Community operation: 5 ways to get to know the community and master it

This article explains in detail the routines from understanding the community to playing the community from 5 aspects. Let’s take a look.

1. Cognition: In the social age, you either gather people or people gather you.

Each of us has at least several social groups. In addition to your family and acquaintances, there are also colleagues groups, industry exchange groups, trouble-making groups, stranger groups, etc.

You are involved in so many communities, why not build a fan community base of your own?

Of course, some people may already be building a community, but have you considered some issues when building a community, such as how can I build a community that helps me make money? How to get rewards from it? How do I operate and manage a community?

In fact, working in a community is very hard work. You have to deal with different people, produce content, organize and plan activities, etc.

Considering the input and output issues, I personally do not recommend creating a free community. Unless your strategy is to attract short-term traffic , do not create a free group because your operating costs will be very high and you will face many human challenges.

Paid communities have certain thresholds, which can help you screen out some people, thereby improving your community population and environment, which will facilitate your operation management and word-of-mouth building. At the same time, it will bring some returns to your investment, such as increasing your annual income by tens of thousands of yuan, which is normal.

2. Planning: How to plan your fan community?

When doing anything, it is recommended to think about the layout before taking action, and the same applies to building a community.

1. 5W2H model to think about community issues as a whole

It is best to think clearly before taking action before creating a community. I would recommend that you use the 5w2h thinking model. I recommend that you take a piece of white paper or write on your computer why you want to create this community?

• Why: Why do I want to build a community
• What: What value can the community bring
• Who: What kind of people are the community members?
• When: When to establish and promote
• Where: Where to build a community
• How: How to implement my community planning
• How much budget do I need?

When building a community, you need to consider input and output, but the most important thing about building a community is not how much money you charge, but what kind of value you bring to others . Of course, the stronger this sense of value is, the better, provided that it matches your own value.

2. Think about your social positioning

What should be the positioning of a community? Here are a few factors for your reference:

Price positioning: Generally speaking, low-priced communities are those with prices below 499 yuan. The mid-range prices are above 999 yuan. The relatively high-end ones are those with prices of several thousand or tens of thousands of yuan. It is not recommended to set the price very high at the beginning, as it may not attract people. For ordinary people, what they can usually hold on to are low-priced communities.

Scope positioning: Scope positioning means that when you set up a community, do you want to go big and comprehensive or do vertical segmentation? We need to think carefully about it.

Category positioning: What kind of fields and categories should be chosen to build the community? It is recommended to determine it based on the group owner’s personal advantages, personality, and endorsements. You have to think about what you are good at? Which category can you handle? For example, I can handle WeChat Moments operations, community operations , and micro-course operations. If I switch to categories like time management, English, and learning and growth, I won’t be able to handle it. This is the positioning of the category.

Crowd positioning: Crowds are generally associated with prices. Corresponding price positioning can divide the purchasing power of the crowd into low-end novices, mid-range middle class and high-end experts.

Scale positioning: Generally speaking, low-price communities are large in scale and have many members, while high-value communities tend to be small and beautiful. So what scale should the communities be built on? It depends on your positioning and initial planning.

Regarding positioning, there are four questions worth thinking about again and again:

• What kind of community do I want to create?
• What kind of people do I want to gather?
• What kind of things are we doing together?
• What makes me different from other people in the same community?

3. 5 reference steps for building a group (from Uncle Qiuye’s social marketing )

Find people who share the same interests: This means finding people who share the same frequency, have some common interests and hobbies, and have similar outlooks to play with.

Determine the structure : To build a community, you need to first sort out the structure of the community. How are the people in my community arranged? How to set the rules? And so on.

When building a fan community, a pyramid structure is recommended rather than a ring structure. The reason is that the pyramid structure will divide the people in the community into several different levels, and everyone needs to recognize the group owner, which is conducive to the creation of fan culture.

The circular structure means that everyone is equal. For example, there was a mutual promotion group for knowledge payment bigwigs some time ago. In this mutual promotion group, everyone is a big V who has achieved certain results in the field of knowledge payment. They just need to follow the rules of the group and don’t need to look at me, so the means of operation are very different.

Output : This means that your group should output some valuable information, such as valuable discussions, sharing, and gameplay.

Smart operation: Use clever operation methods to carry out community activities in an orderly manner.

Replicability : Communities need to develop sustainably, be able to incubate and replicate new communities, and even be able to iterate upwards.

For example, if I create a low-cost community, then what I might do next is to create a more advanced one, screening high-quality people, or even allowing some high-quality friends in the group to split into a new community. This is replicable.

4. Plan your social gameplay

If there are no regularly organized activities, the group will easily become a dead group. When we are building a community, we must think about how long this community will operate.

If the cycle is several months or even a year, then what I should think about is what activities I should do every month, week, and day in this year? ‍‍

5. Confirm the system for joining the group

When you run a paid community, you must set rules for joining the group. Generally speaking, there are four rules:

The first invitation system : This system is suitable for finding some KOLs to support you, and using their influence to help you with publicity and promotion.

The second payment system is to pay money to enter, which is simple and crude.

The third application system : Because the screening process is very cumbersome, the review method will be through questionnaires, emails, one-on-one private chats, etc., and it will only be used for high-end community applications.

The fourth review system : generally, the review will be conducted through self-introduction, circle of friends and one-on-one private chat. Easier than applying.

It is recommended to use the payment + review method to join the low-cost fan community. This two-pronged approach will greatly reduce the risk of screening out some people who do not fit in.

The recommended practical method is to look through the other person’s circle of friends, and you will automatically identify who may be a high-quality group member, and the deviation will not be too large.

6. Accident risk management

Building a community is not without its own benefits. There are also risks and thorny issues:

For example, if there are often people in the group who maliciously make trouble, argue with you, and disrupt the order of the community, what should you do at this time?

Here are some common emergency response plans:

• First, regarding community issues, if you encounter any dissatisfaction, you must get a full refund. There is no need to ruin the group for such a small amount of money.
• Second, if you encounter malicious destruction or people with different values, immediately persuade them to leave and refund the money to avoid expanding the negative reputation.
• Third, when encountering a social public relations crisis, the common way to deal with it is to first acknowledge the incident, then take the initiative to apologize and send a large red envelope, and finally conduct emergency handling, state the future action plan, and then improve and implement it. Don't say one thing and do another.

7. Summary and answers to common community planning questions

The first one is about pricing. If the price is too high, no one will buy it. If the price is too low, it will not be cost-effective. What should we do?

It is recommended that you conduct a preliminary investigation into the pricing of similar communities in the entire industry. If this is your first time to start a similar community, your pricing can be slightly lower than the industry level to make it easier to recruit people. Once the price is too high, it is almost impossible to lower the price.

The second problem is that I am worried that no one will buy into the promotion at the beginning.

The simplest strategy is to increase the volume. You can first invite some good friends to come in and support you, or give some places to your loyal fans.

The third problem is the worry that the operation will not work.

This worry is a bit unnecessary. The operation has already been planned out during the planning period. We just need to execute it and make adjustments if any problems arise. Nothing serious will happen.

The fourth problem is worrying about bad reputation and being afraid of people complaining about it.

Strictly speaking, complaining is normal. As long as you make sure that most people in the group say something good about you, it’s an OK community.

3. Promotion: 3 powerful tricks to find 300+ group members at 0 cost

The logic of community recruitment promotion and course promotion is the same. You need to think of a good strategy at the beginning. It is recommended to release the potential energy first and then consider making money. Here are three tips to help you find your paying users step by step.

The first trick: low-price promotion to create momentum

As mentioned in the previous suggestions, you should promote at a low price in the early stage, and then raise the price after recruiting enough people and accumulating the community potential.

Please note that the low price here does not mean poor quality, but rather provides super value at a low price. In other words, the value of the community service you provide is high, but the fees are low.

But many people cannot do this. They always raise the price at the beginning and make a lot of money. In fact, it is difficult to expand quickly.

The second trick: choose a promotion strategy that suits you

For communities, there are several common promotion strategies and ideas on the market.

The first one is to bring in new users through old members' referrals. This method of attracting new users is suitable for mature communities with certain potential and reputation, such as the Knowledge IP Base Camp. This is how they promote their services. One old member has about three internal referral slots.

The second method is to attract new customers through fission . This method is directly driven by distribution fission and profit, where KOLs who have already joined the group or are outside the group are asked to help recommend products. Promoters receive a certain percentage of commission from this, and the common commission ratio is about 30%-50%.

The third method is to attract new members through funnel . Many communities attract new members by giving you a free open class, and then after the course, telling you that they have a more advanced course and community, and if you want to join, you have to pay to join, thus achieving funnel conversion .

There are many strategies, how to choose? At the beginning, without traffic and potential energy, you cannot attract new customers by following the model of the big guys.

At this time, you can use some tough tactics, such as applying fission and funnel to attract new users, to screen out some people who recognize you.

By following this method, you can generally find 100-200 community members. Once you have these people under your control, you will slowly accumulate the potential and reputation of the community.

After that, you can slowly raise the price of the community, change your promotion strategy, and promote and convert new users through word-of-mouth conversion and by bringing in old users to bring in new ones.

So you see, our promotion strategies and rhythms are completely different in different periods.

We must take into consideration our own potential, influence, resources, etc., and avoid blindly copying other people's ways of playing, otherwise we will fall into the trap again.

The third trick: Continue to convert word-of-mouth communication

User conversion follows a conversion formula: number of paying users = traffic × open rate × conversion rate . If you want to find more paying users, there are two points worth your efforts.

The first point is to find the location of your traffic. In plain words, it means to cast a wide net and screen which users might be your favorites.

These traffic entrances may be Moments, official accounts , live broadcast rooms, multi-platform platforms, etc. The more traffic entrances, the better.

The second point is that if you want to write a good community recruitment copy , the two important evaluation points are to increase the opening and conversion rates of the copy.

How to write such copy? Please continue reading.

4. Copywriting: How to write high-conversion community recruitment copy

The most important thing about a copy is the strategy, not the literary talent. Common copywriting strategies include: achievement, value, value-for-money, endorsement, emotion, word-of-mouth, effect, authority…

So, before writing a copy, you must choose your copywriting strategy. What cards do you want to play?

After choosing a strategy, you should then plan the logic of the copy and how it should be written. The common routine framework for copywriting is AI DA.

• Attention: The first sentence should attract users to read on.
• Interest: Make users interested in what you are talking about
• Desire: Make users believe that what you say is true.
• Action: Guide users to take action and buy

Here, I will put some copywriting I wrote in the past. This copywriting has not been read many times, but it has helped me earn at least 30,000 yuan. If you are interested, you can directly analyze it.

Of course, good conversion copywriting is just the tip of the ice water floating on the surface. What is more important is the more valuable things that sink underwater, which will make more users pay for the trust that you have built in your personal brand over a long period of time.

• For example, if you are such a person, always speaking and doing what you preach, and your personality is the same as your daily practices, then you will naturally attract a wave of people who recognize you.
• Secondly, you must achieve some results on your own and thoroughly establish your personal brand.
• Again, writing your own brand story is to spread it continuously so that more people can know and understand you.
• Finally, you must learn to habitually communicate your brand . That is, if you have done something outstanding, remember to spread it in a timely manner so that people can remember you deeply, understand you, and establish a strong personal style (personality).

5. Operations: Gather a group of people and empower each other

The most important thing in community operation is to empower each other. Many communities die prematurely and become inactive, and the fundamental reason is probably because of this.

1. Design a community empowerment system

How does a fan community achieve empowerment balance? Is it necessary to plan at the very beginning what the different levels of community roles should contribute? What do you get accordingly?

Once the balance between input and output of community roles is broken, the empowerment balance of the entire community will be completely destroyed.

For example, community managers always give a lot but cannot get what they want. They will give up over time, and the group will become a useless group once no one manages it.

Because of this, the gameplay we planned in advance must begin to realize its true value. These gameplays are like lubricants, constantly nourishing everyone in the community and allowing everyone to operate under this system.

Continue to empower the community and then gain what you want. For example, I will hold weekly flipped course sharing in the community. Every community member can apply to become a guest and come to my live broadcast room with more than 2 million popularity to give lectures.

For community users, they provide me with content, and I also provide them with platforms and resources. Everyone contributes at the same time and gains from each other, the energy is balanced, and the community gets bigger and bigger, and the reputation gets better and better.

2. Planning community operations staff

However, it is still difficult to run the community solely relying on this empowerment system. There must be an operations team dedicated to managing the community.

So how do you plan this team? Generally speaking, there are four types of people: core person in charge, partners, outsourced partners, and executors.

At least four people are needed to actually participate in the operation of the community, including the group owner, administrator, activity officer, and record officer. The specific division of responsibilities can be found in the figure below:

3. Manage and motivate community operators

Now that the responsibilities have been planned, can you really handle them well? It also requires an effective management and incentive mechanism, after all, many operators are part-time.

In this regard, a reference approach is to pay close attention to the status and ideas of the operations staff, and give them enough space and guidance; rewards should be given when they are due, and money should be given when it is due. If there are particularly outstanding partners, they can be selected as partners.

The most troublesome problem in online operations is the instability of the operations staff, which can easily lead to talent loss for one reason or another, so timely communication and problem solving are very important.

Of course, to be able to hold this group of people, it also depends on whether the core figure’s energy field is big enough and his pattern is big enough, otherwise it will be difficult to solve the substantive problems.

It is very difficult to run a community. From a participant to a planner, and then to an executor, only then will you understand how a community should be played?

4. How to improve the level of community operation

• First, change your role from a participant to an operator. You can try to be someone else’s community assistant and experience the gameplay firsthand.
• Second, get involved in actual combat and directly manage a community from beginning to end, regardless of whether the fee is 9.9 yuan or 99 yuan, and regardless of how many people the community recruits, first go through the entire community process according to planning, promotion, and operation.
• Third, copy the gameplay . We go to other people’s communities. If we see that others have good operating methods and routines, within the scope of our own operating capabilities, we recommend copying others’ good gameplay for our own use. This is the fastest way to progress.
• Fourth, upgrade and iterate . Don’t be dissatisfied with the existing operating methods, and constantly optimize and iterate new methods to keep pace with the times.

VI. Summary: Three core elements of playing with the community

1. Planning: Planning the community deliberately

Sun Tzu's Art of War says to win first and then fight. The most important thing for running a group is the early planning. You must be confident enough in the planning to gain a chance of success in the community, lay out the situation well, and then think about how to execute it.

Be careful not to launch a community without planning, otherwise you will set yourself up for many pitfalls.

2. Promotion: Promote strategically

Promotion is no small matter. Cook as much as you have rice. Don’t be in a hurry to make money. It is recommended that you build up potential energy first and then talk about the rest.

3. Copywriting: There are ways to increase user conversion

There are methods to follow for copywriting conversion. Don’t rush to start writing. Instead, think about the planning and strategy of the copywriting first, and then use the AIDA copywriting template to design the logic of the copywriting.

The most important thing is to build a solid personal reputation and credibility.

4. Operation: Have a routine to play your community

There are some tricks to playing in a community. In addition to playing yourself, you also have to watch others play. If you find a good way of playing, you can copy it and use it for your own benefit. While operating, you also need to think about how to iterate and optimize next.

Recommended community operation tools :

• WeChat group : mainly used for daily communication.
• Live broadcast room: mainly used for community sharing activities, convenient for listening back and hosting.
• Knowledge Planet: Convenient for recording important information and synchronizing community updates to the Knowledge Planet.
• Other auxiliary community operation tools include Xiao U Manager, Wetool, Weiyou Assistant/Community Space, etc. Please search on Baidu for their functions and how to play.

Source: Bruce2047