How should companies build and operate their own communities?

When it comes to communities , many people’s first impression is various WeChat groups . For enterprises, if they think that communities are just a few WeChat groups, such communities are doomed to fail from the moment they are born. To understand communities, we must first understand the emergence and significance of communities.

1. The significance of community

As it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire traffic and the opening rate of public accounts continues to decline, WeChat groups, as a channel for acquiring new users and communicating directly with users, have become increasingly important. From simply attracting a seed user group to covering all product users, community operations have also risen to the strategic level of the enterprise.

We can see that in different eras, the chain of business logic has different evolution paths:

Industrial Age:

It’s a one-time transaction. When you pay and get the product, the service ends.

Internet Age:

The PC traffic gameplay is to attract users first, and then monetize through advertising, e-commerce , and membership. As long as there are users, you can continue to make profits.

Post -mobile Internet era:

The service empowers existing products and evolves into new products at the same time, killing three birds with one stone.

For example:

In the industrial age, an author published a book and handed it over to a publisher. He would receive royalties for each copy sold, and the business chain would end.

In the Internet age, he started blogging and became a Weibo influencer , which enabled him to profit from advertising or selling goods.

In the era of mobile Internet , he not only opened a WeChat public account , but also organized a reader group. He found that some things that had been kept in the box were more suitable for small-scale dissemination, so he built a paid knowledge planet. If others still had questions after reading it, he had the paid Q& A platform Fenda. Throughout the evolution process, as services deepen, business models continue to expand.

Internet products gather users, but the deepening of services requires a strong connection with users, and communities play a very important role here.

2. What types of companies are suitable for community building?

Companies can acquire customers at low cost and provide users with more products and services by building communities. However, not all companies are suitable for building communities .

The community is applicable to the following three types of enterprises:

1. Early stage of enterprise development

In the early stages of a company's development, resources from all parties are relatively weak. Communities, as a low-cost way to acquire customers, can quickly acquire the first batch of seed users, and these seed users can promote product iteration and word-of-mouth effects.

2. Products with long decision cycles

For example, products like insurance have high capital thresholds, and users need to constantly learn about the products before they can make purchasing decisions. This requires constant communication within the community to help users understand and eliminate doubts.

3. Products with high barriers to use or recognition

For example, blockchain is a new thing and users are vague about the whole concept. People who are new to it don’t know how to perform operations such as buying and selling. Traditional Q&A and operation guides cannot meet user needs.

3. How should companies build their own communities?

The logic of attracting new customers , promoting activation, and converting customers is as follows:

1. Community acquisition

①Activity fission

Activity fission is undoubtedly the most effective way to attract new members to the community. From NetEase's drama queens coming out to give lectures to the New World Marketing Class, this method not only quickly gathered users but also went viral on WeChat Moments .

The core of this kind of activity is to use extremely favorable products or give benefits to induce users' desire to get a bargain. Common methods include joining a group to get discounts/free items, group purchase discounts, current prices far lower than the original price, limited-time specials, step-by-step price increases, invitation/distribution rewards, etc.

A complete activity fission process is as follows:

②Enterprise personal account construction

The nature of WeChat 's social interaction among acquaintances will cause a certain resistance to marketing accounts. People don't want to see micro-business advertisements in their circle of friends, but they don't have much resistance to company or industry information. As an important way to attract new customers and display information, personal accounts should establish their image as a living employee of the company who is familiar with the products and has insights into the industry, rather than a customer service representative or a character who posts advertisements every day without knowing who is behind it.

Moments is a very good way to display information. The upper limit of WeChat friends is 5040 people. Each Moments post is a display of information to 5040 precise groups of people. The goal is to make what you post look like sharing rather than advertising. In the daily construction of Moments, in addition to company information, there should also be a display of personal life status, understanding and views on the industry.

2. Community promotion

Many WeChat groups are set up and become active for a few days before they either become dead groups, or become filled with advertisements or turn into chat groups. Attracting users is only the first step. Continuous operation is required to maintain the vitality of the community.

In summary, corporate communities need to provide users with the following five values:

① Information value

Users can obtain information about companies and products in the group at the first time. However, WeChat is not friendly to group management. Official releases can easily be drowned out by group information. Official information needs to be given a sense of ritual to distinguish it from other messages in the group. For example, it can be released in the form of pictures, fixed sections, and fixed times to establish a unique impression in the minds of users.

② Benefit value

Red envelopes in the form of greetings in WeChat groups and regular activities with small prizes can effectively motivate users.

③ Value of opinion

The group provides a space for close contact with the company's founders or product managers. Group members are very happy to hear their views on the products and the industry. At the same time, often inviting some big guys to speak in the group can often bring about a climax of interaction.

④ Learning value

As mentioned earlier, industries suitable for building communities often have certain cognitive or decision-making thresholds. Helping community members improve their knowledge in related areas can increase the stickiness of the community.

⑤ Link value

Not only the link between users and enterprises, but also the link between users will generate huge value. Enterprises can organize offline meetups and encourage local group members to organize spontaneously and give certain rewards.

3. Social Conversion

The ultimate goal of building a community is to bring about conversions, and we need to look for the following two points:

1. Use scenes to drive conversion

WeChat is a social tool , and the chat environment is not conducive to product conversion. At this time, it is necessary to design the conversion form in a scenario-based manner to transfer users from the chat scenario to the scenario designed by themselves. The conversion scenario can be festivals, hot spots, etc.

2. Convenience of conversion process

Multiple redirects will often result in the loss of a considerable number of users. When the number of community members reaches a certain scale, it is necessary to establish a product based on WeChat.

Communities are not a product that only appeared after the WeChat group appeared. From BBS to various interest apps, the evolution of communities will make products closer and closer to users and make communication more and more convenient. At the same time, new product forms will evolve based on user needs. Users are king in Internet products. No matter what form the community appears in, only by adhering to the mentality of serving users well can the operation of the community be done well.