Community operation: 6 thoughts on community operation!

As the growth rate of offline channels and e-commerce channels slows down, everyone says that the future will be a "war" for traffic between communities, but do you know how to operate a community well? The six thoughts on communities in this article may give you some ideas.

A community is like a product. The life of a community begins from the moment it establishes a rules framework and invites users to join. It survives in the alternating operation of daily content and activities. It prospers when community members gain value and thus help the community to operate independently. It declines when the monetization conversion rate gradually decreases and the community is unable to make ends meet. It dies when the only options left are advertising or leaving the community.

According to relevant statistics, most communities cannot reach the stage of self-operation, let alone monetization. Less than 8% of communities can truly monetize. I have also participated in the operation of a community that affected more than 10,000 people, and wrote a review | It was not the first year of operation, but I did several community projects covering 10,000 people.

I have experienced two failures in community building, so I have been thinking about “how can I best build a good community?” After observing my own active communities, I found that they all have precise positioning, division of labor and collaborative operation models, clear user group structures, and can even be converted to offline.

After breaking down the logic behind these communities and consulting with individual operators, I finally dared to write down these 6 thoughts about the communities, because the people who can write them down truly understand them, and the people who can put them into practice are the best. I hope this can inspire you and encourage you to put them into practice.

1. What is a community?

A community is a chain of relationships, which means that there is a certain relationship between a group, whether it is a blood relationship, campus relationship, workplace relationship, interest partnership, or a relationship of mutual benefit. This relationship supports everyone to identify with this group, be willing to socialize within this group, and be willing to do things together.

Even when there was no Internet, this kind of relationship chain at the bottom of the community existed. Families are related by blood, companies are based on contractual relationships in the workplace, classmates are based on campus relationships, and swimming and fitness classes are social relationships based on interests.

In other words, communities have existed since ancient times, but after the popularization of social communication tools such as WeChat and QQ, and community operation tools such as Planet and Qianliao, community relationship chains have become more easily visible to people, and weak relationship chains have become easier to establish. Communities then became popular in 2016.

If I have to give a definition to community, the concept I agree with is "community is a group of people doing something together."

For example, there is a very popular article recently. It says that in 3 months, there were 700 paying users and 1,000 UGC operation cases. How did they do it? This article is written about a community called "Top Cases". I am also a paying member of the community, so I know that everyone in this community is actually doing one thing: finding the best cases in the market that are worth repeated study, and then studying them.

You might as well try to see if those "high-quality communities" in your eyes are all doing the same thing? The kind of group that is created on the spur of the moment for "resource cooperation" probably won't last more than two weeks, because it's just a WeChat group and there's no common, clear purpose. Resource cooperation is a particularly vague goal, and the information gap and disparity are too great.

So when you are building a community, you have to think carefully about what you want to do with the community members.

2. Why do you want to build a community?

Although communities are said to be on the verge of an explosion, e-commerce and traditional offline channels are still the main players in terms of channels. Competition between communities is mostly fierce in areas such as knowledge payment and WeChat business Taobao.

So before you start a community, do you need to think about whether your products and services are suitable for the community? Why do you want to start a community?

Let's first look at the advantages of communities compared to other channels. What can a good community bring us?

In the past, traffic for most products came from external sources, such as Baidu search, Toutiao’s information flow ads, and Tencent’s social marketing ads. The users of these platforms are large and comprehensive, not accurate enough, and many users leave after using them, making it difficult for you to establish further relationships with them.

For Internet companies, traffic equals revenue, which is absolutely true. Tencent has expanded into many areas with the huge traffic of QQ and WeChat, and can even buy enough equity at a preferential price for the crabs it cannot eat by exchanging traffic.

However, it is difficult for Internet companies' short-term projects and traditional service providers to have traffic. They have to constantly place advertisements in Internet companies and offline supermarkets, subways, and communities. This approach is changing with the emergence of the concept of community. Every company wants to be able to connect with its own users, and every freelancer hopes to become an influential IP.

In the absence of high-frequency scenarios, communities are the lowest-cost way to gather users. They are also very low-cost for users. Even if they do not join your community, they at least have the WeChat APP. As long as you can provide corresponding services, solve some of their pain points, and do something related to your own field with users, communities will come into being.

Let me give you an example. There are many author groups on platforms, maybe WeChat groups or QQ groups. In this group, everyone "writes articles on product operations and marketing, and strives to publish them on these platforms." The platform will give the authors certain benefits.

On the surface, author communities are about people motivating each other and competing to write articles. There are also potential opportunities for work, publishing books, and participating in offline activities. But from the perspective of the platform, why do PMs want to establish author groups?

In general, content is the basis for attracting traffic to these websites or apps. The content of the website is relatively vertical and professional, and the output of these articles is generally low.

As a platform, how do you motivate authors to continue writing? How do you get the right to publish articles in the shortest possible time? How do you establish a deeper connection with authors? How do you expand the field around authors?

The basis of all this is that authors continuously publish articles on the platform. The platform gets to know and screen authors through the articles. When the supply of articles on the platform changes or there is a huge shortage of articles in a certain category, the platform can also find authors in time to cooperate in producing manuscripts.

Therefore, the author group is the basis for the normal operation of the platform content. They establish links with the authors, provide benefits to the authors, encourage the authors to produce content, and lay a solid content foundation for the platform, thereby monetizing the traffic brought by the content.

When you are building a community, have you thought about why it is for? What benefits will it bring to yourself? Can this benefit point be combined with the interests of users, so that users can benefit first, and then consider your own benefits.

3. How do you position your community?

The common categories of communities are product-based, education-based, service-based, connection-based, learning-based, value-based, and interest-based communities. One-to-one correspondences include the Knowledge Circle Test Group, Gravity Member Group, Douyin Official Community, Beijing HR Talent Exchange Group, Ten Points Reading Club, Illustration Club, etc.

If you want to build a community, how should you position yourself?

In order to identify the type of community, we must first understand that "community is about everyone doing something together", rather than you or your company asking users to do something. If the user himself does not need to do this thing, no matter how many red envelopes you give, it will be of no use.

So first you have to think about what the user needs? What do they want to achieve?

For example, if you are in the health field, can you work with users to "keep running every day"? Knowledge training can lead users to "read a little bit of books every day"? Skill training classes, such as art studios, can work with students to "draw a simple sketch every day."

If the competition in your field is fierce, it will be difficult to ask users to pay directly because there is no trust. The community is a tool to build trust and strengthen relationships bit by bit. As everyone does a common thing, trust between you and users is established.

So how to position the community depends on what field your product belongs to, what people in this field care about, especially what they have always wanted to do but couldn't stick to, such as universal ones like running, reading, writing, singing, etc., or vertical ones like memorizing 10 words, memorizing 1 financial knowledge, etc.

For example, blockchain communities, like Three O'clock and so on, I won't mention them, they often create hype and everyone is familiar with them. One of my favorites is the "Blockchain Scenario Laboratory". The positioning of this group is "to study the application scenarios and technologies of blockchain together."

When everyone is studying cryptocurrency, people who think rationally want to study "what are the application scenarios of blockchain technology", so his group will be full soon. As for expanding to group 1 or group 2, it depends on whether he is willing to do so. At present, the group I am in is very active.

Another example is Jingka Club, which is considered to be a relatively powerful training community. At that time, it claimed to "help JD merchants get on the front page in one month". Their positioning was "to build a good JD store together". All members were JD merchants or operators, and the categories involved were relatively complete. However, due to the lack of sufficient interaction in the later period, the community existed in name only (the price of joining the group at that time was close to 1,000 yuan, and a set of JD operation series courses were given as a gift)

4. How to acquire customers accurately?

If you understand the above three considerations and have positioned the community according to your own situation, the next step is to design rules and deliver copy to find target users as much as possible.

After positioning the community, you should know what to do with the community members, but this is not enough. I believe that no one is perfect. Since most people cannot persist in completing this task, why should you have the confidence to do it well and take the lead for everyone?

Next, you need to make a plan to achieve the community's goals, help future community members to achieve their goals, and build trust. After completing this plan, you can then design the community rules and structure. All of these things must be done before inviting people to join the group.

The community must have an entry threshold, such as paying to join the group, real-name review to join the group, etc. The way of directly posting a QR code to create a group will most likely make the group silent quickly. Of course, these big guys who come with buffs are an exception. They have influence themselves, and users will have extremely high enthusiasm for the big guys and what they do. As long as they appear in the group from time to time, the group will still be active.

Since the big guys come with their own buffs, when we build a community, it is best to first invite a wave of KOLs to join, and then use their endorsements combined with the entry threshold to attract and screen users. After users enter the group, they must have a sense of ritual of meeting each other too late, and they must be informed of the group rules and how to play in a timely manner.

When a disharmonious incident occurs, those mentioned in the group rules should be handled according to the group rules. Those not mentioned should be handled through emergency discussions, and the group rules should be supplemented in a timely manner. In addition, the group's structure should be established in a timely manner, and both external volunteers and internal departmental resource support should be coordinated and divided into different tasks in an orderly manner.

When the group is running properly, you can open up an internal invitation system to allow members who recognize the community to invite their friends. The invitees must endorse the community and represent their own values. In this way, the community will expand on the right track and become more and more influential.

Jingkahui started to acquire customers by offering online open courses. They gave open courses on issues related to JD.com's e-commerce operations, attracting merchants and e-commerce operators to attend the courses.

The traffic is then directed to the official account, and then relevant content operated by JD.com is continuously updated. The content is highly professional, and for ordinary JD.com merchants, the content value is high, and brand trust is gradually established.

Then, we went a step further to get closer to users and set up a WeChat communication group for JD merchants. We would then publish e-commerce morning reports, answer questions, and conduct private chats to investigate the store conditions of group members. We would gradually start offering paid courses and then import paying members into the Jingkahui paid community.

The next step is to link the course and the community together, and you will also have the right to have a customized plan on the homepage for 10 days. The temptation is very high, and the price is not expensive for JD merchants. They usually participate in many courses, and the fee of thousands of yuan is not a problem. Even if the community is now in name only, no one asks for anything, just some complaints.

5. How to continue to operate a good community?

A community is also a product and needs to be operated in terms of content, users, activities, etc.

Content operation mainly focuses on outputting valuable content based on the positioning of the community. If you want to continuously output content, you must have sufficient content sources. Before establishing the community, you must collect channels for content sources and understand how to find relevant content more quickly.

Planning content source channels in advance can reduce operating time costs and provide valuable content to community users in a timely and continuous manner. Everyone can see the persistence and timeliness of this. The form of content does not need to be limited to the field in which it is selected.

You need to have sufficient understanding of the users in the community. If it is on WeChat, it is best to add a friend and regularly chat privately with highly representative users to discover the satisfaction of needs and the feasibility of new needs incubated, increase user stickiness, and cultivate opinion leaders in the area.

At the same time, users can be labeled and noted from many aspects such as their expertise in the field and their activity level. WeChat's label notes are quite useful. As long as you carefully guide users to fulfill their pre-promises, trust will gradually be established, preparing for future monetization.

In order to better meet the needs of users in the group, we need to understand why users join your community and why they are active in your group. In addition to work, users also have lives, and the community is just a simple social interaction outside of the two. There are so many communities, why should they be active in your group?

In my opinion, there are only three reasons.

First, you can find fun in the group that you don’t have in real life. Just like games, it is easy to satisfy users’ certain value needs. This is why groups with many beautiful women are generally very active, because everyone loves beauty, and it is naturally great to be able to communicate more with beautiful women. This is the same as the essence of live broadcast platforms.

Second, there is a lot of valuable knowledge in the group, which is very practical. I feel that my status in the industry has improved suddenly by staying in the group. I have really learned a lot. The third is that there are many potential opportunities within the group, but users have not yet found suitable linking opportunities.

In terms of activities, when you first announce the rules of the community, you can agree on a simple, easy-to-execute small activity within the group, so that users know what will happen in the group at a certain moment. Of course, if conditions permit, you can be generous with rewards and reward users who make great contributions.

In addition to online activities, offline activities can also be organized according to the situation. They can also be organized by KOLs in the group, and the official will provide resource support. In this way, under the operation strategy of insisting on content, users, and activities, do you still worry about operating a community poorly?

We operate a community well in order to monetize it, so how can we monetize it with the help of the community? Community monetization is divided into direct monetization and indirect monetization.

Direct monetization means charging for joining the group. There are often many scammers in this model. They find many agents to create the impression that the group has a large number of members and powerful resources. In the end, they are all used to defraud people from joining the group. So everyone just needs to be vigilant about this.

When we are running a paid community ourselves, we must make users feel that they are getting value for money, and there must be a strong sense of trust outside the community, so most communities cannot do this.

Indirect monetization is to connect with products. I think the act of purchasing actually has a trigger formula:

Purchase = trust + need + ability to pay + sense of urgency + cost-effectiveness + convenience

The operation of the community builds trust, the precise positioning makes users feel the demand in your field, and the purchase limit creates a sense of urgency. The pricing is value for money, and the purchase and receipt of services are extremely convenient. Under such circumstances, won’t users who have the ability to pay buy it?

So when you do it step by step, monetization is waiting for you ahead.

Let’s take the scenario application community of blockchain as an example. First of all, in terms of content, every time the operator shares content, he/she thinks deeply about it, and analyzes it from many levels such as general direction and reverse thinking. His/her experience determines his/her judgment on the market and technology. Moreover, he/she has the support of his/her friends in the circle of friends, so the essence of the content is worth looking forward to.

As for users, he not only shares himself, but also throws out some questions every day. Everyone will discuss from various directions such as technology, market, product implementation, etc. There is no limit. As long as they can think of the application direction of blockchain, they can talk about it, even if there are various unrealistic issues such as impractical costs.

In addition, as more users add him on WeChat, private chats will receive responses in a more timely manner. His professionalism and emotional appeal have established a high level of trust among members. In terms of welfare, he will occasionally give out some cutting-edge documents, courses, etc.; in terms of monetization, I haven't seen him selling anything yet, but he will occasionally recommend some paid circles (with a commission of about 30%), and the payment rate seems to be high.

6. What is the core point of community operation?

Having said so much, you may also be wondering, what is the core of community operation? It just so happens that we will summarize it at the end, which can also be regarded as the last thought. I hope these 6 thoughts will be helpful to you.

In essence, whether a community can be established successfully depends on your insight into users and your experience in your field. If users don’t care about what you want to do with them, the community cannot be established successfully from the beginning.

Secondly, there must be a screening threshold to keep out users who do not meet the community's positioning and prevent advertising parties from infiltrating the community; the rules of the community must also be promulgated and adjusted in a timely manner and implemented according to the rules. There can be no order without rules, and the community must not be in chaos.

The initial community goals must provide timely progress feedback, take appropriate measures to motivate users, and truly provide value to users. It is also important to think clearly about what the community can bring to you and the company. After all, everyone is profit-seeking.

Finally, when you recommend products and services, you must weigh the pros and cons. It is best to recommend what users really need. It is important to find the right balance between interests and emotions.

Finally: What does a good community look like in my eyes?

The above has said a lot about how to build a good community. If we ourselves have no impression of a good community and don’t know what kind of community is considered well-operated, then it will be difficult for us to even set the community’s operating goals.

I think a good community has three common characteristics:

The positioning of a community must be consistent with its own atmosphere. It is best for you to feel proud in this community, even if it is just to satisfy your vanity of showing off. Spiritual recognition is the ultimate motivation for participating in the community.

The content is highly convincing and recognized in their field, just like the courses produced by the Qiuye team have received rave reviews.

A good community must be full of creativity, leading users to achieve planned goals while having fun, making users feel that the community is extremely attractive.

Well, that’s all I have to say about my 6 thoughts on community. I hope they will be inspiring to you.

Author: Mars Operations

Source: Lu Songsong's blog