Analyze the technical content behind microblog operation

Today, the development of Weibo can be said to be in a very hot era, the media value of Weibo should avoid going astray, it should not be another new frontier of traffic mode, but should be a social media with better organizational structure and dissemination efficiency, and burst out the value of more technical content than the traditional flow type media.

From the domestic first microblogging platform-Sina Weibo online for nearly two years, "onlookers", "live" has changed people's daily lives. And with the growing number of users, Weibo is also affecting the business world's trajectory.

The "micro-broad", which has been the buzz of the outside world, has become a "micro-media" that is growing a variety of fresh fruit in the fertile soil of Weibo. And the growing number of users is to ripen these fruits of nutrients, tens of thousands of forwarding numbers, news headlines of the original place and the first landing, micro-BO media value is rapidly erupting.

But at the same time, some weeds are growing wildly. False information, small ads, buying and selling fans are devouring the original ecosystem, so that the platform of micro-blogging accelerated toward a barren Mercedes. These irrational, unconventional behaviors arise because there is not a set of adaptive impact assessment systems in the new social-media arena. People simply to whether to add "V", the number of fans to judge the value of a microblog ID, so the public by these exposed hard data tired, confused.

"There are more than 100 followers of Weibo, you are a magazine; More than 100,000 people are an urban newspaper; more than 1 million people are a national newspaper; more than 10 million people, TV stations, more than 100 million people, CCTV. "This has been widely circulated on Weibo, and now it has become the advertising language of a fan selling shop." But are the bought fans valuable? In fact, everyone has an unspoken answer. Then why would anyone care so much about the number of fans? When we put too many eyes on the number of fans, some problems arise.

Just as in the portal era, like traffic, the micro-blogging platform as a simple extension of the attention economy, in fact, to limit its new media form and the future of many possibilities. But if you stick to the value of Twitter as a "fan-count", it is likely to stifle the potential release of the new media platform.

Weibo fan Mess

Weibo fans of the bubble originated Umebo in today's media properties. The number of fans is visually equivalent to the number of subscriptions to a single media. When a user focuses on an ID, it is tantamount to voluntarily accepting information about its publication. Theoretically, the larger the number of fans, the greater the coverage. This "subscription number" is so "transparent" hanging under the avatar, providing the potential subscribers with evidence of judgment, and always tapping the vanity of the blogger and its value as a "micro-media."

Especially when the concept of "micro-media" arose, the business of the fans was quietly born. Price tag plus after-sales service, "Brush powder ads" in the private mailbox or micro-group waiting for you. Taobao 3 Drilling shop to provide products to see, "6 Yuan 100 from the shoot, 10,000 350 yuan, can be bought anonymously, high-quality, permanent fans, life-long package"-this is the price of the line in the higher price.

In addition to the simple fan trafficking, there are more advanced single tweets to forward the comment package, and according to the number of forwarding and the number of comments divided into different types of packages. "500 forwarding + 50 high quality comments = 28" is the entry level, "10,000 forwarding +1000 high quality comments = 238 dollars" is the top package, and can be customized comments content. There is also a monthly package to ensure that the number of daily forwarding and comments.

In the "Deal record" column, a buyer directly bought the equivalent of 100,000 fans, but labeled as "network media promotion" merchandise. There are more buyers are obviously holding the mentality of trying to buy only 100 fans, in the "Evaluation details" the product received a 4.9 high score (5 is divided into full marks). The alias product 30 days to sell a total of about 86,000 yuan, if converted to the number of fans, about 1.4 million ~240 million people. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in the sales business. Now, its "technical content" rapid upgrade, it has been difficult to use the previously not angry, can be quickly identified "zombie powder" to describe, but there are content release, forwarding, commented the "robot".

If some people buy fans to satisfy their vanity and make their tweets look more face-saving, they should be aware that such fans are very difficult to interact with and have very low user value. However, some large accounts that began to appear in the form of "micro-media" are also members of the fans ' buying and selling industry chain, with a clear commercial purpose. A lot of smart people have seen their huge commercial value when the new thing is not yet ripe for Weibo.

At the beginning of May, the well-known writers Ning Mammon in their own micro-bo in the material, an advertising company hopes to cooperate with, "only need to send 3, 30,000", but the attached condition is "waiting for you to send out those few scarf, can let Chen Yao turn?"

The confusion has led to an illusion about the value of fans, but also to practitioners in the micro-blogging industry, and has led to rising external capital valuations for microblogs.

At the beginning of 2010, with hundreds of thousands of fans of Weibo account only 5~6 million can buy, but now the situation is to master multiple accounts, the number of fans reached tens other operators, the face of VC 80 million valuation also unmoved. Marketing companies, which want to use micro-broad to advertise, are complaining about rising prices. But the number of fans and comments, forwarding situation can be false, with the number of fans to success or failure of Micro Bo became a game to deceive themselves. Their fans, and then give these false listeners to push ads, pretending to spread the effect is very good, in fact, they coax themselves to play.

Once this vicious cycle is formed, it becomes a worthless resource loss, and for the marketing value and trust system of the microblogging platform, it will be an irreversible catastrophe. At the same time, these unfair vicious competition for the deep understanding of micro-Bo marketing, early to bury the foreshadowing, to seriously real user entrepreneurs, is also a kind of interference and impact. Once the marketing of micro-Bo to do rotten, then it will be the crash, and its curse is probably "only the number of fans."

Twitter will be a platform for future new media and even a gateway to the Internet. But in establishing the rules of the game, there are countless of the perpetrators and trampling, can only be the microblogging from the original good prospects of the orbit away.

Technical content of microblog operation

The microblogging platform provides only a user pool. In the early days of Weibo, microblogging owners were looking for ways to attract enough users, after which they might consider how to attract enough target users. Content organization, prime time release, key communication node forwarding, focus on building the impact of micro-blog account needs a lot of factors.

The most important thing is the ability to operate the content. "I always believe content is king. Yangzhou Mountain Ruzod Enterprise Management Co., Ltd. founder Wine Red Ice Blue (net name) so said. Did most of the year Weibo account of the wine red Ice blue currently has more than 100 accounts, the total number of fans around 10 million, well-known "global fashion" is her current largest account.

But it's hard to imagine that a "global fashion" with nearly 1.5 million fans is run by a little boy born in 1989. He had no sense of fashion at all, and went out as a little country boy, black and thin. "Red wine ice blue so introduced her right-hand man," but his grasp of the popular point of judgment is very accurate. Like the same post, you see no feeling, but he can be sure that this is a hot spot, like a magazine editor to do the same topic. ”

At the end of last year, the Wine red ice blue for each employee to buy a iPhone4, from now on the way the staff wanted to send micro-blog every day. "But we generally require employees in a few gold points must be sent in person, usually can be issued regularly." "Wine red Ice blue recruit employees are all over the country micro-Bo control, and these micro-bloggers in the past six months, less than a few months of actual combat, have a set of their own way and style."

"For example 10 o'clock in the morning ~11 point, is the housewife to see the peak of Weibo." In the morning, the child was sent away, the dish was bought, and then it was done, waiting to cook, and she would look at the microblog. and students, they usually play a little more after school or on weekends. "Wine Red Ice said operating experience is far from the rich front-line staff," our company's so-called account and I have no relationship, let them do, I am such a person. "The peak changes in the activity of micro-blogs are also different depending on the population, and the right content is released at the right time to produce accurate information coverage for target users." And more combat experience and operational skills. Although the wine red Ice blue did not share, but at least proved that as long as the real serious content operations, master the basic skills, can attract a large number of real fans.

Business model operation is also an important factor outside the content operation. In the account growth process, a variety of temptations also followed, it is inevitable that the ads are not connected. "Last year our company took on a very low-level thing to keep the cash flowing, but since March this year, we've adjusted the program and it's not done," he said. "Wine red ice blue is very resolute.

Abandoning the simple advertising model is because the quality of the content in the wine red ice seems to be crucial. "Traditional media content and advertising ratio, normal words in 7:3, content is 7, advertising is 3." Microblogging media should be so, at least follow this rule, you have to exceed, will cause users disgust. "Has many years of media experience, is now the founder of NTA Innovation Communication agency Shenyin so evaluation."

Weibo marketing expert Du Zijian also said on Weibo, "Weibo is not a platform for advertising." Naked Marketing is not the right thing to do. Do brand, do image, do influence, do crisis warning, do customer service, do consumer information docking, is correct. "Because in a seemingly small id behind, are a real user." A preference has personality, can be accurate to gender, age and location of the spread of nodes, is suitable for brand marketing.

Shenyin as a planning consultant "every guest xiaoming" advertising is a vivid example. May 5 10 o'clock in the morning "every guest xiaoming" advertising film in 12 hours forwarded 125,000 times, comments 6,000. In the "material can be rampant", Shen also found that in the transmission process, the launch of a real social network to make the coverage of no corner. "There is media support, there are opinion leaders, celebrity celebrities, grass-roots meager support in the spread of the chain, all kinds of nodes and hubs are used." "The content and dissemination of the common role, so that an advertising film can be spread across a wide range."

Beyond that, to be truly influential, you need to see who the real fans of Twitter are. By analyzing the cross accounts and vertical areas that users are interested in, you can basically form a general description of their personality preferences, and each Weibo account that fans pay attention to is equivalent to a label that defines it. The more professional, vertical and even smaller the label, the easier it is to define the characteristics of its fans.

The obvious example is that the "cold joke picks" and "I stock" of Sina Weibo represent a completely different demographic. "Cold jokes selected" because of its popular acceptance, played a limited role in labeling, but "I stock" directly narrowed the crowd to the U.S. capital markets and the Internet's characteristics of this population. With the increasing demand for precision marketing, the "micro-media" of the public and the audience will be of value, and the latter's value potential is likely to be greater than the former.

So, with 10 of each has 100,000 fans of the media, its value may be far more than a 1 million fans of the mass media. This is in line with the trend in the real world of media from the public to the audience, because many rules in the Internet world are always projections of the real world rules.

At the same time, further analysis of the fan data, can also be found in the transmission chain on the issue of the key node. The greater the proportion of these hyperlinks, the higher the value of Weibo fans, which are not reflected in the size of the fans. Therefore, in view of the "micro-media" operation of the technical content is still generally low, the future value of the real release will depend on content creativity, business operation capacity, the ability to subdivide and identify the key transmission nodes, and so on, and the number of fans will no longer be the only judge criteria.

From "Only quantity theory" to "value-only Theory", the value of micro-bo in the dissemination of the future can be truly released, a healthy micro-blogging ecosystem has the basis of sustainable development.

The development trend of micro-media

How should the flow of micro-blogging be transformed? How can content operations be freed? After simple flow aggregation, successive will be not a simple transformation process, is in situ transformation or export to other landing? Weibo must be a platform, but there are countless imaginations about its extension.

The rapid rise of Weibo, the big reason is that it is a very "light", very simple application, so that the largest range of people can use it handy. But the "light", very simple product form also poses a key problem, that is, for the micro-media such as ecosystem participants, the "micro-blogging world" to their space and stage is relatively single, which will directly affect the carrying capacity of their business model.

Currently on the micro-boping platform, with information and news as the main driving force to spread, advertising has become the user extremely sensitive and offensive words, or even micro-broad for this model are very cautious. In the daily 20~30 of micro-blog release, a lot of micro-media as long as the presence of a small number of ads will cause the visitors to experience harm. Therefore, "micro-media" may not even reach the so-called content of the traditional media and advertising 7:3 of the proportion, but the form and content of advertising than the traditional media higher requirements, which will inevitably greatly affect the "micro-media" business model carrying capacity. It means that for the "micro-media", the advertising model may be a failure to carry out large-scale sustainable development model.

In this case, not to take e-commerce ads, but their docking e-commerce business, seems to be becoming a "micro-media" to try to become a direction. At the beginning of this year, the domestic E-commerce enterprises where customer prudential products on the use of "every guest talent" activities towards the direction of social E-commerce, a tentative step forward. and "micro-media" is standing at the end of socialization, trying to move towards the electrical business.

People who dare to eat crabs have begun to emerge. For example, Wine red ice blue revealed that the second half of the year will be set up with the fashion category-related E-commerce site, the flow from the microblogging platform to extend out, with another more solid, more intensive way of value conversion. "There are ' global fashion ' more than 3 million fans as the backing, our fans gradually led to our own electronic business site to generate registration, so that the data is guaranteed." After all, can not put all the treasure on Sina a platform. "The wine is red ice Blue said so.

Of course, is this light weight process smooth? Integration of upstream and downstream resources plus warehousing logistics, these are not rely on a few network of young people to operate micro-blogging work, nor is it a single link with some of the micro-blog can be completed market promotion. Using E-commerce this complex heavy device to digest fans, is the step path, but it is indeed an extremely complex project.

Similarly, there are some big accounts to see the micro-blogging platform of the business model is too simple and limited bearing capacity, began to think seize the mobile internet and intelligent terminal popularization of the tide, the development of mobile applications, and then to the microblog users to a more solid and commercial carrying capacity of a more powerful platform. For Twitter accounts with a large number of fans, recommending mobile apps is not a difficult task, "there were people who came to us and let us help push their apps, but instead of pushing them, why don't we do it ourselves?" Wine red Ice Blue said.

Of course, whether it is through their own e-commerce to directly change the impact, or through the transfer of some users to a more commercial carrying capacity of the platform, this is not a simple job. In the short term, for influential micro-media, the foothold of profitability is still the operational capacity of the content. Have the actual combat experience of micro-blog operators can help each other, playing "with the war," the micro-broad, as well as the flexibility of a very strong planning capabilities, these three are many companies are not the official micro-blog. The blue cursor subscribed to a 24.5% stake in Du Zijianwa, also saw its strong influence in the micro-blogging field and the ability to meet the operational capabilities of its enterprise-class customers.

Enterprise-class services have also spawned more projects, even offering a full range of social media solutions to businesses. In addition to the day-to-day maintenance of the official micro-blog, as well as the meeting live broadcast-operators directly to the scene with the shooting, the release of illustrated content, and then by playing "match war" large forwarding, bring fans. "We can also do a high precision industry account, if you can achieve 50,000 independent IP, such as to do with the credit card, to find any bank, the account to sell it, the price will be very high." "The wine-red ice-blue is a real believer in the value of true fans," and then we're going to be a regional fan and build about 100 accounts that resemble local sites. "Micro-media" may be the first to build a healthy value chain and business model for serving enterprise customers, using the first-coming advantage of the number of fans and the ability to operate with a strong content operation.

Data ability to set the future

At the same time, the demand for micro-blogging data mining is becoming more and more urgent. The desire of all participants in the micro-blogging ecosystem for the definition of individual attributes of their fans, and how to identify, manage, and drive the objective needs of the fans, are calling for truly technical content and data mining capabilities of the service provider.

On the one hand, the future of corporate Weibo will likely become the CRM (Customer relationship Management) micro-Bo version of--FRM (concern Relationship Management), through the company's meager account completed from customer service, technical support, customer care, brand marketing and other actions.

At the same time, many "micro-media" will also have the urgent need for their own fans to subdivide and filter, because only to restore the true face of each ID, even with each ID highly fit the needs of the interaction, this is the people-centric internet beyond the traditional Internet mode of value, It is also the core of their future establishment and promotion of their own media value.

On this level, Sina, Tencent, such as microblogging platform is clearly the most important force. At present, many of the data on Weibo are not completely transparent, and the data that can be analyzed by third parties are very limited. This may be the platform itself is aware of the value of data and have reservations, on the other hand, more realistic reason is also the limitations of their own technical capabilities, can not give a third party a safe, simple data mining and analysis of the interface. But whatever the reason, future Weibo data will become the water and air in the microblogging business ecosystem. The openness of these data is the trend and the key to the sustainable and healthy development of its own micro-blogging ecosystem.

In the future, no matter whether the use of the data is completely free or open, there is an urgent demand for the market. Even, through the platform to establish similar search engine advertising alliance, such as micro-blog advertising ecosystem, is not feasible. Because this kind of advertisement customer's one-way data open, not only can guarantee oneself to the value chain control power, but also can drive more participants to obtain the forward circulation development. Therefore, for Sina, Tencent and other enterprises, is a self-interest and ecosystem development can find an effective balance point of the way.

In any case, the microblogging platform should not be a simple flow convergence, nor should it be another new frontier for traffic patterns, but a social media with better organizational structure and communication effectiveness. It should burst into a more high-tech value than the traditional flow-type media.

The value of these more high-tech content is inseparable from more and more solid data support. To this seemingly very backstage thing strategic understanding, the open mind, as well as the technical ability, may precisely decide Sina, Tencent and so on enterprise in microblog next stage competition victory and defeat key. And this is to whether it really recognized the concept of "platform", and dare to put the vision of the ecological system of the great vision and the best embodiment of the great mind.

Micro-Media Influence list

In order to eliminate the impact of the original popularity on the value of the microblogging, the list only selected the recent Sina Weibo has been the most forwarded, non-star, non-traditional media microblogging account as a research object. In addition, taking into account the inherent limitations of the micro-blog content, we have in particular the popular topic type micro-blog and vertical domain type of micro-blog, to get "mass micro-media" and "focus on micro-media" two list, and in the selection of indicators on the difference.

In the two major aspects of the value of the fans and the content value, they are divided into 6 indexes.

The value of the fans, mainly from the scope of the impact range, including the number of fans, mention number, fan number of fans, geographical coverage and impact depth (fan interaction, active fans number), in order to play a similar role in TV program ratings.

In terms of content value, the average number of times each microblog is commented and forwarded, it represents its popularity and social awareness, while the original rate and content focus reflect the quality of its nature, and the amount of time the microblog sends (ie, on average, a few micro-blogs per day) and the daily distribution of microblogs shows its dimensions.

In the "Mass micro-media" list, for these micro-blog accounts, covering more and more extensive people is the key, but whether there is original content, and the user to form frequent interaction, the account does not have much impact. Therefore, in the "mass micro-media" evaluation indicators, we removed the content of original rate, focus on the level of interaction with fans 3. "Cold Jokes selected" (Weibo ID) The great success of the content of the "Hui hundred Director" approach is effective, very few original, welcome to submit is also a major feature of it. and the "mass micro-media" rankings and Sina Weibo published the "Grassroots People list" basically the same.

Although "mass micro-media" in the number of fans to occupy the first advantage, but the future of the white-hot competition will further squeeze their living space. Faced with no threshold, no industry-differentiated content, everyone needs to find some fun in daily life, and users are happy to forward and share. But have to face is, micro-blogging User Content also began to appear more diversified and specialized demand, blindly public entertainment for users to produce a limited viscosity. And more and more homogeneous, even hit the title, hit the contents of the situation has occurred. In fact, microblogging content sources are no more than SNS sites and forums, when more of the same type of micro-blog Account Mining Limited content, whether from the topic space, or living space, will face great squeeze.

and focus on the vertical area of the "sub-media" list has contributed a large number of dark horse. Of the 48 Weibo accounts in the list, only 13 are in the "Grassroots Talent List" published by Sina Weibo, and others are in the hundreds of accounts. As far as "the media of the audience" is concerned, the penetrating power and influence of the specific people formed by the professional content is the intangible wealth that is more precious and lasting. Therefore, for the "focus on the micro-media" value measurement, the content of the original and high-quality is more critical.

Many microblogging operators have realised that a vertical account for fans to solve their specific needs will be more valuable after the "mass micro media" has accumulated fan numbers.

Indeed, there are already fewer than 50,000 fans of "niche micro-media" into the list, such as the end of the list of data cut-off, Sina Weibo on the "I U.S. Only a little over 36,000 fans, but with the focus on the U.S. listing of the Chinese concept unit and the U.S. star shares of the news report, attracted dozens of senior investors, including Cai, Xiaoping and other well-known investors. And these heavyweight fans, as transmission nodes, will be able to radiate more than just 30,000 fans. In addition, there are a number of "sub-media" is obviously micro-bo "large" in the help of the push to the big belt small, although this practice some tricky, but as long as the content is strong, can attract accurate true fans.

The value system of these two lists is not further analyzed due to the limited amount of information available to the microblogging public. It is believed that the future value of "micro-media" will be more accurate as the data richness of the microblogging platform opens up. However, even from the current limited data conditions, we can see that the number of fans although the "micro-media" is an important factor in the influence, but it is not a decisive factor.

Noun Explanation:

Number of fans: Focus on Weibo (data from Sina Weibo, as of May 20, 2011)

Number of active fans: the number of fans who interact regularly (data from the microblog, as at May 20, 2011);

Mention rate: The number of tweets mentioned in Weibo, (data from Sina Weibo, as at May 20, 2011);

Number of Fans: sample to estimate the total number of followers of a Weibo fan (data from Sina Weibo, as of May 27, 2011);

Fan interaction: The average number of times each fan responds to each of its tweets. Formula: Fan interaction = (average number of tweets per tweet x3+ per tweet)/number of fans (data from the microblog, as at May 27, 2011);

Geographical Coverage Index: the standard deviation of the geographical distribution of the vermicelli can indicate whether the influence of this microblog is evenly distributed (the data originates from the micro-blog, as of May 27, 2011);

On average, each tweet is commented on (article): Total number of comments/tweets (data from the microblog, as at May 27, 2011);

The average number of tweets per tweet (times): The total number of forwarded/Weibo (data from the micro-blog, as of May 20, 2011);

Bo frequency (Bar/day): Micro-Blog total/registration days;

Original rate: The proportion of original information in micro-blogging (data from the micro-blog, as of May 27, 2011);

Time Distribution index: micro-blog Published time distribution standard deviation, indicating whether the average distribution of micro-blog every day. The greater the likelihood of being submerged, the worse the influence (the data comes from the microblog, as of May 27, 2011);

Content Focus: Sampling to obtain the proportion of the total number of microblogs associated with its focus range (data from Sina Weibo, as of May 27, 2011).

Classification of evaluations:

Because of the different types of micro-blog, we will be grassroots micro-media into mass micro-media and distribution of micro-media, mass media generally refers to the dissemination of information on life, health, fashion, trends, news, and so on, and the micro-media that everyone can be interested in. The medium of distribution is generally referred to the dissemination of science and technology, knowledge, music, film and television, as well as various types of commodity information media.

Because of the differences between the two types, we do not evaluate them in the same way. For the mass media, we mainly selected the number of fans, the number of active fans, mention rate, fan number of fans, geographical coverage index, the average of each micro-blog is commented (article), the average number of tweets per tweet (times), the frequency of the BO (article/day), Weibo time distribution index to evaluate, because the mass micro-media to cover a wide range of major characteristics, we ignore the fan interaction, original rate, content focus on the level of three indicators, in terms of weight also to the fan value tilt. On the contrary, we selected the number of fans, the audience, the number of active fans, fan number of fans, fan interaction, the average number of tweets per tweet (times), the frequency of the BO (Bar/day), the original rate, the time distribution index of Weibo, the content of the focus of several indicators, ignoring the reference rate, Geographical coverage index, the frequency of three index, at the same time the weight to the content value tilt.