How to operate a good community? Share 4 community skills!

Since 2017, communities have been pushed to the forefront, and a large number of talents have emerged from community operations . Because they can reach users faster, some companies have seized the bonus period of communities, accumulated a group of users for the companies, and directly increased the company's sales.

Traffic is becoming more and more expensive, and companies all want to occupy the traffic for themselves. As a carrier for accumulating traffic, communities have gradually begun to be valued by companies, and community operations have entered their peak period.

Therefore, this traffic channel of social networks is increasingly regarded as important by enterprises. As a result, some early "personal channels" were born that used WeChat tools to create community fission and WeChat traffic .

The so-called "personal channels" are operators with traffic thinking. When the community was at the forefront, they saw the potential business opportunities in it. When the community is popular, people start to add groups crazily to attract traffic with the help of WeChat group tools and some operational means, especially some communities in vertical industries, by adding dozens of WeChat accounts.

Judging from the data in my personal circle of friends , they generally have thousands or even tens of thousands of community resources in vertical industries, covering the whole country. They realize their monetization by promoting products to advertisers in the community. They generally call themselves "traffic growth officers."

So how to build a highly active and high-quality community and how a community operator should operate a community well, here are some of my views and ideas:

I think a highly active and high-quality community can be generally summarized by the following four points: the attributes of group members, the charm of the group leader, the value of the community, and the means of community operation.

1. Attributes of Group Members

The attributes referred to here are some characteristics and personalities of group members. For example, an operational communication and discussion group will often be much more active than a community established for commercial purposes. Even if you sometimes do not operate this community at all, it will still be very active.

Because of the different attributes of group members, members of an operations discussion group are definitely looking for communities to find resources or seek help for better communication, or they are forced by the company's KPI. Under the pressure of KPI and the lack of understanding from leaders, they often feel that they have a lot of grievances to express.

At this time, the online WeChat group has become their best place to rely on. Because everyone in the group is in the same industry and can understand each other, even if they were not familiar with each other before, because it resonates with group members, they can quickly integrate together and create a topic.

This is not the case for a community with commercial purposes. From the second half of 2017 to 2018, online education and knowledge payment have emerged and become the top three popular industries. Many companies have seen this business opportunity, and a large number of corporate executives have begun to teach as lecturers to bring sales to the company.

I believe everyone still remembers some of the cases that went viral, such as: NetEase Xijing, New World ’s marketing class, and Knowledge Planet’s first open class. As a result, many course learning groups have emerged in the name of open courses, but the life cycle of such groups is generally not very long.

From what I have seen in communities of this type on WeChat, I have found that these communities are generally only active for a while before and after the course begins. After a long time, this community will become silent and forgotten because it can no longer provide value to group members.

I would also like to say something here. After establishing a group, many companies do not pay attention to subsequent services and operations, which directly leads to the death of the community. You can observe the communities around you to see if they are all like this.

2. The charm of the group leader

Generally speaking, in a community, except for those that have split off, more than half of the people are acquainted with the group owner. If you want to run a community well in the early stages, the group owner plays a very important role because he has to take care of the feelings of everyone in the group. If you are not careful enough, you may neglect a group member, causing him to become inactive in the group.

At this time, it depends on the charm and popularity of the group owner. If the group owner himself has a certain degree of fame or excellent popularity, and can maintain good relationships with everyone in the group, then this group IP potential will be able to cover everything.

So, let’s make an assumption: if you join a community of people who are well-known in the industry, will you pay more attention to this community than other communities? Or when a community invites a big-name member to join, will it arouse your interest in becoming active in the community again?

3. The Value of Community

The value of the community is very important, as it will determine how long your community's life cycle will be. That is, what is the original intention of creating this community, and can it provide value to your group members?

Generally, when a person joins a community, he or she has a purpose and needs. If he or she does not find what he or she needs in the community in a timely manner, he or she will choose to block it. The value of the community can generally be reflected in these areas, such as: case sharing, resource docking, content output, professional sharing, and sharing of practical information.

As time goes by and the number of group members increases, the worthless community will have more and more spam ads or meaningless chats, causing many valuable members to choose to quit the group or directly block group messages.

Only valuable communities can develop for a long time. Fundamentally speaking, worthless communities have no meaning of existence. Existence is just a simple WeChat group.

4. Means of community operation

What I have said before are basically the characteristics and attributes of the community itself. Now I would like to talk to you about the methods a community operator can use to make the community more active and extend its life cycle.

There are actually many means of community operation. Let me briefly tell you a few:

(1) Using group tools

If it is a learning community, we can use some check-in tools to increase the participation of group members and improve the overall activity. For example: set a goal or a book or a class as a goal, and check in every day to learn a part of it.

(2) Self-introduction

When a new group is established and new members just join, you can ask members to introduce themselves first. This will help everyone get to know each other better. After knowing what the other party does and showing their strengths and projects, other group members will see what they are interested in and start to connect and be active in the group. This will indirectly build a bridge for mutual understanding among community members.

(3) Creating topics

We can use some hot topics in the industry, throw them into the group, and then find a few people to call for action and stimulate discussion. This will also arouse the interest of group members and increase participation.

(4) Support group KOL

A community is one in which all group members must be connected to each other, in order to prevent the entire community from becoming silent due to the withdrawal of one connection point. As community operators, we need to help group members to smooth out relationships, eliminate unfamiliarity, establish connections, and form a network framework.

Therefore, we can allow some of the more active users in the group to share some work experience and content in the group on a regular basis, so that while increasing the activity of the community, we can also cultivate a group of opinion leaders within the group.

(5) Offline activities

No matter how much or how deeply we chat online, we are still “online friends” after all. Therefore, when appropriate, you can propose to hold offline activities in the group. It would be best if you are all in the same city and invite group members to participate. Increase the emotional aggregation among community members, enable members to establish deeper connections, and increase the stickiness of the community, which can better ensure the activity and life cycle of the community.

(6) Reward mechanism

We can use material measures to encourage members to actively post topics and participate in discussions. We can set up a mechanism for the community. For example, we will give out some gifts to the top three most active members of the community every month. The gifts can be chosen by themselves, which can be books or other things. This can also increase community activity.

Pay attention to one detail here. When presenting the awards at the end of the month, be sure to publicly mention the winning members in the group. This will inspire the fighting spirit of the members who did not win. Gupo's Planet has used this method before, selecting the top three active users every month, publicly awarding them prizes in the group and mailing them books. The author himself has also used this method in the community to motivate members by sending red envelopes, and he personally thinks it is not bad.

Of course, there are many other methods. As a community operator, these are all soft skills of the community. If the environment permits, I think you can try them.

Nowadays, communities are becoming more and more prevalent. On average, each user joins at least dozens of communities. Communities are products. If your community cannot attract users and make them willing to spend their time in it, then I think you should think carefully about whether your community still has meaning to exist.

A community should be of high quality rather than quantity. Before building your community, I think you should first think about your community planning and monetization path, otherwise it will be meaningless even if you build it.

Now more and more people are pouring into the community operation industry, and some community operation factions have emerged. Everyone is thinking about how to innovate and how to better integrate the community with their own business.

There is still a lot worth thinking about on the road of building community.

The above are some of my views and sharing on the community. Everyone is welcome to discuss in the comment section.

Author: LZX, authorized to publish by Qinggua Media .

Source: LZX's study notes