Have you taken so many community courses but still can’t build a community?

In the past two years, community operation has become more and more popular. Many people have learned a lot of community courses, but when it comes to actual operation, there are many problems in terms of activity, monetization, or the rhythm of operation . No matter how they adjust, they can't achieve the desired effect, and things are getting more and more chaotic.

In the process of community consulting and training, I found that in addition to the problems everyone has in practical operations, there is another main reason, which is that there is a deviation in fundamental cognition; or, there is no clear understanding of the community at all, and either they think that the community is a WeChat group , or they simply regard the community as a method and tool for attracting traffic and monetization.

Therefore, if we do not understand and grasp the community from a certain perspective, it will often become increasingly difficult and we may end up failing in the end. Therefore, upgrading cognition is the first step to building a good community.

Personally, I feel that there are at least three cognitions that need to be further clarified and upgraded. I will briefly explain them one by one:

The first understanding: grasp the trend, the traditional business model is collapsing

Pinduoduo has just been in business for 3 years. Its monthly active users are second only to Taobao and JD.com , and its penetration rate has even exceeded that of JD.com, making it the second largest e-commerce company . Baby Plays English seems to be a relatively niche brand of early childhood English education. It has been in business for two years, with 200,000 paying users and 200 million yuan in revenue each year.

There is no need to cite more projects. I believe that there will be many entrepreneurial dark horses who will understand the trend and stand out quickly. Why?

The key is that these companies have seen the changing trends in traffic entrances and reconstructed their business models. The change in traffic entrance has brought about the reconstruction of the entire business model.

We can divide the changes in online traffic entrances into three stages:

1. Web 1.0 stage: The entrance to traffic is the portal website, such as Sohu, Sina , and NetEase. Almost everyone who goes online cannot do without these big websites. The business model at that time was to advertise on portal websites to attract traffic.
2. Web2.0 stage: The entrance to traffic became a search engine . When we read news and look for content, we mostly go to Baidu. How do many people read the news? They just look at the most searched news. Taobao does not allow Baidu to include it, so when we look for products, we can only go to Taobao. Therefore, Taobao has become the traffic entrance for users who have product needs. At that time, our business model was Baidu's bidding ranking and SEO optimization, and many people were also studying Taobao's recommendations, etc.
3. web3.0 stage: This is the rapid development of mobile Internet , especially WeChat in recent years. We can feel that now when we read the news or know about a hot event, where does everyone get the news from? It is neither from portal websites nor from search engines. Often, many people get the hot news from their circle of friends . According to the latest statistics, WeChat, Weibo, and QQ, the three major types of self-media with social attributes, which we call social media , account for more than 80% of the traffic. For example: The Luo Yixiao incident that many people know about was about an article posted on an ordinary WeChat public account , which stated that if forwarded, one yuan would be donated to Luo Yixiao. The article was read over 96 million times, received over 110,000 rewards, and received a total of 2.62 million yuan in rewards.

What is the concept?

I consulted my friends in mainstream media, and they all said that even mainstream media don't have such a large dissemination volume. An article written by an individual can reach this level in just a few days of dissemination on the Internet. Therefore, in the era of mobile Internet , the entrance to traffic is no longer portals and search engines. The entrance has changed.

The new traffic entrance comes from social media and from every user. Anyone can say whatever they want at any time, and it can be seen by everyone and spread spontaneously and unlimitedly through social networks .

The change in traffic entrances has also directly led to the reconstruction of the business model.

Pinduoduo, Baby Plays English, and many other dark horse startups we know of, became famous overnight and exploded rapidly because they grasped the trend of changes in traffic entrances, exerted their efforts on the social attributes of WeChat, formed fission communication, and quickly reaped dividends.

Therefore, the first thing to do to master the community is to see this trend clearly. The change of traffic entrance has brought about the reconstruction of the entire business model.

Whether it is a new entrepreneurial project or an old traditional enterprise, the original method of investing huge amounts of money in advertising or bidding rankings is rapidly becoming ineffective. These costs should be invested in social platforms where users can spread the message to each other independently. You will find that your precise users now exist in groups on social networks. Moreover, as long as the method is appropriate, they can be quickly detonated, achieving twice the result with half the effort, or even instantly sweeping the entire network.

The second understanding: Find the key and what is the huge bonus in the social era

This is actually a more fundamental question, which is: How did the community come into being?

In other words, what are the deep-seated reasons and internal trend dividends behind the sudden popularity of the community? In particular, many people have asked why the concept of community has only appeared in the past two years. Why didn’t it exist before? Why is that? I think it’s just two words: connection. The upgrade of the way people connect with each other immediately triggered the benefits of the community. Let's briefly sort it out:

At first, we could only establish connections offline. At that time, long-distance communication was very difficult. We could only rely on blood ties and geographical locations to form an acquaintance society in a village or region.

In the Internet age, we can connect through PCs. I remember it was very magical. I bought a computer in 1998 and registered QQ. At that time , I searched for strangers through QQ and found a few friends who could talk to me. Later, we talked on the phone and in person. We got along very well and are still in touch now.

It should be said that the disadvantage at that time was that you had to sit next to the computer, and he had to sit next to the computer too, for the two of you to chat and communicate.

Now, in the era of mobile Internet, mobile phones are like an organ in our body. We use them at any time. Through social software tools such as WeChat and QQ on our mobile phones, we can connect with anyone in real time.

According to the latest WeChat big data report , 900 million people are online on WeChat at the same time every day, more than 38 billion messages are sent every day, and 6.1 billion voice messages are sent every day. Looking down every three minutes and refreshing the screen every ten minutes has become a normal state for many people. It should be said that if the whole society adopts new behaviors, change is not far away.

Tools like WeChat, while not creating collective action, do remove the barriers to collective action.

Therefore, the change in the way of connection and mobile Internet technology have enabled people to achieve more convenient and free online communication. The freedom of social interaction has increased, and the restrictive conditions such as blood ties, time and space separation, and identity attributes have been continuously weakened. Social relationships, emotional interests, and real-time sharing have been continuously enhanced.

Whether it is a community of interests, a community of values, a community of trust, etc., it was originally impossible to link together people with similar interests, hobbies, and values, but now it is possible.

It turns out that the feeling of regretting not meeting each other earlier will actually become less and less common, because people can easily find each other and get together.

Real-time interaction and free aggregation between people have become ubiquitous and omnipotent, and everyone can instantly have the ability to form groups and act together. The cost of communication has dropped dramatically, and various groups that were originally loose and coordinated can now easily come together. It has also greatly enhanced the breadth and depth of social relations.

The mobile Internet connects each of us together in real time.

In fact, from a macro perspective, every development of human society is an upgrade in the way of connection. Connecting people or things that were previously not easily connected together now creates huge dividends.

I once said this: The steam engine is the ancient Internet.

What does it mean?

The Internet connected computers that were previously unable to be connected together, resulting in the great Internet era and the establishment of an information society; what about the steam engine? By connecting the previously unrelated plant fossils (that is, coal), water and iron, the great industrial age was created.

Therefore, having connections will bring huge intrinsic benefits and value. Didi has built a great company by connecting people who want to take a taxi with idle cars.

The same goes for communities. Interest-based communities connect like-minded people together, while product-based communities connect users and brands more closely through operations such as WeChat, Weibo, and events. We discovered the underlying reason for the community dividend, which is connection.

So, what are the huge dividends of the community era?

It is an upgrade of the way of connection, which allows people to immediately find like-minded friends and connect more closely.

WeChat has achieved such great success because it has accumulated a large number of user relationships. We have also seen that many current products such as Toutiao, Douyin and Alipay are constantly recommending friends to you, or asking you to add friends, helping you find friends in your address book, and strengthening various connections.

Therefore, the key to community operation is to deeply strengthen and continuously activate the connections between members, and to increase the dimensions, frequency and duration of the connections as much as possible.

The more connections develop, the more prosperous the community will be, and the greater the dividends will be.

An indecent word I used to say often is an important principle for community operations: pimping. In other words, you have to find ways to create more relationships between community members. The closer the relationships are, the easier your operation will be because everyone will automatically stay active and interact.

The third cognition: Reconstruct your thinking, 3 social logics you need to clarify

01

Reconstruct product thinking: In the process of brand operation, in the past, our thinking was focused on products, and the goal was to make money . Now, with community-based operations, we should pay more attention to customers, and the goal should be changed to attracting people. Your product is just a gateway to your social media fans.

How do you understand this? You focus on the product, how do you get more benefits?

The only way is to continuously improve product performance, reduce costs and improve cost performance. However, you have to know that with the development of the Internet, any technological improvements or service upgrades you make will definitely not be unique, nor will you be far ahead of others. It is actually becoming increasingly difficult to make money.

If you focus on customers and think about operations from a user perspective, you will find that you can create many products based on various user needs. For example: If you run a hotel, according to traditional thinking, that is, product thinking, if you want to make a profit, you have to improve the hotel's service level and lower the price.

But if you think from the user's perspective, you focus not on your own products but on your hotel's customers. Then the hotel actually becomes the entrance for your users, and you can develop more products and services. For example: If we pay attention to the social needs of users, we can consider that as soon as the user checks into the hotel, he or she will automatically enter a group of guests staying there, and can get to know people from all over the world. People who stay in the same hotel have similar economic levels and tastes, and should have a similar common language. If you organize a social gathering or a cocktail party every day, many people will be willing to get to know you and make more friends in an unfamiliar place.

For example: pay attention to users’ shopping needs. Then we can consider that the pajamas, quilts, pillows, and tea cups in the hotel can all be used as exhibits. They are all products of our hotel. Customers can use them well and if they want to buy them, they can scan the QR code at any time and make a successful purchase. One of the biggest problems with shopping on Taobao is that you can’t see the actual product and don’t know whether it is suitable for you. A hotel is a display place for everyone to try out products.

Also, do users have investment needs?

Chinese society is currently seeing the rise of the middle class and there are more wealthy people, but the stock market and property market are not very reliable and the investment risks are too high. We use community-based operating methods, for example, we frequently organize member activities to allow users to deeply participate in the hotel's products, and let everyone have a deeper understanding of the hotel, thereby enhancing users' emotional connection and stickiness. As long as the operation is good, it is not impossible to open a hotel and let users become your crowdfunding investors .

Traditional hotels, first of all, waste their users and fail to establish community fan relationships. Second, space is wasted and no relationship is established between services and products and users.

The focus of business is shifting from things to people, the driving force of business is shifting from traffic to relationships, and the measurement criteria of business is shifting from value to values. Therefore, in terms of thinking, we need to shift from being product-centered to being user-centered, and from operating physical objects to operating users. Physical objects are a means, and users are our assets.

In fact, now each of us can easily find an entry point, first acquire users, precipitate user behavior, and then reversely derive products to transform their commercial value.

What we can see is that successful companies are able to use their products as verbs. For example: I came here via Didi, asked a question on Baidu, and contacted me via WeChat. The word "product" is used as a verb. These mobile Internet products are definitely because they have accumulated a huge amount of user behavior .

Therefore, only when you update your thinking mode to user thinking, you will find more community gameplay and greater community dividends, opening your path to community wealth.

02

Reconstruct customer thinking: Many traditional companies have basically no relationship with customers after selling their products. Some even regard customer service as a nuisance and a burden. For companies that operate in a community-based manner, after the products are sold, they only begin to build relationships with customers and then start operating through the community.

A common operating method of the community is to use existing customers to trigger incremental customers, that is, by serving and connecting with old customers well, so that old customers will continue to actively attract new customers to you on the basis of greatly increasing their purchase rate.

A common problem facing companies today is that customer acquisition costs are increasing dramatically, while conversion rates are getting lower and lower. In fact, while working hard to expand new users, many people ignore the maintenance and operation of old customers.

The Internet has transitioned from the first half of land grabbing to the second half of intensive cultivation. One of my consulting clients invests tens of millions of yuan in advertising every year, but its customer consultation cost (the cost of attracting customers to come for purchasing consultation) is only a few hundred or even a thousand yuan. I asked them to use a more clever method, such as using text messages to get old customers to add their customer service WeChat, and then gradually activate them. Now the referral ratio of old customers is almost half.

Some customers also told me that they can earn more than 30 million every year on JD.com alone. I said that this is not important at all. If you don’t build a community, you may not even be able to sell 1 million this year.

Why?

Because they have no relationship with you, next time they want to buy the same thing, they will search again on JD.com, compare prices and reputation, and may not necessarily buy from you. The customers on JD.com are not yours, but belong to the JD.com platform. Later, he attracted old and new customers to his WeChat and hired people to operate the business. Now his sales have doubled and he is no longer restricted by the JD platform. He has achieved more than 10 million sales with Youzan.

Therefore, in addition to cash and physical assets, a more important asset of a company is how many fans you have and how many loyal fans you have. This is the real guarantee for the sustainable development of the company.

03

Reconstruct brand thinking: That is, if a brand only has powerful functions and advanced technology, it actually has no advantages at all, because your competitors will be able to catch up with or even surpass you immediately. Therefore, it is not enough to build a brand simply from a functional perspective. Your competitors are still continuously researching and developing product functions, but you are satisfying consumers' emotional needs while ensuring functionality. Only then can you truly stand out from the competition and remain invincible.

In other words, as a brand or a company, no matter how high-end you are, you must bend down and truly make friends with users and narrow the emotional distance between you and users.

We see that many traditional companies or projects are still communicating and interacting with consumers in a particularly professional and standardized manner, while truly successful companies have begun to humble themselves and use very down-to-earth language and methods to communicate with consumers, even in all kinds of unscrupulous ways. For example: Durex is definitely a pioneer in reconstructing brand thinking, so much so that now other brands of condoms are desperately imitating and catching up.

According to traditional brand thinking, brands generally promote their functional advantages in materials, prices, craftsmanship, etc. But in fact, no matter how you break through in terms of functionality, you are not much better than your competitors. Durex was the first to break this simple brand thinking and attract consumers from an emotional level, and it achieved huge success.

A critical and common question that requires everyone to rethink is: Why do consumers buy your products?

Some people say that it is because their products are of good quality, powerful functions and high cost performance. However, looking around, almost every field is a red ocean and consumers always have more choices.

Some people say that in addition to my high cost-performance ratio, I also have a high credibility. Don’t many people now look at reviews and credibility when buying things online? My credibility and reviews are the highest on the entire Internet. However, on the one hand, we can fake the best reviews at a very cheap price. Why should consumers trust you? On the other hand, even if consumers believe that your reviews are true, in such a fierce market competition environment, your competitors are actually also improving their own credibility.

You may still not have any advantages.

So why do consumers buy your products?

In addition to high cost-effectiveness and high trust, there is another very important factor: emotional factor . You are familiar with me, and I think you are my type, so if we have the same product, I will choose yours.

I may not be able to tell the difference between a Hammer phone and a Samsung phone, but Mr. Luo Yonghao is sentimental. Mr. Luo said: I am not here to win or lose, I am just serious! In addition, the remarks made at various press conferences really touched me.

Therefore, even though the Hammer phone initially had some gaps and flaws compared to Samsung phones, and even though the product advantages were not obvious, many Hammer fans bought the Hammer phone, and showed it off everywhere and recommended it on behalf of Mr. Luo.

Therefore, it is more difficult to build a brand, but there are more opportunities. When others are still competing on price-performance ratio, if you build a brand community and truly interact and communicate with consumers, you will be able to stand out and be one step ahead of others.

Summarize

The above is what I want to share with you. Before you officially start operating a community, you need to clarify and upgrade several aspects of your cognition. Including: grasping the trend, the change of traffic entrance actually brings about the reconstruction of the entire business model. Get the key right: the essence of the community lies in connection, and the goal of operation is to pimp.

Reconstruct your thinking, change your product development and layout ideas, customer relationship maintenance ideas, and brand building ideas.

Many of my friends who are familiar with me know that the above content is also some of the views and opinions that I often share with everyone before teaching community courses. From last year to this year, in addition to a series of systematic community courses and a 2-day and 1-night offline community training camp, I also taught more than 30 special community practical courses on various platforms.

Some people have a deep and thorough understanding of the community, and when they follow the methods, the results are very good. However, some students just imitate and copy blindly, and as a result, they put in a lot of effort but get mediocre results.

The content of this article, to some extent, is equivalent to reinstalling a social operating system for you. Only by carrying out various practical operations of community operations based on this new social operating system can you achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Source: Happy