How to operate a good community?

There are so many communities, which ones make you feel a sense of belonging? Taking the Anaya community as an example, the author analyzed the relationship between a community and its users. What methods can be used to operate a community well?

People of our generation may not have many friends, but we have participated in many communities. Take WeChat groups for example, each person has at least dozens of them.

When we talk about something at work, we “create a group to discuss it” and usually we disperse after the discussion. Compared to traditional meetings, emails or one-on-one communications, these types of "instant discussion groups" are really annoying.

It is so easy to create a group. People are too lazy to look for the old ones and just create a new one. If you are not careful, several new discussion groups will appear. There are too many groups and you have to repeat the same things over and over again. If you miss any information, you have to "climb the stairs". It is a rule to reply to @ in time. Sometimes a problem that can be solved with a phone call takes a long time to discuss. It is also common for misunderstandings to occur due to inaccurate words and punctuation.

As a communication tool, most of these "monthly" and "daily" groups have no social attributes and do not generate positive energy, but negative energy is always present.

In addition to work groups, each of us generally has the following groups:

• Alumni groups, family groups, fellow townsmen groups, girlfriends groups, former colleagues groups, etc. There are no clear group rules and the topics are very casual; active members talk in the group while others lurk around; even so, once you join, you generally won't leave the group.
• Paid groups, such as photography, writing, operations and other learning groups that require payment to join. Everyone is a virtual classmate, discussing homework, writing down their thoughts, and sharing useful information. Most learning mutual aid groups have rules and a daily check-in system, and everyone is very serious when submitting homework and giving comments. However, if there are no offline activities, classmates will not remember each other, and will disband after the course ends.
• Commercial groups, such as a merchant’s membership group or fan group, a personal purchasing group, etc. The content is mostly discount information, group buying, red envelope requests for forwarding, direct product sales, etc.; without discounts, there will be no popularity. The marketing method commonly used by this group is fission, with the purpose of spreading the word widely; to use fashionable terms, it is "private domain traffic."

The economy is in a downturn and business is not doing well. Merchants are racking their brains to create groups, conduct operations, and strive for conversions in order to gain traffic.

Just search "how to operate a community " on the Internet and you will find a large number of operation strategies, decomposed steps, and reward methods; to sum up, it is to make the group active through answering questions, checking in, sending red envelopes, etc., and finally induce purchases.

Being added to a group for no reason and treated as a leek is of course extremely disgusting; "I treat you as a friend, but you treat me as traffic" describes this kind of helplessness.

So, we quit most of the groups and wanted to go back to the way we were before, but we found that after getting used to fragmented online communication, the content of the discussions had lost its depth and became empty and boring.

In July this year, I visited a friend’s home in the Anaya community in Beidaihe, and was pleasantly surprised to find that this was the utopia in our hearts: the owners shared common values, life philosophies and attitudes, and the community held a variety of owner activities that were rich and colorful; the relaxation and happiness on the faces of my friends and community owners made me realize the sense of belonging and pride that they often mentioned.

I fell deeply in love with the place where "life can be better", and also found an in-depth answer to the question I had been thinking about for a long time: "What exactly is a community? How can we maintain long-term activeness?"

1. Aranya: "Life Can Be More Beautiful"

Friends outside of Beijing may not be familiar with Anaya, the place with the "Lonely Library by the Sea".

(Photo from Aranya WeChat official account)

Another famous landmark is the "White Church by the Sea", which many people go to check in and is a well-known internet celebrity attraction.

(Photo from Aranya WeChat official account)

Aranya is not only a holiday resort, but also a new community targeting Beijing's new middle class.

Most of these owners are between 35 and 45 years old, with good incomes and good jobs. They have a high pursuit of spiritual things, which is what we commonly call "literary youth". According to Anaya, they are "a group of free people who share similar sentiments and hobbies", so they gathered together.

The Aranya community was initially a communication platform between property owners and developers, just like the communities in most of our communities. When the community develops to a certain scale and the owners become familiar with it, the vitality of the community is greatly increased when the operator tries to give the initiative and right of choice to the owners themselves.

After discussion, everyone independently formulated the "Owners' Convention", "Civilized Dog Raising Convention", "Visitors' Convention", etc., and also formed nearly 100 communities, which are divided into three types: owner groups, official WeChat groups formed by experts, and unofficial WeChat groups (formed by owners based on their interests).

Among them, 8 major owner groups are mainly used to discuss community affairs together; official WeChat groups include drama group, running group, equestrian group, family history group, reading group, music group, photography group, dance group, poetry group, kite surfing group, etc.; unofficial ones include baby strolling group, Qinhuangdao grocery shopping group, etc.

Aranya’s DO team (meaning dream organizers), Aranya’s founder, and everyone in the community are deeply involved in the operation of the community.

DO team members come from various jobs in the community and are the soul of Aranya’s services. This group of young people full of energy and passion are professional, dreamy, versatile, friendly and kind. They are not only super playmates for the owners, but also event organizers and friendly coaches for various activities.

The owner group is led by the boss Ma Yin himself, who is responsible for answering or solving any problems of customers, including complaints and suggestions; any problem must be responded to within 5 minutes and must be solved within 24 hours.

The group leaders of other interest groups are elected. For example, the Aranya running group brings together marathon fathers, professional experts, professional coaches, doctors, and even a group of internationally active cross-country runners.

In addition to online communities, there are also a lot of offline activities. Aranya holds about 1,500 events a year, ranging from large ones like Xu Wei's concerts and Meng Jinghui's plays to small ones like reading activities among owners; half of these 1,500 events are organized spontaneously by the owners.

(Photo from Aranya WeChat official account)

With rich content and a community platform, Anaya has attracted more and more like-minded people to buy property here.

According to official reports, 95% of the houses in Anaya were sold through referrals from old customers to new customers (the house prices in Anaya are also at least 50% higher than the average house prices in Qinhuangdao).

Thanks to its extremely high reputation, Anaya’s new projects in the suburbs of Beijing and Sanya have received a large number of reservations from followers and even second purchases from owners without any advertising.

In addition, Anaya’s annual revenue from community services reached 450 million, which means that it has truly achieved profits from user operations, rather than just making money by selling houses. The Anaya community puts satisfying the spiritual demands of the owners first, and sales conversion happens naturally through word of mouth, which spreads from one person to ten, and from ten to a hundred.

The current community is still growing all the time. This growth is not simply an increase in the number of people; rather, it is a growth in spiritual connotation, an expansion in breadth and depth, which naturally attracts more and more followers.

2. Aranya’s community has these characteristics

My friend joined the drama club in Anaya. He is usually a taciturn person, but every weekend he would rush back to Anaya from Beijing to participate in the drama club's rehearsals and prepare for the community performance at the end of the year.

What is the magic that keeps the Aranya community active?

I think there are probably the following aspects:

• Sense of identity: If you buy a property in a resort but do not live there permanently, you need to consider the return on investment and the risks. The owners are willing to gather here, in addition to the beautiful scenery, because they identify with the value proposition and life proposition advocated by Aranya. This strong spiritual resonance is an important reason why the community has warmth.
• Sense of participation: In addition to the community convention that is discussed by the owners, it also ranges from small issues such as whether residents can keep pets and whether those who are not properly dressed can eat in the community canteen, to big issues such as how to organize and operate a large-scale homestay, and even the future direction of Anaya. As long as it involves public affairs, no matter how big or small the matter is, everyone can participate in the discussion in the community, and most of the suggestions are actually adopted.
• Willing to share: Owners are not only masters of the community, but also share a common dream. Everyone shared their feelings, experiences, imaginations and suggestions about Aranya. Whether it is daily life, work, art, sports... there are new topics, new stories, new touches, and new inspirations every day.
• Sense of belonging: A very special and warm community in Anaya is led by professional neighbors who organize neighbors to learn how to write family history and record the moving stories of their own families. The theme of this group inspires the owners’ deepest feelings and homesickness, and helps them gain a sense of belonging.

For many people, coming to Anaya is like finding their second hometown and spiritual home.

Compared with traditional real estate companies that sell houses and provide services, Anaya uses the community, a carrier of spiritual belonging, to allow every owner to draw nourishment from the community and nourish others.

The neighborhood relationship of "I am for everyone, everyone is for me" has become Anaya's unique formula for success.

3. Learn how to operate a community from Aranya

Most of our companies do not have the unique community advantages of Anaya, nor do they have group members with highly consistent values. However, I was greatly inspired by the Aranya community phenomenon and was also thinking about the underlying logic of the community and specific operating methods, such as the following:

1. Community operation requires planning

In other words, you need to know what kind of people should join, who can become the seed users in the group, what topics can be discussed, how to meet everyone's demands, who will be the manager, who will make the final decision on issues... These issues all need to be thought about and planned in advance.

It is easy to create a group, but it is even easier to lose a fan in the group; once the user feels that there is no value and leaves the group, the possibility of finding the fan again next time is very small.

There are many things we can learn from WeChat business in terms of community operation, such as content planning, speaking mechanism, daily sharing rules and responsibility mechanism within WeChat business groups. Precisely because of the planning and rules, WeChat business groups have always been very active and continue to attract new members to join.

1. Choose the right people and then create a group

Find a group of people with similar backgrounds, common hobbies, interests, and values; if everyone is different, it will be difficult for the community to last long.

For example, if we form a tea culture group, some group members are tea merchants with 20 years of experience, some are newly graduated tea science students, and some are people who know nothing about tea. Their demands were completely different and they couldn't talk to each other at all; no one got the knowledge, resonance or even connections they wanted. Such a relationship is unequal and unfair. The experts will leave, and those who don’t understand will still not understand.

If users do not have much in common, it is better to maintain one-on-one communication with customers first; after the community planning is perfected and more and more people with the same user profile join, different users will be pulled into different groups.

1. Create a good community atmosphere

A good community requires serious and sincere operation and maintenance. For example, some people are slow to warm up and take a wait-and-see attitude when they first join the group, and rarely speak actively. At this time, the operator needs to actively break the ice.

There are routines and methods involved, and more care and concentration are required.

The founder personally integrates into certain communities, actively listens to fans' suggestions, and makes decisions immediately when encountering user complaints or feedback; this is extremely helpful in establishing the founder's image and brand influence.

The community atmosphere cannot rely on an operations editor holding three mobile phones, sending out red envelopes, and doing fission. It is not as simple as giving a friendly name and chatting with group friends every day.

Community operation requires deep participation and guidance from operators. Only by true integration can a good community atmosphere be created.

1. There are rules and regulations

Most communities have group rules, which are nothing more than what topics can be discussed and what cannot be discussed.

In addition, how to deal with disputes, how to reach consensus, how to provide feedback, etc. must be considered in advance.

By refining the management system and rules, everyone will feel fair and equal in the community, and the community's suggestions can be adopted. Only when group members agree on these rules will they be willing to actively contribute their energy to serve the community and others.

1. Make the community warm

Combining online and offline, everyone believes that the community needs to be warm. How can it be warm?

Offline face-to-face contact is essential, but online interpersonal relationships are lukewarm with just a few words of conversation. For example, organize fans to participate in offline new product tasting activities, let group members participate in product development, advertising design, etc., and establish close communication relationships through constant communication.

1. Make the community interesting

When an interesting and informative content community starts operating, it needs to be able to arouse interest, be entertaining, and generate curiosity, encouraging members to gain in-depth knowledge.

After establishing contact, you can provide consultation, knowledge, and interesting business-related content; when the group matures, you can encourage group members to create more content, share more experiences, and even assume some of the responsibilities of the group owner and serve other group members.

Everyone who comes to the community, whether hoping to find similar people, seek help, or find better products and services, hopes that the information they obtain is true and reliable. If it is boring or just one person's opinion, it will not resonate with everyone and it will be difficult to ferment further.

To sum up

Humans are social animals and everyone needs social relationships.

When we consider business operations, we must first consider what users need from the user's perspective, which is often referred to as "user thinking."

For example, Anaya’s advocacy of “life can be better” emphasizes that owners can create their own lives. Compared with "giving you a better home", emphasizing the life that the company provides to the owner is lofty, so the owner's enthusiasm for participation will be different.

Secondly, for a community to operate well, there must be a thread that connects the people in the community, and that is values. At Anaya, this thread is the value of more than 3,000 owners in pursuit of a better life.

Finally, the community is our spiritual home in a lonely society and everyone’s energy field. In addition to gaining nourishment, we also hope to gain a sense of accomplishment by realizing our own value.

Only when businesses understand these basic user psychology can they create a community atmosphere of respect, tolerance and mutual assistance, build lasting reputation and bring infinite commercial value.

Note: The introduction to Aranya in this article refers to the content of Aranya WeChat public account and Aranya magazine.

Author: Hanni

Source: Time Notebook