How do communities attract traffic and convert people?

Everyone is talking about community operation and fan economy , spending a lot of manpower and resources to establish communities and formulate various plans for maintenance and operation , but the results are very limited. Why?

Have you ever encountered this situation:

• I worked hard to create several large groups of three to five hundred people. They were active at the beginning, but became dead in a few days. Apart from sending out a morning report every day, I also posted advertisements in the groups.
• I transferred several groups from the official account, intending to do community operation and conversion , but they turned into complaint groups, and a lot of manpower is spent every day to solve problems and deal with crises.
• Because of the offline activities , several large groups were organized. Before the activities started, there was a heated discussion in the groups. Everyone was looking forward to the start of the activities and made appointments to meet each other offline. On the day of the activities, the friends who attended the activities had live text and picture broadcasts in the groups and had a great time chatting with each other. However, after the activities ended, the groups became quiet and slowly died out.
• Through fission activities, hundreds of groups were formed. At the beginning, a group of hundreds of people was established within a few minutes. Everyone followed the rules and posted screenshots of their Moments in the group to ask for courses or benefits. But once they were about to reach the goal, they left the group, and slowly the group went from 100 people to 80 to 50 people.

Everyone is talking about community operation and fan economy, as if without a few WeChat groups , we cannot keep up with the pace of the times. A lot of manpower and resources are spent on establishing communities and formulating various plans for maintenance and operation, but the results are very limited. Why?

What are the genes of WeChat groups?

I monitored 30 WeChat accounts and nearly 3,000 WeChat groups over a period of 7 days, and analyzed the following data:

Groups with less than 100 people account for the largest proportion, more than half.

All groups can be classified into the following five types:

• Benefit-based: For example: JD Welfare Group, Yishang [In-app Purchase Discount] 8 Group;
• Event-based: For example: Internet conference registration group, Saturday offline group, August 3 team building group, product launch test group;
• Interest-based: For example: check-in reading group, check-in fitness group, street dance group, mountain climbing group, midnight chat group;
• Regional type: for example: Beijing dating group, Xi'erqi rental group, Dawang Road second-hand goods exchange group;
• Relationship-based: for example: a loving family, CreditEase insurance division, university classmates group.

And through data analysis :

Statistics show that among the 2879 groups, 1640 had no replies within 7 days, and 815 had no more than 7 sentences. If each group is considered active if it has 10 conversations per day, there are only 154 groups, accounting for 5.3%, which means that 94.7% of the groups are "dead groups." Statistics were collected on 1,239 groups that had conversations within 7 days.

The following table can be obtained:

From this we can get:

Activity: Relationship > Interest > Region > Event > Benefit

If each group is considered active if there are 10 conversations per day, there are 154 groups. Analysis of the 154 groups yields the following:

The above data show that the genes of WeChat groups are biased towards relationships, and the WeChat ecosystem is social networking among acquaintances. Relationship groups such as classmates, colleagues, and friends are more dynamic. Regional and interest-based WeChat groups only meet people’s needs for social networking with strangers, that is, the function of self-realization. As an event-based community, its rise is rapid and its fall is sudden. Interest-based groups satisfy people's greed and do not stimulate their desire to express themselves. In other words, in order to cover up their greed, they will suppress their desire to express themselves.

Therefore, for the activity (event-type) groups and welfare groups we have created, if they do not have the gene to be active themselves, even if we set up more group entry ceremonies, group check-ins, daily reports and other means of activating the group, it will only delay the sedimentation time of the group.

Should we create a WeChat group and how to do it?

Should we create WeChat groups? In the PC era, search was the traffic entrance. In the mobile era, WeChat is the largest traffic entrance. WeChat groups are the most convenient and fastest way to accumulate traffic, so of course we should create WeChat groups.

So what should we do?

In a word:

Give users a reason to join the group and convert them as soon as possible during the group’s attenuation period!

Let's talk about this sentence separately. Let's talk about the first half first: give the user a reason to join the group.

In fact, it means why users join the group and whether your reasons are convincing and attractive enough. Join the group to receive red envelopes. The reason is simple and clear. You can join the group to listen to lectures, join the group to communicate with industry leaders, join the group to receive daily benefits, join the group to receive Tmall coupons, offline registered users can scan to join the group, and paying users can join the VIP member group, etc. There is nothing wrong with these reasons, the reasons are clear enough, these groups are interest-based and event-based WeChat groups.

What to do after the group is full?

Convert as quickly as possible during the group decay period . Never try to operate these groups, as it will only be a waste of effort and in vain. There are four paths for conversion direction.

Generally, event-based WeChat groups will decay rapidly seven days after the event ends, so the best time to convert is during the event. For example: after an offline or online course ends, send out a public account QR code, reply to keywords to receive the course PPT, or send APP coupons in the group, which are valid within 7 days of download and registration. Each industry and each path is very different, so I will not give examples one by one.

What should we pay attention to when converting WeChat groups?

People are more willing to join large groups, and the decision to exit a large group is more costly.

For example: There are two industry exchange groups now, one with 80 people and the other with 400 people. If you are asked to choose one, which one would you choose?

400 people, because you subconsciously believe that a group with more people means more people recognize you, and you will have more opportunities to gain from joining a large group. Similarly, now you are in two industry exchange groups, one with 80 people and the other with 400 people. Now you have to quit one of them. Which one will you quit?

You will quit a group of 80 people, and after comparing the costs, you will think that the loss is greater if you quit a group of 400 people. Therefore, when we create a group, we try to create a large group, which is easier to attract people to join and less likely to lose users.

Type superposition makes it easier to retain users.

A WeChat group can be formed with a single type. If the types are overlapped, the stickiness of the WeChat group will increase and the activity will be improved. For example: Interest region = Beijing reading group can retain users better than reading group, after all, it also has regional attributes. For example: Interest event = Huofeng Fitness Club VIP members’ 6.20 course group, which contains online courses of the same fitness club, can further increase stickiness.

Create a browsing-based community and maintain continuous exposure.

Browsing-based communities rely on high-quality content. Only a small number of core users are required to contribute content, while the vast majority of users browse and consume. Browsing-based communities do not require strong operations and have lower labor costs. As long as the community content output remains continuous and certain, the user churn rate will not be too high. By providing continuous and uninterrupted exposure, a memory effect can be formed in the minds of users, which can lead to continuous conversion.

Summarize

This article mainly discusses the direction of WeChat group operations. Everything has its own internal genes. Genes are innate and are the essence of things. Violating the essence is tantamount to seeking fish in a tree and going in the wrong direction. Only by going with the flow can you achieve twice the result with half the effort. Create a browsing-based community, focus less on operations and more on conversion, and treat the WeChat group as a traffic pool.