Crack UGC's profit dilemma: Smart Content

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In 2006, Google's acquisition of YouTube marked the rise of the "user generated content, referred to as UGC" model. Subsequently, more and more Internet companies are keen to build the network platform, and the content on the platform to let users to complete.

In this model, it is true that many companies have achieved "great" results in attracting users, such as Wikipedia is the world's fifth-largest site, the number of active Facebook users 1.1 billion, and Instagram on the line after a week attracted 100,000 users. There are a number of such Internet services, including American Twitter, Pinterest, Yelp and Quora, and their respective Chinese imitators.

In the eyes of VCs, the value of these companies before they go public is measured by the number of users, and the number of users represents the potential for future income generation. For VC, it seems that there is a user, how to profit will be the problem. Yet it is embarrassing that most of these services are struggling to find business models on a huge user base.

Facebook was touted by the capital markets before it went public. However, its share price fell by half in the absence of performance support and dragged the entire U.S. technology sector into a slump. It was not until this spring that Facebook was turned over by mobile internet advertising. The hype at the time had been characterized as "irrational exuberance". Twitter, which has recently been listed, has not been profitable. Despite the size of the user community, Twitter has found that advertising services such as "Referral trends" and "referral messages" have little advertising, and users are still not interested in most ads. To this end, Twitter is fully developing a good relationship with the television industry, hoping to become a "second screen" outside the television.

Services such as Facebook and Twitter are still at the core of the business model, but in fact the overall market's advertising spending is basically fixed and fluctuates only with the economic cycle. Despite the entire advertising market, the Internet is robbing traditional media share, but "cake" is always limited, the major Internet services for the market will be a zero-sum game.

To address this problem, some people in the industry have recently begun to discuss what is known as "intelligent content". For brands that want to cover Internet users, it's not enough to just put banner ads and expect users to click on them. In our time, it is not clever to convey marketing information in a straightforward way. In recent years, UGC content on the internet has exploded, especially in pictures and videos. Publishers always want to make as much use of content as possible without causing user aversion. In order to carry out successful advertising campaigns, content-related advertising must be targeted, not repulsive, and used by the user to feel useful.

So how do you achieve such a goal? A simple way is to turn the UGC content itself into a service, that is, to insert the electrical link directly into the content. This is the idea of "intelligent content". Intelligent content is considered to be the key to the next electronic business revolution. Through the combination of business, media and technology, anything can be turned into intelligent content. Whether it is pictures, video, streaming media, maps or games, whatever the device, the content can be turned into "sales of goods counter." This brings the effect of "what you see." Through intelligent content, brand marketers can grasp the impulse of consumers to purchase, when consumers need to provide them with the goods immediately.

Yelp has done a good job in this respect. The UGC content on Yelp is mainly merchant reviews. When the user browses the content on Yelp, the goal is actually very clear, which is to know whether the merchant has a high rate of praise to determine whether to go to the merchant for consumption. On this basis, Yelp has developed a range of electronic business services, including ordering, check-in and delivery. This is for the user "strong demand" service, so the probability of being used is very high. With these electronic business services, Yelp earns a hefty income. Yelp's share price has risen more than twice-fold since its IPO last year.

The use of intelligent content to create interactive advertising experience is very suitable for the characteristics of social media platform. Targeting AD audiences with UGC content that is relevant on social networks can take advantage of the content itself (that is, on Yelp), or it can take advantage of its high level of participation (that is, the various interactions on Yelp where users talk to merchants).

At home, a number of Web sites and mobile applications have started this effort. Among them, watercress's scope of involvement is broader. For example, for many books in watercress, watercress offers an ebook purchase option. When a user is interested in a book and reviews it, they find it convenient to buy the book, so it is likely to produce impulsive buying behavior. And for watercress films, watercress has been in many cities to provide a choice of ticket services. As a result, flipping through the film critics also has a great chance of buying movie tickets directly. Recently, watercress also began to sell items through watercress, such as clothing and digital products. Although actual sales still occur in Taobao and Fank platforms, but these products are also a large number of watercress users discussed the topic.

In addition to watercress, some of the other social features of vertical Web sites are also doing so, such as from the start of the film review, the current time network to sell movie tickets, the sale of high-quality music shrimp nets, as well as the application of female shopping mushroom street and Beauty said.

One of the key points of this type of electronic business service is a seamless experience. If you can get a new product with just one click, the brand Advertiser creates an experience that consumers cannot refuse. For example, when you see a friend wearing a pair of jeans to take a cool picture, if only a few clicks can buy the same paragraph, then many people may be itching unbearable. Industry insiders believe that this kind of shopping impulse on social platforms will become the future of retail and consumer shopping, and intelligent content is the channel to achieve this effect.