Starting from MLM, 3 routines to upgrade your social marketing operation capabilities

Pyramid selling refers to the illegal act of an organizer developing personnel and obtaining wealth by calculating and paying remuneration to the developed personnel based on the number of people directly or indirectly developed by them or their performance, or requiring the developed personnel to pay a certain fee as a condition for obtaining membership.

In a broad sense, community refers to all social relations that take effect within certain boundaries, regions or fields. It can refer to actual geographical areas or social relations that occur within a certain area, or to more abstract, ideological relations.

Many companies often feel overwhelmed when operating user groups, fan groups, and brand groups: there are only a few people in the group, there are people in the group but no one pays attention to you, and there are people in the group who pay attention to you only when they are sending red envelopes or offering discounts during activities. The atmosphere of the group is far inferior to that of the evil pyramid schemes, let alone the micro-business communities that cheer people up, shout slogans, and post fake pictures every day.

In reality, pyramid schemes have become the fourth largest social cancer after pornography, gambling and drugs. Pyramid schemes such as "chain operations", "pure capital operation", "Western Development Private Fund" and "1040 Project" have organizations with numbers ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. From a psychological perspective, when a group of people gather together and exhibit characteristics that are different from the individuals that make up the group, and the thoughts and feelings of everyone in the group tend to be in the same direction, a community has been formed. MLM organizations have a stable group structure, consistent group consciousness (recruiting people to develop downlines and cheat money), and consistent ability to act, which can instantly kill most brands, users, interest and other communities.

Although they are all communities, the ugliest and most evil ones often develop rapidly because they echo the truest human nature.

Next we will analyze the routines of pyramid schemes.

Before that, we must first clarify a seemingly simple but most critical question about the community: Why does your community exist?

If your answer is just that the company leaders want to build a community or the company wants to do community marketing , then no matter how hard you try to operate the community, you will not succeed. Just as products and brands need to have a clear and unique positioning in the minds of users, communities do the same.

What we need to do is to let everyone in each community feel this positioning. This positioning generally includes two aspects: one is the initial positioning, which is the reason why users join this group; the other is the target positioning, which guides what community members do after joining the group to generate established community value. The distance between the initial positioning and the target positioning is the main line that all group operations need to revolve around.

For example, if you are building a user group for a mobile phone product, the initial positioning of this group should be the reasons why users join this group. Those who join the group are fans of the mobile phone and are interested in digital products such as mobile phones and have certain abilities. The target positioning is that after joining the group, everyone should constantly make suggestions and opinions for product optimization, so as to continuously improve the mobile phone experience (as for how to get users to cooperate, we will talk about it below). Not all communities have the better the more people they have. As mentioned above, the user group for core product improvement does not need to pursue the same number of people as activity groups or marketing groups. Having more people will not make any difference. Users who have only a superficial knowledge of mobile phones will increase the workload and reduce efficiency. Only by clarifying the initial positioning and target positioning of our community can we make the community generate value in a targeted manner.

With the foundation of the existence of the community, let’s take a look at the tricks used by pyramid schemes to keep people obsessed and how these tricks can be used in community marketing.

Routine 1: Squeeze the persimmon from the soft part first

MLM members usually target people they know, deceiving their relatives, classmates, and fellow villagers with reasons such as making money together, doing business together, getting together, and finding a job. Because they are acquaintances, people will generally let down their guard a little, making it easier to lure people to other places. Once a person is deceived by relatives and friends into a MLM organization, he or she will definitely be afraid or angry. At this time, the MLM members will deliberately create an atmosphere of joy, care or respect, ask you to sing and play games , and serve you tea and water, but they will not ask you to pay money to join immediately. If you are in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people, many people will be very wary and find it difficult to integrate into the community. Now you are in an unfamiliar place, but you are using acquaintances. You are meeting a group of strangers, but you are using simple and familiar singing and playing games. You are taking advantage of the fact that people always trust and like familiar things to make people let down their guard and integrate into the group.

Social marketing application: How to quickly integrate users into the community

1. Leverage what users are familiar with

Nicknames, topics, atmosphere, settings, etc. that are familiar to general users will make people relax their vigilance and join in the discussion. Once the interaction begins, they will naturally deepen their understanding of the community, which may lead to more relationships and possibilities. For example, the avatar of a mountain climbing community can be a mountain, the group album can contain recent climbing photos, and the group announcement can be about mountain climbing activities planned in the near future, etc. The purpose is to allow new users to quickly find things they are familiar with and integrate into the community.

2. Set up easy-to-complete tasks

We will also encounter this when we first play a game. Generally, the tasks or levels at the beginning of the game are very simple, and the purpose is to allow users to quickly become familiar with and integrate into the game. We can also use this method in group operations, setting simple, easy-to-complete tasks to allow users to complete their first interaction, such as asking users to complete a simple, interesting, and highly relevant group vote.

3. Use a simple group entry ceremony

Many groups do not have good guidance for new members. Most new members will take a long time to express themselves or even remain lurking. If we make good use of the opportunity at the beginning of joining the group and allow new members to introduce themselves or express their opinions and ideas as soon as they join the group, thus breaking the constraints of the first time, it will be very useful for new members to integrate into the community and increase group activity.

Tactic 2: Taking advantage of group ignorance

If you were shown the stories and materials about MLM schemes, you would feel that these things are full of loopholes and that people who believe in them are simply mentally retarded. Have you ever had this experience: when a group of people are having a great time together, the music and cheers make you feel as if you can do anything, and you will do things that you would never do when you are calm; when a bunch of people are pushing you to confess your feelings, you feel the blood rushing to your forehead, your brain is fuzzy and you can't think, and your IQ at this time is simply touching. Le Bon said in The Crowd that when people are in a group state, the morality that originally restrained individuals will lose its effect, individuals will lose their judgment, and people will become slaves to various impulses. Therefore, top salesmen will create an atmosphere in various sales activities and marketing meetings to make consumers lose their minds and buy completely unnecessary items.

Social marketing application: How to make social users gather together to form a cohesive group

1. Set boundaries and create a sense of belonging

You watch two sales scenes from an outsider. Assume that all the products, personnel, and services sold are exactly the same. One sales scene requires tickets (free of charge) and is set in an environment with walls or partitions. The other sales scene does not require tickets and is set in an open-air environment. Which scene do you think is more likely to ignite the atmosphere? The square in the city center is crowded with people coming and going, but they will never form a group. If you want to form a community, you must cleverly set the boundaries of physical or virtual space to separate this group of people from everyone else. All methods of restricting freedom, such as the community's initial positioning, charging, simple tasks for joining the group, verification code invitation codes, abnormal challenges for joining the group (many mysterious top communities will adopt such boundaries), etc., can be used in community operations. Only by setting boundaries reasonably can group members feel that their community is different from others and find a sense of belonging in this community.

2. Constantly hint and strengthen the group’s sense of mission

It is hard to imagine that human beings are such creatures: you repeat to yourself a thousand times that you are an idiot. If I ask you what you are, what do you think you will answer? After a community is formed, constant hints and inflammatory language, whether reasonable or not, can mislead people and stir up the emotions of members in a group state. It is difficult for non-fans to understand the hysterical enthusiasm and admiration among fans. The essence of this is that in the collective state of the community, admiration for stars is constantly repeated and hinted at. We will not discuss this in depth. In normal corporate community operations, we also need to constantly hint at seed concepts to group members. For example, we can constantly hint in the group in various ways that the company is pursuing the ultimate product experience. Regardless of whether your product currently has a perfect experience or not, their impression must be that the company is pursuing the ultimate product experience.

3. Build imagination and make members chase it crazily

Benedict Anderson's famous "community of imagination" tells us how nations are imagined and constructed, and that national power and groups of conquerors are often built on the imagination of the masses, and the same is true for communities. Good community marketing lies in being able to stimulate or cater to the imagination of group members, allowing group members to find room for imagination in initial positioning and target positioning, and then educating community members through repetition and indoctrination. In this regard, the practice of many charitable communities to build imagination through education is worth learning from. Community members know that they will not get any material rewards when doing charity. Now many paid communities are also using education methods to build imagination space and promote knowledge payment .

Tactic 3: Taking advantage of human nature

Generally, in MLM dens, there are two most common things done. One is listening to lectures to instill ideas, and the other is settling accounts to cater to human greed. For example, for the 1040 Sunshine Project, new members need to pay a "membership fee" of 69,800 yuan, and the bank will return 19,000 yuan the following month. Then you need to find three partners, and your three partners also need to invest 69,800 yuan, and each of them needs to develop their three partners; including you + 3 partners + 9 sub-partners, your team already has 13 members. After that, they kept developing "salesmen". As long as the "salesmen" had good performance, after 21 members were included, the total amount of money absorbed directly or indirectly was more than 100,000 but less than 1 million per month, and the amount absorbed directly or indirectly had reached 25,407,200, of which 45% was paid as national tax, and the remaining 10% was paid as personal income tax. So you would get 25,407,200* (1-45%-10%) = 11,433,240. After deducting various so-called expenses, you would get 10.4 million, which means you could "make money out of nothing" and finally earn 10.4 million yuan. There were a bunch of algorithms and rules in it, which were actually just various transfers of money. However, this set of rules seemed to make sense and catered to human greed and laziness to a great extent, so there were many followers.

Social marketing application: how to give social networks vitality

Every method of exploiting human nature is a double-edged sword. If you want to benefit from it, you must also suffer from it. Please use it according to your actual situation. Here are three simple examples of leveraging human nature to increase the number of group members and group vitality: leveraging human greed to give material rewards, leveraging human vanity to give spiritual rewards, and leveraging human curiosity to create a sense of mystery and upgrade the tone of the community.

1. Taking advantage of human greed

Human nature is greedy and selfish. When resources are limited, human nature is to find ways to acquire more survival resources in order to satisfy more of their own desires. Many marketing activities take advantage of human greed, such as gifts, discounts, lotteries, rebates, red envelopes, etc. We give certain material benefits or promises to attract more users. The same is true in the community. By setting reasonable rewards, we can attract users to join the group, such as receiving red envelopes or discounts for joining the group, or using exclusive event rewards during holidays to increase the activity of group members and increase their sense of belonging.

2. Taking advantage of human vanity

Vanity is a psychological state of human beings. Regardless of gender, age or status, it is hard to say that vanity is an evil act. Most of us are slaves kidnapped by vanity. All behaviors revolving around vanity are just means to satisfy vanity. There are many manifestations of vanity on the Internet : likes, medals, PK, achievements, beauty, showing off wealth, etc. In community operation, in addition to material rewards, we need to consider more spiritual rewards. Such rewards satisfy the vanity of users and bring them a sense of accomplishment and pleasure. At the same time, in order to win rewards, community members will unconsciously participate in them, such as the hierarchy system within the group (QQ group title).

3. Use mystery

Mystery can attract people's attention and stimulate our curious nature, making us eager to find out the truth. When using this strategy, the most important thing is not what to spread, but what to hide. For example, we all know that QQ members have a level system, from vip 1 to vip8. Each level has corresponding privileges on the official website. What will happen if the privileges of the vip8 level are left blank? Most people are not very interested in vip1-7, but are very curious about vip8, thinking that this level must be very powerful and mysterious (of course, Tencent chooses to disclose all levels, which is also in line with its positioning. It does not need mystery, but needs the trust gained by public information). In the operation of a community, if you need to create a sense of mystery, you must first learn to hide, and then selectively disclose limited information.

What I have said above include some tactical practices, but more of them are guiding ideas at the strategic level. Each strategic idea needs to be adjusted and adapted in specific industries and enterprise applications. Therefore, in specific community operations, it is necessary to choose appropriate strategies and tactics based on the company's own situation and the company's goals for community value.