Why is your community always asleep? Don’t fall into these four pitfalls when building a community

Pitfall 1: Before establishing a group, the positioning is not accurate and the operation and maintenance goals are not clear

Most people, once they have a group of people around them, will subconsciously create a group without caring about anything else.

The so-called positioning is nothing more than what the group is, what it wants to do, and what the profit model (this profit is not only economic benefit) is. If the community is regarded as a project, it can be said that the positioning work is equivalent to the architecture process of the back-end monetization machine.

Any community without a clear positioning is just a waste of time. 90% of the social networks fail because of this. Even the other pitfalls I pointed out later were caused by inadequate work on this part.

The operation and maintenance goals in the positioning part (that is, what you want to achieve, which is the word "profit" in double quotes above) are the top priority, and this is the source of motivation for the community initiators.

The main targets of operation and maintenance are:

The first type of people create groups subconsciously, and when they see a lot of people around them, they have the urge to group them together. This is the stage of complete novice, and even lacks basic understanding of the community. They think that a community is just a group of people.

The second type of people have a certain understanding of the community, but their calculation of the benefits is insufficient or incomplete, which leads to them stalling midway and giving up. By reaching this stage, at least one has a certain understanding of social media marketing . However, due to the lack of sufficient insight into the community, people often start well but end badly, and the group always ends up in disgrace.

If you want to jump out of this deep pit, you must work hard. In addition to calculating the economic benefits, you also have to calculate the amount, and at the same time you have to take into account your own interests and hobbies. It is best to do multiple things with one piece and gain "profit" in multiple dimensions with one action.

Pitfall 2: During operation and maintenance, a closed-loop chain of value supply cannot be formed, there is a lack of a community value flow mechanism, and the group becomes dead silent

It has been mentioned many times in the previous article that community is an energy-intensive way of playing and must be used to do high value-added things. There are two main ways to maximize the value of a community. One is to start with a large amount and eat your fill all at once; the other is to make a steady flow over a long period of time, and in the end the amount will not be a small amount. Of course the best strategy is to start big and then proceed slowly over time.

The above statement is not difficult to understand for anyone who has played in a few communities, but it is not the itch of life and death for the community.

The truth is there, but what is more important is how to achieve the ideal state, that is, how to start big and make long-term profits.

This is the design of the community value flow supply mechanism. Organizers have operational profit-seeking goals, and community members also have their own profit-seeking ambitions. Everything requires an intention, and the important thing is how to make this group of people who get together satisfy each other's interests.

In addition to the nourishment provided by the group organizer, the value provided by group members to the group owner (and even among group members) is equally important. If any party is neglected, there will be no fun in the community.

This can explain why some people have profound attainments in a certain field but cannot build a community well - sometimes it may be due to inexplicable ideas (for example, making money is not a decent thing) and they seek too little "benefits" for themselves.

Communities whose group organizers are not satisfied die the fastest, and charging fees is the simplest, direct and effective booster. Sometimes your group dies, it is very likely that you did not collect the money or collected too little (money is a universal medium of exchange for various benefits).

Based on my experience of participating in various communities over the years, I can see that the setting of group thresholds will largely translate into the satisfaction of the group organizers' "profits". For example, collecting threshold fees can be directly converted into economic benefits, banning advertisements can save management energy, and unifying certain aspects of the group's code of conduct can satisfy certain emotional demands of the group organizers.

A capable (capable means having the ability to provide value to group members) and satisfied group organizer will be motivated to provide group members with a variety of benefits.

People often say that a group is dead, which has nothing to do with whether it is active or not (it is simply murder and robbery to keep silent if you keep scrolling and polluting the information flow . It's just that a dead group may appear inactive. Can you say that people are dead if they fall asleep?). In fact, the value supply chain within the group is broken.

A truly capable community operator must not only know how to care for group members and provide them with value, but also design a set of gameplay to make group members also "care" for the group owner. Most people tend to be vampires. The essence of community gameplay design lies in clarifying each other's boundaries, respecting each other, providing value points to each other, and making these basic principles a consensus among community members.

If a community value surging mechanism cannot be established, the only outcome is the following:

——Community members did not get any benefits, and the group initiators had high investment and low returns, or even got into trouble and received negative returns.

Pitfall 3: Group discipline is lax and problems frequently occur

Typical symptoms:

• Blindly active, far off topic, low information flow value;
• There are frequent violations of rules in advertising;
• Faced with various disputes and even conflicts within the group, the group leader does nothing.

99.9% of the communities in the world are a mess. The initiators feel like they are stupid for making it into this state, and the people who join the group also feel like they are stupid, wondering why the hell I joined such a crappy group.

To get out of this pit, I would like to give the following ideas:

1. Take the attitude of a community initiator and set the threshold for selecting people.

If you are awesome enough, charging money is the best way to become a threshold. Besides providing enough motivation, group members will never come in to post advertisements after paying 10,000 yuan. (In order to keep the group alive, charge money. However, if you are a scammer and do not deserve the threshold fee, the people will discredit you.)

In addition to forcing people to cut their own flesh to create obstacles, setting rules can also create thresholds, such as setting limits on values, industries, income levels, and cultural levels, to further screen out those who have nothing to say.

2. After the community is established, clarify the daily rules of the game (to a certain extent, the community is defined by these rules).

The rules of community games mainly include two aspects. The first is the regulations on community gameplay, such as whether the group’s value is released through online YY or offline gatherings. The second is some disciplines, which are equivalent to laws in real life, such as not being able to advertise or recruit people privately.

The rules of the community game fully test the skills of the community initiator. This is only a rough framework, and there is no possibility of complete replication as each community has its own unique style.

This also fully reflects the core competitiveness of a community. For example, when it comes to guiding promotion needs, most people may just prohibit others from posting advertisements without providing other ways out. However, in my group, promotion is not prohibited, but there are some requirements on the posture.

Example: The only means of promotion for this group is to share value. Use your awesomeness to conquer group members and they will naturally add you. If you start to scan the group as soon as they enter, I will block such people from the entire network. It is not decent at all. I would not be ashamed to say that I am in the Internet industry.

There are countless details like this. Building a community is just like running a business.

3. The group initiator should set an example and firmly uphold the rules of the game by discussing the issues at hand.

The real way to treat group members as masters is to build a good community and allow value points to emerge fully instead of turning a blind eye to all kinds of dirty behaviors.

This is a tricky job. First, it depends on whether your intervention is reasonable. Second, it depends on whether you have the courage to face the challenge head-on.

The advice I can give is that if you want to maintain order, you must clearly distinguish between rewards and punishments.

Pitfall 4: Not knowing when to disband the group

The group is unable to complete its mission well after releasing its value. It is possible that the group has already released a lot of value, but when the group is disbanded, there is a lack of a proper explanation to the group members.

Create a few more groups. As long as you have some experience, you can pinpoint the time point when the value is fully released. Then make it clear to everyone at the beginning of the group creation. This is very important. If things are said in advance, maybe everyone will just be reluctant to leave instead of making a fuss and poking your nose and scolding you for disbanding the group.

The community can be disbanded once it achieves its operation and maintenance goals and completes its mission.

Even if this group is lifelong and long-term, I think it should be changed and exposed once a year, otherwise the value supply chain of the group will be greatly affected.

For example, send out an announcement to tell everyone that the old group will be disbanded, and everyone only needs to contact the group owner if they want to join a new group. If some people are too lazy to respond to this, it means that this member has given up on the group, not that the group doesn't want him. If someone rejoins the group after the deadline, you can ask him to join the group and send a red envelope, and everyone will be happy.

Don't delay disbanding the group. Just disband it when you are done. Think about it, when you grow up, you have to stop even your mother's milk, let alone a group.

The four pitfalls revealed above are all throughout the process of community building. I feel that every word I write hits the nail on the head and shows my conscience. I hope it can give some inspiration to friends who are on the road of community operation .

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