In the past few years, I have been working on content products. Among the companies I have worked for, some are Internet companies, and some are content publishing and content production companies. Although my job responsibilities have remained the same, they are all product managers, but different companies will have some differences. Witnessing the rise and fall of several companies and experiencing the confusion within the company, this article talks about the anxiety of content platforms. 01 Content Boundaries A company that has been through before, when there was a long discussion within the company about content boundaries. The reason for this discussion is also because we were particularly entangled job title email list at the time - as we developed, our content became more and more, and the company was a little confused about the future development direction. Since it is a content platform, it must focus on content, attract content, create content, and rely on content to attract users. All of this is centered on content, and the platform has a very high degree of dependence on content. For content platforms, the most effective way to expand user groups is to expand the scope of content. The positioning of content products, some follow the model of a comprehensive platform, no matter what form, what kind of content, but unfortunately, only big companies like Toutiao and Baidu have the ability to do this. Many small and medium-sized companies, although they have the ideal of a big platform, still have to make a choice in the scope of content, so this is also a problem that their own capabilities and inner desires do not match. There are three main dimensions to define the content boundary: According to the scope of content, such as medicine, science, and art, some platforms include many fields, but the content format is limited, only videos or articles. A platform that can do this is at least a medium-sized one;There are many forms of content, including text, pictures, audio, and video, but the scope of content is limited to one or a few fields, which are more common in UGC products;Smaller and more vertical, the platform only has a certain type of content, and the media form is very simple, such as some financial websites. How to ensure the high production of content and the quality of content is a major problem for content platforms. Content is equivalent to spring water. Once the spring water is exhausted, the spring will definitely decline, and naturally no one will come. This is a common problem faced by all content platforms. Therefore, the platform must first find a main line of sustainable content production. For example, financial websites will have a column of characters, which will specially interview and report on entrepreneur groups; company listing analysis will make special reports and analysis of each newly listed company. such a main line. The advantage of determining the mainline is that you have a sustainable content production direction yourself, and that there are several clear purposes for users to access the platform. Although there is a main line, it is easy to grasp the scale in the process of continuous development of the platform. In addition to their own constraints, many platforms cannot withstand the temptation of social hotspots, whether it is out of the pursuit of user volume or platform popularity. For example, one day there was an illegal demolition incident with a particularly large social impact. Some art platforms that have nothing to do with this will follow suit and write a review article about demolition to increase platform traffic. . Fortunately, for users, as long as the content is good, their acceptance is still very high, and they don't mind if such content appears occasionally. It’s just that if there are too many things like the platform, it may be easy for them to not be able to distinguish their own positioning. When clicking into a channel on the platform, the expected content does not match the result, and after a long time, users and the platform themselves will feel confused.