How can community operations be converted from 0 to thousands of users?

Why is no one joining my community? Why can't my community continue to operate? Is it because I’m not a big V? Is it because I don’t have any fans?

No, you just didn't find the right method.

How to build a community with thousands of members from zero fans? The author will help you find the answer.

Ye Damao, a senior e-commerce practitioner, originally worked for the largest dental orthodontic production and trading company in China. He later switched to Taobao B2C and led his team to become the top 3 in the industry.

Big Cat calls himself an "e-commerce vendor" and currently operates a sixth-level Taobao C store, a Tmall store, a JD POP store and two Pinduoduo stores. He is an Alibaba certified e-commerce expert and a Google certified advertising expert, and has in-depth research on online advertising and search engines.

The free circle "E-commerce Teahouse" operated by Ye Damao has attracted 2,000 new members from 0 in just half a month, shared more than 200 themed posts, and accumulated a large number of high-quality fans. Since its creation, the paid circle "E-commerce Big Cat Express" has also attracted nearly 300 paying users.

Unlike Weibo celebrities or public account owners who have hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers, all of Big Cat’s operational achievements are built on the basis of zero fans.

How to transform a community with zero fans into one with thousands of members? Xiaohongquan invited the community owner Ye Damao to share his experience in community operation :

“What is the original intention of establishing a community?”

Why did you suddenly think of creating a community? What was the original intention?

In fact, I have always felt that I am a person with a strong ability to dig out high-quality information, so I came into contact with Jiangnan Angry Youth and Xiaohongquan very early, and joined high-quality circles such as "Wind Blowing Jiangnan Xiaohongquan" and "Windless World" at a relatively low price in the early days.

In these circles, I was able to meet many excellent friends and learn a lot. At the same time, it naturally aroused my "desire to express myself". I happen to be a person with strong output ability, and I also like to deal with people and am happy to share what I know and gain. It would be even better if my limited knowledge could help others, so I thought about building a circle based on my expertise.

And in my opinion, Xiaohongquan can help many people with strong content output ability solve several problems:

1. 1. The content needs to be accumulated . Xiaohongquan is a product that is very suitable for content accumulation, and members can search for content by category, tag and keyword, which is very convenient;
2. 2. When sharing content, there are too many people asking for help, and you need to block them . The payment mechanism of Xiaohongquan can screen out a large part of the "freeloaders". At the same time, some functions of Xiaohongquan also support members to express their own experiences and opinions.
3. 3. High-quality content needs to be disseminated in a positive way . Some of Xiaohongquan’s invitation rebates and paid reading profit-sharing mechanisms can very well motivate members to spontaneously disseminate high-quality content and expand the influence of the community.

“What preparations were made when the community was first established?”

What work was done during the community’s preparation stage? How to accumulate seed users?

In the preparation stage of the opening of the Little Red Circle, I mainly did two things:

1. Find the community’s positioning

Once you have found the right positioning, you will know what kind of people to target and what kind of content to update.

1) Crowd positioning

According to statistics: there are more than 40 million e-commerce practitioners in my country.

Compared with the United States, which is also a major e-commerce country, our e-commerce practitioners are far inferior to them in terms of professional quality and efficiency. All e-commerce practitioners need systematic learning and transition from the "operation level" to the "decision-making level."

2) Content positioning

I strongly agree with what the leader of the "Windless World" circle said: " If you want to make money, you must first create value ." In my opinion, value is actually about solving problems. The size of value is the number and size of problems solved. The amount of value I create for others is how many problems I solve for them and how big the problems are.

Therefore, I position the community to provide more substantial content, as well as answers to relevant questions and case studies, to output value and substantial content in the long term. At the same time, a mechanism for resource exchange among members has been established, so that members of the circle can not only learn knowledge but also make good use of the personal connections in the circle.

2. Find my seed users

In fact, before I was ready to launch Little Red Circle, I already had a small group of seed users. I am a training instructor at Alibaba and I often go out to give lectures. After each lecture, I ask my students to add my WeChat account and pull them into a group. These are my first batch of seed users.

With the first batch of seed users, as long as we continue to output high-quality content, they will naturally spread it spontaneously.

Why operate two circles, paid and free? What is the core difference between the two?

The original intention of the free community is to provide a place for e-commerce people to drink tea and chat. Later, fans from public accounts, Zhihu fans, Paidai fans, QQ groups and other channels will be gradually moved to the free community.

Paid communities provide more substantial content, as well as answers to relevant questions and case studies. Of course, long-term output of value and substance is what both communities need to do.

The core of free communities is openness, sharing, and weak connections; the core of paid communities is high value and strong connections.

If you are just starting out with a paid community and don’t have accurate traffic and channels, a low-threshold community (free or low-cost) can be a good foundation.

Because paying to join a community requires extremely high trust in the community owner, a low-threshold community can allow users to build awareness and trust in itself at a very low cost. When this awareness and trust are built to a certain level, paid conversion can be made.

“How do I promote my community?”

How did you accumulate so many users so quickly in such a short period of time? What are the promotion channels?

In fact, there are many channels that can be used around me. My circle promotion is mainly through the following channels:

1. Moments

The circle of friends is the channel with the highest conversion rate, because the people in the circle of friends have a certain understanding of your profession. So during that period of time, I would share some content from my circle of friends with friends every day, and attach a promotional copy.

2. WeChat Group

During this period, I have been "hanging out" in many WeChat groups. From time to time, I would post links or content from my circle in the group. To apologize for disturbing group members, I would also send a few red envelopes. This method attracted a lot of attention to my circle.

3. Little red circle recommended position

During the promotion period, I also contacted the official operator of Xiaohongquan and applied for a recommended position on the Xiaohongquan discovery page. A large number of users also came from the traffic imported from Xiaohongquan.

4. Member dissemination incentive mechanism

This is a method that many circle owners are using, which is to enable invitation cashback - members can make money by sharing my circle and successfully inviting friends to join my circle. At the same time, high-quality content output can also allow members to spread the circle spontaneously.

“How to retain users and motivate them to create content?”

After users join, the next step is retention and activation. How do you do this?

1) Maintain high frequency of content updates .

I basically update my status every day now, and then slowly guide members to develop the habit of checking my little red circle every day, so as to form a dependence.

2) I wrote a systematic course specifically for my paid community, planning to update the content of one lesson per week, giving members of the circle relatively high psychological expectations .

3) Regularly raise some controversial and valuable topics in the circle to encourage everyone to think and discuss, and express their own opinions . For example, the topic of "Product is king VS marketing is king" has attracted a lot of attention.

4) Invite big-name guests .

My circle has invited many well-known guests in the industry, such as Bei Ming Cheng Haisheng, vice president of iFLYTEK, Ouyang Lou, marketing teacher of P&G Greater China, and Wang Juhui, former foreign trade boss of Lifan Group. Members can ask questions to the guests at any time , and I also regularly invite guests to share on topics such as advertising, e-commerce, and marketing .

5) WeChat group with synchronized operations and circles .

WeChat groups are more suitable for instant topic discussions and information feedback, which can generate valuable content and accumulate it in the small red circle.

“Three most important things to do to build a good community”

What do you think are the three most important things to build a good community?

1) Maintain a harmonious atmosphere .

The essence of a community is the connection between people. A harmonious and mutually beneficial community can retain more members. Since my community has been operating, I have made more friends. During holidays, I have received gifts from friends from all over the country.

2) Let community members participate more in communication and activate everyone's ideas.

If a community relies on me alone to output and share, it will easily become exhausted. I hope to throw out more topics for members to think about and create. This will not only bring me inspiration, but also a process of growth and improvement for members.

3) Allow the majority of members to enjoy the long-term value of the community.

This value is to help my members solve problems. It can be said that as long as they carefully study the content and customized courses I prepare for the community, they will gain a lot.

Author: Circle Jun

Source: Circle Jun