The social media that we've been through over the years

It's written in front of you.

Recently and some peers (engaged in social marketing) in-depth exchanges, found that the industry changes quickly, is not the original micro-blog marketing era. This is a rapidly changing industry, some people may have just entered the plan to leave, but also some people always complain but always insist. From the outset, we are not familiar with the microblogging, in addition to coping with a variety of social tools and platforms, but also always pay attention to the overall trend. The process of communication also let me re-examine myself from the beginning into the social marketing industry to the current process, so I would like to share one or two.

No social media age

Talking about social media having to start with its ancestor, Facebook, is the 2008 years that Facebook has not been discovered by the organization. Facebook has been on fire all over Hong Kong in 08, and the people who use Facebook in the eyes of the young people mean it's cool, so I started using it as a follower. At the time, domestic estimates of social media were not available, and more people might only know the existence of Facebook-led social networking sites.

Shortly thereafter, the network and happy net, which symbolized the ancestor of the domestic social networking site, began to take hold. Many people through the network to find a long-lost lover or primary school at the same table, and many people through the social networking games to meet new men and women friends. See around the small partners are gradually starting to use domestic social products, and Facebook was "organized" stare, so I began to follow together with the network and net.

To 2009 years, the net and happy net have their own clear positioning. University of higher education students to occupy the net, while sitting in the office of the "Bones" are to occupy the net. At that time, whether the network or net is a pure Internet products, have not been "evil" brand owners stare, and college students and white-collar workers are also in their respective fields to play. And I occasionally on the net to play stealing food games, occasionally on the campus and college girls to catch up, then the domestic social networking site is a pure paradise. It was not until July 09 that the peace was finally broken, and the web was followed by Facebook's public homepage service.

The introduction of a public homepage means that not only celebrity celebrities can gather their own fans, they can also sell their products through the public homepage. Although the network has just started to open only a handful of stars, movies and brands of public home, but Facebook's public homepage has become a favorite place for major brands, many large brands have to open a public homepage in the way to engage in marketing activities. That's the behavior of the network, and I started to get in touch with the marketing of social networks.

At that time I was engaged in the offline party planning work, the party's target group is the university student, each party will ask the participant to register the name and the contact method. So how to make use of the information resources of these users? If you send a message directly or even make a phone call, users will be able to resist, if you do not use this information is very wasteful, and then the net is the real name registration, so we decided to maintain customer relationship through the net.

For some friends around or some old customers, the net account can play a certain role in maintaining. Perhaps because of the relationship between acquaintances, some of the familiar customers will be in the account and we interact. But the effect on some of the new clients is not that obvious, either not adding us or not interacting with us.

The same year was July, as the first to copy micro-blogging mode to China's rice because the "organization" stared, so the site was closed indefinitely. At that time because they do not belong to the depth of the Internet users, so there is no use of rice products, feel a pity.

and the opportunity of Sina Weibo

August 09 Sina Weibo began to beta, and thousands of oak Group also announced the official network of the net. At that time I was still wandering in Renren and happy between the idea is not enough, just May time on Twitter registered an account, so also not too clear what Weibo is. Until May 10, I was surrounded by a very tide of small partners who asked me to play Sina Weibo, and said that many Hong Kong stars are playing. So, in the Curiosity driven I also registered an account, from now on Sina Weibo is one of the loyal users. Before long, Sina users announced that the registered user broke 50 million. But also in that period of time, around the small partners began to gradually from happy net, Renren transferred to the Sina Weibo.

The first time to participate in the operation of the non-public nature of the microblog account is due to the work of the relationship, engaged in offline activities planning many times need to use the power of the network to promote. From the operation experience of Renren we find that although the activity of the account release is not very strong, but Renren will be able to take part in our activities of the old customers gather together, as long as we have a new activity they can be the first time to know, this in the virtually cultivate a small group of loyal customers.

As for Sina Weibo, we hope to be able to transplant this customer-gathering approach to the past, so that we can get everyone involved in our activities in the first place. But the initial effect is not very obvious, because Sina Weibo and Renren is a big difference is that Sina Weibo is not to "add friends" mechanism to contact users, but the "fan" system. That means we focus on a user, but that user does not necessarily come back to focus on us, so our account fans are growing very slowly. Then we gradually return to the focus of the operation of Renren, and gradually abandoned Sina Weibo.

If the first operation of Sina's account is to try to grope, then the second operation is really leading me into the social media field.

Still is the summer of 10, out of the love of the clothing industry, coupled with the unlimited opportunities for the internet, my friends and I decided to set up a reliance on internet sales of the crowdsourcing apparel brand. We were planning to build a platform where every customer was a designer, and we were responsible for helping them make the design into a kind of our brand and then put it on the market for sale. As the head of the whole project, in addition to the preparation and coordination of the main task outside the project or brand promotion. To promote the cost of consideration, we only delineated the offline exhibition and online promotion two ways. And in many forms of network promotion we are most familiar with only social networking sites, so our focus of promotion is also placed above.

Popular Sina Weibo became my preferred place to promote the brand, but because the account has just opened, the number of fans is basically single-digit, so the brand exposure and awareness are very low. For a new brand, the first batch of fans is critical and determines whether a brand can be done. Do creative crowdsourcing brand and do traditional clothing brand may be different, the early stage we do not have the entity to support its own brand, and we are still in the preparatory stage, so the content source of Micro Bo is a headache problem.

The grassroots growth of Sina Weibo

For a microblog without content, what does a fan pay attention to? So I started to look at other grassroots accounts and see how they operate. It was very popular at that time to focus on the "@ Cold jokes selected", "@ Global fashion" and so on, but their content is basically a single source. In particular, the same fashion category "@ Global fashion" content is basically a foreign street on the site of the picture plus a few words "very beautiful", "good beautiful good like" a kind of copy, but because the picture is very beautiful, so also very popular fans.

After summing up several micro-broad operating methods, I decided to focus on the content of micro-blog in the trend of fashion, mainly introduce some street trends, share some street racket modelling and trend of a single product. The content source is the official website of some big brand and some foreign trend information portal. Hope to be able to use some related content will accumulate the fan slowly, and then occasionally inserts some and own product related content to promote the brand.

With content as the basis of the overall operation, and then through the spread of acquaintance relations after the proliferation of fans began to have a preliminary growth, but the overall growth rate is very slow. After one or two weeks, the fan is still less than three digits, the growth rate is estimated to wait until the thousands of fans after the brand is no longer exist. So began to study the other same type of grass-roots account of some of the powder strategy, whether there is a way to quickly grow fans? In those days, the sale of fans was not popular, so I didn't get any information or channels. )

After observing a period of time, I found that the micro-blog is very popular one approach is "attention and then Cancel", which is commonly known as "cheat powder" way to get more exposure, now the industry also has a more pleasant to say that "accurate fan access." In the case of curiosity about the effect, I started my own "cheat powder" career. At the beginning did not feel the doorway, the fan return is not very ideal, attention hundreds of fans each day, the rate of return to the powder is only dozens of. And there was no such thing as a "fan toolbox" or "Green Buddha", which was a fan-managed application, so it was basically sitting in front of a computer every day, clicking on a large fan and then focusing on one location.

The rate of return has not been promoted, so I changed the focus of the strategy, to select some and my account type similar to a number of large to pay attention to. For example, I am engaged in the trend information broadcast, I choose some of the fashion industry large. The Times, Fashion Street, and everything was large, but there were only a handful of three or four of them on the street, and I was one of them, so the fans were buying it. In addition, I also through the Sina Weibo search tag with relevant industry key words of the micro-blog account, this way can be a one-time batch of attention to many accounts, so it is also a shortcut.

After changing the focus on the strategy, the rate of return began to rise slowly, because Sina found many accounts through this way to cheat powder, so the concern limit, each day account can only focus on about 500 fans, and then become only concerned about 300. What is the rate of fan return in the case of accurate attention, that is, the attention of 300 fans each day will have nearly 200 or more back powder. That means you can get at least 1000 fans a week, and a one-month increase in the number of five thousand or six thousand fans. This is a significant growth figure compared to previous ones.

Here may be some people will ask, Sina Weibo total concern number is 2000 caps, if the rate of return to more than 1000, the total number of attention should be close to 2000? What if the total number of "attention" is full? Full of course is to cancel the attention of another group of fans. That means maybe I've been focusing on 300 fans by 12 o'clock this evening, and after a day or two, the total number of "attention" is almost full, and I need to focus on the cancellation of the first couple of days and pay attention to another new group of fans. For this kind of transition frequently cancels the attention the movement, the powder drop situation did not imagine bad. Although it's easy to offend fans by saying that I've focused on them and then canceling their attention, most fans will buy into my account because my content satisfies the needs of the fans.

In the end, Sina Weibo has a variety of restrictions, such as "active attention" and "cancellation of attention" in one day, the two actions can only operate on 300 users and so on, the return of fans also began to decline. However, due to the emergence of a variety of fan management tools, but also greatly facilitate a lot of grassroots account. With Sina Weibo users slowly smart up, plus Sina official restrictions, the rate of return is also declining day by day. So I started looking for new ways to get fans.

On the sly, Sina Weibo has a lot of groups like the "Mutual Powder Alliance", which can increase the number of fans on its account as long as they are added to the group. But this way only exists in the exchange between small accounts, after all, no matter how the powder can not grow one months tens of thousands of fans, so another organization appears.

There is an organization called "Cross Alliance" between the same level of large size, the blogger and blogger will be between the content of each other, through this mutual forwarding way to absorb each other's potential fans. For example, I'm a 100,000-magnitude trend, so I'm going to look for some of the same 100,000-level fashion tuba, and then we'll swap the content for forwarding. I'd like to post a story about female street today, so I'm going to say hello to a blogger with the same level and content and women. Next time, the blogger has a trend-related content that I can forward for her.

In the beginning, the conversion rate is not high, perhaps a microblog can only bring dozens of fans, and the number of forwarding only a few 10. Later, after the study found that the need for the overall content of the strategic adjustment, the exchange of content if it can be forwarded to the fan nature of the blogger or some of the current hot content of the creation of a more likely to trigger a higher degree of transmission. The frequency of exchange forwarding begins to decline due to the need to create two of the content, but in order to bring higher quality fans, it can only improve the quality of the content and reduce the number of swaps.

"Directed attention" and "resource swap" two kinds of powder up strategy in the early stage can be very effective to help the grassroots large fast powder, with the number of fans more and more, micro-blog Matthew effect (the more fan account more easily access to other fans of the priority attention) is more and more obvious. Sina Weibo in the early days of crazy development, micro-blog registered users are "small white" status, they do not know what micro-bo, then will choose to pay attention to a lot of different accounts, which is to do grassroots Weibo account an opportunity. I have also developed a number of accounts in both ways.

The smell of copper on Sina Weibo

In the early stage of operating the grassroots content number, only to consider the convenience of brand promotion in the future and ignore some of the existing micro-blogging business behavior. Remember that time has been three points in the world, in the Sina Micro-bo grassroots size Top 50 account number, Cai won 25, Du Zi built 15, the other 10 belong to "Wine red ice Blue." Every day basically can see different media in the story of their scenery feat, especially du Master's legendary deeds are Bo main circle no one knows.

The initial microblogging account is the hope that the use of micro-blog to promote brand marketing, but due to the partners in the direction of the brand of the problem and disagreement, and ultimately our brand in the profit model is not clear to die. But it is precisely because of the exploration and trial of Weibo, but also let me explore another seemingly very "money" industry.

The first time to know that you can make money through Weibo account is due to a brand through letters to find me, said they are holding a microblogging award-forwarding activities, hoping to use my account to help them forward content. They paid me 50 yuan for a forwarding, because my account was only a little over 10,000 fans, so the price is not high. But it was this experience that made it clear to me that I was starting to enter the industry because of the commercial forwarding that got me started with some of the profit models of micro-broad.

After that, slowly I began to contact more and more bloggers and brands, and found that the industry is very promising but it is a deep water industry. Because of the lack of uniform standards, so many very messy unspoken rules, and bloggers offer a variety of. At that time, in contact with the blogger, fans only more than 10,000 bloggers can earn more than 1000 2000 yuan in the forwarding fee, and tens of millions of fans of the blogger has tens of thousands of to a hundred thousand of of the monthly income. After smelling the smell of money, some of my little friends and I started to move again.

At that time, there are many ways to make quick money, one of which is to use their own account to continue to send ads will flow guide to Amoy Bora Brush, brush and then go to pick up the goods and then use a different account diversion. And so on several times down, also can obtain a small profit. Another approach is relatively more "bandit", because at the time there are all the companies selling zombie powder, can buy or make their own large number of fans to create many more than a hundred thousand of "large". And in order to create a more realistic account, forwarding and comments also need to combine the corresponding number of fans to fake. This method can create a number of vertical accounts, and finally by helping the brand to forward business micro-blog profit.

Quick money can easily destroy the industry's order and rules, as more and more people into the industry to make fast money, micro-blog bubble is growing, to the last hundreds of thousands of fans of the account forwarding a micro-BOCAI receive advertisers a few dollars forwarding fee. Not long after, my little friends and I withdrew from the business before the bubble burst.

The social marketing start of the brand

In the summer of 10, every guest, as the first batch of Sina's official Weibo brand, started the first Battle of Weibo marketing on Weibo. At that time, all the guests to find Han, Dan, such as a group of youth idols to create a popular network of "where the object." "Love the Internet, Love freedom, love to sleep late, love to eat snacks love, who I am who." "The copy spread like a virus on the Internet. And many netizens also played their own strength, to create a variety of spoof version, "Where the object" to the climax. And every guest is also in my opening Sina Weibo has encountered the first through the commercial approach to create a huge volume of sound brand.

At the end of that year, Renren's social media advertising platform finally launched a successful shot, and Uniqlo's queuing game allowed major brands to see the opportunities brought by social media. At that time, Uniqlo took only two weeks, and the number of participants reached more than 1 million. A new page to open Renren, is basically the small partners in the Uniqlo queue information Brush screen.

Recall that Uniqlo was the game mechanism, in fact very simple. Login Renren account and go to the activity page of Uniqlo, select the role queued and post to their own new things can be at every 5 minutes to participate in a queue. Queue can participate in Uniqlo lottery, prizes have iPhone4, iPad, travel coupons, Special Edition commemorative T shirt and so on. In the queue process can also be queued with a friend chat to increase the interest of waiting. Through the social relationship between friends and friends spread, plus the odds of a great win, so caused a sea of people situation.

After a variety of brands continued marketing baptism, the domestic social marketing concept slowly rise, the social era has finally arrived. Then appear Durex hot occasion, seabed fishing you will not learn these classic cases, but also let the industry slowly appear in the public eye. The birth of a new industry will inevitably trigger a lot of speculators to stop, but also attract many good people to argue, will attract a large group of onlookers watching the lively. And I have gradually become a practitioner from a speculator in this industry and started my career as an agent.

Not to be guessed by party a

The advent of the era of social marketing, nature can not ignore the protagonist of this era, brand owners. In the advertising circle circulating such a classic copy "party A abused me times, I treat party A as first love", to express the agent (Party B) on the various requirements of party a helpless and compromise.

From the entry to the present contact a lot of big and small each different party A, there are conscientious and prudent small boss, has management only two or three people but the annual income but tens of millions of "small business owners", but also the world's 500 strong international enterprises market department. In these companies, the mindset of both employees and bosses is often rejected.

First talk about the smart small boss of this group, they are most of them are some chain operators to join the brand, the most typical of the catering industry, consumer entertainment industries or slimming beauty industry. These small bosses may have a few to more than 10 different stores, but everything will be pro. This group also has two types of small bosses, one is the older generation of businessmen, the other is a new entrepreneur.

There is no concept of a KPI in the eyes of the older generation of merchants, as there is no need for specifics. "I don't want to see how many fans or how many forwards, you tell me this thing can bring a few people to my shop every month to spend on it" this is the older generation of businessmen often on the tip of the tongue. So when talking to them about marketing, the most direct measure is ROI, which is the ROI of the settled. They don't know what social media is, and they don't have time to listen to your presentation. But they are well aware of the two of tweets and micro-letters, because many "industry lecturers" will tell them that these two things can be used to make money.

Most of the new entrepreneurs are the main force of the group, part of which has a turtle background, a number of entrepreneurial experiences, and some of the prestigious MBA titles. There may not be a veteran businessman with a senior business experience, but they have a mentality of being willing to try anything new. They often say they want to use real effective interaction as a KPI, but as a businessman, ROI is always the ultimate measure of their psychology. For every expense of marketing, sometimes they are even more accurate than the older generation.

The second is the SME marketing department head, their enterprises are already reached a certain scale, and they are also generally a number of professional "busy person." Although they cannot make final decisions, corporate bosses tend to delegate power to plan and arrange them, and they are also influential at the decision-making level. In early contact with such party A, usually their microblog is the company's marketing department or sales department in turn management, or a trainee to take over this piece. At the end of the period, micro-letters arose, and they managed them themselves. For social media, they use new media to generalize.

As they often attend the exchange activities of their peers, they also learn about microblogs or micro-letters from their peers, and also know the importance of them. Suffer from the limitations and inexperience of their companies, so they outsource this business to some companies or teams to run. One of the most vexing problems for people is the uneven level of operating agents in the industry, the high prices of experienced operating agents, and the large amount of water that is often present in low price operating agents.

The third is the world's top 500 international enterprises of the market, these enterprises are basically well-known brands. In the early days of the rise of social media in China, many of their social media operations were run by the digital marketing Department of the 4-a advertising agency, but later found that these 4 A were not only highly quoted, but they chose some local agents with a 4A background.

The social operations of these brands are generally owned by the marketing team or the PR department, and some of the brands will have their own independent social media departments. These are usually the best "serve", but the most difficult to "serve". Good "serve" because they basically understand the rules of social media operation, so the proposal when the agents do not have to pay a lot of words to express clearly, difficult to "wait" because they think they know more than the agents of social media operating rules, in the feasibility of the general nitpicking.

No matter what kind of party a, we all have a common goal, is to hope that the brand through social media to produce a certain effect. In the initial contact or proposal, the brand and the operation may be the relationship between party A and B, but once the relationship between the two sides is established, it is more like a friendly little partnership. While there will be small disagreements or unpleasant events, it is the most harmonious and friendly moment when people stand on the same side against other brands.

Industry openness and sharing

After talking about the nature of the party to talk about this industry peers in some of the atmosphere of the situation. Since stepping into the industry has found that there is a problem has been a concern, is the theoretical school and the practice of controversy. Theorists think that the practitioners of the practice of the lack of systematic thinking blindly implementation, the practice of the people who think the theory of the people say not to do pure flicker. So what is the right one?

First of all, on the theoretical pie, in my years of social media industry observation, there are many different types of theoretical school, consultants, professional lecturers and so on. This group of people is basically social people, they are active every day in various online or offline forums to impart knowledge, can also call them "professional missionaries." Among them, professional lecturers have their own set of marketing theory, and these theories are often called the value of millions or billions, ordinary people can not easily access, unless pay to listen to their courses.

Professional lecturers can be said to be the most profitable and fastest earner in the industry because they have tens of thousands of courses to move. They are also the people who contribute the most to the industry because they have the arduous task of educating the market. Without their classes, it is not likely that so many people are aware of the importance of social media.

There are a lot of people in this industry who are envious of professional lecturers, saying that they always take other people's case to go out and cheat more, and I happen to have some different opinions. Although most of the professional lecturers lack actual implementation, their theories are not entirely without merit. To skim away a small number of lecturers who make quick money, most lecturers do their homework before imparting knowledge or sharing ideas, at least the things they share will have practical examples to support. Existence is reasonable, others can do the case of success, there will always be a place worth learning.

Although the practice of truth, but non-stop to practice and lack of summary, it is easy to fall in the same place more than a few times. The theorists have just played a role in helping the practitioners to comb their experience and straighten out the strategy. If according to their own experience you feel that there is merit, do not imitate one or two, if you feel absurd boring, that big can not ignore. Some people are good at doing implementation, some are good at summarizing and having their own strengths. However, for those who are involved in the industry, it is advisable to listen to the practitioner's advice first, or you will lose yourself in the industry.

Talk about the practice of socialization marketing, the practice of the people who have advertising and grassroots origin of two kinds. The basic advertising is engaged in the advertising industry for many years, the battle-scarred, advertising and marketing have their own unique insights or mature marketing system. Grassroots is to do micro-broad or do event hype and then switch to do marketing, they do not have formal advertising training, but most of them have a lack of advertising network sense, netizens or network events have a good control.

In addition to having a fight with theorists, the practice faction has a small range of battles inside. Some professional advertisers feel that grassroots people are very low-level, always use some of the three vulgar content to hype brands. And some grassroots feel professional advertising people are very loaded, at all, take strategy or big idea to scare. In addition, they are in awe of each other, professional advertisers will learn some of the grassroots grounding of the practice, and the grassroots will be summed up professional advertisers mature system.

Previously engaged in social marketing of the practice of most Shing, meet nothing more than talk about the recent one or elder sister to jump to which 4 A, who who who's team recently left. Most of the recent interactions between peers have started talking about their marketing experience or analyzing and summarizing a case, an atmosphere that has made the industry more interesting.

I remember visiting a company that was engaged in social media data analysis, and the company's philosophy has so far kept me from remembering new. Continuous learning, common progress, open sharing is their basic idea. The founder of the company believes that social media work is a job that needs to be constantly updated. Today, you learned a new knowledge, maybe tomorrow will be outdated, so in this industry no one who is the teacher. Everyone needs to progress together, even the CEO itself, have the opportunity to become your students.

In addition, open sharing is also their spiritual philosophy, only good at sharing can grow better. So they have regular in-house sharing, and everyone needs to tell everyone about their recent discoveries. They also have a professional knowledge of the reserve department, responsible for the most advanced ideas and share. In the process of sharing their own insights, not only can help others can also help to comb the adjustment, is a double win behavior.

Open sharing, learning turnover. For a new industry, whether theoretical or practical school, mutual support, common progress, why not?

Every change is the beginning of innovation

Unconsciously, it is the summer of 13. From contact with this industry began, more than three years of socialization process, watching the domestic industry changes. And I, also from doing personal grassroots micro-blogging operations, set up a studio service to small customers, the advertising circle to serve the top 500 brands, to now enter the Internet technology Circle for the brand to provide creative technology integration services.

Every era is always the strategy and opportunity of that era, whether it is a grassroots micro-bo era, the enterprise official micro-marketing era, or large data under the social age. Every change in the Times is also the beginning of innovation, including the recently popular micro-letter 5.0 reform. Change is not an end, but a new beginning. Faith Open Learning mentality, we common progress!

Note: Part of the paper is from the network. Original articles, All rights reserved, reproduced please specify the author and source. Thank you for your cooperation! "

Author: @ Open Kefen

Currently engaged in digital marketing work, responsible for brand communication in the technical aspects of the creative strategy part. If you are interested in Internet business, you might want to scan the above two-dimensional code to add my public micro-letter: A business note to start (or micro-mail search: Kaifans).