What is the value of KOL?
Simply put, the value of KOL lies in improving the efficiency of operation, which will be reflected differently in different types of products. The purpose of operation is nothing more than innovation, promotion and transformation. Let's illustrate how KOL embodies its value in these links from several product examples.
First of all, Racine, you have to mention the early operation of Weibo. In the early days, Weibo invited well-known entrepreneurs and stars to settle in. These well-known Weibo bloggers were KOL from early Weibo. It is these people who have settled in that attract a large number of ordinary users to join Weibo, pay attention to them and interact with them. The application of "celebrity effect" contributed to the rapid growth of early users in Weibo, so that many products were learning this trick from Weibo later. For example, the popular answer some time ago was to invite many celebrities to settle in, which has obvious effect on attracting new users.
Let's talk about promotion activity first, which is more common in community products. In the early days, there were a large number of online celebrities and online celebrity posts in Puff and Tianya Community, which often became explosive posts. The existence of these kols among network celebrities is very effective for active communities. So is Weibo. The existence of a large number of kols often makes Weibo a battlefield of public opinion. Every KOL is like an army general, and fans of TA are like soldiers. As soon as KOL makes a move, it will inevitably lead to the soldiers at the bottom. What's more, some users often use a product because of the existence of a KOL. For example, someone uses Weibo to see the daily updates of a blogger they like.
Finally, the transformation. In some products, KOL can transform from free users to paying users, and from ordinary users to advanced users. Internet celebrities are typical of doing e-commerce. KOL relies on its influence and fans' trust to sell goods and promote the transformation of sales.
How to dig KOL?
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of KOL mining, one is external invitation and the other is internal cultivation. According to the product's functional positioning and user groups, choose the way to mine KOL and the type of KOL.
After determining the target candidates of KOL, we can invite them through the contacts of team members, hook up in places where such people gather, and even invite them through interest. Weibo and Fenan gathered the earliest KOL through external invitation. In the early days, Zhihu also used external invitations. In addition to inviting celebrities to settle in Zhihu, we also invited some good people to join us and encourage them to contribute high-quality content. The early semi-open invitation system introduced new people, and also brought a number of high-quality users to Zhihu, and later became well-known respondents.
Another way is internal cultivation, and early forums and communities are particularly good at it, such as Puffs, Tianya, Sister with Milk Tea, and Xiaoxing Yi the Beast. Nowadays, many network celebrities have made their fortune in these communities, and they have heard some stories about cats becoming popular on the Internet from friends, but they know little about the operation mode of cats and the cultivation of KOL. However, I can take the community where I used to run as an example to talk about how we trained KOL. We are a local living community, and there are many kols in the community. They have distinct personalities and are very famous in the community. In the community operation, the tour edition is essential. This process can help us understand the habits and characteristics of users according to the content published by them, and also find some active users or users with distinctive characteristics. As long as the resources of these users are slightly tilted in the operation, such as recommending their content to the home page, they can get great exposure. After getting high exposure, we will encourage them to be more active and publish more high-quality content, thus entering a virtuous circle and gradually forming personal influence. Even do some activities to dig out people who meet the product temperament, give them enough publicity and exposure, and make the product a KOL.
How does KOL operate?
KOL's operation will be slightly different from that of ordinary users. One thing to consider is to strike a balance between meeting their needs and improving their operational efficiency. KOL's needs are often spiritual, so it is very important to get TA's attention and recognition.
For example, Zhihu will edit and recommend the content produced by high-quality respondents, make popular recommendations, publish in the daily newspaper and push the official WeChat account. Some high-quality content will also be shared in its official Weibo, which can make high-quality content get more exposure. For content producers, the happiest thing is that their content will get more readers, and these recommendations will also enable the author to continuously improve his popularity, which is exactly what KOL needs.
Then there are offline activities for KOL, such as the Super Red Man Festival in Weibo, which is the offline conference of Super KOL. Every year in Zhihu, there is a salt society gathering, and famous answers are gathered in Zhihu. These offline activities are extremely important to enhance KOL's reputation, identity and sense of belonging to products. Many Zhihu interviewees are proud to be invited to join Zhihu Salt Society.
We just said that the purpose of operating KOL is to improve operational efficiency, so besides satisfying KOL operation, how can we let it help us operate? On the one hand, meeting the needs of KOL can make it make more contributions to products, on the other hand, it can also amplify the value of KOL in activities. For example, we make an online education product for junior high school students. There are many famous teachers in our product, and the famous teacher is the KOL of our product. We plan an activity, that is, bring in famous teachers and let them interact with students on topics, and the effect of the activity will be greatly improved. This has improved our operational efficiency to a certain extent, and also narrowed the distance between famous teachers and students, thus enhancing the personal influence of famous teachers.
Some points for attention when contacting KOL.
KOL is very important to operators, so it is essential for operators to establish personal contact with KOL, and some matters should be paid attention to when contacting KOL, otherwise it will cause some bad effects.
What should I do when KOL conflicts with ordinary users? In product operation, conflicts between users are common, and the operation only needs to be carried out according to product rules, but the conflict between KOL and ordinary users is not so simple. Just following the product rules may be bad for KOL, so in this case, the official treatment should be fair, follow the rules, and then comfort KOL privately. Official handling must not be biased, which will make the official lose credibility among users and is not conducive to the sound development of products. Don't judge each other in private appeasement, and beware of the disclosure of chat content.
You can't use your personal authority to give KOL some privileges or conveniences. KOL should get some privileges according to the product rules, but it can't be given privileges or some care because of personal relationship, which will have a bad influence on other users of the product.
Don't disclose products and official information to KOL. Many products and official information are not suitable for users to know. You can't disclose these contents to KOL through personal relationships.
So much for KOL's operation. There are still many things that need to be explored slowly at work. Product operation without KOL is not a good operation. Recognizing the value of KOL, mining KOL in work and operating it through effective methods are very helpful to improve operational efficiency.