[Operation Case] ​​In-depth interpretation of community operation, this is my ten thousand word summary after experiencing four communities

A mature community is like a city. It manages its members through systems, forms markets through supply and demand, and passes on culture through platforms. It has a stable self-operating mechanism. The operator of a community, like the manager of a city, has the core responsibility of establishing rules and continuously optimizing them.

I believe that all Internet practitioners hope to establish such a mature community, which means having a stable and massive user group, a self-operating mechanism, and realizing the value of the community through user interaction and transactions. The most attractive thing is that this gives us a top-notch sense of accomplishment.

This is a more abstract concept of community, which is a very ideal state but very difficult to achieve. Abei has always believed that Douban is such a community, or has such conditions, but after many attempts, he still hasn't found a suitable way. For example, the Alpha City in the picture below is built according to the concept of a city.

Putting aside this abstract concept, in fact, the "community" we usually refer to is a content-based UGC platform in a narrow sense, similar to Zhihu and Tianya.

I'm very interested in the community and hope to write something. What worries me is that although I have been in this industry for many years and have experienced 4 community products, there is still no typical success case.

But I think the experience of "failure" is more valuable. It’s like after a person dies, we can know the specific cause and take preventive measures for ourselves afterwards. But it is difficult for us to find the real secret of longevity of a centenarian because there are too many factors involved and they vary from person to person.

Successful experiences cannot be replicated and may not even be correct. To achieve a successful result, many prerequisites must be met, including the right time, the right place, and the right people. Otherwise, those successful experiences will not be valid.

Therefore, as a community operator with many failure experiences, my experience may be more practical for reference. This article will discuss the gameplay of community operation from this perspective.

1. What is a community?

There is currently no particularly authoritative definition of what a community is, and it is mainly based on convention. My definition is that an Internet community is an online platform that brings together users with common attributes and provides interactive services. Among them, the three elements of common attributes, interaction and online platform are basically possessed by every community.

It should be noted that the concepts of community and social platform are easily confused, and many friends are not clear about the definition criteria. I believe that community is based on content, while social interaction is based on people.

Use a simple method to distinguish and see what dimensions the contents of this product are connected with. If it is connected by content itself, it is a community, such as Zhihu, Tieba, and Same; if it is connected by users, it is social networking, such as Weibo and Momo.

Zhihu, which is full of content, is a community

Momo, where the screen is full of people, is a social

Due to the wide variety of product forms, some situations are difficult to define using this method. For example, Weibo connects content through people, but it has strong media attributes, so it is reasonable to say that Weibo is a community. Another example is the Moments, which connects content based on acquaintances, but the content itself has become increasingly heavy, so it has both community and social elements.

There is another type of situation where the community is just one module of the product, such as Xiachufang and Xiami, or the community is an interactive element integrated into the entire product, such as Xiaohongshu and Maoyan Movies.

Community is just a module of Xiami

Xiaohongshu uses content to make transaction decisions, and contains community elements

In fact, it is meaningless in practice to classify several different products and define them into one concept. The core of the specific presentation form of the product is to meet user needs, rather than to make a certain type of product. This is a reasonable analysis approach.

2. Three factors that determine the success or failure of a community

1. Positioning

With a correct positioning, the project is halfway to success; if the positioning is wrong, no matter how hard you try, it will be useless. Similarly, for the community, positioning is the most important thing. The following three issues need to be considered in practice:

①The market is big enough

Simply put, it depends on the field in which the community is positioned and whether there are enough people and demands. The product form of the community determines that success is only possible if it forms a scale effect in terms of the number of people. If the market size is large, it means that as long as you get 10% of the market share, the base of the community population will be large enough and the conditions for success will be met.

If the focus is on a niche and small-scale field, firstly, there will not be a sufficient population base to make the community operate; secondly, a small market means that the commercial value may not be great. Without commercial value, the project is incomplete and cannot be sustained.

The so-called "small and beautiful" companies are difficult to survive, and most of them are just gimmicks for team recruitment and PR. For example, in the early days of Zhihu, the crowd was concentrated in the Internet field, and their level was very high. In addition, registration was not open, so it was a typical "small and beautiful" platform. But then Zhihu experienced a key turning point, that is, its user base expanded from the Internet to other fields, accounting for a large proportion and growing at a fast rate. If this had not been achieved, Zhihu would have remained in the Internet field and would not have had the current user scale and social value.

Looking back at Douban, everyone says that it has become watered down and has changed in taste. In fact, this is the inevitable result of the expansion of the user base. The previous niche literary and artistic style was based on the premise of having few people. When a massive number of users pour in, such community culture will inevitably be impacted. But if Douban does not work on user growth, it will have a great impact on the company's valuation and commercialization.

So, although Douban's early literary and artistic route was enviable, the market size and audience were too small, which affected the company's development, and it could only make breakthroughs in outward expansion. This is because the small size of the targeted market brings difficulties to subsequent growth.

② The target audience is good at UGC

An important reason why Douban has achieved its current influence is that it targets book, movie and music lovers. Such literary and artistic people are better at expressing delicate emotions in words, have a strong productivity of high-quality content, and are also very active. Douban's initial content and community culture were created by such people, laying the foundation for the subsequent expansion of high-quality content and users.

In addition to book, movie and music lovers, Internet practitioners are also a group of people with strong UGC capabilities. The characteristics are long online time, high activity, more proficient use of Internet products, and certain writing skills. Simply put, they know how to play and can play in various ways.

The disadvantage is low loyalty. Because their original intention of using the product is not because of demand, but to experience the product. Just like locusts, they swarm towards products that have not yet been launched for promotion. When they get tired of the products and they are no longer interested in them, they leave and pounce on the next target. This is what we often call the Internet product tour group.

We don’t want them to go “sightseeing” because this group of people are not the target group of the product. Their activeness will affect the atmosphere and tone of the community, and the interference with product data will lead to the inability to conduct normal analysis and decision-making. More importantly, after trying the product, the tour groups will publicly release their opinions and interpretations. This will cause the product to gain a reputation that is inconsistent with expectations when it is caught off guard, which will affect the product brand.

The people in the above two cases, one is a book, movie and music enthusiast with a strong literary and artistic atmosphere, and the other is an Internet practitioner. Both are somewhat special and out of touch with reality. Here is an example of Kaixin.com.

Kaixin.com became all the rage, and an important reason for this is that it targeted white-collar workers in first-tier cities, took advantage of their fragmented time at work, tapped into their psychological needs to relax during boring and stressful work, and designed content forms such as games , voting, and reposting that were highly entertaining and had a low threshold to participate. Users only needed to click the mouse to participate and share with friends, who would then follow, participate, and spread the content, and so on, forming a closed loop of content production and consumption.

This model, through clever crowd positioning and low-threshold interactive forms, successfully solved the problem of poor UGC capabilities of domestic users, and is a case with great reference value.

Kaixin.com, the legend of the past

When building a community, you should choose a target group with strong content contribution and activity; or explore the needs of a certain group of people and meet them through products. Douban solved the UGC problem by targeting the crowd, and Kaixin.com solved the problem in a roundabout way by using products.

③ User needs are real

The two most watched companies nowadays are Meituan-Dianping and Didi Chuxing. What they do is food and transportation, which are closely related to people's lives and are rigid demands. Although there are many other factors that contribute to the success of the two companies, from a positioning perspective, the user needs involved are real, which lays the foundation for success.

Let’s take another example. Pornographic websites are illegal in the country, but both the supply and demand sides continue to operate despite repeated bans. The demand side uses various complicated methods such as circumventing the firewall, recording different URLs, etc. to log in and access the site, and even pays for VIP. The reason is rigid demand and the pursuit of food, sex and nature.

Data of Caoliu Community

For a community, it is just a communication on a certain topic or among a group of people. I don’t think this demand is strong enough, and it is difficult to operate with just this. The reason why communities such as sports, games, and shopping exist is not because the topic is in high demand, but because there are other demand points that tie down users, such as buying cheap goods, checking game guides , etc.

However, there are also some individual segments where communities can be built solely by relying on the need for communication, such as parenting communities. There are two reasons. First, most young mothers are having babies for the first time. They have a lot of anxiety and excitement that need to be resolved, and many questions that need to be discussed and consulted. Second, the birth of a baby will bring about essential changes in the family structure and focus, which will trigger family conflicts, and mothers need to talk. So, this is a very powerful demand.

Let me use one of my own projects as an example. I built a sports community 2007 years ago. The user path was to post offline activities , indicating the venue and event information. Interested users clicked to register, and could post comments if they had any questions. Organizers could check the registration status in real time and send free text messages to registered users to remind them of the event information. After the event, you could post messages and photos to summarize and reminisce about the event.

Do you think this product is reliable and the user usage path is clear? In fact, this is a false demand. Users will not use it as described above. It is just a story I imagined. Users can solve the problem with just QQ. Although it is not so standardized and easy to use, it is easier and more convenient. The cost of transferring to other platforms is relatively higher.

2. Community tone

You will admit that a person is beautiful, but you may not necessarily fall in love with her, because beauty is only a superficial feeling. What really makes you fall in love with someone is internal factors such as temperament, common language, and world outlook. It is also because of these that we present people with different characteristics.

The same is true for communities. The reason why users use communities is because of needs, and the reason they fall in love with the community is because of its tone. A community with a unique brand and tone will give users a reason to fall in love with it, and may also gain more product reputation and brand penetration. A community without tonality is incomplete, just like a person with only a skeleton but no soul.

The tone of a community is mainly achieved through the positioning and perspective of the content, and the corresponding population will also be very segmented and precise. Let’s take a look at a few examples:

The picture above is Douban Dongxi. As a sub-product of Douban, the community tone is consistent with Douban, which can be intuitively felt from the picture.

The picture above is the same page. Judging from the styles of these recommended topics, there is a sense of simplicity and casualness, which is in line with the relaxed and unrestrained feeling that the post-90s generation likes nowadays. It is also consistent with the simple product style and leaves a deep impression on people.

The picture above is Bilibili. It feels like a Japanese style blowing. This is the base camp of ACG Fans.

3. User incentive system

The community is a product form that relies on UGC, so users who contribute high-quality content are the core elements, and community operations work also revolves around this group of people.

So why should users contribute content, what benefits can they get, who will consume the content, how to get users to continue to contribute, and who will continue to consume content? This is a closed-loop user incentive system. Among them, the reason and motivation for users to contribute content is user incentives.

Simply put, users are willing to contribute content because it must satisfy certain needs, either spiritual or material. Therefore, the most fundamental starting point of the user incentive system is user demand. When designing this system, the idea is to see through which products and operations can meet user needs.

Some friends say that user incentives are sign-ins for points, levels, and medals, but this idea is wrong. These are just specific ways to achieve motivation for users, not the root causes. It is unreliable to simply think that these methods can solve the problem of user motivation. If you think that by building up points and levels, user motivation will improve, this is equivalent to mistaking specific appearances for the underlying causes. This is due to the order of analytical thinking, which should be from internal causes to specific methods, and cannot be reversed.

Many practitioners today lack the ability to think independently or the logical thinking ability to analyze problems. They believe that the incentive system is the points, levels and medals, improving retention means signing in, and the only activity is giving out red envelopes. It is lazy to think like this, these are just means to an end, not the underlying reasons.

3. The rhythm of community operation

A community is like a market. It takes a long time for people to gather together and it won’t become lively all at once. Therefore, in the process from nothing to something, and from small to big, the rhythm of community operation is very important.

Simply put, the rhythm of community operation is to first explore the model and build atmosphere on a small scale, and then replicate the model and increase the user scale. But this rhythm is actually only in the initial stage. The operation rhythm of the community in the middle and late stages must be combined with the actual situation, and it is difficult to summarize the commonalities. For example, some communities only start commercialization after reaching a certain scale, such as Douban and Zhihu; some communities contain commercial elements from the very beginning, such as Meilishuo and Mogujie. Therefore, the community operation rhythm mentioned in this article is only applicable in the initial stage.

The rhythm of community operation is as follows:

This part belongs to the execution link. Each point can be extended to a topic, so here is only a brief description. If you want to know the details, you can read these articles separately:

1. Cold start

2. Seed users

3. User Operation

4. Content Operation

5. Event Operation

Step 1: Cold Start

①Seed users

Based on the product positioning, determine the definition of the core user group, and then introduce them through operational means. Ensure that there are active users after the product is launched, contributing content, interacting and submitting feedback.

② Content filling

The positioning and tone of the community are reflected through the content displayed. Therefore, in the early stage of product launch, we operate and edit high-quality content (including pre-buried replies) to fill in the skeleton of the community and build it into the desired shape.

Users can also participate, but when the product is first launched, users do not have a thorough understanding of the product, and the content posted may not be in line with the community positioning, so operations are needed to complete it. The content quality of operational planning is more reliable, more in line with the positioning, and will serve as a benchmark.

③ Atmosphere construction

Community atmosphere, including activity and community culture, is an important reason for user retention, so it should be taken seriously from the early stages of community establishment. We can accept that the user scale is not large, but it will not affect the good community atmosphere.

To create a good community atmosphere, we must strictly control the quality of seed users and initial content, pay attention to the amount of interaction, and control the reasonable critical point of conflict and friendliness, so as to attract users to share and discuss, and make users feel warm and have a sense of belonging.

Step 2: Explore Mode

①Demand confirmation

Before going online, the prospects of the product are unknown and only remain in the speculation stage. No one is sure whether users will like it. Therefore, it is urgent to verify whether the previous speculation is valid after the launch, whether users have such needs, and how they recognize the product.

As long as users recognize the core functions, other auxiliary modules and detailed experiences can be optimized subsequently. If users are not interested in the core functions, then you should consider whether a transformation is needed.

There are many ways to verify demand, such as looking at data, conducting research, monitoring user gameplay, etc., mainly to see whether the actual operation meets expectations.

②Incentive closed loop

After the demand is confirmed, we need to use seed users to quickly run the closed loop of user incentives to prepare for the subsequent influx of a large number of users. Simply put, why should users contribute, what will they get after contributing, and why should they continue to contribute? This has been mentioned above, so I will not elaborate on it.

③Determine the tonality

Before the product goes online, the positioning of the community's tone is just a reservation, a description in the plan, and at most a few pieces of content are used as cases to illustrate it in detail.

After going online, the previously planned tone must be implemented, but more importantly, it is necessary to continuously adjust according to user reactions, gradually shortening the distance between the plan and the actual user reaction.

Step 3: Quick Copy

① User growth

Through the first two steps, the cold start was completed, the product model was verified, and the incentive mechanism was implemented. It’s like the reservoir has been built and it’s time to open the gates to release water.

At this stage, various methods need to be used to increase the number of users, such as channels, activities and brand promotion. But the most important thing is to grasp the rhythm and gradually expand the user base, rather than frequently using big moves without reservation. A community is like a person. We cannot expect a baby to grow up after just a few meals. Instead, it needs to be raised slowly, bite by bite.

If the user growth rate is too fast, the community atmosphere may be broken up; if the growth rate is too slow, users will feel too deserted and the initial passion will slowly fade away. Both situations will cause user loss and have a great impact on the community.

②Expand coverage

"User growth" refers to the overall user scale of the community, and "scale expansion" refers to the horizontal areas of the community.

Some communities will cover multiple horizontal fields or categories, for example, Douban has books, movies and music, Zhihu covers everything from the Internet to all categories, Weibo covers everything from the Internet and media to all categories, and Meituan covers everything from food to various services. These are expanded from a single or a few categories.

This step does not occur in every product and is related to the initial product positioning. If there is a need to expand coverage horizontally, this step is a reasonable time in terms of operational rhythm.

③Brand communication

After the product is formed, the community tone is determined, and there are stable and active users, it is time to consider external brand communication to expand visibility and deepen cognition, so that more off-site users not only know about the community, but also have some understanding of the community's values, thereby enhancing brand awareness. For example, Zhihu has done a round of subway advertising, one of the purposes of which is to cover and win over Zhihu's extended users, that is, users who have heard of Zhihu on social platforms but have not yet converted into products.

In the stage of launching brand communication, each product is different, and the forms and channels are also different. For the community, at least it should do the continuous dissemination of high-quality content and use off-site channels to expand content exposure. This will have an incentive effect on existing users and, more importantly, spread the community brand.

4. Six traps of community operation

Let me talk about the pitfalls I encountered when building a community. I think they are very common and applicable to many communities.

1. Create a community to improve user stickiness

When we create a product or feature, the only reason is user demand. Everyone understands this principle, but the following situations still occur:

We are a tool app, and users visit it about once a week. In order to enhance user stickiness and increase DAU, we decided to build a community.

I would like to reiterate that a community should be created when there is user demand, rather than just to increase stickiness. It seems that these two sentences are similar, and the results may be the same, but the most fundamental analysis idea is wrong, which may lead to failure.

If the goal is just to increase user stickiness, the most likely approach is to add a community tab in the app, because this will achieve the purpose of "having a community".

If the purpose is to meet the needs of users for communication, after thinking and analyzing, the conclusion is to meet it through a community form, but the specific product form does not necessarily have to add a tab like existing products. An independent community module may not meet user needs. Perhaps integrating community elements into the tool module is a better choice.

Therefore, if the starting point is different, the destination may be very different.

2. The pursuit of growth rate for quick success

The most important thing about a community is its atmosphere, which is created by a small number of active users. When building a community from scratch, find seed users based on product positioning, and then use various means to get them to play. Through this process of playing, a community atmosphere is formed. Although it can be summarized in one sentence, it takes a certain amount of time to accumulate.

What I am most worried about is using data alone to measure the operational progress of a new community. If you require weekly community data (such as UV or UGC volume) to increase, you will definitely not be able to make solid early accumulation. You can only be busy with activities and gimmicks. Unfortunately, the foundation has not been laid yet, and the users attracted will quickly leave.

As mentioned above, the operating rhythm of the community is very important. Each step has different functions and focuses. Only by connecting several steps can we see obvious results. It is unrealistic to take out the data of a single step or a single week and expect to see a significant increase.

A community is like a snowball, which grows big and solid only after rolling down from small size; a community is like a person, which grows up healthily only after eating every meal well; a community is like a tall building, which cannot just think about how it will stand after completion, but should first lay a solid foundation.

If you blindly pursue growth rate in the early stage and hope for quick success and instant benefits to reach a new level in the number of users every day, you will disrupt the rhythm of operations and do things that you should not do to cater to this unreasonable goal. In the end, it will only slow down the community's progress, or even cause it to die.

Let’s see how Zhihu does it. This is Zhou Yuan’s original words:

We actually haven’t hyped up any hot topics. In the early stage, we will invite high-quality users and suggest them to participate in some suitable topics. Zhihu's user development has gone through two stages. The first stage is an invitation system. If you want to become a Zhihu user, you must apply or be invited by a friend. The 200 users we choose to invite initially will influence the subsequent 20,000 users. At that time, most of the content links you searched outside the site were inaccessible. This process lasted about two years. Our idea was that development could be slower, but we had to allow the community atmosphere to settle better and become more solid, so that more people could define Zhihu.

The "two stages" in the article refer to Zhihu's operating rhythm; the "200 invited users" are seed users; and "off-site users cannot access" is one of the measures taken to improve the community atmosphere and content quality. But what is extremely rare is that this relatively closed state actually lasted for two years. I think most companies can’t accept even two months.

Therefore, don’t just look at Zhihu’s current popularity and scale, but ignore people’s initial patience and restraint.

3. Unable to change user perception

Let’s make up an example. You go to the supermarket to buy toothpaste, and there are two brands on the shelf: Crest and Master Kong. Which one would you choose? The first thing that comes to mind is definitely Crest, after all, it sounds like a toothpaste. And Master Kong should be instant noodles. It feels weird to choose this when buying toothpaste.

This is the user's inherent perception of the brand. It is very costly to change and may not necessarily be successful. The same is true in the Internet field. Baidu is search, Taobao is online shopping, and Meituan is group buying. This is the first impression that ordinary users have of these three brands. But in fact, they have many other product lines. When these independent products are very different from the parent brand, they will encounter the problem of changing user perception.

Especially for those products that have tools first and then communities, users’ cognition often remains on the tools and they may not notice the existence of the community. The process of getting users to pay attention to and recognize the new direction (community) is the process of reversing brand perception, which takes some time, which may be long or short, depending on the specific situation.

Most of the apps that have performed relatively smoothly in this regard are female apps, such as Dayima ; there are too many that have not performed well, for example, Taobao has launched so many community products, but none of them have been successful so far.

Changing user perception is not impossible, but it is a difficult problem that will cost a lot of time and manpower.

4. Most users are not good at sharing

There are very few users who are willing and able to contribute content on community/social platforms. Although the operations girls around me can write interesting and wonderful posts on Weibo and Moments, the UGC capabilities of ordinary users are not like this. Just take a look at the Moments of our elders and you will find that most netizens have poor abilities to create and identify high-quality content.

Of course, in addition to our elders, the same is true for the elite groups:

Only 5% of users on Zhihu answer questions, and 95% of new questions asked every day go unanswered.

Not only domestic netizens, but also foreign users are the same:

40% of Twitter users have never posted anything, only 10% have posted more than 10 pieces of content, and only 2% have posted more than 100 pieces of content.

If you decide to build a community, you must accept the current situation. Even if you already have a certain number of users, the number of people who actually contribute is still very small. And no matter how hard we try in operations, the vast majority of people will still not be converted into contributing users.

5. User demand does not exist

This point has been mentioned in the "Three Factors That Determine the Success or Failure of a Community" above, and I would like to emphasize it again here. There are indeed many failed cases because they are targeting a false demand which is not valid. Therefore, even if the operation is forced to death, the community cannot be built.

In addition to pseudo-demand, there is another situation where people hope to move offline demands online and satisfy them through the community. Offline, there is a ready-made group that presents certain needs, but when it comes to online, it changes and may not be valid.

I have a friend who works in the medical industry. The company’s users are all leaders of tertiary hospitals, and the service it provides is high-standard offline medical conferences. Hospital leaders are very willing to participate because they have the social needs of high-end circles and also have economic benefits. However, the company wants to transform this group of hospital leaders from offline activities to online products and meet their information, social and research needs through an app. This is not feasible.

In addition, transferring from offline to online products has costs and operational barriers. Due to human laziness, it is very likely that such a community will fail because no one is willing to "move" or the attrition rate is too high.

6. It is difficult to commercialize community products

As a valuable product, it must have the ability to be commercially monetized, otherwise it will not survive. Cross-subsidy and money-burning methods are only suitable for large companies and are not a long-term solution.

There was a saying before that as long as the community has a large number of users, there is no need to worry about making money. The direction is correct, but finding ways to "make money" may be very difficult and may even "bring down" the community.

Because the main body of the community is content, which is far from money. If any element involving "money" appears in the community, the user experience will be seriously damaged, and it will also affect the neutrality and purity of the content, making the community atmosphere full of "the smell of money." Users are very sensitive to this and will react strongly, which is much more serious than imagined.

A friend of mine has a content app with over one million DAUs, but as long as product-related information appears in the product, users will be lost and the click-through rate is very low. Failure to find a suitable commercialization model may very likely lead to the death of the product, which is why this case is kept anonymous.

There are many examples of well-known products, and Tieba is the best. Due to the strong brand awareness of Tieba, the click-through rate of the advertising space is very low. Although there is a lot of advertising revenue every day, for a product of the scale of Tieba, it cannot cover the cost at all. That’s why we see all kinds of monetization attempts. Selling memberships is normal, but “selling it” will hurt users and brands.

Douban generates over 100 million yuan in revenue each year from selling advertisements, but for a high value-added product like Douban, this figure is just barely acceptable. Zhihu also began its commercialization exploration cautiously and would not do anything that would affect the user experience. It is for this reason that its commercialization progress has been relatively slow.

5. Conclusion

There are many articles about community operations. I tried to explain my understanding of the community in a differentiated way. The methods of operating a community and operating user products are similar, so this article does not contain much practical content. Friends who are interested can read the previous articles of this account.

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