In the past couple of days, due to @_kaitoai's scoring rules, combined with another Twitter scoring software during the day, a new round of attacks on KOLs has begun. Just like last time it was TO C, this time it's TO B; one can only say that there’s nothing new under the sun, and the cycle of heaven is good.

As someone who previously worked as a brand in Web2 on the client side and as a creative on the agency side, and now barely qualifies as a so-called Web3 KOL delivery person, I have a certain understanding of various positions and needs. Therefore, today I want to talk about how we should view KOLs. After all, in the past year or two, whether you are on the project side, an exchange, an agency, or a retail investor, KOLs are at the center of content marketing and need attention from everyone related to the industry. The client side needs to know how to choose KOLs; the agency side needs to know which KOLs to recommend; and KOLs need to know what to do next, because project parties are becoming smarter with their spending, users are becoming pickier, and KOLs are facing a depletion of creativity and a lack of brand awareness.

Now, the current situation in the Chinese-speaking world is evident; there are more KOLs than projects. KOLs are increasingly lacking in personality and memorable traits, and with a large number of matrix accounts, they jump in to increase hot topics and brush followers, mutually commenting as a standard practice. Does this really have constructive significance for the industry? Probably not. For many years, content has been created based on traffic logic, resulting in a lot of homogenized content. Kaito and Tweetscout have gone to the other extreme, focusing almost exclusively on how many platform-defined big accounts are among the followers, and indeed they are very biased towards foreign accounts. I see that even He Yi doesn't rank in the top three among my followers, and the content and dissemination seem to have no weight, making it feel like a different kind of insider trading for the project side, where ordinary people can't benefit no matter how hard they try.

For KOLs, the situation seems to be getting more and more difficult. Under the logic of traffic, all content revolves around generating traffic and attention, repeating previous things or venting extreme opinions, with traffic washing over without leaving anything behind. What everyone cares about is the event itself, not who posted it. Moreover, from the fans' perspective, taking ads is a disgrace, and the ad content is often written casually, leading KOLs to take ads with conflicting feelings, wanting to make money but fearing backlash, not to mention co-construction.

So what exactly is the value of KOLs? I think both the project side and users need to think it through. For the project side, unless they really have no money or just treat KOLs as a task, they will face the situation of not knowing how to allocate the budget. Let's make two assumptions: one is a carefully selected professional KOL who has been deeply engaged in this field for many years and communicates deeply to post extremely fitting and interesting content, accurately conveying what you want to communicate to users, comparable to a white paper, but may not have much traffic. The other is finding the KOL with the best communication effect within the budget, efficiently spreading your information to the most people, so many people suddenly know about your project. Both are good, but which one will you choose?

Ultimately, KOLs are content creators. The standard for creators is: are you creating something that the world has never seen before? Does this create value? The logic of content is that the value of content is the origin of creation. Does the content help users? Is the content effective in the long term? There may not be large traffic in a short time, but as time accumulates, both traffic and content brands will exist, and the creator's brand will be established. For example, Zhao Benshan's skits are always the most anticipated during the Spring Festival Gala. Even if the script is not meaningful, as long as he performs, you love to watch; this is the creator's brand. What is needed is sustainable creation. One good piece of content is not enough; continuous and stable good content is needed to establish a content brand.

Since last year, the commercial competitiveness of major KOLs has been rapidly declining. In the past, they could make money easily, but now they have to work hard for it. The advice for KOLs is: sort out your marketing role, what marketing problems can you help the project side solve, and what are the necessary reasons for your promotion? If it’s just traffic, then it means that once your traffic declines, you can be replaced at any time, regardless of what type of content you create. To be more competitive, you must have content recognition and be able to help brands solve marketing problems.

🔝 To summarize

The competition among KOLs has entered the second half; traffic is important, but it is not the most important.

For KOLs, they are now facing a transformation and upgrade and must switch from traffic logic to content logic.

This process will eliminate a large number of KOLs; those without content competitiveness are about to be abandoned by the market, which means losing commercial viability.

KOLs with content competitiveness need to think about another core issue: what is the marketing role of the content? What marketing problems can it solve for the project side?

Small and medium KOLs should understand their marketing role and can create sustainably, earning a little money is fine, but remember not to get inflated.

For KOLs that have already formed teams, it is recommended to focus on the unity of content and brand, even directly upgrading to WEB3 marketing agencies to bring higher premiums to commercial content.

The most important thing is to encounter content you like, remember to give it a thumbs up.