product?

For example: No one paid attention to Haier's washing machine when it was used to wash clothes, but after farmers used it to wash potatoes, it became well-known. So you can never guess what users will do with the product, which provides a fertile ground for users and companies to co-create wonderful content.

2. What kind of content is good content?

It's interesting and informative, with attitude and warmth. The so-called "consumption upgrade" is not just an upgrade of product functions, but an upgrade of users' lifestyles and attitudes towards life. People need to find their own sense of existence and circle.

When people are no longer satisfied with the functional demands of products and services at the material level, and pay more attention to the spiritual culture such as the value propositions and personality labels behind the products, the products become props and carriers for users to express and shape themselves.

When customers believe that the experience value and image value promoted by the product are consistent with their own outlook on life and values, they are more likely to have a spiritual resonance and then desire to communicate and interact with those who have the same cognition, and thus communities are born.

As UNIQLO Chief Marketing Officer Wu Pinhui said: "UNIQLO is building a lifestyle that goes beyond clothing to create its own social marketing."

Mr. Hidetoshi Miura, the author of "The Fourth Generation of Consumption", believes that "objects are self-projections", that is, anything you buy is actually a projection of your self-awareness, psychological needs, and life values ​​onto the objects.

The fourth consumer era is a "consensus economy era" in which buyers and sellers continue to reach consensus on lifestyles and value perceptions, thereby maximizing efficiency and personalizing experiences, rather than businesses unilaterally guessing and guiding consumer demand. Social platforms play a key hub role in this process.

Boston Consulting Group predicts that by 2020, China's consumer market will reach $6.5 trillion, with more than half of the total consumption generated by the younger generation (people under 30 years old), that is, those born in the social media era.

For this mainstream consumer group, the more expensive an item is, the better it is, nor is it better just because it has a high cost-performance ratio. They care more about the value label behind the product. They buy products to reward themselves, and self-pleasure consumption begins to emerge and gradually becomes mainstream.

Therefore, companies need to focus on users’ lifestyles from the perspective of life aesthetics and output the life attitude that their products advocate.

For example, Jiang Xiaobai's expression bottle, Sangcha's sad copywriting, Li Ziqi's pastoral life short videos, and even many Internet celebrities like Grandma Wang who only wears high heels all started with character creation, and gained fans by expressing their distinctive attitude towards life to the outside world.

3. Are there any templates I can refer to when producing content?

When it comes to creating content and attracting attention, variety shows are second to none. When you are still worried about the content, you might as well refer to the most popular variety shows.

4. How to promote a new product?

Example:

1) The first stage

Similar to "Tucao Conference", find existing similar products to complain about. In this regard, whether it was Steve Jobs' press conference or Luo Yonghao's Hammer phone launch conference, it can be said that they criticized competitors' products harshly.

2) Second stage

Similar to the PK between students in "The Voice of China", they let their own products PK with products of competitors. For example, in order to highlight its high performance, Xiaomi’s favorite game is "run a score if you don’t agree".

3) Phase 3

Similar to "China's Got Talent", KOLs and KOCs are allowed to showcase the ultimate product experience in a PK format, such as Haier washing machine's coin stacking event to challenge the Guinness World Record and the 699 liquor line pulling event with thousands of people.

The ultimate goal of community content is to create IP. On the surface, IP is a carrier of traffic, but in essence it is a social currency that is spread by users. It influences more potential users through the dissemination and sharing of users.

The motivation for users to forward messages is to hope to be empowered by IP and declare to the outside world "I am me, a different firework." The value of the community to individuals is to empower them through IP to meet a better self and become a better self.

The shortcut for companies to produce content is to parasitize the product brand on a super symbol that is familiar to the audience. This is also the core essence of HUA & HUA's methodology.

For example: the “I love Beijing, 50 kilometers south of Tiananmen Square” designed for Gu’an Industrial Park and the “I love 莜” designed for Xibei Oat Noodles are both brands parasitizing on an existing, mature super cultural symbol. Both Tiananmen Square and "I love you" are super cultural symbols.

5. What has enabled Amazon to maintain its 20 years of growth?

Amazon's founder Bezos believes that high-quality and low-priced products will attract more and more customers, more and more customers will generate more and more traffic, more and more traffic will generate more and more sales, and more and more sales will provide better products and lower prices - this is what Bezos calls the flywheel effect.

6. How is the community growth flywheel formed?

More exciting content + better product experience brings more fan word-of-mouth, more fan word-of-mouth brings more users, more users bring more revenue, and more revenue can provide users with richer products, better community content, and more interesting community activities - this is also the underlying logic for the community to continue to operate.

As Wu Sheng, founder of Scene Lab, said: The foundation of the success of Xiaomi's business model is the strong credit relationship built on brand personality and community operations . Xiaomi has established its own distribution system with the help of the power of fans.

In other words, through content and activities, Mi Fans are transformed into unpaid salespeople for the company.

The leader once said: "The Red Army is an armed group that carries out political tasks. In addition to fighting, it must educate the masses, organize the masses, and arm the masses. Without the latter tasks, the Red Army would lose its meaning of existence."

In addition to selling products, marketing also involves promoting users, organizing users, and arming users. Without the following tasks, marketing would lose its meaning.

How to promote users? Organization users? Armed users? If you don’t occupy the position of thought, the enemy will. How can you occupy it?

The value of community content and community activities is to publicize the community's value proposition and vision goals, attract users who identify with and recognize the brand proposition, and create brilliance together with the company.

2. Social scene: From emotional scene to uncontrollable emotion

Eugene Schwartz, a famous marketing expert, said: Marketing cannot create the desire to buy goods. It can only arouse the hopes, dreams, fears or desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and then direct these "already existing desires" to specific products.

1. How to awaken users’ hopes, dreams, and fears?

Research in modern physiology and psychology has shown that when people come into contact with external information, 83% is through the eyes, 11% requires the help of hearing, and 6% relies on touch, taste and smell.

Scene marketing is the use of human senses of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell to carry out experiential situational sales that pleases people with "color", moves people with "sound", tempts people with "flavor" and touches people with "emotion". Its goal is to get consumers involved and stimulate their desire to buy.

For example, the popcorn stand in Disneyland will turn on the "artificial popcorn scent" when business is slow, and soon customers will automatically come to the store by smelling the aroma.

2. How to design scene experience?

There are six common scene types:

1) Product production scenario

In recent years, many liquor brands like to organize distillery experience tours to allow fans to personally experience the entire process and craftsmanship of liquor brewing and reshape fans' perception of grain liquor. Many catering companies have transparent kitchens so that customers can see the process of making pasta on site with their own eyes.

2) Product experience scenarios

When and under what circumstances do users use the product? How are you feeling at the moment?

For example: drink Red Bull when you are tired and sleepy; drink Red Bull if you are afraid of getting a sore throat; drink Six Walnuts if you use your brain frequently - these are all based on user demand scenarios to highlight the functional attributes of the product.

3) Terminal sales scenarios

For example: Walk into any IKEA store and you will find the ready-made “living room, bedroom, kitchen” model rooms filled with a full range of IKEA products.

The model rooms in IKEA stores provide consumers with suitable products and home furnishing experiences, satisfying their fantasies about home decoration design. Reading a book in a living room decorated by IKEA, having a drink at the bar in the open kitchen, and close interaction with the products awaken people's yearning for a better life. Customers hope that their own homes can be decorated in this way.

4) Offline activity scenarios

For example, maternal and infant stores like to hold various parent-child activities in the store. It is said that a single Kidswant store holds an average of 1,000 activities each year.

Xibei Oat Noodles also holds parent-child private cooking activities in its stores, allowing children to learn how to cook and make oat noodles from chefs; this includes various on-site experience activities for nail and cosmetic products in shopping malls and supermarkets, and a pop-up event held by the Palace Museum's cultural and creative industry in Sanlitun, Beijing.

There are also some sales activities in the name of sharing professional knowledge, such as wine tasting, tea art performances, etc. In the past, many developers’ marketing activities when launching new projects were to invite celebrities to give artistic performances, such as XXX’s concert.

How does Sunac China design marketing scenarios for houses for the new middle class who are demanding and have good taste?

Sunac China Holdings designed a "walking library" activity scene, which attracted a group of potential customers who love home and life through reading activities, and the on-site response was very good.

5) Traffic node scenario

From the perspective of time nodes, such as holidays, the Spring Festival, Valentine's Day, etc., are major promotion nodes that merchants cannot miss. Even on the special day of the college entrance examination, Mengniu can get a wave of traffic, "Everyone knows how to answer the test, and all the answers you guessed are correct."

From the perspective of space, some companies build museums of product history, aesthetics halls, wine halls, etc. in order to highlight the long-standing and profound cultural heritage of their products.

6) User social scenarios

I won’t accept any gifts this year, the only gift I’ll accept is Melatonin. The scene of Melatonin is gift giving.

Xiaomi has designed a series of social scenarios for Mi fans, such as city meetings, popcorn, Mi Fan Festival, and Xiaomi Family Banquet. Gather Mi fans from the same city and let them experience the product first and exchange their experiences.

Common scenarios and methods used in social e-commerce include group buying, bargaining, support, and Rising Coffee’s buy a cup get a cup free promotion, which are all social scenarios.

Gobi hiking has become popular among entrepreneurs in recent years. The crowdfunding process is also a very good social scene. Through crowdfunding, the organizer can leverage the circle of friends of hundreds of people behind the contestants, so that a Gobi hike with 1,000 people can affect millions of people through crowdfunding.

In the United States, Harley motorcycles often appear in groups. When they ride Harleys in groups and speed through the streets, it is a classic community scene that ignites the desire for freedom and rebellion in countless boys.

Think about it: What are the application scenarios of your product? What social scenarios do you design for your users?

3. Community Business Model: One Body and Two Wings

Charlie Munger said at the University of Southern California Business School in 1994: "What is basic universal wisdom? If you just remember some isolated facts and try to repeat them word for word, you will never fully understand them. If these facts are not based on some theoretical framework to form a complete concept, you cannot use them."

After seven years of studying communities, I finally understood the weight of this statement. So can we use a model to explain the business logic of the entire community?

After deeply analyzing a large number of community practice cases, I proposed a "one body and two wings" model: the community is the carrier, IP and scenarios are the two wings, and the sharing economy is the landing gear. A community is like an aircraft cabin, used to carry people and create strong relationships between them.

IP and scenes are like wings. The main function of wings is lift to support the aircraft flying in the air. The sharing economy is equivalent to the landing gear of an airplane. The landing gear is the support system necessary for the airplane to take off, land, move on the ground and park. The sharing economy is the support system for community commerce.

Author: Lu Yan

Source: Lu Yan