Community operation, how to improve activity and conversion rate?

In this article, the author will talk about how to improve community activity and conversion rate based on the three core standards of an active community (useful, interesting, and informative) and the three major means of activation (light output, frequent live broadcasts, and activities).

Everyone should have seen these two types of groups: one type of group is filled with various topics, and when you open your phone, there are 100+ messages; the other type of group is where everyone replies to the same number, and very frequently.

Excuse me, are you willing to stay in there? I believe that most people would not do so because it has no value.

In fact, when I first started operating, I thought such a group should be active, but later I found out that I was wrong.

A truly active community should not be like this in essence. It is just a superficial appearance. The core thing should be that the community can retain users. No matter what actions are taken in the group, users will participate.

In fact, this can be judged through some data to determine which groups are alive and which are dead.

For example, the attendance rate of live broadcasts, the participation rate of check-ins, and many similar data can be used as evaluation indicators for active communities, but there should be a set of core standards.

What should this standard be?

1. Core Standards for Active Communities

So, what does an active community look like, or what characteristics can be used to determine that the group is active?

There are three aspects that can help us make judgments, or in other words, these three aspects are actually the core of an active community. These three cores are: useful, interesting and informative.

1. it works

What does useful mean?

Two categories are given here: the first category is called sharing of practical information, and the core word is practical information.

So what is the dry stuff?

——Produce content in this community that is valuable and helpful to everyone.

For example, for the education community, there are two forms of dry goods:

One is systematic question materials , which children can use as regular practice to improve their grades; the other is to teach parents some guiding content such as how to help children do questions and how to communicate with their children.

In fact, the format of sharing useful information is not fixed. It can be in the form of files or audio. For example, I once shared with users in a community of 200 people the topic of how to reduce the time children spend playing games. I used audio to talk to everyone.

For parents, children playing games is a typical pain point, and the content I share can help them solve this pain point. This is practical sharing.

The second type is called value discussion , which is the communication and discussion between community members on a certain issue.

For example: I raise a question in the group about whether the time children spend playing games should be limited. Many people will contribute answers. In the process of contributing answers, there will inevitably be differences of opinion. With differences, discussions will arise, and there will be debates between each other.

For most people in the group, they are in a state of watching, and when watching, they are willing to see different opinions, and a learning atmosphere will be formed in itself, which will greatly increase the stickiness of the community.

So, what is useful?

——The content shared and discussed can help people in the group solve certain problems or improve their abilities in certain areas.

Of course, the definition of usefulness is different for different types of communities. You can define what you think usefulness is based on the field you are in.

1. interesting

For a community, there must be a certain degree of fun. Generally, through the design of activities, it can bring obvious emotional mobilization and release to the users in the group, such as: a sense of surprise, a sense of honor, etc.

Let me share a case about a welfare activity. This is a Double 11 case shared to me by a friend.

During Double 11, he specially formed a group, in which he would announce the time and launch of various welfare activities. For example, red envelopes would be rained out from Monday to Wednesday, coupons would be grabbed on Thursday, and lucky draws would be held on Friday. These activities could give users a continuous sense of surprise.

In addition to welfare activities, mature game mechanisms can also bring fun - in other words, use gamification thinking to build a community and increase user activity.

I am the first member of an educational community. It has a very systematic points system, which I think is a game mechanism. I sign in every day to earn points, and I also produce content and participate in activities to earn more points.

It will also tell you when your points will be cleared. If your points are below a certain value, you will be kicked out of the group. However, if you exceed a certain number of points, or reach a certain ranking on the leaderboard, you will get something extra, and these points can be exchanged for operation club courses, operation club peripherals, etc.

In this group, points are obtained by completing tasks, and with the redemption mechanism and competition mechanism, the community will become more active as a whole. This is why I am willing to share and discuss in this group. After all, I get a sense of accomplishment and competition from it.

So, what I want to illustrate through this example is that using gamification thinking to build a community is very effective, and there is a model that can be quickly mastered, which is the PBL model that everyone is familiar with.

The points mentioned above are points (p); the value of the points will match the corresponding level, which is the badge (b), such as: academic genius, academic master, academic scum, academic bubble, etc. If I am an academic master, I will feel very honored.

The last part is the leaderboard (l). We regularly sort out the points rankings, rank them by score, and then tell you what you can get based on how many points you have, so that you have goals and motivation to participate in community tasks and improve your ranking.

By launching welfare activities and developing game mechanisms, it is entirely possible to make a community very interesting. Therefore, how to improve the fun is worth every operator's thinking and trying.

1. Informative

The third aspect of community activity is that it has content, which means that in an environment of information asymmetry, users can get the information they need most in the community, such as scarce information and first-hand information.

Parent communities for children in the transition from primary to junior high school are typical examples of communities that have "informative content". What do parents need most when it comes to the transition from primary to junior high school?

——It is information about further studies, pitfall classes, which famous schools have internal recommendation quotas, which famous schools have exam opportunities...

When parents receive such information, they will immediately verify it and register their children, so such communities are very active.

For example, I have joined various experience sharing groups for primary school to junior high school before. Many parents who have already succeeded in getting their children into junior high school will share in the groups how they prepare and plan for their children's transition from primary school to junior high school. These experiences are very valuable for parents who have not yet succeeded in getting their children into junior high school.

Therefore, if you can be useful, interesting and informative, an active community will be established and sustained. Of course, these three points do not need to be met, but as long as one of them is met, the community will have value.

2. Three ways to keep your community active

Next, let’s talk about how to keep the community active. Based on my own experience, I have summarized three methods: light output, frequent live broadcasts, and organizing activities.

1. Light output

The core of light output lies in the word "light", which means that you do not need to pay too much operating cost to output useful content at a high frequency. There are three forms of low operating costs that can be achieved.

The first one is called daily newspaper . For example, many industry communities I have joined will publish morning or afternoon newspapers every day. Its essence is to provide everyone with a collection of information, saving the time cost of searching for information by themselves. Moreover, it does not take much time for operators, who only need to pay attention to some information sources in their field.

The second one is called mind map : This type of map is what users are very willing to collect. The main content comes from the essence of some articles and course contents. Its advantage is that it is clear at a glance, easy for users to understand, and can even promote dissemination.

The third one is called the data package , which is the most basic and commonly used output form. Users in different fields require different information content. Education requires exercises and test papers with answers, or knowledge points summary. Operators are concerned about event SOPs, industry reports and the like.

One thing to remind you about light output is to use your usual time to browse and accumulate various forms of content and build a content library. This will improve your efficiency and you don’t have to look for it every day. Instead, you can share it immediately.

1. Live broadcast

Frequent live streaming means sharing content at a high frequency every week. It is best to set a fixed time period. For example, the community I run stipulates that I will do audio live streaming at 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday. If I add additional time periods, I will notify users in advance to help them develop a habit and improve retention.

As for the form of live broadcast, we will not discuss it here. It can be audio live broadcast, video live broadcast, or recorded live broadcast, etc., depending on user preference.

As for the specific suggestions for live broadcast, there are only two points:

The first is to meet the pain points : the theme and content of each live broadcast must be what users need most, and the specific principle is the usefulness mentioned above. Specifically, the theme of the live broadcast is a problem that the user particularly needs to solve, so my content will provide him with ideas and methods to solve the problem.

Of course, the pain points of users in each field are different, and the solutions are also different, so I won’t go into details here.

As for the second point: make long-term plans - that is, tell the user that there are so many problems that he will encounter or has encountered over a considerable period of time, and arrange them systematically for him. In other words, it is an outline.

From what I have observed, many communities are doing this, generally telling group members to sign up for a long-term series of courses. The benefit of this is that it gives users a strong sense of value and expectation.

So, how do you develop the syllabus for a long series of courses?

——The simplest way is to classify topics according to different dimensions.

For example: educational courses can be planned from the dimensions of motivation, habit, method, ability, etc. Another example is the growth courses that have been very popular recently. They can be designed according to growth thinking, customer acquisition methods, retention techniques, monetization paths, etc. In short, the division dimensions of different fields are different, as long as users can understand them clearly.

1. Do activities

The purpose of organizing activities is to mobilize the enthusiasm of community users, which conforms to the principle of fun. There are many specific forms of activities. As for what kind of activities to do, to borrow the words of Teacher Yang Fei, only a few moves of military boxing are enough. Tai Chi or Baguaquan is not necessary. Just choose a few activities that you find effective.

When I was doing community activities, I usually had three methods:

The first is to give away books to attract new users, and the community is the basic traffic pool. Because I always work in educational communities, I mostly give away supplementary teaching books, which are then sent out in the form of fission. The target audience is very precise, about 100 books each time, and the effect is quite good. However, the operation is rather troublesome, as it is necessary to consider the issues of screen swiping within the group and mailing.

The second is the clock-in , which has an obvious purpose, which is to promote activity. Regarding the clock-in design, I have three small opinions:

1. You can directly set up a regular punch-in for two to three weeks, get a reminder every day to complete the task, sign in using the mini program, and if you stick to it, you will get the promised benefits. The bigger, scarcer, and more in line with pain points this benefit is, the better.
2. Checking in can be done in a short period of time and at a high frequency, and it is best to combine it with courses because this can create a sense of freshness. Long-term check-ins can easily make users slack off, and it also has high operating costs and poor data.
3. If you want to do long-term check-in, you can use the ranking + redemption mechanism, for example: you can get different benefits by checking in different times, design extra rewards according to rankings, and you can get points that can be used for redemption by checking in once, etc.

The third is to issue coupons . This coupon can be used for conversion courses or other purposes. The operation method can be to issue it in limited quantities for a promotion, or to design a task to receive it.

For example: I did a wave of lead conversion before the May Day holiday. The bait was a full-price coupon for a long series of lectures. You could get it by filling out a questionnaire and making an appointment for a trial class. At that time, I got hundreds of high-quality leads.

The above are three ways to activate a community. There are no new tricks. They are all methods that operators are familiar with. But the prerequisite is that they can be utilized to the fullest extent. Otherwise, no matter how many tricks you use, it will be of no avail.

3. Conversion Model of Active Communities

Finally, let me talk about the community conversion model. This model is not the only one, but I think it is easy to explore and verifiable.

Regarding the core data indicator of community activity, I think there is only one, and that is the conversion rate. Specifically, it can be the retention rate or the payment rate.

So how do we ensure a higher retention rate or payment rate? You can design according to this conversion path:

The first step is to attract traffic . When I was doing community building, there were four common sources of traffic: external traffic, public accounts, personal account circle of friends, and personal account fission.

External traffic was a very important source in the early days. At that time, one-third of the traffic was provided by external parties. The way to obtain it was not through delivery, but in the form of cooperation - we provided the content and the other party provided the platform. It could be said to be a win-win situation at the time.

Of course, this is not a long-term model. You still need to grow your own traffic, so you build a traffic pool system of personal accounts + public accounts. The core lies in the fission of personal accounts, and there is no need to explain the specific methods. The advantage is that the users attracted are accurate, which makes it easy to check whether the other party is cheating, and there are opportunities for continuous reach, which is conducive to conversion.

The second step is to build and operate a community . This part has been described in detail before. Let’s focus on the third step - how to convert community users?

There are many specific conversion routines, but they can be divided into two categories:

One type is to use price leverage . Common means include free, big sales, discounts, coupons, discounts, red envelopes, flash sales, price increases, limited quantities, pre-sales, cash back, group buying, gifts, distribution, etc.

Personally, I think group buying is more effective. As long as the price and number of people in the group buying are designed properly, the conversion efficiency can be greatly improved. I have promoted group buying short-term classes before, and the conversion effect was higher than trial classes and comparable to low-priced experience classes.

The second type is experiential marketing , common ones include trial classes and diagnosis. This is a common enrollment method in the education industry. For example, the trial class that one-on-one online classes like to use is a type of trial class.

Diagnosis is personalized marketing, matching products according to user levels, and the effect is powerful. For example, the various popular xx English often use AI to detect users' vocabulary levels, greatly improving payment efficiency.

In fact, it is entirely possible to combine diagnosis and trial classes into one product, and the conversion effect is not 1+1, but far greater than that. As for the reasons behind this, readers can think about it for themselves.

Finally, let’s make a summary:

1. Three criteria for an active community: useful, interesting, and informative;
2. Three ways to activate the community: light output, frequent live broadcasts, and activities;
3. The conversion model of active communities: attracting traffic internally and externally - promoting community activation - converting with low prices and experience.

Related reading:

1. Demonized growth, fission and community!

2. Community operation: How to create a good community atmosphere?

3. Community operation: 6 thoughts on community operation!

4. Community operation: How to use the community to achieve a daily turnover of one million?

5. Community operation: Why are more and more communities dying?

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7. Community Operation丨The essence and gameplay of "private domain traffic" in 2019!

8. Community operation: replicable community marketing case!

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10. Community operation: teach you how to easily build a high-conversion rate community!

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Author: Dugushang

Source: Dugu Operation