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

Everyone should have seen these two groups.

There is a type of group that is filled with various topics, and when you open your phone, you will see 100+ messages; there is a type of group that replies to the same number in a very high frequency.

Excuse me, are you willing to stay in there? I believe that most people would not. 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?

Core standards for an active community

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 we can say that these three aspects are actually the core of an active community. These three cores are useful, interesting and informative.

1. Useful

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? Output content that is valuable and helpful to everyone in this community.

For example, for educational communities, there are two forms of practical information. One is systematic question materials, which children can use as daily exercises to improve their grades. The other is guiding content that teaches parents some methods to help their children do questions, how to communicate with their children, and so on.

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, if 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.

2. Fun

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 users in the group, such as a sense of surprise, 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 points value will match the corresponding level, which is the badge (b), such as the academic genius, academic master, academic scum, academic bubble and so on. If I am an academic master, I will feel very honored; the last one is the ranking list (l). Regularly sort out the points ranking list, rank by score, and then tell you what you can get with how many points, 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 increase the fun is worth thinking about and trying for every operator.

3. 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.

For example, parent communities for children in the primary to junior high school stage are typical communities with the attribute of "having content". When it comes to the primary to junior high school transition, what parents need most is information about further studies, information about pitfall classes, which famous schools have internal referral places, and which famous schools have examination opportunities. Upon receiving such information, parents will verify it immediately 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 can be established and sustained. Of course, you don't need to have all three, but as long as you have at least one of them, the community will have value.

Three ways to be active in your community

Next, let’s talk about ways 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 report . For example, many industry communities I have joined will publish morning or afternoon reports every day. Its essence is to provide everyone with a collection of information, saving the time cost of finding information by themselves, and it does not require much time for operators. They just need to pay attention to some information sources in their field.

The second one is called mind map , which is a type that 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.

2. Live broadcast frequently

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., which can be decided according to user preferences. As for specific suggestions for live broadcast, only two points are put forward.

The first is to meet the pain points , that is, the theme and content of each live broadcast must be what users need most. The specific principle is the usefulness mentioned above. Specifically, the theme of the live broadcast is a problem that users particularly need to solve, then 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.

The second point is to make long-term plans , that is, to tell the user that there are so many problems that he will encounter or has encountered over a considerable period of time, and to 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 approach 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 recently popular growth courses, which 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.

3. 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’m working on a community, I often use three types of activities.

The first is to give away books to attract new members, and the community is the basic traffic pool. Because I always work in educational communities, I mostly give away supplementary teaching books, and then send them out in the form of fission. The target audience is very precise, about 100 books each time, and the effect is pretty good. The only thing is that the operation is more troublesome, and I need to consider the issues of screen swiping and delivery within the group.

The second is punching in . Its purpose is obvious, which is to promote activity. I have three small opinions on the design of punching in.

(1) You can directly set up a regular clock-in for two to three weeks, and be reminded to complete the task every day. You can sign in using the mini program. If you stick to the clock-in schedule, you will receive the promised benefits. The bigger, more scarce, and more in line with the pain point of the benefit, 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-in 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 additional rewards according to the ranking, and you can get points that can be used for redemption by checking in once.

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. I got hundreds of high-quality leads at that time.

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.

The above is all about community activity. Let’s make a summary:

1. The core criteria for an active community: useful, interesting, and informative;
2. Three ways to activate the community: light output, frequent live broadcasts, and organizing activities.

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?

6. Community operation: How to increase the conversion rate of fission communities by 10 times?

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

8. Community operation: replicable community marketing case!

9. Community operation: 9 minefields of community marketing!

Author: Dugushang

Source: Dugu Operation