B station community operation strategy!

Today we are going to talk about the small broken station! Although I registered as a member several years ago just to post comments for my favorite idol (well, everyone has been young), I had always just used Bilibili as a player, and would occasionally think of it when looking for a video. But since I watched B station's New Year's Eve party last year, I have completely transformed from a casual fan to a loyal fan. In the past few months at home, I have checked B station on average every day. Sometimes I check the recommendations on the homepage, and sometimes I follow the updates of my favorite bloggers. I am gradually beginning to understand why everyone loves B station so much.

Among all the mainstream content communities in China, Bilibili ’s community atmosphere is undoubtedly the best and healthiest. Although the barrage function was quickly followed by various video platforms, a good community atmosphere cannot be copied savagely. So some things cannot be achieved by just throwing money at them, and creating a community atmosphere is a long-term task. If content is the first moat of community products, then a good community atmosphere is the second moat of community products.

Today, continuing with our last discussion on the three stages of community product development , let’s talk about community atmosphere. What does a good community atmosphere mean to a product? By referring to the excellent case of Bilibili, are there any universal experiences that can be drawn to replicate its success?

What is a good community atmosphere?

Think about it carefully, we think the community atmosphere of Bilibili is good, what is good about it?

Most of the time, when you open any video, it will be accompanied by a lot of barrages, which include praise for the up-loader who uploaded the video, comments on the video content, recognition and feedback on the details, memes based on the content, etc. In addition, after watching the video and coming to the comment area, you will also find a lot of interesting content, which are nothing more than recognition of the quality of the video carefully uploaded by the up-loader, looking forward to the next update, and talking about various interesting memes in this video.

So we can find that there is a positive interaction between users based on the content, not just the interaction between viewers and video creators, but also the interaction between users watching the same video, and weak social interaction between users due to their interest in the same person or the same content. Through these friendly interactions, we are conveying a message that this is an interesting community, good content will be recognized, no nitpickers will argue with you, and everyone can interact and communicate here on an equal footing.

In addition, users of Bilibili have shown great tolerance and understanding for the commercial actions of up-masters. Many times, people follow a blogger because they recognize that his or her content is valuable to them, but most of the time they just want to get something for free. Once the blogger starts trying to accept advertisements, they will angrily unfollow him or her, believing that it has damaged their user experience. But on Bilibili, once an up-host accepts an advertisement, the screen will be filled with comments like "Let him post more advertisements". The users here not only recognize the content, but are also willing to continuously provide positive feedback to encourage the up-host to produce high-quality content. Even the act of accepting advertisements can be understood and accepted.

This is the high-quality community atmosphere of Bilibili that I feel.

A good community atmosphere is the guarantee for healthy interaction among community members

What does a good community atmosphere mean to a product? Intuitively speaking, a good community atmosphere can promote healthy interaction in the content ecosystem and improve data such as user stickiness and average usage time.

A key word must be mentioned here: interaction. Interaction frequency is a very critical indicator for community products. If there is only content but no interaction, then what is the point of having a community product? Just use Word. You write yours and I read mine, and we don’t interfere with each other.

Such a model cannot bring out the greatest advantage of the Internet, namely network collaboration .

If all users are scattered points and only have a single line of contact with the product operator, they will not have any connection with the tens of millions of users who use the product. In other words, for content creators, they just write things, and they don’t know who will see them or what the reactions will be. After they finish writing, they just hand it over to the product operator to show it to the right people who are interested. What content consumers get is the content in front of them, and they just read it. They can’t express their thoughts or give feedback, so they don’t know whether the content is good or bad.

Doesn’t this model resemble the model used by traditional publishing houses to publish books?

On the one hand, such a point structure is very inefficient. The people who output the content do not know what the readers want to see, nor do they know whether the content they write can truly create value for others, or whether there are areas that need improvement. It is a complete black box.

On the other hand, this structure is also very unstable. It depends entirely on the product operators to maintain this weak Internet relationship in the middle, and there is no guarantee that a large number of users will be lost one day.

Therefore, community products are committed to enabling direct connections between content producers and content consumers, and between users who consume the same content, which is what we call interaction here. Of course, this doesn't mean you should socialize and then randomly match two people and let them have awkward conversations. Rather, based on their recognition of the same content, there is a natural desire for connection and interaction.

The essence of interaction is our desire for communication. Content consumers will naturally want to interact with content creators based on their recognition of the content or emotional resonance, such as "It's so real! Soul-stirring questioning," or they will imitate and follow certain popular copywriting because of the herd mentality, such as "I may not be a human, but you are a real dog." For content creators, the driving force of interaction may be based on the sense of honor of being liked, recognized, and paid attention to. They will feel that they have a great responsibility to answer everyone's questions and strive to do better.

Therefore, community products naturally have topics that encourage people to interact. In other words, there are weak connections between users. Internet community products simply provide channels for interaction, allowing everyone's nature to be released. Through interaction between users based on comment areas and private message links, their enthusiasm and creativity can be greatly stimulated.

According to the strategic rules of points, lines, surfaces and bodies, the direct connection between points gradually forms a weak relationship network between users, and such a weak relationship network ensures user stickiness. Therefore, the benefits brought by network expansion are also multiplied. This is the dimensionality reduction attack of the Internet industry on traditional industries.

Then, there is a new problem. Since interaction is human nature, and every product has a comment function, why don’t people interact? Why is it that only NetEase Cloud Music has transformed from a music player into a music community, and why are only the comments on Bilibili so interesting?

This brings up the importance of community atmosphere. A high-quality community atmosphere ensures healthy interaction among users, which is mainly based on the following three aspects.

@1: The quality atmosphere sets the tone.

@2: High-quality atmosphere induces action

@3: High-quality atmosphere promotes a sense of community

High-quality atmosphere sets the tone

The community atmosphere is presented through the presentation of content and the product's UI design, creating a common scene for each user. This allows everyone to subconsciously accept the settings of this scene when using the product and do things that are in line with the community atmosphere, such as friendly comments and generous praise. The influence of atmosphere on people's behavior may be explained by the inconsistency-avoidance tendency of people mentioned in "Poor Charlie's Almanack".

(In order to save computing space, the human brain is reluctant to make changes, which is a tendency to avoid inconsistency. When users enter a new community and acquire a new identity, they tend to behave in a way that is consistent with the community atmosphere. Constrained by a good community atmosphere and public supervision, both new and old users tend to maintain the status quo - that is, to stick to the small broken station.)

When friendly content becomes mainstream, it will further strengthen user awareness. Users and community product operators will work together to make the community atmosphere better and better.

High-quality atmosphere inspires action

As mentioned earlier, interaction is actually part of human nature. But why are users unwilling to interact in many products, and why are there so few replies in the comment section? We can try to use the behavioral model mentioned in the previous push to analyze why users do not do what we want .

Behavior = Trigger + Motivation + Ability - Resistance

Well, based on the recognition of the content and the emotional resonance, if the content does create value for users, there is no doubt that users will have natural internal triggers and motivations. The ability required to interact is to click the comment button and type a few words, which most Internet users can do. Regarding the resistance part, that is, what concerns the user has about participating in the interaction, these concerns make him suppress his nature and dare not participate in the interaction.

Concerns from the user's perspective may be:

“Is it appropriate for me to post these?” “Is this question a stupid one?” “Will there be trolls attacking me?” “Will anyone reply to my comment?” “Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if no one responded to me?”…

In the previous article on the three stages of community development, we mentioned that from the perspective of content consumers, users will mainly have five possible behaviors in the community, namely, positive feedback for high-quality content, negative feedback for high-quality content, positive feedback for low-quality content, negative feedback for low-quality content, and no feedback.

Therefore, in any community, there are bound to be users with no feedback. When the proportion of users with no feedback is too large, we need to reflect on two issues: Is it because the content quality is not good enough that users lack the internal trigger and motivation to interact, or is it because the community atmosphere is not good enough that users have greater concerns about speaking out on public Internet platforms? All we can do is increase motivation and reduce friction so that users who don’t respond will interact.

Therefore, due to the existing barrage culture of Bilibili and the positive interactions in various video comment areas, everyone can realize that this is an inclusive and friendly community, an interest-based voice channel, and based on the high-quality community atmosphere, it dispels users' potential concerns about interactions and enables positive interactions and communication between users.

The high-quality atmosphere enables the group to actively participate and maintain

A high-quality community atmosphere first sets the tone for the product, then encourages user interaction, and finally, driven by a sense of community, encourages users to actively participate in building and maintaining a high-quality community atmosphere, thus forming a virtuous circle.

A good community atmosphere is conducive to promoting a sense of community.

In social psychology, even the name of a group is enough to create "in-group favoritism," making members more likely to behave altruistically. The community also strengthens this sense of group in its design, such as "community rules" and "member titles".

On the one hand, we all love the small broken station so we will maintain it with our heart. Once the barrage of comments provokes conflict and other behaviors, these low-quality barrage of comments will be reported by users. Low-quality video content such as plagiarism will also be rejected by users. Everyone becomes a part of the community co-construction, and together we make the content ecology of Bilibili better.

On the other hand, the altruistic behavior attributes of members are stimulated, and they are more willing to help each other here. Users either take the initiative to move and translate videos from the Internet, or actively edit videos of their favorite idols to actively create value. In the comment section, new fans don’t understand what the memes in the barrage mean, but old fans patiently explain and answer related questions on behalf of the blogger, voluntarily helping to spread the video content and expand its influence.

The active participation and maintenance of the group ensures that the high-quality community atmosphere continues to exist and exerts a greater influence in the community.

How to create a high-quality community atmosphere?

Since a high-quality community atmosphere has many benefits for community products, every community product hopes to have one of its own. The key to the problem is that the role of the word "atmosphere" in a product is very difficult to quantify, and there is no public industry standard. Even if you want to copy Bilibili, you don't know which one to copy and how to copy it. Simple plagiarism can only copy one Bilibili. Due to the high replacement cost, you can't leverage Bilibili's original users, and in the end, you get nothing.

The creation of a community atmosphere is based on two aspects: hard power and soft power. Hard power refers to the function and design of the product, while soft power is the tone of the product, that is, its values.

Product functions and designs are of course important. If you want people to interact, you must first have the functions of likes and comments. If you want people to continue to interact in the comment area on the same floor, you must have a product design within the floor and allow users to like comments. Here are two examples of product designs that B station has put in great effort:

No anonymous behavior allowed

In order to introduce public supervision and social pressure to constrain user behavior, the community cannot speak anonymously or modify nicknames at will. All behaviors are transparent on personal homepages, and product rules are used to restrain the evil in everyone's hearts.

Even if the nickname is changed on Bilibili, previous comments and other behaviors will be changed to the new nickname instead of the original nickname, and clicking on the avatar will still enter the user's personal homepage, which ensures that the behavior can be traced. In this way, we can raise the threshold for bad behavior and avoid verbal abuse or bad behavior between users.

As for the negative example Weibo, everyone knows that the traces of your provocative comments can be quietly erased by changing your nickname. This product mechanism amplifies evil. When you search for this nickname again, you may not find this person. Therefore, in order to increase the cost of provoking conflicts and making bad comments as much as possible, Weibo can only change nicknames once a year. (But recharge members can change it five times. Sorry, if you have money you can do whatever you want.)

Coin mechanism

This part of thinking was inspired by an article by Professor Wang Hai: "Bilibili's going out of the circle, and Bilibili going out of the circle" (public account: Product Manager Class 7). Before this, I had never actively thought about this question: why is it that only Bilibili has the one-click three-link function (some say the specific three-link is like, coin, and forward, some say it is like, coin, and comment, but all emphasize the importance of the coin action), while other community products only have likes and comments.

Bilibili treats liking and coining as two independent behaviors. Although both express likes, there is a clear difference between the two. The act of liking has little cost for users, and there is no upper limit on the number of likes a user can give per day, so likes may be abused and cause inflation. Some videos with a high number of likes may not necessarily be of high quality. Relying solely on the number of likes is not enough to reflect the value of the content.

But coin-operating is different. Not everyone has coins and the coins are not unlimited. Because they are limited, we should cherish them. Users will weigh them more seriously than giving likes. Coin-operating is a higher-level recognition that is backward compatible. When you put in a coin, it will be like by default, but when you like it, it is just like.

How do you get coins? Bilibili monetizes the time users spend online. That is, the longer you use Bilibili, the more coins you will have, and the more likely you are to participate in voting for quality content. Through the design of the coin function, Bilibili can simply distinguish active users or old users. Based on their trust in Bilibili and recognition of the content, they have been on Bilibili for a long time and have been using it for a long time. They are more familiar with the atmosphere and product mechanisms here, and their recommendations should have greater say.

Monetizing user retention time allows it to circulate throughout the platform in the form of currency, recognizing the value of old and active users, and by differentiating users and giving them greater voice (more coins) so that they can better maintain the community's content ecology.

However, having said that, there are no barriers to product functions. Basically, if you develop a function that is useful, the entire network will follow suit in a few days. It is difficult to create technical barriers.

Therefore, when it comes to creating a community atmosphere, the more core thing is product values.

Each community product has some labels that are used to describe the community and the general characteristics of the group of people immersed in the community. This is the tone of the community, which will subtly influence the content produced by the community, affect the user behavior of the community, and form a subtle common understanding through continuous interaction between users.

Of course, it is undeniable that users are attracted to this community by valuable content, but what makes users willing to produce content here, and what makes users firmly stuck in this community? I think it is based on collective identity and common values.

What needs to be noted here is that we must carefully control the tone of the community. Based on this value and tone, we will attract the first batch of users who are willing to stay, and continue to grow and develop through this group of old users.

Teacher Wang Shimu mentioned in "Behind the Scenes Products" that the more distinct and extreme the brand values ​​are, the easier it is to draw a line between itself and the outside world. People who like it will like it very much, and people who hate it will hate it very much.

This will enable us to accurately find the first batch of loyal users and complete the cold start of the community product. However, if the first stage goes smoothly, it will bring great threats to the subsequent growth stage, because such a group is extremely xenophobic. The extreme values ​​themselves attract a group of people who do not follow the beaten path and do not like to be the same as others. Therefore, they will be extremely repulsive to new users. The product operators will face irreconcilable contradictions between new and old users. Either the old users will keep themselves in the circle and drive away the new users, or as new users arrive, the product will quietly change its appearance to cater to the new users, making the old users feel that the community no longer conforms to their values ​​and leave angrily.

Therefore, it is best for us not to rush for quick results, and to choose some moderate and inclusive values ​​as much as possible. Although the starting speed may be a little slower, it will have the advantage of long-term development and greater space.

Bilibili has done a great job in this regard. Let’s take a look at what values ​​and product tone Bilibili has conveyed to us through its long-term operation. These values ​​are inclusive and open enough to be applicable when dealing with conflicts between new and old users, and conflicts between content producers and consumers. Through common values, the operator's position can be put in the right place. Both wife and mother are important, and I will help whoever is right. Users are also gradually educated through common values ​​to screen out low-quality users who do not agree with the values.

1. Content first

As a content community, we attach great importance to the value of content. All product iterations and improvements are aimed at creating a better content ecosystem. Therefore, no matter what the reason, actions that destroy the content ecology are not allowed on Bilibili, and you may be locked up in a small black room.

To a certain extent, content that provokes conflict in the barrage or comment section can indeed promote user interaction through conflict, thereby improving product data, such as daily active users, number of comments, number of barrages, etc. Appropriate conflicts can make a group more active, but these interactions are not benign interactions. Content that provokes conflict and quarrels undermines the value of the original content and hurts the user experience of those who recognize the content. Perhaps they will turn off the barrage, or perhaps they will give up watching the video or even unfollow the blogger. Therefore, the value of content first allows us to maintain some rationality and principles in the face of growth, and not give up long-term value for short-term benefits. .

Another benefit of highlighting the value of content first is that it makes everyone focus more on the content itself rather than other irrelevant interference factors. Users will not make comments such as "Why do you, a beauty blogger, come to post in our dance section?", "Why are you a beauty blogger when you are so fat?", "Why do you, a newcomer, lead the trend?" and so on. The value of content supremacy weakens irrelevant factors such as the status, class, identity and role of content producers, and guides everyone to focus on the content itself. No matter whether it is a beauty blogger or a dance blogger, as long as its content can indeed bring value to a certain number of people, it is enough. Recognizing the content itself without valuing the person can also, to a certain extent, combat the phenomenon of old users forming a circle and squeezing out newcomers.

2. Respect every user

Although each user is just a cold number in the background of the product, people come and go every day. Many times, the product only focuses on the changing trend of the overall data, but ignores that behind the numbers are living people with emotions and needs. Therefore, we need to respect every user and treat users as people rather than traffic, which means that the product needs to be commercialized with caution.

It should be noted that it is not impossible to commercialize, but there needs to be a bottom line and basic respect for users.

In community products, based on their recognition of the product and platform, users are willing to speak out and make friends here. Trust is the foundation of everything. If users treat you as a friend, but you treat them as leeks, then there will naturally be a crisis of trust and you will eventually go your separate ways.

Bilibili is very cautious about commercialization. It has never used built-in patch ads like iQiyi and Youku, but instead made money by operating on behalf of others. Later, it gradually developed commercial channels in the form of live streaming and premium membership.

There are two reasons why there are no interstitial ads. First, unlike iQiyi and Youku, Bilibili's videos are mostly UGC, and the length and quality of the videos vary. Introducing interstitial ads will have an impact on the quality of the original content and may affect the enthusiasm of creators. For example, a 30-second video has a 30-second ad inserted, and a 60-minute video also has a 30-second ad inserted.

Another very important reason is that Bilibili’s promise to old users in the early stage of the product not to add interstitial ads is a promise made to Bilibili in the beginning. Although new users may not understand this background and may understand it after being educated by major video sites, once commercialized, it means the collapse of trust with the original old users. Once trust collapses, it will lead to a series of consequences. If even the initial promise can be violated, a group of old users may leave in anger because Bilibili is becoming less and less interesting.

Therefore, Bilibili is cautious in commercialization while respecting user experience. The company will not treat users as non-human beings and fill every corner with various advertisements for hair transplantation, braces, etc., nor will it cede too much profit to paying users so that the product conveys the value of money first and that whoever has money can be the boss in the community. Whether or not you are a paying user, you need to abide by certain common principles of the community and not harm the value of the content and user experience.

It is okay to eat food for money. On the basis of feeling respected, users approve of the food-eating videos on Bilibili and even hope to eat more. If you treat me as a friend, and I treat you as a friend, I will also treat you as a friend and hope you can live a better life.

Therefore, it took a long time for B Station to create such a good atmosphere now. The details in product design and the control over the rhythm of product development all reflect the thinking and care put into the product. It has built its own moat based on day-to-day maintenance and operation. The small broken station is the best!

This is roughly the discussion about community atmosphere. These are just some of my superficial thoughts. If you have other opinions and ideas, you are welcome to communicate with us.

Author: Twelve

Source: Twelve

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