How to use the ARPPS model to evaluate the quality of a community?

It is not easy to judge whether a community is good or bad, and it requires careful study using a formula.

Looking only at a single structure such as the number of social messages and the amount of conversion realized is a typical case of being blinded by one's own mistakes.

People who focus on conversions think that the more money they can make from conversions, the better.

Focusing on active people, you may feel that there is no rush to catch them, but to raise them first. The more active the community is, the better, and you can make a lot of money in the future.

People who think in terms of traffic think that it is nothing more than constantly attracting people, and the more community members the better.

However, anyone who has operated a business for a period of time (usually about 3 months) will find that none of the above three dimensions are accurate when viewed individually.

It is also very difficult to maintain activity and retention . People all have a sense of novelty. After a period of excitement and hustle and bustle in the early stages of introducing themselves and scrambling for red envelopes, the enthusiasm will drop, or even completely cool down and become a dead group. Once this phenomenon occurs, there is no need to talk about the future of the community.

In addition, sometimes it is not the problem of the community operator , but the limitations of the product itself that restricts the activity and subsequent development of the community. For example, some products have obvious timeliness. Check in for postgraduate entrance examination and prepare for IELTS and TOEFL. When reviewing and preparing for exams, members can stick together for support. However, once the goal of passing the exam is achieved, or if they give up completely, the cohesion of the community will drop dramatically.

Secondly, the monetization ability is marginal, and conversion monetization is also the most difficult part in social marketing . If subsequent new users cannot keep up, the community’s monetization resources will be exhausted. There is only so much rice in the pot. If the products are not so high-frequency, have a low repurchase rate and a high unit price , the value of the community will soon dry up. Of course, if you plan to build a community with the idea of ​​doing a quick job and then leaving, then it doesn’t matter.

In addition, even if it is a high-frequency product with a high repurchase rate and low unit price , can it be guaranteed that it can continue to cater to user needs and develop new products? Whether the speed of product development and sustainable investment of human resources for after-sales follow-up can be guaranteed

In addition, people with traffic thinking always believe that they are full of Internet thinking and are guided by network effects. The more people in the circle, the greater the power of the community. It cannot be said that this is completely wrong, but first of all the scale must be large enough, and tens of thousands of people are definitely not enough.

Secondly, if the social media users you attract are not accurate at all, for example, if you sell beer but you attract a group of mothers, it is irrelevant. Even if the number of people is large, the conversion effect will inevitably be poor.

Therefore, never use traffic thinking to build a community!

To judge the quality of a community, we must not look at it directly from a single dimension, but need to evaluate it from multiple dimensions.

AR PPS Model :

The ARPPS model is a model that evaluates communities from multiple dimensions.

A stands for: Activity

R stands for: Retention

P stands for: Precision

P stands for: Profit

S stands for: Scale

Condensed into Chinese, it can be divided into three major dimensions:

Active retention level + conversion and monetization ability + member quality and quantity

(In order of importance)

High levels of active retention are the core factor and the foundation for a community to continue. Even if the number of members is small and the monetization ability is not strong, it can still be judged that the community is very valuable.

The degree of active retention can be further divided into: content production + intersection links + role structure

When many people think of being active, they immediately think of chatting, but chatting is only a small manifestation of being active.

In fact, small talk is a form of content production. It’s just that the content may not be able to be redistributed because the content of small talk is generally superficial, such as weather, society, life...not professional vertical content.

Secondly, the degree of active retention is closely related to the degree of connection between community members. Two people who have absolutely no connection with each other are inexplicably pulled into a community, and they don’t even have a simple friend relationship. So how can they establish a link? Only by having similar interests and common characteristics can basic intersection be guaranteed.

In addition, the level of active retention is also related to the organizational structure of community members. A country has its own laws and a family has its own rules. A community must have rules and regulations, as well as written and unwritten role division systems. Written means setting up a points system and then dividing it according to contribution levels.

There is no clear hierarchy in the unwritten rules, but there are active members, content producers, lurking members, etc. Members instinctively identify with their respective roles.

The second is the ability to convert and monetize. If it can be converted and monetized to make money, then of course it is valuable. But what is more valuable is the ability to continuously convert and monetize to make money. Otherwise, the community is no longer a community. When activity and retention cannot be guaranteed, the so-called community is merely a one-time channel tool for selling products.

The monetization capability of a community can also be further broken down into: number of paying members + quality and quantity of value-added services + sales conversion rate + brand influence (advertising premium) + distribution participation

In terms of member quality and quantity, the number of members is not that important. In other words, the more people in a community, the better.

On the contrary, the small group effect was very popular not long ago. In fact, the core meaning of the small group effect is that it is difficult for a highly active community to become very large, and the cost of expanding the community size is to sacrifice the connection dimension between community members. In addition, when the number of community members reaches a certain size, the management difficulty and investment cost will be very high, and the final input-output ratio will be very low.

Unless the scale is in the tens of millions or geometric levels, you can sell traffic, or exchange resources, and go the third-party advertising route. In this case, the scale of the number of people may have some effect. But please note that the main concept at this time has been replaced by "traffic" rather than the community itself. Many people in the circle who claim to be social media experts are still buying and selling traffic.

This extensive monetization effect will become weaker and weaker after the Internet demographic dividend. I believe that everyone has joined many groups with 500 people, but the activity level is still low and cannot be monetized.

In terms of member quality and quantity, quality is the core and member users must be accurate. On the contrary, the impact of the number of people becomes weaker and weaker over time.

The above are the three sub-dimensions for evaluating community quality . Each dimension can be further divided and subdivided. Future articles will further analyze the sub-dimensions.

Source: Zhihu