Next, I will talk about building a community from 0 to 1. These are points that I thought of in practice but are not elaborated in the book. Additional thoughts on the book 1: A community must have people with similar interests, but what kind of people with similar interests can last?
In my book “ Community Marketing ”, I talked about the fact that a community must first have clear like-minded people. What does it mean to have clear like-minded people? The organizers and those who join the community understand from the beginning why their community can exist for a long time.
If someone who comes into a group asks: What is this group for? ——Then there is something wrong with the positioning of this group’s like-minded people.
I don’t know the reason for its long-term existence. This group was established for a temporary reason and is just a discussion group. For example, let’s have dinner together tonight.
What kind of like-minded people can make a community exist for a long time?
My conclusion is that people in the group should be able to find great emotional comfort, great interactive joy, and great practical benefits in this group with the help of like-minded people. Only when one of the three is met can the community continue.
The communities established by many people seem great on the surface, but they fail to think clearly during the positioning phase:
[1] What kind of emotional needs do you bring to others that make them unable to stop?
【2】What happy memories can you share with others that they would long to return to?
【3】What kind of benefits do you create for others so that they expect more?
For example, some people asked whether it is possible to create a community around small kitchen appliances. It is difficult to create a membership discount community here. After all, kitchen appliances are not purchased frequently, and it is also difficult to share experiences with small kitchen appliances. It is also difficult to create an emotional connection by talking about small kitchen appliances.
The only possibility is that you are all a group of netizens who are dedicated to researching small kitchen appliances and can share new knowledge, new technologies, new views, and new processes. This is how you can establish a niche and sustainable group. The community can exist because there is a need to exchange professional knowledge, but this group may be very small.
Additional thoughts on the book 2: The operation of a community must have a sense of ritual.
Many groups are set up hastily. Once an idea comes out, they immediately start to recruit people to join. This is inappropriate.
A community that wants to develop over the long term must be taken seriously by those who join it, and this requires a sense of ceremony, just like when we join an organization, the inspection process is very rigorous and standardized. In this way, the more cautious you are before joining, the more effort and energy you will invest after joining.
The Liangshan heroes had to submit a pledge of allegiance before joining the gang, which was also a kind of ritual.
When we build a community, do we have to define our own community name, avatar, slogan, culture, group prompts, and operating model from the very beginning? ——Let others feel that this place is different from other places as soon as they come in?
When we build a community, do we require others to make some efforts to join the community from the very beginning? For example, asking someone for a recommendation, writing a cover letter, doing something valuable for the community, or being willing to pay?
When we build a community, should we make others feel from the beginning that the joining process involves a series of procedures including application, inspection, selection, registration, and introduction to internal group members, rather than everyone just joining together as a mob on a whim?
I think many community operations do a very poor job in terms of sense of ritual, or even have none at all.
Additional thoughts on the book 3: It is recommended to control the scale of the community structure.
I am now increasingly inclined to believe that the community is not a large organization, but a small and beautiful circle.
In reality, there are several forms of organization that can bring people together on a large scale on the Internet:
1. Political parties; 2. Religion; 3. Fan groups; 4. Schools; 5. Chambers of Commerce; 6. Dealer networks; 7. Clubs.
You will find that these organizations require specialized people to operate in order to achieve a relatively large scale. In fact, they are just professional organizations and it is difficult to call them a community.
Many so-called communities on the Internet are actually online variations of forms 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Strictly speaking, except for clubs, which can be developed into communities, other forms are difficult to become communities.
Some WeChat business groups cover hundreds of thousands of people. In fact, their essence is to put offline channel cooperation online. It is a business, chasing the trend in the name of community.
Some training camps claim to have tens of thousands of students, but in essence they are just the same students who attend classes in school. They are not as good as offline schools, where at least people in a class live together for a long time, are familiar with each other, and even know each other well. Online students are often together during classes, but after the classes they go back to their own homes and mothers, with no interaction between them.
Clubs generally have common hobbies and can organize a group of people to play and get together regularly, which creates emotional connections and thus creates new possibilities. This is what makes the community have happiness factors and profit factors and allows it to operate for a long time.
However, it is also difficult for a good club to expand in size. Firstly, there are not so many suitable people who meet the entry criteria. Secondly, with more people, the cost of getting to know each other will increase exponentially. Therefore, smaller circles will definitely be differentiated from the club, and a membership grading system will be established.
Private clubs are called circles. It is difficult to enter a circle, and this circle is a real community.
What circles compete with each other is energy, not scale. It’s just that people who have no energy prefer to huddle together for warmth, thinking that they will have energy if they are with many people. As soon as someone with real power makes a move, they scatter like birds and beasts.
So I suggest that the community should not try to grow big right from the start. It can start with 40 people, operate well, and then expand slowly. I have seen that 300 people is the limit of operating costs and returns. At this time, we should consider upgrading the group's energy, setting stricter entry conditions, and bringing together more energetic people, rather than blindly expanding the scale.
However, this does not prevent you from leveraging the power of the community to become a member, recruit students, and buy things. This is a commercial realization based on the power of the community, which can be big or small, but it does not mean that you have to build a big community to have the opportunity to get big commercial realization.
Additional thoughts on the book 4: The membership of the community must be diverse.
For a group to survive, it must be fun. Otherwise, who would be willing to stay in a place where no one can find joy?
A fun group must have people from diverse occupations, regions, expertise, and personalities. Diverse genes can bring about interesting chemical reactions brought about by the creative collision of the community.
The member selection criteria of many communities are too focused on consistency in values, but they miss the charm of diversified hybrid growth.
A community is like an online cafe where everyone can speak freely and there are people with all kinds of interests, which makes it interesting.
In addition, the meaning of diversity also includes that the community must have a soul figure, but the soul figure does not necessarily host the community for a long time, so there should also be some big names with sufficient potential energy in the community to form an energy circle of the community and attract everyone to join, and then there should be a group of people with medium potential energy, and more people with ordinary potential energy, to form an energy gap, so as to establish an ecological chain that promotes circulation.
This means that when building a community, operators must introduce members in a planned, hierarchical and typed manner, just like ecological restoration, where the various species must be reasonably matched.
It can’t be that all the members are big shots, otherwise it will end up being a contact list or a group of people, because everyone is busy and no one interacts.
It can’t be that all the members are ordinary people, otherwise there will be no in-depth conversations every day and it will become a spam group.
Additional thoughts on the book 5: Community members must cross-link and establish emotional identification.
The reason why people form a group is that you have a deep connection with many people in the group. You know his QQ number, WeChat number , mobile phone number, and home address. Gradually, the two people's circles of life, friends , and careers intersect.
You can often see each other’s avatars popping up in each other’s circle of friends, praise posts, and WeChat groups , and you can even interact directly with each other. In this way, people can establish emotional identification and slowly become friends.
Therefore, when operating a community, we must find ways to encourage people in the group to pay attention to each other in various ways.
For example, in our knowledge-based IP training camp, our partners have developed many ways to link up with each other
[1] Privately chat and add friends, and send thank-you red envelopes when you meet them [2] Follow other people's WeChat public accounts and keep leaving comments or rewards [3] Ask others valuable paid questions through Fenda [4] Meet others through Xingfu [5] Conduct online interviews, write interview notes and share them [6] Ask your fans to comment and interact under other people's WeChat articles [7] Invite others to your fan group for sharing and interaction [8] Plan theme activities together online, such as collaborative micro-classes, training camps, online parties, etc.
In short, the richer the ways of linking, the more ways the community plays, and the stronger the vitality of the community, which requires the community to introduce people with different personalities and talents to join from the beginning.
Only when there are more connections among people can there be emotional identification. Only with emotional identification can people communicate deeply and produce chemical reactions. Only with chemical reactions can new possibilities be created and returns beyond your expectations be brought about.
All of this will grow naturally in the process of natural connection. We only need to guide the culture of the community and do not need to worry about the results. The result is the natural product of a group of people who identify with a culture.
The emotional connection among people in a community is not actually lasting. Emotions sometimes come and go quickly. It would be better to form an interest structure based on emotions and trust.
Since you have such a good relationship and understand each other so well, why don’t you do something together?
It sounds like a line from a movie .
Additional thoughts on the book 6: Slow community operation is faster than fast.
Since I emphasize that community operations must have emotional connections to easily produce chemical reactions, the time for emotional recognition between people will generally not be too fast. After all, love at first sight is mostly unrealistic. Love at first sight in reality is mostly due to misunderstandings of the other party.
Too many people always want to expand quickly and cash out all at once. This kind of thinking is inherently short-sighted and does not take the feelings of community members seriously. It will not last long and will not be big.
Instead, it is possible to achieve great success by slowly screening the people in the community, building up relationships with them, and providing good services.
So we say operating slowly is better than operating quickly. Of course, we still need to continue to innovate, develop more interesting management methods and operating routines, and strive to make our community grow faster than others. This is still very necessary.
Additional thoughts on the book 7: There are three monetization models for communities.
The first method is to build your own community. In fact, this method is very slow and not suitable for most companies. In addition, the operating cost and difficulty are very high. It requires a professional team to operate it full-time and requires a huge investment. The purpose of this kind of community model is to attract energetic people to form a circle and then make money together, rather than making big money directly through the community.
The second method is to enter the community . This method is very suitable for companies or individuals without money. Just enter other people’s communities or groups, then choose the opportunity to perform, add impression points, and then cleverly insert advertisements at the right time to drive promotion . After completing user discovery and private contact, you can exit the community.
The third type is to support the community . After all, doesn’t the community have a soul figure? Support him and let him speak for your brand, you will soon gain a group of loyal fans and accelerate the realization of your business. This usually requires being rich and having a high income to do so.
