Bilibili Operation: How to improve user loyalty?

With its content quality, community atmosphere, user loyalty, and activity, Bilibili has become a cultural fertile ground and a super active community for cultural exchange for the post-00s and post-90s. So why is Bilibili unique among young people and so popular among users?

High-energy warning ahead, 23333333333, triple, charging, barrage, please accept my coins...

If you don't know what these words mean yet, you may need to go to Bilibili to check them out.

This article will discuss:

1. Why do young people gather on Bilibili?
2. How does Bilibili achieve growth through community operations?
3. What is the competitive environment of Bilibili?
4. How to become a UP host on Bilibili step by step?

1. Why do young people gather here?

On June 26, 2009, Bilibili was created by "@9bishi", a core user of Acfun (A station). Its predecessor was Mikufuns, which featured barrage videos and is now called "B station" by fans. Bilibili initially focused on 2D animation content, and because the videos had no advertisements and featured rich interactive comments, it quickly became popular and loved by young people. [1]

Bilibili is not the first two-dimensional community in China, but today it has an absolute leading position in the ACG (anime, comics, and games) field. In the two-dimensional field, products with higher monthly active user numbers include Bilibili, AcFun, FirstBomb, and Fuciyuan. The sum of the monthly active data of the last three companies is less than that of Bilibili alone. With 97.421 million monthly active users, Bilibili is the leader in the two-dimensional community.

From the perspective of user age structure, according to the latest data provided by iResearch, the age of Bilibili users is concentrated at 24 years old and below. Users under the age of 24 account for 40.44%, and users aged 25-30 account for 33.24%. These users are Generation Z (referring to people born between 1995 and 2009, also known as the Network Generation or the Internet Generation). [2]

Therefore, Bilibili introduces itself on its official website as a "paradise for Generation Z" and a "cultural community where young Chinese people gather."

2. How does Bilibili achieve growth through community operations?

The three key points of community operation are: users, content, and mechanisms. Next, we will introduce how Bilibili’s community operations bring about steady growth from four aspects.

Product Operation : Traffic Decentralization

Station B has three major product advantages:

1. High-quality interactive barrage
2. Videos without ads
3. Decentralization

Since its inception, Bilibili has been famous for its barrage of comments and has led this unique trend. Other video websites have followed suit and adopted the barrage function. However, some people also say that "only the barrage on Bilibili is worth watching", so this has become one of the advantages of Bilibili compared to comprehensive video platforms. Compared with the dispensable barrage on other video sites, the barrage on Bilibili is an integral part of the content. "What you watch is the barrage, and the video is just the background."

"Bilibili has no patch ads," this is what Chen Rui, chairman of Bilibili, once said. Some users who are used to watching videos on other websites will come to Bilibili for this reason.

Compared with other video sites that often have 60-second to 90-second ads, the video watching process on Bilibili is more "smooth and enjoyable." Although Bilibili experienced some minor setbacks along the way, it ultimately persevered, and users were very accepting and recognized of its ad-free feature.

Why does Bilibili have to be “decentralized”?

As a community mainly based on PUGV (Professional User Generated Video), 90% of Bilibili's views come from content uploaded by UP hosts. [3] Bilibili must ensure that users have a steady supply of high-quality content to watch, while also ensuring that the creators of this content (UP hosts) have a healthy living environment. Therefore, in order to ensure the continuous production of UP hosts, two points must be achieved in the product operation strategy: traffic distribution and creative incentives.

The homepage of Bilibili has a large number of recommended positions to display UP hosts’ videos. There is a ranking list on the right side of each content section to display high-quality UP hosts’ content. The “Subscription” in the personal center reminds UP hosts of video updates... These details are all helping to achieve “decentralized traffic”.

1. Content operation: ACG copyright expansion + category expansion + PUGV support

Bilibili started out with two-dimensional content, and is bound to make efforts in the field of two-dimensional content. In addition to introducing a large number of genuine anime series, Bilibili is also actively participating in the production of various IPs.

In May 2018, Bilibili established an animation production studio in Tokyo, Japan, and in June it jointly established a cultural company with Dream Animation. At the same time, in order to reduce its dependence on Japanese comics, by opening up a "National Creation" section and investing in domestic animation, it is not only helping the rise of domestic comics, but also expanding its territory for its own two-dimensional copyright.

In addition to continuing to consolidate the copyright of two-dimensional content, Bilibili's content formats are also constantly expanding, involving live broadcasts, games, overseas tours, etc.

In terms of content division, Bilibili is no longer limited to ACG content, but has also incorporated beauty, food, fashion, etc. Young people like to pay attention to interest-based content, and the rise of these new segments is also due to users.

The expansion of product categories not only helps retain users and increase their online time, but also expands Bilibili's brand influence, while helping Bilibili expand its influence in various fields.

Because each sub-interest area has an interest network, the gradually mature partitions on Bilibili will attract users from other platforms to enter this partition, such as digital fans and entertainment fans.

Here are a few examples of how brand expansion can affect influence:

1. Jackie Chan's duang incident originated on Bilibili in 2015 and reached its peak on the entire Internet;
2. Lei Jun's "are you ok" has over 5 million views and over 100,000 comments on Bilibili;
3. The TV series "Go Princess Go" was popular on Bilibili because users created new plots for it.
4. ……[4]

These interest-based events have made Bilibili’s content famous because of young people’s culture and the influence of the Internet, and have also expanded Bilibili’s content categories.

According to the real data disclosed by Bilibili itself, the total number of PUGV video submissions exceeds 8 million, the number of video plays per day exceeds 100 million, and the average user stays for 71 minutes, which makes Bilibili users highly active and engaged. 90% of the videos on Bilibili are user-generated and original, so PUGV is the content feature of Bilibili.

2. User Operation: Strict Entry + Strict Punishment

1) Strict entry mechanism ensures value recognition

As a community platform, Bilibili's users are both readers and creators of content. Every action of every user may have a huge impact on the community content, especially video content with barrage. Bilibili adopts a mechanism that requires "answering 100 questions" to become a formal member. These questions that must be answered include basic knowledge, atmosphere guidance, rule notification, etc. Those users who identify with Bilibili will identify with it even more, while those users who don’t know about Bilibili will have received the best “education”.

The disadvantages of strict entry are obvious, such as small base and slow speed. Many communities have had similar methods in the early days, such as Zhihu’s earliest invitation system. The difference is that Bilibili has persisted until today. Judging from the data, this strict entry mechanism also has huge benefits. The 12-month retention rate of Bilibili’s official members (users who join by answering questions) is over 80%. “Once you’re integrated, you don’t want to leave.”

2) Strict punishment mechanism ensures the quality of the atmosphere

Weibo, which is also a community, has content that provokes conflict, attacks, and infringements almost every day. The "cyber violence" we see has always existed on these platforms. Zhihu, which was once a pure land, has seen its atmosphere deteriorate sharply after expanding its user base.

Bilibili’s censorship mechanism is stricter, faster and more transparent. The "Little Black Room" is Bilibili's page for announcing community punishments. When you open the "Little Black Room", you will find that Bilibili's response to punishments is fast and its bans are ruthless.

• If you like a certain type of anime and insult other anime, you will be banned for "provoking war";
• If you post a comment like "This person will die in the next episode", your account will be blocked for "spoiler";
• Accusing other barrage posters of "personal attacks" will result in them being blocked;
• Calling on everyone to conduct a human flesh search on UP hosts they dislike will result in being blocked for "privacy violation"...

The "Little Black Room" and "Discipline Committee" ensure that the community atmosphere is not threatened by spam and keyboard warriors.

3. Creator operation (UP master): training plan + incentive plan

Content creators are affectionately called UP masters on Bilibili, and the active UP master creative ecosystem is a continuous driving force for the community's development. If the creator's life cycle is subdivided, junior creators need cultivation and training, intermediate creators need more encouragement and motivation, and senior creators need more benefits and influence.

The training program is to provide new UP hosts with comprehensive online and offline training. Bilibili has opened an online "Creative Academy" and an offline "UP Master Academy Exchange Day" to help UP masters grow in terms of creative material collection, drawing and painting, audio processing, post-editing, special effects synthesis, advanced skills, etc., and to enhance the creativity of new UP masters.

The dimensions of incentive plans can be divided into honor incentives and benefit incentives. Set up physical medals of 100,000 and 1,000,000 yuan to encourage the growth of UP hosts. The "bilibili power up" top 100 UP hosts awards ceremony is held every year to enhance the UP hosts' sense of honor. Profit incentives are crucial to retaining high-quality UP hosts for a long time. Bilibili creates income for UP hosts in a variety of ways:

1. Creation incentives: By applying to join, the income will be calculated based on multiple dimensional indexes such as user preference, content popularity, and content verticality.
2. Charging Plan: You can apply for it after publishing a manuscript. It is actually a reward function. Users can reward UP masters through the Charging Plan.
3. Reward Program: If a UP host has 1,000 followers and releases one original video within 30 days, he or she can sign up for the reward program. After joining the program, you can earn commissions through the advertising exposure of your content or the revenue from e-commerce advertising.
4. Fireworks Business Order: UP host can sign up if he has 10,000 fans and publishes 1 original video within 30 days. This is a platform that matches advertisers and UP hosts to conduct business transactions.
5. Contractual cooperation: In order to retain the top traffic owners or poach some celebrities from other platforms, Bilibili will sign contracts with them. For example, Feng Timo, the former "No. 1 anchor of Douyu", has signed a contract with Bilibili to start exclusive live broadcasts.

Through product operations, Bilibili highlights its own characteristics in the market while creating a healthy traffic distribution mechanism. Through content operation, we can expand the breadth of content on the basis of consolidating the two-dimensional world, attract more users and expand our influence. Through strict user operations, a positive and active community atmosphere is ensured. Establish a good content creation ecosystem through creator operations.

Through four aspects of operations, Bilibili has created a community atmosphere that is extremely tolerant, extremely demanding, and extremely loyal.

Users can accept the absence of stars, rough editing and low production costs, which is "extreme tolerance"; users cannot accept "plagiarism" and "filling in the blanks", which is "extremely harsh"; users will use "three links" and "tap water" to support the content they identify with, which is "extreme loyalty".

3. What is the competitive environment of Bilibili?

Growth Feixiang has always advocated creating a growth environment for enterprises from the inside out. Bilibili's community operations, product content and years of accumulation in a field are the internal factors for its growth. Finally, we analyze the opportunities and threats that Bilibili may face next by comparing it with external competitors.

1. Comparison with comprehensive video

Compared with comprehensive video platforms Youku, Tencent Video, and iQiyi, Bilibili has no advantage in popular content. However, Bilibili has a huge number of young users, more interesting and educational content, a high-quality content production mechanism, and highly sticky UP hosts and users[5]. As the “divisions” expand, Bilibili’s influence has the opportunity to rival that of comprehensive video platforms. On the contrary, comprehensive video platforms do not have the community growth capabilities of Bilibili.

2. Comparison with short videos

Douyin and Kuaishou are indeed snatching a lot of users' time, and in terms of time dimension, Bilibili and short video products are competing. Short video content is fun, interesting, fast and fragmented. However, for a large number of young users of Generation Z, long videos are actually an advantage. Long videos have high stickiness for UP hosts, can produce higher-quality and more nutritious content, and are interest-dependent content.

What Bilibili should pay more attention to is Xigua Video, which has similar attributes to it. Xigua Video is also a platform mainly composed of PUGV, and it has developed based on the traffic and powerful algorithm capabilities of Toutiao. Although there is a gap in the current content quality and direction, in terms of monthly active users, Xigua Video is greater than Bilibili. There are already many UP hosts who are using Bilibili to attract traffic to their own Xigua videos.

YouTube has achieved a 92% coverage rate in the United States, so we have reason to believe that a model like PUGV can also develop in China. As Bilibili's young users grow and its influence increases, we have reason to believe that Bilibili will have a wider range of content and develop a larger number of users.

4. How to become a UP host on Bilibili step by step?

If you have read this far, congratulations, you have already gained a basic understanding of Bilibili's development history, user situation, and community operations. The following content will target friends who want to try to create content on Bilibili and tell them how to become a UP host step by step.

There are many similarities in the ideas between the operation of Bilibili and Douyin, and the differences are more derived from the characteristics of the platforms. It is recommended that all operators who are about to contribute to Bilibili spend some time on Bilibili in advance and familiarize themselves with its products, users, and content. Only by understanding and becoming familiar with the environment first can they survive better in it.

We divide Bilibili's operation strategy into three stages: the initial stage to familiarize yourself with the characteristics of the platform, the middle stage to build a good operation infrastructure, and the advanced stage to master the ability to increase fans and realize profits.

1. Initial stage: understand the characteristics and master the rules

1) Where users see your video

We have mentioned before that Bilibili's traffic is operated in a "decentralized" manner. Where are the entrances that eliminate centralization and facilitate video viewing?

The homepage is where all users open their pages. If your video is pushed to the homepage one day, then congratulations, you can sit back and wait to gain a wave of fans. Next are the page recommendation positions for all sections and the content rankings of each section. These entrances are generally content entrances that users care about, and most of the content is recommended or ranked based on the quality of the content itself.

Users of Bilibili highly value the subscription system. Users who subscribe to a channel will receive message reminders first, and they are the earliest seed users who play your content. Most of the time, our playback volume depends on our own fan base. Other ways to increase exposure include participating in various special events at Bilibili and sharing through other means on other sites.

2) Recommendation weighted algorithm

The submissions on Bilibili are currently divided into five categories: video submissions, column submissions, interactive video submissions, audio submissions, and photo album submissions. The content is delivered according to the content of the UP host, and each type of content has its own algorithm mechanism.

Let’s take the videos and columns with the most submissions as an example. The factors involved are: number of coins, number of collections, number of comments, number of views, number of likes, number of shares, and update time. Video submissions will have an additional bonus of the number of barrages. The values ​​of these factors will affect the recommendation weight of each of our content.

The number of video views and the number of article readings mean the same thing. Their weights are both very low and are both non-interactive parameters. Collections and comments have higher weights, but unlike other platforms, comments have higher weights than collections. A high collection weight means that you attach importance to content quality; a high comment weight means that you focus on interaction.

The amount of sharing has the highest weight in both types of content. This is actually easy to understand. When your content is shared by more people, the algorithm will consider the quality of the recommendation to be excellent.

3) What content is likely to go viral

Knowing what kind of content on Bilibili is likely to become popular is the most basic work to understand the platform's tone.

Different sections are all leading the trend and each has its own unique and popular content. Judging from the data, the most popular section on Bilibili is currently the gaming section, followed by life, entertainment, film and television, then anime and dramas, and finally technology, music, dance and other sections.

In terms of submission style, the popular content on Bilibili can be summarized in five words: beauty, laughter, tears, wonder, and learning. Works with good image, sweet voice, and beautiful pictures; works that are funny and interesting; works that are shocking and touching; works that are weird and novel; works that are for learning and tutorials...

Of course, we can’t just go to the most popular zone or create the most popular content. We still have to create content based on the UP host’s own conditions.

2. Middle stage: start from the basics

1) Clear advantages: account positioning

Just like operating a Douyin account, we need to clearly position our account. The easiest way to position yourself is to think about these questions:

What are you best at? What do you like most?

Can you find relevant content in the field you are good at and like on Bilibili?

How popular are these contents on Bilibili? Is there potential?

If you can answer these questions and they are all good answers, then it means that you have content worth submitting and you can start producing it. Know where your strengths lie, and then find your own position based on your strengths.

When positioning, you need to be clear about which partition or partitions you have made? What style of content? What is the long-term content plan?

2) Infrastructure: naming, avatar, introduction, and account maintenance

After positioning, you need to start preparing for the name, avatar, and introduction. Because of the attributes of the platform, we recommend that in addition to expressing your own positioning and works, you must also be more in line with the style of Bilibili. Two-dimensional, interesting names, avatars, and introductions are best, and they must not be rigid and boring.

Maintaining an account is also one of the basic tasks at Bilibili. In addition to improving the "human" attributes of the account, the most important thing about maintaining an account is that it allows you to interact with fans and other UP hosts. Therefore, while contributing regularly, you can also use the account for daily use.

3) Technical preparation: shooting, recording, editing, post-production

As for video content, the most basic components are pictures and audio, and producing content requires certain skills. As mentioned above, Bilibili provides a creative academy for UP hosts. Before starting to produce content, individuals or teams can learn various skills including shooting, recording, editing, and post-production in the creative academy. I recommend that you click and bookmark the following link: https://member.bilibili.com/academy/home

4) Content production: standardized process

Every submitted content must go through four complete steps: outline script, shooting and recording, post-editing, and submission and publication.

As a UP host, you must develop a good standard production process. The improvement of each step will improve the quality of the work.

If you are a team, you can divide the work and collaborate according to four steps. The outline script is the foundation of all content. Many more mature UP hosts spend 80% of their time on the conception of the early script.

5) Create uniqueness: beginning, ending, music, language, and action

Every UP host hopes that his videos will continue to be watched by users and be remembered by users. Then your content should make users associate it with you every time, and each video cannot have a different style. The beginning, ending and music are very basic skills that can be mastered. Through fixed opening words, fixed ending patterns and commonly used music, you can form a unique identity and make users remember you.

For example, @影视暴风, @宝剑嫂’s fixed opening, @朱一生的闷生活, @阿幕临降’s common soundtrack, @翔翔大战, @嘟嘟不嘎油’s unique performance style, and @力元君’s own exclusive meme…

6) Improve the open rate: clickbait and coverbait

Looking at the situation in major communities, both title parties and cover parties are very effective, and we should also follow human nature when operating covers and titles. If your videos can’t attract users to click in, how can they be watched, invested in, liked, and collected?

To make the cover, you can redesign a picture, or you can capture the most exciting scenes from the video, add keywords, and enlarge and bold them. It must look attractive at first glance. If you don’t know what style is attractive, you can go to the homepage to see the popular content.

The title can refer to "Is it too late to make Tik Tok now? The five types of titles we mentioned in "The Latest Douyin Operation Guide in 2020" are particularly suitable for question-type titles and suspense-type titles on Bilibili.

3. High stage: Operational methods for sustained growth

1) Find a way to monetize

Most people initially start to become UP hosts because of their hobbies and interests, but few people stick with it.

There are 3 million UP hosts with submission records at Bilibili, but many of them eventually give up due to time constraints or lack of popular content. Therefore, if you want to continuously produce high-quality content, the UP host or team must find ways to monetize it in a variety of ways.

The incentive plan within Bilibili has been mentioned in the previous article. If your content is good and your account is of high quality, you will definitely be able to monetize it within Bilibili's own ecosystem.

However, there are limited ways to actually earn income, and the amount may not necessarily be enough to cover the UP host's operating expenses. Some external methods can improve the commercial monetization map. For example, UP hosts can accept external brand business orders, sell their own peripheral products, and divert traffic to other products to share profits.

2) Take advantage of the popularity and seek content cooperation

After mastering the methods of content production and operation, you should always pay attention to competitors and hot content. Bilibili has created many hot spots and made many topics popular, such as the recent data visualization video. Producing content related to hot topics can help increase your fan base. For example, @何同学’s video, which relied on 5G, not only had a huge number of views and millions of fans, but also won the “Bilibili’s Top 100 Honors” and was featured on CCTV programs.

Content cooperation can help us build our own circle matrix on Bilibili, such as shooting content with UP hosts of the same section and type, and attracting the attention of fans of the same type by displaying each other's accounts.

3) Uniqueness and universality of content

The production of a specific content can indeed help us attract good loyal fans. Users like to follow unique content and are extremely loyal to this type of account. However, any content may become outdated. For example, the former Overwatch game UP host lost popularity due to the game's lack of popularity. In order to avoid the risk of single content, it is recommended that UP hosts start trying more universal content in the later stages of content creation. This will not only help attract more fans, but may also bring new growth points to the account.

4) Which is more popular: video or account: building IP personality

There are some UP hosts on Bilibili whose videos are very popular but they have very few fans, while some UP hosts have many fans and their videos also have many views. Even UP hosts with the same total number of views have very different numbers of fans.

Why does this phenomenon exist? There are many reasons for this, and the final result is that UP hosts with high fan conversion rates have more IP attributes.

There are many factors that determine whether a piece of content or an account becomes popular, and even luck is a factor. Do the most basic work well, insist on producing good content, and perform meticulous operations, so that you will not miss the opportunity when it comes. These B station operation guides start from the most basic perspective. If you are just starting to operate a UP host, it is recommended to use it as a getting started guide.

Author: Growth Flying Elephant

Source: Growth Flying Elephant