How to operate a community from 0 to 1?

To operate a community well, three points are very important: group rules, content, and interaction. These three points may seem simple, but they are actually very difficult to do well.

From communities to social groups, from free to paid, from official to interest-based, each of us has joined many groups, but why do we want to quit some groups as soon as we join, while we can't even enter some groups?

From work to life, from school to society, from friends to strangers, we have tried to create many groups, but why are other people's groups active for a long time, and even the founders make a lot of money, while some people can't even operate a free group, let alone make money from the community?

Although community operation seems simple, it is actually a considerable subject.

Luo Yu’s previous job was user operations for Toutiao. Later, he started his own community business. While in school, he operated more than 10 high-quality communities and earned tens of thousands of yuan a month through the communities within 2 months.

I think whether it is from high-level theoretical models or actual community operations, Luo Yu can bring some experience to you who are doing or want to do community building.

First, let’s take a look at what community operation is.

Community operation is subordinate to user operation. It is the process by which officials or individuals establish direct contact with users through the establishment of communities and maintain relationships in order to achieve a certain purpose.

1. Official community operations

If you are from an official perspective today, when your company's products need marketing, or when your company's products need crowdfunding ideas, you can establish an official community, cultivate some loyal users or loyal content producers, and establish strong links with core users, and finally achieve an increase in product sales or an update and iteration of product content.

Let me give you an example from my own experience. When I was doing user operations at Toutiao’s Wukong Q&A, I found that even a platform as big as Toutiao with so much traffic needed to build stickiness with users through communities. As a powerful official platform, Toutiao has three main purposes in establishing a community:

1. In order to better serve the top, waist and vertical users;
2. Increase user loyalty in the Toutiao matrix;
3. Improve the number and quality of users' posts through the community, and directly manage core users.

Generally speaking, it is not easy to enter Toutiao's official community. Basically, they are core users in different fields, such as games, technology, education, health, entertainment, and agriculture, rural areas and farmers. Sometimes, according to the official operation purpose, short-term support vertical communities are established to provide targeted posting guidance and traffic subsidies to some potential users. Each community has official operators, who are responsible for user operations in that field.

It is relatively easy to maintain a community like this because it has already passed through layers of screening from the beginning. If users can enter the community, it means that they have been officially recognized. Although both parties are demanders, the greater demand lies with the users. They need more opportunities, more traffic, and more subsidies, so they are generally more cooperative and active.

Therefore, if you are an official operator of a large platform such as Toutiao, and want to learn community operation from 0 to 1, there is no technical difficulty in daily maintenance, and you only need to provide user feedback. However, if you want to achieve higher-level operations, you need to think about how to attract new users, promote activation, retention, fission, and self-propagation, which is what we often call the AARRR model.

Attracting new users means having more potential users and top users. Activation is about promoting user activity on the platform rather than just the community. Retention is about ensuring that core users are not snatched away by other platforms. Fission and self-propagation allow core users to actively bring in more core users.

But if your official platform is not as powerful as Toutiao and you need to use social media for marketing, you need to consider how to provide value to users, whether it is trial rights, discounts, or priority information on activities, etc. It is best for such activities to exist for a long time, and there must be operators to interact with users in a timely manner. This type of community operation requires some effort because, generally speaking, the official is the larger demand side.

2. Personal Community Operation

Personal community operations are mainly divided into two categories. One is the community of acquaintances, such as family, classmates, and friends. There is nothing much to operate, and you don’t need to worry about it and it won’t die. The other is the community of strangers, which can be divided into many categories, such as hobby groups and user groups.

Hobby groups include fitness, running, reading, hiking, etc. Generally speaking, they are free groups where everyone gets together to play. However, even such groups may die if they are not managed well. The best way to operate a group is for the operators themselves to stick to their hobbies and to encourage and lead community members to stick to them.

The main purpose of the user group is for marketing. Individual business owners can establish their own user groups. The operation methods are the same as the smaller official groups mentioned above. Personal brand builders can also establish their own user groups. This is the most difficult type of community operation.

As a person who wants to build a personal brand, you will definitely be unknown in the early stage. Not to mention that it is difficult to attract others to your community. Even if you attract them, it is not easy to maintain them. It is even more difficult to monetize through the community.

I suggest that friends who want to build a personal brand through the community should post 1-2 months of practical information in the same field on WeChat Moments before creating a group, so that everyone can understand your personality. This will make it more convincing when you create a group later. After creating the group, please continue to provide practical information every day, continue to answer questions and solve problems for community members, gain recognition within the community, and then if there is a suitable opportunity later, slowly try to monetize.

Creating a group is just the first step. If you want to operate a community well, first, group rules are important, second, content is important, and third, interaction is important.

To summarize the methods of community operation:

1. Clarify community positioning

Whether it is an official community or a personal community, all communities need to have a clear positioning;

2. Clarify group rules and gameplay

Official communities need to consider activities, while personal communities need to follow up on interactions;

3. Continuously provide value

In order for a community to be active for a long time and have a high retention rate, it is necessary to provide community members with the value they want. For official groups, this can be subsidies, discounts, etc., and for personal groups, it can be atmosphere and practical information.

4. The best community operation is self-operation

The founder builds a platform, and the group is full of strong and capable people. They have their own ideas, actively communicate and chat in the group, and take the initiative to maintain the community atmosphere. The community will be active for a long time without the operator having to worry about it. This is the most ideal state, but the disadvantage is that the founder basically has nothing to do, and there is no need to think about monetization.

The above are some of my thoughts, I hope they are useful to everyone.

Source: Luo Yu