How to attract new members and convert them into new members in the community?

As community operations are mentioned more and more frequently, people are paying more and more attention to community operations . We know that the community is a gold mine, and we all want to dig gold out of it, but being able to see and being able to grab are two different things.

If you don't have the skills, you can only watch the gold slip away before your eyes. That kind of heart-wrenching feeling is worse than not seeing the gold at all.

Now that we have seen it, how can we catch it? Here I will talk about the three stages of the community, and take my own three operation groups, the e-commerce groups I joined, and the user communication groups as examples to analyze how to operate the community.

(Note: The community mentioned here refers to WeChat group , not QQ group. The two have different functions and different ways of playing.)

Attracting new members to a community is easier said than done.

When doing community operation, the first biggest difficulty faced is attracting new members, and attracting new members here refers to creating groups. Some people may say that it is very simple to create a group and you can easily attract dozens of people. That’s true, but if the target is 500 people, it’s different. It’s much more difficult to operate than you imagine.

It’s just like chip research and development. From 28 nanometers to 14 nanometers, there is hope if we work hard. From 14 nanometers to 7 nanometers, we can achieve it with some hard work. From 7 nanometers to 3 nanometers, it requires an extremely high level of skill.

There are many ways to attract new members to a community.

The reason why our community cannot attract enough people is, on the one hand, that there is not enough traffic to import so many users; on the other hand, we only know one way to add friends and pull them into the group.

Insufficient traffic is a problem that most people who create groups will encounter. As for those with large traffic, such as the chicken-eating game , it is not within the scope of our discussion. When traffic is insufficient, the best way to increase a group of 100 people to 500 people in a short period of time is for users to attract other users.

There are two ways for users to attract other users. A single user will be rewarded if he/she attracts 5 to 10 people, or when the group reaches 400 or 500 members, all members will be rewarded.

When attracting new users to a community, you must be selective.

The number of community members is not the only indicator for assessment; whether they are target users is also an important factor to assess.

I am often inexplicably pulled into shopping groups. As soon as I enter, dozens of shopping voucher information pop up. I see that there are less than 30 people in the group. I guess other group members were also pulled in in this way. How is it possible for people who are pulled in like this to convert ?

It cannot be ruled out that this way of playing has always existed and has proven to be profitable. The solution to low conversion rate is to mass produce, using machines instead of manual labor to reduce operating costs.

There are operational routines for attracting members to the community, as well as tools for building groups. Either method can be used, depending on the situation. For physical stores, you can’t be in a hurry to create a group, because users come in waves, so it is more suitable to use operational routines, add the store manager’s WeChat , join the group to grab discount coupons, so that the users who come will be of higher quality and more valuable.

The community needs topics.

Once a community is established, the way to keep it active is to have topics to talk about. Communities are essentially online versions of offline gatherings. During offline gatherings, everyone also has topics to chat about. When our department has team building, we first talk about age, then feelings, and then dark history. If there is enough time, we will talk about something more exciting, such as salary.

Once you have a topic, you can keep chatting about it. That’s what a community is all about. What if there is no topic? The administrator creates a topic, which is like an introduction that can draw out people in the group who like to chat.

There is no life cycle for communities.

Before I started community operation, I watched a platform talk about the life cycle of a community. The curve looked like an upside-down pot. I was naive and really believed it. I thought an operation group would only be popular for half a year. But it’s been more than a year, and it’s still very lively.

I also referred to several operation groups, and found that the longer the time, the deeper the feelings among group members, and the longer the life of the community. It teaches us a truth: what others say may not be right, only what you have verified yourself is the truth.

Regular benefits liven up the community atmosphere.

Each group has its own characteristics. For example, in groups providing life services, the administrator will not always keep an eye on the group, and there will not be many topics to talk about. If there are not one or two people who can liven up the atmosphere, it will easily become a dead group.

In this case, the solution is to hold a lottery at a fixed time every week, and the prizes can be movie tickets, gift cards, etc. When the activity was going on, the atmosphere in the group was boosted and all the lurkers came out. If there is a regular benefit to cultivate users' habits, the community will not fail.

Community maintenance is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and not everyone can do it. Just as introverts are suitable for analysis and extroverts are suitable for business, community maintenance requires extroverted and lively people. In their eyes, chatting is a very happy thing. They didn’t expect that they could get paid for chatting with others. How great is that! If you find the right people and the right methods, it will be no problem to maintain the popularity of the community for two or three years.

There is an index reference for community conversion rate.

Here we take the e-commerce community as an example. The purpose of creating an e-commerce community is to sell goods, and selling goods will involve purchase rate and average order value. The conversion rate of a community is in the single digits, that is, in a group of 500 people, no more than 50 users place orders. A good operator can increase the conversion rate to 40% or even higher.

Factors that affect conversion rate include whether user attributes match, recognition of the merchant, price, etc. These can be improved through operational means. Turntables, discounts, and vouchers are all tricks.

Social conversion does not necessarily mean money.

The purpose of creating some communities is to hope that group members will take certain actions according to their own ideas, such as paying, voting, forwarding, etc. When the show Produce 101 was popular, group members followed the administrator's instructions and voted everywhere. After the show ended, the community became less active.

This conversion refers to how many group members can act according to the administrator's instructions. If the game's customer service group is well maintained, these people can not only attract new users, but also spend millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Not every community needs to be converted.

The purpose of community creation is not just for conversion. Game customer service groups, product experience groups, and industry communication groups all have no reason for conversion.

In my three operation groups, I am very happy as long as there are people talking in them. As for conversion, it does not exist. There is also the Shenzhen MTR group. I still haven’t figured out the purpose of their creation. Not only do they frequently distribute benefits, they also don’t sell goods. They just get everyone to have fun together.

Community conversion is optional, but whether it exists or not is determined from the first day the group is created. Some groups are created just to collect money, some are created to increase user stickiness, and some are created just for fun. However, for the sake of KPI, community conversion should still be taken seriously, otherwise the conversation will end and the work will be forgotten.

The gameplay of community operation is already very mature, and new tricks emerge every day, but the most advanced idea of ​​making friends with users and integrating with them will never change. In life, it is really a sad thing to have few friends, so join more groups.

Source: Tiger Talk Operations