There are millions of grassroots webmasters on the Internet, and tens of millions of personal websites. Some webmasters have gained a lot through the Internet platform, and some personal websites have also achieved great results. However, most personal webmasters are still in the initial stage of development, and their websites have not improved. Why can others succeed while some still linger?
On November 18th, Webmaster Network Forum’s Thursday chat event invited Xu Wei from the Pizhou Forum www.pzzc.net to share topics on operations and user accumulation in the initial stages of website development. This article summarizes some of the highlights of the chat. Discussions are welcome.
Question: In the early stages of a website, issues such as operations, user accumulation, and traffic are of great concern to webmasters. How did the Pizhou Forum solve these problems in its initial stage? How to build a user base and build your own brand?
Answer: In its initial stage, the Pizhou Forum was a people's livelihood forum focusing on "news media". It did not start from offline netizen activities like many local forums. In other words, in the local website, we stood at the beginning. Relying on the actual content on the website to attract visitors, when the website was first started in 2006, it was not expected to develop into a business forum today. It was just a place for people to talk and discuss matters. In the early stages of development, it did not involve any There is no so-called financial difficulty in business activities. The difficulty at that time was that netizens put this forum at the forefront of public opinion and put it in opposition to the government. Even now, we still exist in the cracks between the government and ordinary people. We must not only speak from the perspective of ordinary people, but also take the overall situation into consideration!
In its initial stage, online media in a small county town were not recognized by most people. Even now, online media in small counties are not as recognized by the public as in big cities. Sometimes I even introduce them to my family and relatives. Our company and our work are unable to communicate with them. They do not know much about this industry, and they also represent the vast majority of the people in this small county.
Four years of ups and downs have passed. In the past four years, what we have been trying to do is to let everyone understand online media and e-commerce. The company is making every effort to put " The brand of "Pizhou Forum" was established.
Question: The website introduction of the guests mentioned that the user stickiness is very strong, and it has cultivated many loyal users who "want to go to the Pizhou Forum and learn how to surf the Internet." I would like to ask the guests, how do you achieve this? Hope it can be explained in detail.
Answer: Our website was developed in the direction of "media" in the early days of development. In the early days, netizens came to the Pizhou Forum not to see what was delicious, drinkable and fun, but to see what news happened in Pizhou today. event! Users are sticky about the Pizhou Forum because they can see the big and small news events happening around them every day that they cannot see on the "Pizhou Radio and Pizhou TV Station".
Question: In the initial stage of the Pizhou website, it attracted users through tangible content. I would like to know what aspects of information you mainly enrich? How do you find information that "Pizhou Radio and Pizhou TV Station" cannot see, and how do you collect news events of all sizes around the people of Pizhou?
Answer: 1. Because the governments in small places are not very open-minded, the forum must speak for the people and always stand on the side of the people and some disadvantaged groups. 2. Cultivate or make good use of some grassroots reporters to record every big and small event that happens in the local area with pictures and texts. 3. There are a lot of things to see on the website every day, and it has effectively solved some problems for the people that cannot be solved in real life. This is the real reason for the Pizhou Forum to survive and increase its stickiness.
Question: An SEO person has improved the ranking of some keywords in a local forum. How can he retain users through effective methods? Moderators are the soul of a forum, and this is recognized by everyone. When selecting moderators, how do you choose them and what aspects do you focus on? A friend told me that to get traffic from the Internet, it is better to distribute two flyers locally. Do you think so? In terms of local forum promotion, I hope guests can share some experiences.
Answer: First, the Pizhou Forum has not done SEO from 2006 to now. Of course, I am not denying that SEO is not good. The local forums are all physical sites and do not rely on some deceptive keywords to attract users and defraud traffic.
Nowadays, the CEOs of many local websites have a background in website technology. Local forums are different from other websites. In fact, I hope that if these webmasters switch to local forums, they can honestly rely on content to attract users. The engine's keyword deception will only It can make users disgusted. No matter how good the SEO of the website is, if there is no substantive content, it will not be able to retain visitors!
Second, on the issue of moderators, I don’t want to say too much, because I am also an incompetent administrator. The Pizhou Forum has lost too many excellent moderators. The current situation of the forum is that the company’s editors are responsible, and the company’s The editor is the main one, and the moderator is the auxiliary to manage the forum. As you said, the moderator and super editor are the soul of the forum. It is really difficult to find a perfect or qualified one.
Third, DM single pages are distributed on the street, which is "forced" for you to read. If you encounter this situation while walking on the street, it's okay if you encounter one, but I think it's OK if you encounter more. It will be very offensive, but most netizens have this habit of only seeing what they want to see online. Just like coming to the Pizhou Forum, for some news or advertisements, they only choose what they need.
Question: Guest's website is currently run by several people. The annual profit is 400,000-500,000 yuan. Is the cost of labor deducted? What is the estimated operating cost for a year to operate such a website? How did we solve the problem of food and clothing for everyone in the early days? How to make your friends always have confidence in this website.
Answer: So far, there are 9 people. I can’t calculate the specific cost of one year’s operation. I can only roughly say that one month’s staff salary is about 1.5W. The annual profit is 400,000-500,000 yuan, all of which are income from forum advertising. In the early days of development, our company only had three people. Only when we make money can we support more people, right?
Question: The website has just started and I don’t know how to promote it! To be honest, it is simply impossible for the articles to be all original! But the readability of pseudo-original articles is too poor to retain customers! Very confused!
Answer: Pizhou Forum has not done any promotion or advertising from the beginning of the website to the present. It relies entirely on word-of-mouth effect. Because everyone knows that only here can the people speak and only here can the real voices of the people be heard.
Question: For local forum promotion, if the section setting focuses on commercial nature, this promotion and operation method will be very effective in finding suitable merchants to carry out activities together; but what if it focuses on communication and making friends? What kind of activities are suitable to be planned locally?
Answer: Pizhou Forum’s e-commerce can be said to have not yet started or is in its early stages. We only became profitable in 2009. In 2010, we have been exploring how to develop in a small county where there is not much awareness of online e-commerce. Cooperate with businesses.
The road is difficult to navigate, because now, except for those born in the 1980s, many businesses do not agree with online media. They will still choose radio and television stations for advertising, which is called "authoritative" in their eyes. I think in a place like ours, if the forum is made to focus on “making friends, having fun, eating and drinking”, then the forum will not be far from death.
Q: What I am most concerned about is how to increase the enthusiasm of moderators and how to make users become repeat customers and "long-term customers."
Answer: In fact, you can search on Baidu for your question, and you can get many answers. They will all be written in an organized manner and they will be better than me. The important thing is that you should choose how to manage it and what kind of moderator is most appropriate according to the situation of your website. When the website is corporate, it is all about editorial responsibility. The most important thing is to be able to recruit a few editors with strong writing skills.
Question: I would like to ask the guests, what should we pay attention to in the initial stage of website development? How should development plans be planned? What are the most common problems encountered? The biggest problem? How to solve it? Are there any details that should be paid attention to in the layout of the website homepage? Thanks!
Answer: The most important thing in the initial stage of website development is the content. The website layout, style, and pages are all secondary. Some webmasters like to frequently change the layout and style of the website. This is not a way to retain visitors. Frequently changing the layout of the website will only make repeat visitors "recognized", and it will cost a fortune to go to a place they often come to. What do you think when you find what you want? Do Baidu Tieba and Tianya Forum rely on layout and style to retain users?
Q: Hello, guest! With all due respect, the programs and templates of the Pizhou Forum are not perfect yet; the classification of the forum sections is unclear and a bit messy; and the forum management is negligent, with posts from the food section being posted to the real estate section; the number of clicks and replies on posts is limited. In terms of website page design, your website is not a good one. However, your website has an annual profit of 400,000-500,000 yuan. You can still make money even if the quality of the forum is not very high. This is the way to make money that I want to learn from you.
Answer: The website is based on P8, so all functions and points are by default. We will take your suggestions seriously. It is not easy to recruit several capable and qualified editors to manage the website in a small county like ours.
But what I can explain is that the forum has been around for almost five years now. Regarding the forum’s traffic, the number of posts, and the number of clicks on the posts. We have never done anything fake and have always been very down-to-earth. Regarding the management of the website, I have already mentioned it before, and I have been exploring it.
Question: The advertising revenue of the Pizhou Forum is good. I would like to ask when it first started, did customers advertise based on the traffic?
Answer: Until now, they haven’t looked at it because they don’t know what “traffic” is. In our place, if you advertise to tell customers how much "traffic" your website has, it's almost like playing the piano to an ox. This is the difference in awareness of online media between small counties and prefecture-level cities.
Question: The topic of today’s chat is to discuss the problems encountered in the early stages of website development. Before the website is profitable, it will encounter the darkness before dawn, but after persevering through this period, the road ahead will be much smoother. I would like to invite a guest to give some specific suggestions to webmasters who are still struggling in the most difficult transition period in the initial stage of website development, to help webmasters who are still in the difficult early stage of development overcome the difficulties. Guests can talk about their own experiences or provide some guiding suggestions.
Answer: 1. As a friend of the local website, I hope everyone will work hard to create a good content.
2. I’m really sorry. Today I also became a Huifiqian person. I can’t discuss some of the problems the website encountered in the initial stage with everyone on the post, because some things can be said but not written. QQ and Mengjiang We communicated and were understood.
3. Most importantly, I hope everyone will persist. If we had given up when we encountered difficulties, there would be no Pizhou Forum today.
Finally, I hope that everyone will do a good job in the content, and don’t use the ideas of technical webmasters to build local forums, and don’t copy other people’s successful methods to your own site, because the network awareness in your region is different, and the paths are also different.
The website is a platform for users to communicate. How to make users like this platform and stay here, the content is undoubtedly the most attractive. There was no special magic weapon in the early stages of Pizhou Forum's development. It was to provide users with a large amount of rich information that was not available elsewhere, thus accumulating batch after batch of loyal users and achieving today's results. Nowadays, it is necessary for individual webmasters to build a website, design perfect pages, and optimize website keywords, but only content is the foundation of the website. No matter how fancy information is, it is just embellishment, and the connotation is the most critical. (Text/Compiled by Meng Jiang)
Thank you Mengjiang for your contribution