How do core user communities operate? Share 2 tips!

The design, improvement and promotion of products cannot be separated from users. Whether it is a product manager or a product operator , they need to master certain user operation skills. In user operations , the community is a medium that allows us to reach users and listen to their voices more conveniently. For different purposes, there are many types of community operations : product improvement ( seed users /core user groups), product conversion (product trial groups, promotion groups), communication groups (product manager groups, industry communication groups), interest and hobby groups... Here, we will talk in detail about the first category: the operation of core user communities.

1. The value of core user community operations

Core users are crucial to every product. If we operate core users properly, they can generate value beyond imagination, whether it is internal product improvement or external product word-of-mouth communication.

1.1 The value of core users to product improvement

Whether it is a new product or a mature product, the value of core users to product improvement is extremely important.

Xiaomi's initial 100 seed users of MIUI ROM, through continuous product trials and feedback, have enabled MIUI to move faster and faster in the right direction and with the right value, and the product has been continuously improved. Xiaomi called these 100 seed users "100 Dream Sponsors" and made a short film about them. It can be said that when a product goes from 0 to 1, it is inevitable that it will be poorly performed. At this time, in order to make the product go from bad to good, it is necessary to listen to the voices of seed users.

Everyone is familiar with the 1000/100/10 rule of QQ Mail. Each product manager needs to read and respond to 1,000 user experience feedbacks, follow 100 user blogs, and conduct 10 user surveys every month. Before this rule came out, QQ Mail had been online for nearly 4 years and could be said to be a relatively mature product, but listening to the opinions of core users brought about a qualitative change. Through feedback from core users and several key improvements to the product, the number of QQ Mail users has increased a hundredfold from less than one million in 2006 to over 100 million in 2010.

1.2 The value of core users’ product reputation

We can find that many successful products already have a lot of word-of-mouth before they are fully launched. Zhihu, Xiaomi, Onmyoji , whether it is software or hardware, games or tools , if we analyze carefully, we can find that they all strictly screened the seed users in the cold start phase, and through the continuous operation of seed users, they polished the products to the extreme based on the main needs of users. Even before the product was fully launched, it had already been spread by word of mouth. Therefore, the core user can directly detonate the nuclear reactor of product propagation.

2. How to operate a core user community

Now that we understand the importance of core users, and we know that social networks are an effective medium for engaging core users, how do we operate social networks? We know that communities have many advantages, such as: direct contact with users, the ability to communicate directly with users, understanding user needs, and establishing long-term, stable and continuous connections with users. However, the shortcomings of the community are also obvious, such as: high operating labor costs, the emergence of long-term lurking users, and less effective information.

So, how should we operate the core user community well?

2.1 Select User

When building a community, it is particularly important to choose the right users to join the group. So which users are the right choice? We can consider it comprehensively from the following two dimensions:

Considering the relevance of product business, through the 2/8 principle, we can define the standards for the core users of the product. For example, we can set clear indicators for dimensions such as product usage rate, usage time, and willingness to pay for the product. By screening users who meet these indicators, we can obtain users who have demand for the product, are willing to use it frequently, and are even willing to pay for it.

Considering the attributes of the users themselves, the community needs users who have opinions, ideas and are willing to discuss, share and communicate. Therefore, in terms of the user's attributes, we need users who are willing to communicate, approachable, and have a high tolerance for the product. A good screening method is that in ordinary user interviews, we can find some users who can give endless feedback on their usage experience and product issues in addition to your questions. These users are excellent candidates for joining the core user community.

2.2 Follow users

Paying attention to users is often the most easily overlooked or inadequate aspect of community operations, but this step is the key to the success of community operations.

(1) Pay attention to user presence

Making community users feel their own presence is a prerequisite for the community to operate and users to become active. Based on our own experience, we know that when others do not respond to our presence or absence (joining or leaving the group), we will not feel our presence; when others ignore our speeches, we will also not feel our presence. Therefore, community operation requires two basic aspects to make users feel present: first, when users join the group, there needs to be a welcome message with the specified user name; when users leave the group for various reasons, the operator also needs to ask the reasons in private chat and try to solve the problem to win back the users. Second, when users raise questions, operators need to provide timely feedback if no one responds.

(2) Focus on user engagement

The activity level of a community is directly related to the level of user participation. One of the best ways to make a group active is to regularly post some official topic discussions or small activities to get all group members involved. In order to increase the participation enthusiasm of some inactive users, you can invite users to participate through private chat. When this activity goes on for a while, the atmosphere of the entire group is formed, users can feel the sense of participation, and generally speaking, the group becomes active.

(3) Focus on user sense of achievement

In community operations, the most difficult thing is to make users feel a sense of accomplishment. How do users feel a sense of accomplishment? It is to make users feel that their voices can actually create value. Let's look back at Xiaomi's seed user operations and find that Xiaomi updates user feedback every week. The fact that users' voices can be implemented gives users a great sense of accomplishment. This sense of accomplishment from participating in product improvement will become a continuous source of motivation, prompting users to continue to experience the product, unleash their creativity, promote product improvement, and form a positive cycle. In addition to actually adopting product improvement suggestions from core users at the product level, you can also let users gain a sense of accomplishment at levels that are easier for users to perceive. For example, after many products are updated, update emails will be sent to the majority of users, and the users who have made suggestions for product improvements will be @mentioned in the emails. There are also many products that thank their core users in their thank you statements, which greatly enhances the users’ sense of accomplishment.

2.3 Associated Users

Every community has outstanding community leaders. In the early stages of establishing a community, every user is associated with an operator, so it is easy for the operator to become a community leader. The relationship diagram is shown below, which is a single-core community state. However, this state is an extremely unstable one. Once the core changes, the entire community will collapse. Therefore, in the ongoing operation, it is necessary to cultivate more community cores and strengthen the connections between users as much as possible. When the correlation among users is strengthened to a certain extent, the community will be able to operate itself to a certain extent. Even if the core disappears, the entire community will not collapse.

2.4 Regulating Users

Due to the particularity of this form of community, idle chatting is inevitable. This situation can have a certain effect of livening up the atmosphere if it occurs in small amounts, but if there are too many messages, hundreds or thousands of messages a day, there will be very little effective information. Most people see 99+ unread messages in a group chat, click on them and find that most of them are useless information, and they will have the urge to block group messages.

In the process of operating the core user group, if it is found that a few people are chatting in the group, the operator needs to stop them appropriately. The best way is to privately chat with the most active person and tactfully tell him that certain topics may not be appropriate to discuss in the group. Remember not to use coercive means or directly stop this behavior in the group.

3. Conclusion

Community operation for core users is an effective way to improve products, but operation requires continuous investment. If you have determined that you need to carry out community operations, you must be determined to continue investing. If it is only a flash in the pan and you pull some core users into a group but don't operate it well, it will make users feel disgusted with the product. However, from countless examples, we can find that if we do a good job in community operations for core users, these users can bring unlimited impetus to the success of the product.

Author: Z oppo _peng , authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Zoppo Product Growth Diary