Community operation: the key point to keep the community active!

I ate and drank too much in the first half of the year and my weight skyrocketed. Looking at myself in the mirror, I shed tears of regret and secretly decided to lose weight. So far, I have lost about 15 pounds in 2 months, and the weight loss is still ongoing.

The focus of today's discussion is not how to lose weight, nor how much weight to lose, but how I used the check-in community to stick to losing weight and summarize several key points for the community to remain active.

As we all know, it is very difficult for most people to stick to exercise. You need to overcome laziness and constantly challenge yourself.

So, how did I persevere? It’s very simple, I joined an operations check-in community.

In today’s article, I plan to change the perspective, regard myself as a “private domain traffic”, and talk about how a community can stay active from the user’s perspective.

1. Purpose of joining the group

My purpose of joining the group is very simple, just to enable myself to persist in exercising and continue exercising.

I joined several WeChat groups, including basketball, badminton, running, etc., but I quit them all one after another. Why? Because I found that although they are all sports groups, their focus is different. Some focus on individual sports, some focus on sports skills, which do not match my core needs .

Later, we had no choice but to form a WeChat group with a few friends (I can only call it a WeChat group here, because it is still far from a community).

The main purpose of establishing this group is to check in for exercise and to inspire others to keep exercising through checking in.

We don’t have a preference for any particular sport, as long as it’s exercise, it’s fine. But you need to clock in after each exercise. A KEEP screenshot will do, a selfie will do, or even a paragraph of text will do.

After the group was created, we simply posted the reason for creating the group and the QR code on a few people’s Moments. Soon, more than 100 people joined in.

However, in less than a week, more than 20 people withdrew. Since we were all acquaintances and knew each other was a sports enthusiast, I asked them the reason. It was actually the same as when we quit the group in the first place, it was still a mismatch in goals.

Therefore, whether a group is just a WeChat group or can be called a community has a lot to do with whether the group has a clear purpose. Because to bring everyone together to do something together, there must be a reason. If the reason is not clear, no one will come. Even if they are found reluctantly, people’s hearts are not united, and the community will find it difficult to remain active and will die soon.

So when you want to build a community, you must think about one thing: what is the purpose of building this group!

2. About community threshold

In the first half month after the check-in group was established, I did not participate too much in management matters because I was busy with operations. Just share a check-in in the group after occasional exercise. Half a month later, one day, after I finished a project at hand, I suddenly realized that I hadn't exercised for a week.

I found a bunch of excuses for myself, such as being too busy with the project, being in a bad mood, being too tired from work, etc., but none of them were the key. The key point is that I was lazy, and the check-in community did not stop me from being lazy.

So I spent some time counting the check-in records in the check-in group that week, and found that there were quite a few group members like me. We have not achieved the purpose of establishing this group, and we are still relying on self-awareness to overcome laziness.

This won't work.

So, after I reported the problem to the administrator, we discussed it and set the threshold for the sports check-in group. You must share your exercise check-in records three times a week, otherwise you will receive a 20 yuan red envelope. The red envelope is shared by group members who complete the check-in. No leave is allowed. Those who cannot complete the task will be asked to leave the group.

As soon as the system was introduced, 10% of people quit the group overnight. I checked the list and found that those who left the group were those who rarely checked in, which was basically in line with expectations.

After the threshold for this community was introduced, the rate at which new members joined the group slowed down significantly. In many cases, only 1-2 people would join the group in a day. Sometimes there is even negative growth, with more people joining than leaving the group. However, the enthusiasm of the people in the group has increased a lot, including myself. I arrange my time reasonably every day and make sure to take time out to exercise and check in.

The activity of the community is guaranteed.

A good community must have an entry threshold. It doesn’t need to be perfect, and it can be continuously optimized while operating, but it must exist. Otherwise, the quality of group members will become worse and worse, with all kinds of people. If this is coupled with inadequate management, it will easily lead to the bad money driving out the good, and excellent group members will gradually leave or slowly become silent. The community activity declined and eventually became a dead group.

The purpose of the entry threshold is to make users pay something first and then get something from the community. Because only by giving first can you cherish and take the community seriously.

Based on my own experience of joining various types of communities, the higher the entry threshold, the lower the attrition rate after joining, and I am more reluctant to leave easily. On the contrary, some groups with zero threshold are easy to enter and leave. Because the threshold is low, the quality of the group cannot be guaranteed, and the group members include all kinds of people.

3. About Community Rules

Like all the groups we have encountered, our sports check-in group started to have more advertisements as the number of members gradually increased. You send me a bargaining link and I send you a game mini program. Then the content of the conversation started to spread all over the place, including celebrity gossip, social current affairs, etc.

The administrator formulated a group rule . It is forbidden to send any links into the group, otherwise you will be kicked out; it is forbidden to send advertisements, etc., otherwise you will be kicked out; it is forbidden to talk about topics unrelated to sports, otherwise you will be warned, and kicked out after multiple warnings.

I didn't expect the reaction to be so intense. People thought the rules were too strict. It was understandable to prohibit posting advertisements, but it was too strict to prohibit chatting.

Later, everyone in the group discussed together, standardized the group rules, and gradually improved the content.

Here are some experiences:

1. The community must have rules. Without rules, there will be no order.

2. Group rules can be gradually improved, and it is important to avoid one-man rule or excessive intensity.

3. Group rules should preferably be discussed and agreed upon by core members, who should take the lead in complying with and enforcing them.

4. Regarding rules, they generally need to include the following aspects.

-Naming rules: All members use a unified and standardized group nickname. For example, region + occupation + nickname.

-Rules of speech and behavior: What behaviors are not allowed, such as sending advertising links, game links, etc.; what content is not allowed to be discussed, such as pornographic, gambling, drug-related, and personal attacks and insults to group members, etc.

-Punishment rules: Punishment measures for group members who violate the rules, such as banning, fines, apologies, kicking out, etc.

4. Community Benefits

A few months after the community was established, everyone became relatively familiar with each other and would often joke around in the group, such as asking the group owner to distribute benefits, etc.

In order to liven up the atmosphere, a few key members occasionally send out red envelopes in the group, and everyone is having fun. Later, one time when I was running, I met a running expert who had participated in many full marathons. After getting to know him, I invited him to come to the community to give lectures on safe running.

The process and content are ignored here, but I didn’t expect the response to be so good. Members have expressed that this kind of sharing is a welfare that has benefited them a lot and is more meaningful than red envelopes. They hope to invite more experts to share in the group. Some members also contribute their own great friend resources. Later, we arranged several sharing sessions, the results were very good and the group activity became more and more active.

Anyone who joins a community definitely comes with a purpose . For example, in a check-in community, everyone’s purpose is definitely to encourage each other to exercise, lose weight, etc. This is a long-term goal feedback. What about short-term goal feedback? This is the meaning of community welfare.

Just like playing games requires constant stimulation, communities also need periodic stimulation to keep them active.

The simplest form of welfare may be giving out red envelopes, but it can also include discounts and promotions. It needs to be developed around the theme of the community. For example, in knowledge-based communities, you can look for industry bigwigs to share information; in e-commerce-related communities, you can release some free benefits, and so on.

We need to make group members feel that they are constantly gaining, growing continuously, and finding a sense of belonging.

V. Conclusion

There is a saying in the industry that goes, "Born by attracting new customers, die by retaining existing customers." The same goes for communities; staying active is always a challenge. How to keep the community active and make group members feel a sense of belonging to the product? You can refer to some points in this article.

The purpose of clarifying the topic is to locate precise members. Between ten thousand ordinary users and one thousand prepared users, I think most operators will choose the second one. This not only reduces operating costs, but also facilitates various subsequent operations.

The purpose of establishing a threshold is to form a barrier and ensure a sense of scarcity. The easier it is to get something, the less we know how to cherish it. This is a weakness of human nature.

Rules are made to maintain the atmosphere of the community. A community is like a small society. Without rules, you can't move forward. After a brief period of activity, all that was left was a silent ruin.

Community welfare adopts gamification thinking to operate the community. Through continuous stimulation in the short, medium and long term, we can promote community activity, provide immediate feedback and enhance a sense of belonging.

Author: T Brother

Source: T Brother