8 suggestions for 5 pain points in community operations

Community has always been a very hot topic. I studied the more popular Internet learning organizations on the market and found a vicious circle: some people operate their own communities very poorly, but still come out to teach others how to use the community, and the fees are not low. I summarize the problems of these current Internet learning communities into five main points:

1. Information is not smooth among group members, and communication costs are high

This is a problem that exists in almost all communities. The only information everyone sees about each other in the community is in the format of "Shanghai-Unemployed Homeless Person-Feng Baobao" or something like that. This kind of information makes it impossible for people to understand each other. If I talk to each person for one minute, a community of 500 people would take nearly ten hours. This results in very low communication efficiency, so you cannot find the person you are looking for immediately.

2. Community operations lack systematization

Some communities are very active because the group owner has some prestige and is willing to spend a lot of energy to manage them, so he can maintain such activity. But when two, three, or four groups are established, the group owner will be unable to cope with all the tasks. Then the group owner began to recruit some volunteers to manage the community, and the community began to change from then on. These group managers are active just for the sake of being active, doing boring things all day long, forgetting that people gather together to gain value rather than to kill time. Therefore, if you want to establish a community of a certain scale, it must be systematized and have a set of self-running and replicable mechanisms.

3. Lack of incentive mechanism

A high-quality community is inseparable from three elements: a good incentive system, content creators, and high-quality group managers. Currently, almost all content creators of communities are community organizers, and the high-quality content output by group members is sporadic, so it cannot be circulated at all. The problem lies in the lack of an incentive system. Incentives should be real, not just a few polite words of thanks. The value you think you can create for others is often despised by others. Therefore, we need to draw a clear value loop for content creators, group managers, event initiators, and other group members, and provide sufficiently tempting incentives to those who make contributions, so that everyone will be motivated to interact and contribute.

4. Lack of an efficient communication method

A big problem with WeChat group chats is that it is difficult to have in-depth communication. Most of the time, I prefer to make phone calls. Because you can't describe the scenario, details, and demands of the problem all at once, everyone has to keep going back and forth, so it's difficult for the other party to understand. If the other party is no longer in the habit of asking for details, it is easy for them to take the existing content out of context. If you ask for details, the communication will never end.

Due to this inefficient communication method and lack of organization, some people who have goods will not be active in the group. The thinking of talented people is to pursue efficiency. Since the communication rate in almost all groups is very low, people are naturally unwilling to waste time in it. As a result, the community is filled with a bunch of idle people chatting nonsense all day long (I have to finish this sentence even at the risk of getting shot). It’s not that talented people naturally hate chatting in groups. If the group contains the content they need and it doesn’t waste too much time, I think they are still willing to share in the group.

Some people may say, I am not here to study, I just want to join a circle and make connections. Then I would like to ask, what is a connection? It must be someone who has resources or abilities who has communicated with you, is familiar with you and feels that there is a possibility of cooperation and can become your connection. The question is, in a community where no one knows each other and is not active, how do you judge the other person's quality? Do you want to post a missing person notice? In the end you will find that this is simply not feasible.

5. Focusing on personal interests is doomed to fail to mobilize everyone's enthusiasm

Many communities claim every day that they are decentralized, but in fact they still serve the interests of individuals. For example, you don’t allow others to post advertisements, but you can post advertisements yourself, and hypocritically say that what you are posting is welfare. Some big names have a lot of fans, and after opening courses, they establish learning communities. Although students are full of respect for you, getting others to spend time participating in your community building is another matter.

People are selfish. If you are only serving yourself, how can you inspire everyone to build a community? You think you can gain more by doing this, but in reality the end result is that no one likes to be active, and you don't actually get much in the end. Ultimately, it's because you don't have enough vision.

I will just talk about the main issues. As for other issues such as: the group manager controls the group to death, advertisements are posted everywhere in the group, group members quarrel with each other, and there is no need to talk about them.

This article only discusses online community operations. Below I will discuss with you the online learning community system and operation steps I designed from eight aspects.

1. How to quickly make everyone familiar with each other and reduce communication costs

When joining the group, each person is required to fill in detailed personal information. The main contents of personal information include:

• Positions, industries, and personal development paths;
• Personal expertise ( channel resource integration, planning, copywriting , interactive design, thinking ability, etc.);
• Personal demands (cross-border information, solving problems at work, hot topics of concern, technical issues of product operation , concept guidance, job hunting , recruitment , etc.);
• Personal hobbies (to facilitate offline activities ).

(There are many details to be elaborated on this part, but I will not elaborate on them for text reasons)

In fact, many group owners may be doing this step, and the information is not very detailed. But basically all group owners did not share this information, but kept it for themselves. I believe that in the early stages of community operation, this information must be shared so that everyone can understand each other and find the right person to solve the problem.

The specific sharing method is: in the seed user stage, information is fully shared. Later, as the group size expands, names and companies can be omitted and kept by the group owner. The advantage of this is that even if the list is leaked, it will not cause personnel loss or privacy leakage, but will make it easier to attract others to join.

2. How to motivate content sharers

The culture of the community is that everyone is everyone's teacher, and when people encounter problems, they can often solve them together without relying on big names. So when someone raises a problem, why should others solve your problem? Why should others take the initiative to share? The spirit of dedication and vanity alone will not last, so an incentive system must be established.

The top few problem solvers and sharers will be selected as the best sharers every week and given material and spiritual incentives. There are two types of material incentives: spontaneous rewards from group members and fixed rewards from group funds. The concept of paying for knowledge needs to be cultivated within the group, and those who are willing to share deserve to be rewarded. (The specific ranking scheme will not be described in detail)

How do group funds come about? Take from the people and use it for the people. For example, when joining the group, each person is charged 200 yuan as the entry threshold. For 500 people, that is 100,000 yuan. This 100,000 yuan will be used as a community fund and will be spent in 52 weeks. The weekly reward amount is nearly 2,000 yuan. This amount of reward is enough to attract everyone to participate. Material rewards are the basis, spiritual rewards and other rewards with added value are another matter. But always remember that material incentives are always just a means, not a fundamental goal. (In fact, the added value is more meaningful. If you need a deeper understanding, you can communicate in detail.)

3. How to motivate community organizers

No matter how many great people there are in a community, it is meaningless if it cannot function, so the group organizer is crucial. Generally, communities are organized by group owners, or they recruit some full-time staff to manage them, or even volunteers. This approach is not sustainable for the community, as community operation itself is a highly technical job. The operators of the community themselves need to do a lot of work, but the group members are all people with jobs, so they must be given enough material and spiritual incentives. The operation of the community cannot always rely on everyone's dedication.

The system I envision is that money is always the simplest, crudest and funniest way, and the money does not need to be paid by the group owner. Directly adopt the method of crowdfunding to support group management. High welfare means high taxes. The sharing economy is not a free economy and does not rely on sacrifice and dedication. If each member of a community of 500 people pays 10 yuan per month for community operation fee, then the total community operation and management fee will be 60,000 yuan per year. This amount is enough to support a full-time employee.

The group management adopts a rotation system. Those who want to participate can sign up directly and take turns in the order of registration. 60,000 yuan is settled on a weekly basis, which is more than 1,100 yuan per week. This amount is enough to motivate a person to get things done, and the cost to everyone is not too high.

Job responsibilities of group managers: Group managers are responsible for organizing the needs at the beginning, finding the right people to communicate with based on the group member database, encouraging the other party to provide solutions without affecting them, and making the solutions specific and in-depth. Then, during the weekly question-and-answer session, warm up the activity so that everyone can participate enthusiastically. Finally, the generated content will be removed of invalid information and organized into standardized files for sharing by all employees, saving everyone’s time and improving everyone’s efficiency in acquiring value.

KPI for group managers: KPI must be set for group managers. The main indicators of KPI are the number of people participating in answering and the quality of content. Under this incentive system, it is enough for group managers to do their job well. (The details will not be discussed in depth)

4. How to improve the quality of group members and continuously attract outstanding people

The core value of a community lies in the quality of its members and their initiative and enthusiasm in sharing. The initial threshold for the community is just charging fees. In the later stage, we need to continuously recruit high-quality people. So how to recruit high-quality people? We have to provide these people with two ways to join the group, and the number I want to mention here is 52.

For example, if the fee to join the group is 200 yuan, then when the number of group members reaches 52, the weekly reward amount will be 200 yuan. At this time, we search for some questions in the group and let people from other circles participate in answering them, and tell them that you can pick any question to participate in solving it. If you solve the problem and get the best solution, you will get a reward for joining the group. At that time, you can share all the solutions with him. If his is not the best solution, you can tell him that the threshold for joining the group is 200 yuan, and you can participate in learning and communication together.

Talented people like to compete with experts. If they come up with the best solution, it will be a huge benefit for group members, and the reward they receive will just offset the cost of joining the group. If he does not get the best solution, he may eventually choose to join the community because he recognizes the value of the community because of the talented people in the community. (I'm just kidding, I'm not a genius)

5. How to quickly expand the group size as a novice initiator

The excellence of a community is determined by the system and one's own hard work, but only big names can make this community outstanding. Because big shots can get a lot of responses, but losers can only convince people one by one. Moreover, in the later stages of the community, because the big names are in a dominant position, they can act as the soul figures to control the situation and improve everyone's cohesion.

Therefore, in the initial stage, we first look for the first batch of seed users to verify the feasibility of the model, and then work hard to persuade the big names to participate in the leading role. A rookie will never be able to carry this banner. He or she must find his or her own position and do things within his or her ability. Even if making wedding dresses for others is the most powerful for yourself, and this problem itself does not exist, the community itself should be about sharing rather than possession. Celebrities are important, but even without them a community has the ability to run on its own.

If you want to expand the size of the group, you also need to allow everyone to actively recommend and attract others to join. Everyone is calling for decentralization, but basically all communities on the market are still serving themselves in essence. People are selfish. If you are only serving yourself, how can you inspire everyone to build a community? I won’t go into details on how to motivate everyone to promote the product . If you want to know, you can chat with me privately.

6. Extension of community value

After the community operation is successful, a lot of added value can be generated. For those who answer questions actively and proactively, the winners need to keep good information records and establish a talent pool. We can provide them with resource matching services and try our best to meet their needs. This is also the reason why such communities must be led by big names.

All the answers in it can be organized into files. Such files are of great significance for talent recruitment. If the traditional resume-based recruitment method is equipped with these files, it will help companies better recruit suitable talents.

The original content within the community can eventually be compiled into a book to elevate the community, with the creators of the content marked in each chapter to give them fame and fortune.

I have only listed a few of the added values, of course there are many more.

7. Establish an efficient communication system

The person who initiated the question needs to write down his or her demands and detailed background information in Word and submit it to the group a few days in advance so that everyone has enough time to think. There is no limit to the form, the most important thing is to explain the problem clearly. (There are many details to be elaborated on this part, but I will not elaborate on them for text reasons)

The person who answered the question wrote down the solution and ideas in detail in Word and posted it in the group. Then the group manager will organize and coordinate it. Everyone can discuss these relatively complete problems and solutions to prevent the topic from going off topic and improve communication efficiency. After the topic discussion is over, the group manager will be responsible for summarizing and organizing the entire problem-solving process and finally sharing it with everyone. Prevent people from having to constantly climb stairs to read information, wasting a lot of time.

Routines are only for the purpose of making communication more convenient and must not become dogmatic systems. The fundamental purpose of everything is to maximize communication efficiency and create value.

8. Closed loop of value for all parties within the community:

Big names:

• Attract fans, attract fans, and then attract fans
• Improve the retention and stickiness of your own analysis
• Strengthen your insight into the Internet industry
• Absorb some excellent ideas
• To discover the most common problems and find the most down-to-earth research direction
• Finding excellent employees
• Find excellent projects for investment or investment matching
• By answering the questions, you can see the operational feedback of your own solutions and constantly test your own theories
• We can customize some training activities to address common problems.
• The above are all my nonsense. I am not a big shot, how can I know what they are thinking?

Participants:

• Material Incentives
• Show your image and abilities, get everyone's recognition, and build your personal charm
• Potential business opportunities

Questioner:

• Solve your own practical problems
• Find the talented resources you need

The unknown person:

• Watch other people's excellent ideas and grow with them
• Get talented resources

Group Administrator:

• Material Incentives
• Improvement of organizational management capabilities
• Watch other people's excellent ideas and grow with them

When doing something, you must think through the value demands of everyone in the community thoroughly. Don't always try to fool others with what you think are values, and don't waste other people's time. People are smart and selfish.

We can live in that shell all our lives like a hard seed, without any risk. But we will never know what kind of plant we are or what kind of flowers we can bloom. And if we can face our ideals bravely and bloom our own flowers, we will be able to bloom our own fragrance.

Author: Mars Operation, authorized to publish by Qinggua Media .

Source: Mars Operations (MWnewmedia)