Community operation: How to build a high-quality and active community?

By sharing practical experiences from 5 communities, you can quickly build a high-quality and active community.

Recently, I discovered that there are many platforms recruiting for community positions, but it is difficult to recruit suitable people, and there are relatively few people working in this position. Our company is also recruiting people, but it’s not easy!

Why are many companies starting to pay attention to community operations ? Let me share three points first. Of course, the value of the community is not just these three points.

First, the community can achieve in-depth social interaction between the platform and users, and strengthen the relationship between the two.

Take the official account as an example. You may have hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans on your account, but the communication path between the platform and users is narrow, which directly affects the frequency and quality of communication between the platform and users. But if you accumulate fans in the community, the scenario will be different. This can solve the problem we mentioned above, and at the same time you can screen out real fans and realize greater value!

Second, communities can achieve precision marketing;

However, there is a prerequisite here, that is, the community you choose before promotion should be a vertical community as much as possible. At the same time, it can be called precision marketing only when the promotional content is in line with the needs of community users.

Of course, if your promotional content meets the needs of the general public, that is an exception, such as the gaming mini-programs that were once very popular in the community.

As for myself, I am running a martial arts account, and I have accumulated 150 relatively accurate martial arts groups. The average reading volume of my content is about 700 to 800. Here, the community is a good promotion channel for my martial arts content, and the effect is better. The index on the new list is 550, and the estimated number of fans is more than 8,000, but in reality there are not that many.

Third, communities can promote word-of-mouth communication and build brands.

There is no need to say more about this. Everyone in the community is a communication node, and some people may be relatively critical communication nodes. If we do a good job in the previous work of the community, we can naturally produce such a result.

Below we share five tips on how to build an active community:

1. Have you done sufficient preparation before creating a group?

There is a classic saying in war, which is "Don't fight a battle without preparation." The same is true for community operations. Only by making adequate preparations before establishing a group can we reduce the subsequent operating costs of the community, reduce resistance, and achieve operational goals as soon as possible.

So, what preparations do we need to make? I think there are the following points:

(1) Determine community operation goals

For example, whether you want to build a service-oriented community, a conversion-oriented community, or simply an interest-based community, our goals must be clear, and our subsequent work will ultimately be carried out for the community's operational goals.

(2) Determine community positioning

If you ask what to do if you don’t know how to do positioning, then you can try to apply the 5W2H rule. If you say you don’t know what this rule is, you can go to Baidu to search it.

At the most basic level, we need to determine the following four aspects of positioning: crowd, scale, value provided, and price. I believe everyone can understand this. The key point is to be differentiated and recognizable!

(3) Determine the basic gameplay of the community

For example, in the operational communities that everyone is familiar with, we can often see the following ways of playing: morning newspapers, good night secret words, inviting experts from inside and outside the group to share at fixed times, special Q&A sessions at fixed times, case analysis at fixed times, organizing reading clubs, etc.

No matter what type of community you create, you must first conceive a set of basic community gameplay before establishing the group, and then optimize and add or subtract it based on fan feedback.

(4) Determine the community’s operating rules

There is no order without rules, this is a cliché that everyone says. Although the sparrow is small, it has all the organs. Before creating a group, the group rules must be prepared.

Let me briefly explain, for example:

(1) Prohibition of advertising

Violate once and you will be reminded; violate the rules twice and you will be removed; violate the rules and you will be punished by receiving large red envelopes; violate the rules and you will need to complete a forwarding task or other task; violate the rules and you will be removed directly.

(2) Do the task

For example, check in regularly, take reading notes, share, etc.

In addition, the group rules will often include the services and values ​​that the community can provide!

2. When attracting new customers, are you attracting the right people?

Some friends may ask, isn’t attracting new users just about pulling them into a group? Move fans of the WeChat public platform to your personal account and create a group; add WeChat friends of offline store customers to a group; or directly add people diverted from other platforms to a group.

I think many people have experienced this. I have fallen into this trap myself. I got excited and had an idea. I posted a notification on WeChat Moments, someone responded, and I hastily created a group. Then problems followed one after another.

So how do we pull the right person:

First of all, we must not forget the positioning we made earlier and hold on to this position.

Secondly, after determining the target group to attract, you must clearly communicate the positioning of the community to them. What is the most embarrassing situation we encountered after forming the group? Someone suddenly asked, "What is this group for?"

Then set the entry threshold and screen the crowd.

What are the common thresholds? For example, you can join the group by paying, completing designated tasks, or passing qualification review. The threshold should be set based on the specific circumstances of each community.

Finally, be clearly informed of the group rules before joining, and make a decision after agreeing.

3. User segmentation, have you done it thoroughly?

How do we commonly perform community user stratification? The level is roughly as follows:

Group owner, administrator, KOL, and ordinary group members.

Does this kind of user stratification have strong links? Recently I often say this sentence: "Come from the masses and go to the masses." In a community, ordinary group members are the majority. If you are too far away from the top of the pyramid, it will not be appropriate. Therefore, we need to tap talents from ordinary group members, shape multiple personalized roles, and motivate them to produce content.

What our community has been doing recently is to explore and shape some roles within the group, such as: Chief Information Officer, Chief Joke Officer, Chief Health Officer, etc. Other communities have had successful precedents in this area.

4. Three major online connections make your community structure more cohesive!

Without further ado, let’s mainly talk about these three links today: trust connection, value connection, and emotional connection.

First, let me talk about how I established a trust link. In my auction group, there was a situation where the pictures of the auction items were different from the actual items. In this case, I met his demand for returns. When new goods appeared in the group (because we are an antique community, new goods are actually fakes and their value will be greatly discounted), I pointed them out in time, potentially preventing novices from being deceived. In addition, I also acted as an intermediary guarantee platform. When two people in the group make a transaction, I can act as the middleman. After the buyer receives the goods and confirms that they are correct, I will transfer the money to the seller. The amount can be small to large and there has never been a mistake. The trust between me and everyone is built up bit by bit in this way.

Of course, each community is different in this regard, and what needs to be done will also be different, so everyone needs to adapt to the group.

Value link, in other words, means what value you can provide to everyone as the organizer and founder of the community. For example, if we invite people in our group who have certain experience in a certain area to share useful information, it is a kind of value link.

In this area, the people in each group are different, and their needs are naturally different, which needs to be continuously explored.

Regarding emotional connection, I will take the antique auction group I used to work in as an example. In the stage of establishing a trust connection, we actually also establish a certain emotional connection. In addition, let me give you a few more examples. For example, if a group member gets married, I will take the lead in sending red envelopes to express congratulations, and many people in the group will follow suit, including those who are getting married. When it comes to major festivals, everyone will also send red envelopes to express congratulations. If a family member of a friend in the circle gets a serious illness, we will allow him to send a fundraising link such as Qingsuochou. I will donate some money, and many group members who are familiar with him will also donate some. There are many similar examples, which gradually bring us closer emotionally.

5. Without offline connections, the community may eventually become a thing of the past!

Offline links are actually a reinforcement of the three types of links I mentioned above, and in my opinion they are indispensable. No matter how happy and familiar everyone is chatting online, if they have never met offline and have no intersection, the online connection may not last too long.

I think offline groups can be regarded as a higher threshold for joining the community, and can be used as an important indicator for judging the number of loyal fans.

I have a community that has been around for nearly three years and is still very active today. We chat about life when we have nothing to do, and when we have questions about operations, we throw them into the group and discuss them.

Why does this community have such a long life cycle and is still active? In the end, I concluded that it is because everyone has established offline connections. We once organized an offline gathering of seven or eight people, and had separate dinners with several people in the group. To this day, they are the most active people in the community. The small circle drives the big circle. Although the group consists of 62 people, the number of people is not large, but the atmosphere is always good.

Now when I have nothing to do, I will find out the videos and photos we took together to reminisce. Although some friends have left Beijing, we still keep in touch. This is the magic of offline connections.

Source: Operation Three People (ID: baiyidian1314)