B station user operation strategy analysis report!

This article takes Bilibili as the analysis object, and disassembles its user operation strategy from the three stages of start-up, growth and maturity, hoping to gain inspiration and gain from it.

1. Product Introduction

1. Product Background

Fields of business:

Bilibili, also known as Bilibili or simply B Station , was created in June 2009. Its predecessor was the Mikufans video sharing website. It is now a comprehensive video community based on pan-two-dimensional content and PUGC content production models. In the early days, it attracted a group of core users who love ACG culture with its two-dimensional content and unique barrage sharing function. With continuous development, it gradually added video content such as technology, education, entertainment, and ghost animals. Based on the original video functions, it developed live broadcast, e-commerce and other businesses and made profits from them. Bilibili's content categories have expanded, its user circle has become wider, and its business has become more and more numerous, gradually moving from a niche to the mainstream.

Product positioning:

A comprehensive video barrage community and ACG community targeting fans of ACG culture, dedicated to meeting the cultural and entertainment needs of China's young Generation Z population.

2. Business Logic

User profile:

From a regional perspective: They are mainly distributed in developed coastal areas (Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu) and first-tier cities (Beijing, Shanghai). These cities have a higher level of education and are more receptive to new things and diverse cultures.

From the perspective of gender: ACG is influenced by otaku culture and video game users are mostly male, so there are slightly more male users than female users on Bilibili

In terms of age: They are mainly young people under 30 years old, mostly born in the 1990s and 2000s, and the user structure is generally younger.

Target Users:

2D and ACG culture enthusiasts: watch new anime, learn about and discuss 2D information

UGC creators: post their own videos, find people with common interests, and hope to gain recognition and attention

Online entertainment video enthusiasts: Watch short entertainment videos for entertainment

Game and animation live broadcast enthusiasts: watch game and animation live broadcasts

Demand scenario:

Follow the series, watch anime and its derivative works

Watch short videos of various types such as entertainment, funny, popular science, etc. to kill time

Watch old movies, documentaries, and professional knowledge teaching videos

Find friends with common interests by uploading homemade videos, reposting videos or watching videos to meet social needs

Broadcasters related to entertainment, games, and the second dimension broadcast live on the B station platform to gain fans and satisfy their sense of identity

Core features:

Video: You can upload or watch short videos, TV series, movies, etc.

Live broadcast: Users can start live broadcast or watch live broadcast

Member purchase: purchase figures, peripherals, comic exhibition tickets, etc.

2. Product Experience

1. Product structure diagram

①Main functional structure:

2. Business process diagram

①Main business logic:

Video and live streaming business logic

Member purchase business logic

3. Determine the life cycle

B station total download volume curve

4. Analyze operational strategies

1. Start-up period (2009-2010)

User operation: seize opportunities and acquire users

The predecessor of Bilibili was the video sharing website Mikufans, which was created on June 26, 2009 by "9bishi" (Xu Yi), a core user of Acfun (A Station). Mikufans mainly contains some works of Hatsune Miku and Touhou, as well as ACG videos transferred from Niconico. The current name comes from the nickname bilbili (the sound of electric current) that Kamijou Touma gave to Misaka Mikoto in "A Certain Magical Index". It can be extended to mean to send electric shocks to anime fans and attract everyone to actively share anime videos. The official Chinese name is "哔哩哔哩", and it is affectionately called "B站" by fans.

The first video sharing website used by 2D fans was Station A, but due to the large number of users and immature technology, Station A often crashed, was unable to provide stable video services, and feedback was not resolved. Some users moved to B Station, a temporary site established by Xu Yi, a senior user of A Station, to watch anime. It is called the "back garden" of A Station.

In its early days, Bilibili seized the opportunity, analyzed user needs, solved the pain point of unstable servers, and successfully gained its first batch of users.

User operation: gathering users

In February 2010, B Station, which had just changed its name from Mikufans to bilibili, organized the then well-known UP hosts to make a Spring Festival greeting video (the predecessor of the New Year Greetings Festival). This event, known as the two-dimensional "Spring Festival Gala", made it a little famous, and more ACG enthusiasts also gathered because of the animation and comic series commonly known as "Xinfan", and migrated from A Station, attracting more users through high-quality video content.

User operation: Strengthen user interaction and establish users' own secondary social circle

In May 2010, the bilibili girl voting was launched, allowing users to choose the girl of B station themselves. Enhance user experience and establish an emotional connection with Bilibili.

2. Growth period (2011-2014)

Content operation and user operation: Break through the dimension and expand the user circle

The popular Lei Jun, Jackie Chan's ghost videos, and Wang Dongcheng, who is well-known in the Cosplay circle, often express their two-dimensional feelings half sincerely and half for show, attracting a wave of fans. Li Yuchun directly sang a two-dimensional hit song "Ordinary Disco"... These operations that broke the circle made the users who follow and use Bilibili not only ACG culture enthusiasts, but also a group of fresh blood poured in, making Bilibili successfully transformed from a small two-dimensional community into a gathering place for Generation Z. As the number of users increased, the content ecology also became richer.

Event operation: organize online and offline events to increase user participation

In 2011 and 2012, B station continued its traditional program New Year's Festival. The number of up-hosts participating in the production of the program increased from 40 at the beginning to hundreds. The New Year's Festival can be described as "B station's Spring Festival Gala" and "the Spring Festival Gala of the second dimension". Nowadays, watching the New Year's Festival and celebrating the New Year together has become a habit for many B station users.

In October 2012, Bilibili held the first barrage competition, which enabled interaction between barrage and users. It attracted many users who were interested in barrage to participate in the competition and created many excellent barrage works, bringing the art of barrage to a new height.

On October 5, 2013, Bilibili held its first offline live event in Shanghai - the first BML. A total of 800 spectators toasted with Bilibili on the spot. The holding of BML marked the beginning of B Station's offline activities, which are still held every year.

During its growth stage, Bilibili already has a stable number of users. In order to continue operating this ACG cultural community and increase user stickiness, it organizes online and offline activities to promote the activeness of ordinary users and core users (UP hosts), which also brings advertising revenue to Bilibili.

3. Mature stage (2015 to present)

User operation: A series of incentive plans to stimulate the creative enthusiasm of up masters

Bilibili launched the “Up Master Charging Plan” in early 2016. By providing an online reward function on the bilibili platform, users are encouraged to "recharge" their favorite UP hosts, hoping to stimulate the original enthusiasm of UP hosts, maintain the independence of UP hosts, and to a certain extent solve the problem of UP hosts' economic sources.

As well as the 2018 Creation Incentive Plan, Rising Star Plan, etc., to help up-masters monetize to a greater extent. With the support of these policies, many full-time popular up-hosts have been born, making significant contributions to creating high-quality original content and maintaining the balance of the cultural ecology.

Commercialization Exploration

The first obstacle to the commercialization of subculture communities is the risk of a large-scale backlash from users. In order to prevent a massive loss of users and maintain the company's operations, it had to embark on the path of business expansion. Relying on its community and user attributes, Bilibili started its game joint operation and agency distribution business in 2014. Games accounted for 83.4% of Bilibili’s total revenue in 2017. At the same time, advertising, membership shopping mall, B station VIP membership, and new anime contracting plan are also one of B station's sources of income.

Content Operations

In December 2016, Bilibili was awarded as one of the “Top Ten Documentary Promoters in China”, becoming the best cradle for documentaries. At the same time, it has attracted a large number of three-dimensional documentary enthusiasts, breaking the current situation of young users and enriching the community culture.

In 2017, the entry of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the opening of a domestic zone made Bilibili more popular and standardized. As a gathering place for domestic comic fans, Bilibili's attention to domestic animation continues to increase, providing a good creative platform for the creation of domestic animation and making a contribution to promoting the development of domestic animation.

5. Advantages & Disadvantages Analysis

1. Content Operation-Advantages & Disadvantages Analysis

Advantages:

It basically occupies a monopoly position in the field of "UGC+2D and Pan-2D", and gives full play to its core competitiveness.

There are many resources of animation dramas, movies, and documentaries, which can meet the needs of most users.

Disadvantages:

The video content is mainly UGC, which leads to serious video homogeneity, low quality and lack of continuous output of professional PGC.

The algorithm recommendation is not accurate enough and duplicate videos may be pushed.

UGC content requires creators to consume a lot of time and money, and is difficult to produce continuously.

2. Activity Operation-Advantages & Disadvantages Analysis

Advantages:

Activities such as BW, BML, and New Year Festival have become labels of Bilibili, cultivating a large number of loyal users, increasing user activity, bringing a sense of identity and creative enthusiasm to up-masters, and also bringing a part of advertising revenue to Bilibili.

Disadvantages:

The prices of event tickets, peripheral products, etc. are relatively high, and the target audience is relatively narrow, mainly 2D enthusiasts.

3. User Operation-Advantages & Disadvantages Analysis

Advantages:

Use the registered member answering system to screen registered users, thereby ensuring the quality of users and content and maintaining a good community ecology

Bilibili has a unique community culture and barrage culture. In the rich cultural atmosphere, it continues to attract new users and groups to join, which is conducive to Bilibili's development of diversified business needs.

Disadvantages:

The user group structure tends to be relatively young, and there are often provocative, meaningless barrages and comments that affect the user experience.

It is difficult for new ups to be discovered and noticed due to their lack of experience in video production and fan base, which to some extent dampens the enthusiasm of new creators.

VI. Summary & Suggestions

1. Summary

Today, Bilibili's users have covered the young group, and its PUGC content production model and related video business are also involved. The functions of the product itself are also very complete, and the explored business model has also begun to show results. But judging from the current expansion, its ultimate goal is to develop into a comprehensive community. Faced with the increasing number of doubts about "forgetting the original intention", the trend of younger barrage users, and the declining video quality, the most important thing is to pay attention to user needs, maintain high user activity, and retain old users.

2. Recommendations

Bilibili still has a long way to go in its commercialization exploration. In the live broadcast function module, it can offer live courses like NetEase Cloud Classroom Live or Zhihu Live, and participants need to pay a certain course fee. You can open live courses such as ghost animal production, dance teaching, or MMD teaching that correspond to the UGC classification of the main site. This can not only increase certain profit-making means, but also cultivate new UP hosts with potential for future UGC content. You can also keep up with the e-commerce trend and set up e-commerce function modules on the basis of improving the member shopping mall, combine it with live streaming, cultivate seed users from both the user and merchant aspects, and achieve better commercial monetization.

In terms of content creation, we can regularly hold newcomer awards in various categories like the Japanese animation newcomer awards, to encourage and motivate the creative enthusiasm of new UP hosts. It can also strengthen communication between new and old UP hosts, promote more brainstorming, and ultimately promote the production of more and more high-quality content. With generations of veterans bringing up new people, I believe that Bilibili can continue to be a popular platform for exporting subcultures and even mainstream culture.

Author: ᴇɪɢʜᴛᴇᴇɴ!

Source: ᴇɪɢʜᴛᴇᴇɴ!

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