To operate a community, you must first know the user’s wish list

As communities become increasingly popular, the profession of community operation is also rapidly emerging, just like new media operation .

Countless people have explored this emerging professional term, but just like new media operations , after a period of training after entering the job, they suddenly find that this field is also dull and unpredictable, just like the writing, typesetting and publishing of new media.

The so-called community operation is nothing more than bringing together a group of potential consumer users.

After working in community operations for a year or so, we are still at the stage of sending gifts to users and promoting activity, which does not provide much help to the product.

The reason why you fail to fully activate the value of a community is that you fail to understand the needs of activating the community.

First we need to ask ourselves a few questions:

• What are the purposes and goals of community operations?
• What are the user channels / user portraits for community operations?
• What are the advantages of community existence?
• What are the disadvantages of similar communities?
• How to make use of disadvantages?

Next, we need to understand the five major demand mechanisms of the community: high-quality content, seeking benefits, seeking help, social desire, and demonstrating value.

How to address the five major needs of the community?

1. Perform quality screening and evaluation on effective content to trigger more effective value from high-quality content.

2. It is necessary to make it clear that users can obtain short-term value and long-term value. There must be real and executable plans, and different benefit values ​​should be described for different users. It is not advisable to explain equity returns to ordinary farmers or to talk about fruit production to capitalists.

3. Provide users with the greatest value by joining the group to seek help, and reply or take over the reply to user feedback and issues that users need help with as soon as possible. Give community users the greatest respect. If you cannot answer their questions promptly and one by one, you must do the preparation work in advance.

4. Strengthen and open the threshold for social interaction, increase the threshold for entry and classify groups, implement cross-operation, reject the social dye vat, and create a good community operation environment.

5. Make users part of community management. During community operation, leave more room for users to play their roles, establish incentive mechanisms, and highlight the status and value of users in the community.

Back to the topic:

Community operation is to cooperate with the use of products and introduce users to the products; the goal of community establishment is always centered around "products", whether your product is a physical product, an idea, or a certain object of appeal.

Before operating a community, we must first clarify and establish a link mechanism with users.

It can be an emotional link, an interest link, or a welfare value link. This is very helpful in formulating the five major needs of the community and also highlights the advantages of the community.

For example: Xiaomi’s fan community was initially established based on the product experience of mobile phone enthusiasts, and the company’s focus was to use this group of enthusiasts to create a small testing experience environment based on product experience.

The social connection point between Kuaishou and its users is emotion, which allows Kuaishou users to feel a sense of a greater self in a small circle and express their emotions in the form of Laotie 666.

Therefore, clarifying the basis for establishing links with community users is the key.

After clarifying the basis for establishing the community, what you need to do is to make a wish list for the user.

When users join a community, it is definitely a process of constantly satisfying their desires, so you need to target users at different stages and provide them with different desire goals.

Below is a mind map of user wishes. Of course, this is just a rough draft and needs your input.

The wishes here can be simply divided into three stages:

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Short-term aspirations – welfare

When users enter a new community environment, their behavior will appear unusually restrained. It is the nature of animals to resist unfamiliar environments, and the best way to eliminate this resistance is welfare.

When it comes to defining welfare, we have to take the simplest and crudest form of money and gifts. Only food can arouse the primitive desires of animals.

People are no exception, no one will refuse food - unless he is Gandhi.

At this stage, we have no intention of distributing rewards to ordinary operating communities. We screen them in a simple active way, and for those who are very active, we will give them food rewards.

For those who are potentially active, what we do is carefully observe what their active behaviors are. At the same time, don’t assume that active people are your potential users. Those who can truly be called users often don’t bother with low-level activity.

By satisfying users' desire for welfare, you can gain a certain base of community users.

Mid-term wish: experience

After users have become initially familiar with the environment, a certain number of fake active users and sedimented users have already accumulated . At this stage, the users need to be filtered. High-value benefits and product experiences can be provided through tasks and placed in the user's wish list.

The free trial of the product can allow some users to understand and experience the product in depth, and the task you set for them can be to write a user experience paragraph or to complete some kind of publicity.

Of course, in order to meet everyone's desires and needs and to reflect the coexistence of fairness and differentiation, we must set common goals and personal honor goals for community users. Just like a game guild, elite players can participate in the guild's copy development and item distribution, and guild member users can also enjoy a certain share of the rewards.

A community is not gathered because of a certain person. If this person leaves and the community collapses, it can no longer be called a community. They will be an important condition for driving the community, but not the only condition.

The coexistence of joint rewards and personal honor is also an important condition for stimulating user activity. It is also a compensation for those who make small contributions to the community. The compensation can be in the form of appropriate product discounts (designed specifically for these users) as feedback, or simple and crude welfare forms can be chosen, such as after completing a certain node target, all members share the rewards or all members enjoy a certain discount.

To borrow a sentence from Teacher Xu:

Working hard for a goal usually makes people tired, while playing games for a goal usually makes people feel fun. The experience that users want to try is not only the product but also the joy of completing the goal.

Advanced Aspirations - Platform

After users are fully familiar with and understand the community, they have become elites and have entered the stage of obtaining advanced desires. Such users can no longer be simply called users. Every bit of their work will be related to the product. The ultimate appeal of all products is still people, and people happen to be the most valuable products.

For example, Xiaomi's fan community is not only an important user of Xiaomi mobile phones, but also the backbone of supporting Xiaomi products. Their value is more like the behind-the-scenes promoter of each product, and they can also be called Xiaomi's most valuable product.

The same is true for Bilibili : the content produced by users and the users' UP hosts are the top priority of Bilibili's product value.

The user's advanced desire is not only the benefits given to him by the product, but also that the user can maximize the output of his own value through the product. Stimulating a person's simple activity can be achieved by solving the problem of food and clothing.

To enable users to unleash their capabilities in the community, what you need to do is to maximize the integration of product and personal value by realizing users' mid-term wishes.

We can simply upgrade users and discover their uniqueness. The product's demand points will always meet the demands of certain users. What community operators need to do is not only to make users become the responsible parties of the community.

At the same time, users should be allowed to become promoters of the product, or become part of the promotion. Product endorsement is not just about the celebrity effect, but also about the support of users.

It can also become an important driver of the platform by fulfilling users' advanced wishes:

• The booming development of live streaming platforms is because they satisfy both the entertainment needs of ordinary users and the value benefits of advanced users;

• The popularity of the public account has made everyone a writer with dreams;

• Tik Tok ’s popularity is not only due to its own algorithm, but also because it enables users to continuously spread their charm like a ripple effect.

• NetEase Cloud Music is not only renowned for its excellent products, but also for the charm of independent musicians on the platform and the moving messages from users. Its promotion still highlights the value of the product through users, and through this process the community (users) is split.

Making a wish list for users is a simple way to operate a community well. You can try to use this method when formulating community rules. After all, group rules are not only institutional rules to regulate group members, but also a means to motivate them to be active and grow.

People's desires are constantly changing. As a community operator, you must always keep abreast of users' desires and needs. If you want to manage users, the first thing you need to do is understand your users.