User Operation: How to do a good job in community operation?

Since 2017, communities have been pushed to the forefront, and a large number of talents have emerged from community operations because they can reach users faster. A large number of companies have seized the bonus period of communities, accumulated a large number of users for the companies, and directly increased their sales.

Traffic is becoming more and more expensive, and companies all want to take the traffic for themselves. As a carrier for sedimenting traffic, communities have gradually begun to be valued by companies, and community operations have entered their peak period.

Therefore, this traffic channel of social networks is increasingly regarded as important by enterprises. As a result, some early "personal channels" were born that used WeChat tools to create community fission and WeChat traffic.

Let me give you a brief introduction to the so-called "personal channels".

That is, some operators with traffic thinking, when the community was at the forefront, they saw the potential business opportunities in it. When the community was popular, they began to frantically add groups to attract traffic with the help of WeChat group tools and some operational means. Especially some vertical industry communities, where people join the group through dozens or even hundreds of WeChat accounts.

Judging from the data in my personal circle of friends, they generally have thousands or even tens of thousands of vertical industry community resources, covering the whole country, and realize their monetization by promoting products to advertisers in the community. They usually call themselves "traffic growth officers".

So how to build a highly active and high-quality community and how a community operator should operate a community well, here are some of my views and ideas:

I think a highly active and high-quality community can be generally summarized by the following four points: the attributes of group members, the charm of the group leader, the value of the community, and the means of community operation.

The attributes I'm referring to here are the characteristics and personalities of group members.

For example, an operational communication and discussion group is often much more active than a community established for commercial purposes. Even if you don't run the community sometimes, it will still be active.

Because group members have different attributes, members in an operations discussion group definitely hope that everyone can communicate better. They may be forced by the company's KPI to look for some communities and resources, or they may want to seek help. Under the pressure of KPI and the lack of understanding from their leaders, they often feel that they have a lot of grievances to express. At this time, the online WeChat group becomes their best place to express themselves.

Because everyone in the group is in the same industry and can understand each other, even if they were not familiar with each other before, because it resonates with group members, they can quickly integrate together and create a topic.

This is not the case for a community with commercial purposes. From the second half of 2017 to 2018, online education and knowledge payment have emerged and become the top three popular industries. Many companies have seen this business opportunity, and a large number of corporate executives have begun to teach as lecturers to bring sales to the company.

I believe everyone still remembers some of the popular cases, such as NetEase Xijing, New World’s marketing class, and Knowledge Planet’s first open class. As a result, many course study groups have emerged in the name of open courses, but the lifespan of such groups is generally not very long.

From what I have seen in communities like this on WeChat, I have found that these communities are generally only active for a while before and after the course begins. After a long time, this community will become silent and forgotten because it can no longer provide value to group members.

I would also like to say something here. After establishing a group, many companies do not pay attention to subsequent services and operations, which directly leads to the death of the community. You can observe the communities around you to see if they are all like this.

Generally speaking, in a community, except for those that have split off, more than half of the people are acquainted with the group owner.

If you want to run a community well in the early stages, the group owner plays a very important role because he has to take care of the feelings of everyone in the group. If you are not careful enough, you may neglect a group member, causing him to become inactive in the group.

At this time, the charm and popularity of the group owner will come into play. If the group owner himself has a certain degree of fame or excellent popularity, and can maintain good relationships with everyone in the group, then this group IP potential will be able to cover everything.

So, let's make an assumption:

If you join a community of people who are well-known in the industry, will you pay more attention to this community than other communities? Or when a community invites a big-name member to join, will it arouse your interest in becoming active in the community again?

The value of the community is very important, as it will determine how long your community's life cycle will be. That is, what is the original intention of creating this community and whether it can provide value to your group members.

Generally, a person joins a community with a purpose and needs. If he does not find what he needs in the community in a timely manner, he will choose to block it.

The value of the community can generally be reflected in these areas, such as case sharing, resource docking, content output, professional sharing, and sharing of practical information.

As time goes by and the number of group members increases, the worthless community will have more and more spam ads or meaningless chats, causing many valuable members to choose to quit the group or directly block group messages.

Only valuable communities can develop for a long time. Fundamentally speaking, worthless communities have no meaning of existence. Existence is just a simple WeChat group.

What I have said before are basically the characteristics and attributes of the community itself. Now I would like to talk to you about the methods a community operator can use to make the community more active and extend its life cycle.

There are actually many means of community operation. Let me briefly tell you a few:

1. Use group tools

If it is a learning community, we can use some check-in tools to increase the participation of group members and improve overall activity.

For example, set a goal or read a book or a lesson as your goal, and check in every day to learn a part of it. Here I would like to share with you two mini apps about checking in: Knowledge Circle and Whale Check-in.

2. Self-introduction

When a new group is created and new members just join, you can ask members to introduce themselves first, so that everyone can get to know each other better.

After knowing what the other party does and showing their own strengths and projects, other group members will see what they are interested in and start to connect and become active in the group, which will indirectly build a bridge of mutual understanding between community members.

3. Create topics

We can use some hot topics in the industry, throw them into the group, and then find a few people to call for action and stimulate discussion. This will also arouse the interest of group members and increase participation.

4. Support group KOL

A community is one in which all group members must be connected to each other, in order to prevent someone at a certain connection point from leaving the group, which would cause the entire community to fall into silence.

As community operators, we need to help group members to smooth out relationships, eliminate unfamiliarity, establish connections, and form a network framework.

Therefore, we can allow some of the more active users in the group to share some work experience and content in the group regularly, so that while increasing the activity of the community, we can also cultivate a group of opinion leaders in the group.

5. Offline activities

No matter how much or how deeply we chat online, we are still “online friends” after all. Therefore, when appropriate, you can propose to hold offline activities in the group. It would be best if you are all in the same city and invite group members to participate.

Increase the emotional aggregation among community members, enable members to establish deeper connections, and increase the stickiness of the community, which can better ensure the activity and life cycle of the community.

6. Reward Mechanism

We can use material measures to encourage members to actively post topics and participate in discussions. We can set up a mechanism for the community. For example, we will give out some gifts to the top three most active members of the community every month.

You can choose the gift yourself, it can be a book or something else, this can also increase the activity of the community. Here we need to pay attention to one detail. When presenting the awards at the end of the month, you must publicly mention the winning members in the group, so as to arouse the fighting spirit of the members who did not win.

Of course, there are many other methods. As a community operator, these are all soft skills of the community. If the environment permits, I think you can try them.

Nowadays, communities are becoming more and more prevalent. On average, each user joins at least dozens of communities. Communities are products. If your community cannot attract users and make them willing to spend their time in it, then I think you should think carefully about whether your community still has meaning to exist.

A community should be of high quality rather than quantity. Before building your community, I think you should first think about your community planning and monetization path, otherwise it will be meaningless even if you build it.

Now more and more people are pouring into the community operation industry, and some community operation factions have emerged. Everyone is thinking about how to innovate and how to better integrate the community with their own business. There is still a lot worth thinking about on the road of building community.

The above are some of my views and sharing on the community. Everyone is welcome to discuss in the comment section.

Source: LZX's study notes (ID: LZX_PM)