How can a professional community with a small platform and a small audience achieve a cold start?

Community operation is actually a full-stack operation , which includes content, activities, attracting new users , retention , activity, and conversion , all of which need to be handled by one person. For operators , it is both a challenge and an opportunity. How do small platforms and professional communities with a small audience achieve a cold start ?

Communities are a great way to gather users and promote conversions. All major companies are using them, and we can also see that many large companies’ community operations are flourishing. However, most operations personnel work for relatively small companies with few resources, and their industries are highly vertical and professional.

When we start to build a new community from scratch, directly copying the model of large companies or popular industries may not be effective. So, how should we achieve cold start and carry out community operations?

First, we understand the characteristics of our products and community, as well as the biggest difficulties.

• Product features: small audience, high verticality, strong professionalism, and low interest;
• Difficulties: The product community is cold-started , with 0 seed users and no traffic channels .

There are generally two options for attracting new members in the early stages of a community:

1. Sticking to the target theme, producing high-quality content and services, and attracting highly sticky users is an ideal way to attract new users .
2. First, use discounts or prizes to gather a group of users, and then filter the users through content. Many ground-based promotions that offer prizes are of this form.

If it is a community that meets the needs of the public such as shopping, food, etc., the above two forms will be effective quickly. As long as the product content is good, there is no need to worry too much about the subsequent activity and conversion issues. But if it is a community with a small audience and high professionalism as the title says, some consideration is needed.

The former is too slow to gather users in some areas with relatively small audiences because the initial user base is too small, resulting in slow dissemination, and it may be difficult for operators to explain to their leaders. Although the latter can quickly gather users, the proportion of actual audiences may not be high. After spending the cost, you may only get a group of low-quality wool-party parties . In subsequent operations, there will be low activity, low conversion and many advertisements, which makes the operation very difficult.

Of course, user quality is also related to the choice of prizes. It is more difficult to start with prizes that are highly relevant, but the users are more accurate. Prizes that are not highly relevant but popular can quickly gather a large base of people, but may have a great impact on retention rate and even fission effect. This is an area that requires special attention. If this method is used, a supplementary plan is needed to filter users.

From the user aggregation point of view:

Content attracts new users < Highly relevant prize attracts new users < Lowly relevant prize attracts new users

From the perspective of post-operation difficulty:

Content attracts new users > Highly relevant prizes attract new users > Low-relevant prizes attract new users

So, which method should we choose for small platforms, and what method should we use to avoid the disadvantages of both methods?

In fact, both methods can be chosen, or the two methods should be combined to take advantage of their respective strengths. Of course, if you only use these two methods to attract new customers, but the subsequent supporting operations cannot keep up, all your efforts will be wasted. Next, let’s discuss the simplest set of solutions for attracting new customers.

Before discussing the plan to attract new customers, we first need to make it clear that in the process of attracting new customers, it is impossible for every customer to be the exact target user , and it is not necessary. However, we still need to pay attention to user stratification, or user classification, and we must also know the purpose of each of our operations links, and try to make every user play their due role and contribute to the operation.

The brief is as follows:

1. Prepare strong and weak related content to form the foundation for the community;
2. Plan new customer acquisition activities and prepare half prizes with high relevance and half with low relevance, and increase the number of prizes with high relevance based on the operation situation;
3. Regularly hold community content discussions and activities for target users to establish a professional and interesting image for the community, manage the persona of the group owner, and maintain relationships with members. In this process, user loss is inevitable. As long as the loss rate is not high, it is considered normal loss. If the loss rate is very high, it means that the new user acquisition activities are not targeted enough and need to be redesigned.
4. Routine operations in the community: attracting new users, retaining users, promoting activation and conversion.

The key points that must be noted are:

1. About the content

Preparing content is not only for attracting new users, but also for retention, activity, and even conversion. Content is essential to keeping a community young and active, but the choice of content requires careful consideration.

I generally divide content into two levels:

• The first level is strongly related to the community theme;
• The second level is content that is weakly relevant or less professional but interesting and attractive.

The consideration in designing these two levels is that the content of the first level is targeted at users with strong demand and strong stickiness, the so-called KOLs , who are also the main force of activity and conversion. Establishing a professional image for the community for this group of users can lay a solid foundation for long-term activity, conversion and even repeat purchases.

The second level of content is for users who are interested but do not have strong demand at present. It has two functions:

• The first is to cultivate users, and cultivate mid-level users into top users;
• The second is to guide active users to use their own channels to forward and spread the community and attract more target users (after all, people live in groups, and the probability of target users appearing around precise users is relatively high).

When it comes to content delivery, it is necessary to constantly adjust according to the user composition and preferences at the time. It should not only cater to user preferences, but also have the purpose of promoting the product itself.

• On the one hand, we need to establish professionalism, maintain relationships with targeted top users and encourage them to remain active;
• On the other hand, we also need to cultivate interested on-the-spot users or marginal users into precise users, so that some users will actively spread the word.

The result of my experiment is that 50% of the content should be strongly relevant, and it should be published regularly, with regular discussions or appropriate activities. When there are very few accurate users, the content can be reduced to 30%, no less. At the same time, pay attention to maintaining emotional connections with top users. If you have time, you can communicate with them individually or in a small group. If we can hold activities consciously, the strong and weak related contents can be naturally connected.

Of course, there are many times when the content that meets the conditions of weak relevance, weak professionalism, and strong interest is not obvious, and requires in-depth exploration.

• For example: other derivative commonalities of this type of users, community operation is not only the operation of content and products, but also the operation of people.
• For example: A user who plans to study abroad is not only interested in English, but also in foreign etiquette, culture, film and television dramas, and they can be related to English learning.

2. About the new customer acquisition activities and their prizes

Similarly, there are two types of prizes, one with high and one with low relevance. In the absence of seed users who are desperate, low-relevance prizes are intended to attract a larger user base to quickly participate in the dissemination, and highly relevant prizes are intended to attract potential target users to join the community.

But please note: prizes with low relevance are not equal to prizes with no relevance, and it is better for the two prizes to have a certain degree of inheritance. If you choose prizes with no relevance, the side effects will be very large. The first side effect is that it is impossible to cultivate or convert users. The second side effect is that there is almost no chance that users with too low a match will bring in high-match users. Third, these mismatched users will affect the retention of existing accurate users.

In order to maximize the benefits, it is necessary to clarify the roles of prizes and users, and to design activities and prizes reasonably.

In the initial stage of the activity, we designed a forwarding prize activity, where people could win prizes by forwarding. The prizes were less relevant. The forwarded content could be community activities, and could be matched with prizes related to the community positioning, in order to attract and screen potential target users.

For example: For a children's programming product community, we designed two prizes, a highly relevant programming tool and a low-relevance math teaching material. Mathematics is a rigid subject that parents are very concerned about during the K12 stage, while programming has a lower correlation with academic advancement, and not every parent is aware of this.

So we face all the parents and carry out an activity of forwarding and distributing math teaching materials. The forwarded content is to participate in a children's programming activity to obtain children's programming tools.

Then we gather two types of users:

• The first is parents who are only interested in mathematics;
• The second group is parents who are also interested in programming.

Parents who are interested in programming are generally white-collar workers in first- and second-tier cities, and the chances of their users becoming interested in children's programming are also relatively high. Parents who are interested in mathematics and parents who are interested in children's programming have one thing in common, that is, they attach great importance to the future development of their children, and even go so far as to attach importance to the cultivation of their children's logical thinking . So from the entry point of mathematics to the goal of children's programming, this group of users also has potential for training.

3. About daily operations

The key to keeping community operations young and active lies in values, habits and emotions.

There are two sources of value:

• The first is the design and delivery of the content mentioned above, which I will not elaborate on here;
• The second is to satisfy the user's sense of accomplishment.

The definition of a sense of accomplishment is different for users at different levels. For general users, a sense of accomplishment refers to what they get in the community, which allows them to gain a sense of accomplishment in real social life. This has a high degree of overlap with content and event operations .

For active users, the key is to gain a sense of accomplishment in the community. We need to provide KOLs with opportunities to perform through activities and topic operations, and set up operations that refer to the membership system to give users a sense of accomplishment. After the event, the group owner can also motivate users through prizes and other means, which can not only stimulate user loyalty, but also attract other users or create opportunities for secondary dissemination in the user's circle of friends .

Habits need to be cultivated over time. You need to understand the user's schedule, choose an appropriate and memorable time, deliver content regularly, and hold discussions and activities regularly. However, the cycle cannot be too long, otherwise users will forget. For example: look at these times: 9pm every night, 9pm every Wednesday night, and 9pm on the 15th of every month.

Obviously, at 9 o'clock every night, users are not likely to forget, and habits are easier to cultivate; at 9 o'clock every Wednesday night, sufficient temptation and continuous promotion reminders are needed, and it takes a longer time to cultivate user habits and dependence; the cycle of the 15th of each month is too long, users are likely to forget, habits are not easy to cultivate, and the content seems too little and pale.

Considering the diversity of operations and cost issues, it is common to choose daily and weekly frequencies. Another good way to cultivate habits is to use slogans with the same content or style for similar activities.

For example: I held an event every Wednesday night at 9 o'clock where people forwarded the message to grab discounted books. The slogan at the time was "Don't thank me, love me." Although this slogan was not very relevant to the business and was not very attractive to users at first glance, it was pushed regularly every Wednesday and accompanied by the same picture, so its dissemination and participation were very high.

Many operations staff mentioned that for top KOLs, maintaining relationships is very effective and critical. In fact, in our actual operations, as long as they are target users, maintaining relationships is very important. However, for different user groups, the form of emotional maintenance is different. It is not judged based on the importance of the user, but on the emotional needs of different users.

Regardless of the user, the basic emotional needs of the community are: the community is warm and the group owner is alive. But the so-called warmth of the community does not mean calling users dear, nor does it mean responding to all the requests of users. After all, we still have the task of marketing , don’t we?

I think a more effective way is to shape the image of the group owner, and the ultimate goal is to establish users' trust in the group owner. Before shaping the image of the group owner, we need to analyze our operational objectives and existing user base, and shape a professional and down-to-earth image based on the analysis results.

All communication content and methods during operations need to be consistent with the character settings, but there is no need to be too nervous. After all, it takes time to shape an image, and it needs to be released and expressed slowly. Therefore, after establishing the basic settings, you can continuously adjust them based on a deeper understanding of the users.

For example: I once operated an English learning group, the user characteristics are 18-25 years old, with average family conditions, average English proficiency at this stage, from first-tier to third-tier cities, more than 80% women, more than 70% have the intention to study abroad but have not yet made a decision, and have a strong desire for development.

Based on these conditions, the group leader is set to be a rough-and-ready engineering man who is born in the western mountainous area, comes from a middle-to-lower-level family, loves cooking, has studied abroad, is around 25 years old, has a humorous personality, and is honest and straightforward. This setting is intended to create an image of both a teacher and a friend for users.

His resume overlaps with the experiences and ideals of most users, and is the realistic version of himself that users expect. His fighting spirit and English learning experience will be recognized by users. His personality and hobbies make him more down-to-earth, exuding a unique charm, making it easier to build relationships with users.

The content he pushes and the activities he holds are not like many communities, including those of many large companies, which are just cold, fixed-format pushes at regular intervals. His promotion has a strong personal style, and even his speaking style and little hobbies can cause topics. His circle of friends reflects his daily life, and he carefully selects topics of common interest to community users.

After just half a year of operation, users' trust in the group owner has reached a very ideal state. Originally, they were worried that the overly straightforward personality would cause user complaints, but unexpectedly, not only did there be no complaints, but it made users feel more real and relaxed their unnecessary vigilance.

Compared with general mechanical content push and product promotion, the above methods do not require more operational energy and do not require one-on-one communication with users, but can achieve very good emotional maintenance effects.

For active users or KOLs, special care from group owners, who are also operators, is also very necessary and the effect is very good.

• On the one hand, they have a good relationship with KOLs in private, communicate with them frequently, and even reveal some inside information to community users through KOLs;
• On the one hand, KOLs are publicly given a certain status within the group, which consolidates the KOL's stickiness and activity while motivating other users.

Community operation is actually a full-stack operation, which includes content, activities, attracting new users, retention, activity, and conversion, all of which need to be handled by one person. For operators, it is both a challenge and an opportunity. After all, with full-stack operations, individuals have a higher degree of control over the overall situation. If the idea is right, it is easy to achieve results, or even create a hit product.

Author: Miaomiaodong, authorized to be published by Qinggua Media.

Source: Everyone is a Product Manager