Microblogging platforms have been dominating the internet for each sector, namingly Tumblr, Instagram, Medium, Blogger, and Linkedin etc. With the AI trends, people will be developing Ai tools for microblogging and social networking with no doubt. This article takes a look at how a Chinese microblogging platform became the top creative platform among other mature social platforms.
Key Takeaways:
- Reasons for why Tumblr and Instragram are successful, individual expression customization and accessibility.
- Niche communities may be small, but they are active consumers, aka addicts, who are very willing to pay and subscribe monthly.
- As long as you can identify pain points of fandom groups, the likelihood of conversion can be unexpectedly high, probably higher than using ads.
- List of metrics to track that are critical to product development and product marketing teams.
The Blog for Creators in China
LOFTER, the brainchild of NetEase, was launched in late August 2011 as a light blogging service aimed at a niche demographic of artistic youth. Initially, LOFTER stood out among NetEase’s offerings by adopting an independent domain and promoting the slogan "Focus on interests, share creativity." This platform was designed to provide a high-quality, user-friendly blogging tool that emphasized originality and simplicity, quickly capturing the attention of internet-savvy individuals, including photographers, illustrators, and writers.
LOFTER emerged during a period when traditional blogs were facing stiff competition from microblogging sites like Weibo. The concept of light blogging, which LOFTER embodied, sought to bridge the gap between the expressive nature of traditional blogs and the social, shareable aspects of microblogs. This unique positioning allowed LOFTER to offer a fresh and appealing platform for users who valued both self-expression and community interaction.
Despite the promising start, LOFTER faced challenges in gaining the same traction as its international counterparts like Tumblr and Instagram, largely due to cultural differences and the less open, less inclusive environment in China compared to the United States. However, LOFTER adapted and evolved by focusing on its core strengths and the needs of its users.
Comparing with Tumblr and Instagram
Tumblr is a new media form that lies between traditional blogs and microblogs, emphasizing both expression and social interaction, and it focuses on customization, making it one of the most popular social networking sites among young people today. On the other hand, Instagram integrates many social elements on mobile, including establishing friend relationships, replies, sharing, and collections. This is the greatest value of Instagram existing as a service rather than just an app.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a new media form that lies between traditional blogs and microblogs, emphasizing both expression and social interaction, and it focuses on customization, making it one of the most popular social networking sites among young people today.
Tumblr places a high value on customizability and ease of use. Users can add seven types of content to their Tumblr. The main page, "Dashboard," displays updates from all followed users. On this interface, users can mark a post as liked or repost it, similar to Twitter. As a result, Tumblr's user experience is very positive, with 85% of registered users staying on Tumblr, far higher than Twitter's 40%. In addition to posting content on Tumblr’s web pages, Tumblr supports updates via bookmarks, email, AIM chatbots, and even phone calls. Additionally, Tumblr can automatically synchronize content to Facebook and Twitter.
Instagram, as a lightweight but very interesting app, integrates many social elements on mobile, including establishing friend relationships, replies, sharing, and collections. This is the greatest value of Instagram existing as a service rather than just an app. At the same time, Instagram builds a micro-community based on these photos, where you can interact with other users through follows, comments, likes, and other actions.
Sharing to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, and Foursquare is not innovative, but it allows the once unknown Instagram to appear in people’s view through more channels. By leveraging the relatively mature user relationships on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, the initial users of Instagram won’t feel isolated. Instagram can import more related friends to enhance the community atmosphere. Through these social media propagation channels, Instagram can spread among people at the fastest speed without spending huge promotional costs.
The Startup Growth Strategies
This part should interest some product managers in startups on building a social platform. The main strategies are direct outreach and product-led growth. With the current economy, niche communities are surprisingly wealthy and they are most likely very very active consumers. From personal experience, with the right targeting method, 1000 creators bring you 50,000 - 60,000 followers, aka buyers.
LOFTER had a head start as most first adopters came from NetEase Photography. During the initial phase, the marketing pipeline was simple, most of these photography users were even brought in one by one by some sales coordinators. The main advantage of this group of users is their high quality followers and creators who were looking for better solutions to their image quality issue. In the photography circle, these prominent photographers have significant authority through their outstanding works. These influencers joined LOFTER and became its first adopters, making LOFTER an extremely attractive community for photography enthusiasts.
The most important aspect is the tone and quality of the initial first adopters, as this group determines the direction of the entire product. Once first adopters are attracted, the next step is to employ key community marketing strategies to keep them engaged and active in the community. Besides creating a continuous appeal through high-quality content marketing, a significant part of LOFTER's community development comes from converting first adopters. These first adopters are mostly photographers, illustrators, novelists, and even celebrity webmasters.
Thanks to the outreach team who deeply understand user needs, LOFTER can focus on developing features dedicated to their user base. LOFTER adopts product-led growth where sales directly connect with creators from their user base to ensure the quality of feature development. Product team provides comprehensive, detailed, and personalized services to excellent content creators who serve their followers well and encourage them to continually generate content on LOFTER. By continually adjusting the product to meet user needs, LOFTER has gradually transformed from a photography-focused light blogging platform into the current image-based social platform.
Metrics product and product marketing teams need to follow:
- Identify the average number of followers creators have that generate income for the platform.
- Track creators with top earnings, engagement, and followers on the platform.
- Determine and track the source of referrals for each user content and profile page. Learn how and where the creator brings in traffic and emulate it.
- Develop features where users can share and embed content from the platform. This is the easiest way to build up your backlinks and SEO.
- Focus on SEO features that can help creators increase traffic on search engines. Track keywords and search volume on consoles or webmasters.
- Segment engagement metrics including clicks, comments, and, ultimately monetary conversions.
