B station’s promotion beyond the circle!

On the road to breaking out of the circle, if Bilibili wants to move from a niche to the mainstream, it must be prepared for the impact of user growth on the good forum atmosphere. The two are contradictory in themselves. It’s like a user-driven website that is eager to “define” users in its latest promotional video. In fact, Bilibili is caught in a dilemma.

But Bilibili probably knows that the more it grows, the more it needs to protect high-quality UPs, and the more mainstream it becomes, the more it needs to maintain the forum atmosphere. Therefore, on June 5, Bilibili officially launched the first-level partition "Knowledge Zone".

1. To maintain low content costs, Bilibili needs to protect UP hosts

Let’s first look at how low Bilibili’s content costs are? The content of Bilibili can be divided into UGC (user-generated content), PUGC (professional user-generated content), and PGC (professional generated content) videos. In terms of PGC videos, Bilibili has purchased copyrighted content such as cartoons, documentaries, and TV dramas. Even with the massive expansion of its copyright library in 2019, content costs only accounted for 20% of Bilibili's expenditures, while iQiyi reached 70%.

This is because PUGC content accounts for the highest proportion in Bilibili. As of Q1 2020, the playback volume of content created by professional users accounted for 91% of all videos on the entire site, covering multiple fields.

Therefore, it can be said that Bilibili is a website dominated by users, and the UP hosts have brought the small site to life with their love and generative milk. However, the premise for UP hosts to choose Bilibili instead of iQiyi, Tencent, Youku and other sites to generate power with love is that the atmosphere here is better and the friends here have similar interests.

After putting user growth first, Bilibili has increased its efforts in channel promotion and brand marketing. These investments have been very effective at the data level, but have caused discomfort among users at the public opinion level.

The UP host can generate electricity for love because they attract a large number of fans due to the same interests and hobbies. The fans' three consecutive likes and urging for more encourage the UP host to update. In other words, Bilibili users are in a virtuous cycle of "up-content-users".

Protecting our UP hosts is very important for B Station to form long-term competitiveness. But when there are too many people, there will inevitably be a lot of gossip. If this place is no longer a friendly place urging for updates and rational discussions, but is filled with bad words and malicious language, users will inevitably look for a new Bilibili.

Therefore, this virtuous cycle is facing more and more challenges as the number of B station users continues to grow and B station's own value choices increase. It is questionable whether B station can still control itself.

2. Bilibili is actively trying to break out of its circle, but the more it grows, the weirder it becomes.

According to Knowledge Flow, Bilibili's MAU in the first quarter increased by 70% year-on-year to 172 million, close to the annual target of 180 million. DAU exceeded 50 million for the first time. At the same time, the average daily usage time of Bilibili users reached a record high of 87 minutes this quarter, and the number of interactions such as barrage comments increased by 260% year-on-year. Against the backdrop of slowing growth of iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video, Bilibili has maintained rapid growth and achieved outstanding results. But it has to be said that Bilibili has used a lot of external forces, and everyone has noticed that it is no longer actively marketing. In addition, some strange phenomena have quietly arrived with the growth of data.

1. Bilibili strives for growth, but its marketing is not close to life

It is no secret that Bilibili is suffering from losses. In the first quarter, its revenue was 2.316 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68.6%, and its gross profit was 531 million yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of more than 180%. In addition, Bilibili has increased its investment in live streaming and e-commerce, weakened the proportion of game revenue, and enriched its overall revenue structure. The growth data looks good and promising.

But in terms of results, it is still making losses, with a net loss of 539 million yuan, and the loss increased by 175% year-on-year. This loss mainly comes from sales expenses, and according to Bilibili's strategy of overall expansion into pan-entertainment, this expense may continue to increase for a long time in the future.

Of course, everyone has seen that this sales expense was spent. Bilibili is eager to enter the mainstream, and the intensity of its investment has exceeded market expectations. As the saying goes, the more you do, the more mistakes you will make. So with so much marketing on Bilibili, even relatively mild brand marketing will hit the users' sore spots.

For example, the speech dedicated to the new generation, "The Next Wave", was all the rage, but many users shook their heads, saying that the artificial "Next Wave" lacked flavor, was not as authentic as Zhu Yici's "Non-Wave", nor as close to life as Kuaishou's "See".

2. More and more celebrities are joining the platform, which goes against the decentralization strategy

Bilibili's recommendation mechanism is decentralized. The recommendations on user homepages are more based on user interests, but there are also recommendations for high-viewing volumes and marketing videos. Unlike other platforms that tend to recommend videos from top users, the video playback volume of UP hosts with many fans is not necessarily high, because users "pay" for high-quality videos by inserting coins, giving likes, etc., which affects video recommendations.

As Bilibili increases its marketing efforts, more and more celebrities are invited to join. Their joining will bring their own fans to Bilibili and bring traffic to Bilibili. But in this way, these stars will gather the traffic again, and the traffic will tilt towards the top again.

Ordinary UP hosts on Bilibili have accumulated tens of thousands of fans by updating high-quality content over the years, but these stars do not need high-quality content so much. Relying on their own fan support, their video views easily exceed one million, making it much easier for them to become the million-level UP host that ordinary UP hosts dream of.

In addition, celebrities have different resources, and the videos they produce are more eye-catching. As a result, it will be more difficult for new UP hosts on Bilibili to be seen, which will affect the production of fresh content to some extent.

3. Fan circles bring traffic, but incompatible temperaments will affect the community atmosphere

It is a good thing that Bilibili is gradually becoming popular and being recognized by more and more people. There are also many celebrities who have joined the site, but they only joined for a short time and were not active. However, a large number of their fans also followed suit, so many users are worried that Bilibili may gradually become a fan club.

Bilibili was originally a website without a strong star-chasing atmosphere. In the initial background of the two-dimensional culture, most users actually liked the characters in the works, whether it was comics or film and television works, so secondary creation and ghost culture were prevalent.

As for the fan circle, what they like is the person himself. They want to promote their idols and hope that everyone thinks their idols are good. They will actively purify the speech for their idols and it is easy to cause conflicts when the UP host plays memes. The more conflicts there are, the stricter the management of Bilibili will be, and the less relaxed the creative environment will be.

3. Maintain the atmosphere and help up. If you want to make money, B station has no choice

A prosperous content ecosystem can help Bilibili gradually break out of its circle, but Bilibili seems to be unable to wait and is striving for growth after going public. This will indeed accelerate the popularity, but it will also consume a certain amount of content environment.

If Bilibili wants to make good money, it actually needs to do two things well in its foundation: first, maintain a good forum atmosphere, and second, help UP improve their monetization capabilities.

The integration of knowledge areas is the beginning of what Bilibili is doing. It is reported that the "Knowledge Zone" is integrated and upgraded from the original Science and Technology Zone, which includes six secondary zones: science popularization, social sciences and humanities, wildlife technology association, finance, campus learning, and career workplace, focusing on sharing knowledge, experience, skills, opinions, humanities and other content.

1. Dividing and emphasizing interest areas may be the key to maintaining the atmosphere of the forum

Bilibili is becoming more and more diversified. In fact, it is no longer the ACG (animation, comics and games)-based video website of the past. It focuses on a series of topics such as life, vlogs, food, film and television, technology, etc.

Since 2019, knowledge and popular science works have become popular on Bilibili. In a forum dominated by people born in the 2000s and 1990s, such interesting and profound content would naturally be picked out by them. A group of new UP hosts also became popular and quickly ranked among the top 100, such as "Hardcore Half-Buddha Immortal", "Luo Xiang Talks about Criminal Law" and "Hello Teacher, My Name is He Tongxue".

In May 2019, Bilibili released a set of data showing that 18.27 million people studied on Bilibili in 2018, which is twice the number of college entrance examination candidates in 2018. From the data dimension, Bilibili interprets the younger generation of netizens, who not only like comics and entertainment, but also love life and learning.

The unchanging core of Bilibili is to attract users with their interests. When users select such content, Bilibili only needs to judge the correct values ​​and support it, so that it can continue to obtain high-quality PUG videos at low cost and maintain the virtuous cycle of "up-content-user".

2. Promote the growth of knowledge content and prepare for knowledge payment

In the past, various knowledge contents were scattered on Bilibili, or hidden in collections. For example, the learning area was in Channel-Life-Daily-Learning. Now, various learning resources have been integrated into the first-level knowledge area.

In addition, since February this year, Bilibili has launched the "Knowledge Sharing Officer Recruitment" campaign. We will provide knowledge creators with millions of bonuses and hundreds of millions of traffic support.

B Station does this by building a knowledge area, integrating related videos into one entrance, enriching the number of learning videos and enhancing the knowledge atmosphere of B Station for users. Increase support for UP masters in the knowledge field and increase the number of active UPs in the knowledge field, so as to better promote the growth of general knowledge content and maintain a high-quality content ecology.

As the knowledge area becomes more and more prosperous, knowledge payment will become a natural thing. Richer content will also increase the possibility of user payment conversion. In October last year, Bilibili launched paid courses for internal testing. The first batch of courses included "PPT Master's Score-Gaining Strategy", "International Strategy Class of the Bureau Chief", "Xiong Hao: Essay Survival Guide", and "KO the Devil: English Grammar Clearance Plan".

Although these are still in the trial stage, it is well known that the barrage of comments on Bilibili provides users with a unique learning atmosphere, and users prefer UP hosts in the field of knowledge. Bilibili will not give up exploring systematic courses. The knowledge area will pave the way for larger-scale knowledge payment in the future, which can not only help UP realize monetization, but also continue to enrich Bilibili's revenue structure.

3. Competitors of the same category strengthen their PUGC content sector, and Bilibili needs to strengthen its advantages

Under high cost pressure, other websites are also very eager for high-quality content created by users. On June 6, Youku carried out a major revision, and PUGC content such as short videos appeared in the form of a double waterfall flow below the eight popular recommendations on Youku’s homepage.

On May 30, Tencent Platform and Content Group (PCG) announced a new round of organizational structure adjustments for its video business. This round of adjustments includes the abolition and adjustment of three departments. Among them, the Tencent Video Platform Department has adjusted its responsibilities to be responsible for the content operations of all categories of the Tencent Video platform, layout a healthy content ecology of the platform, discover and support high-quality creators and content, empower creators, and continuously create value for platform users.

Similar competitors are increasing their investment in PUGC content, which is also a pressure for Bilibili. Fortunately, in the process of cultivating user content creation, Bilibili is no longer in the early development stage. The more segmented and vertical the content is, the more mature the stage is, and the stronger Bilibili's core competitiveness is.

Bilibili has already formed interest circles, and dividing knowledge areas is actually a way to continuously improve interest divisions and strengthen its own advantages. In order for other competitors to catch up, in addition to supporting creators in terms of funding and traffic and completing the upgrade from quantity to quality, they also need to strengthen operations and cultivate interest circles, which takes a long time.

Bilibili showed amazing vitality in 2020 because it is home to a large number of young people. As Bilibili said, they are enjoying the dividend of the 328 million new Generation Z population. But the reality is that this dividend may belong to the future. If Bilibili wants to make a profit now, it must achieve comprehensive growth. However, in order to continue to respect users while pursuing growth and not lose future chips, Bilibili must make the correct value orientation and choices.

Author: Knowledge Flow

Source: Knowledge Flow (ZHISHILLL)

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