Four weapons for operating community products: vests, topics, points, and messages

We said that to design a community you need to: first, determine the tone; second, design only one information flow ; third, interact directly in the information flow. Of course, this is definitely not universal. Second and third are actually based more on the choice of tonality in the first step.

Next, our discussion will focus on: How to design product features to make community operations smoother.

1. Vest

Let me ask you a question first. As a product manager , how would you make your product fit the positioning?

I believe you must have made some choices and trade-offs on some functions, and fully implemented the core functions that match the positioning. So, if you are the community operator, how would you make the tone of the community meet expectations? What are your grip and force points? The first thing we can think of is to control the content of the community, which leads to our first tool : vests.

In the early days when the community was just opened, we needed some content materials. This task could not be completed by one or two accounts, so we needed to equip the operators with a bunch of vests. Vests can be obtained from already active communities, and there may be real users behind them. Be careful not to post whatever you think of. Today the vest may be looking for a partner, and tomorrow the vest may be posting photos of cute babies. Of course, these are all operational skills, so I won’t go into detail and let’s get back to the product.

In order to keep business running smoothly, we designed a way to switch accounts directly on the app . Looking back to when I proposed this idea two months ago, my operations and technical colleagues almost dropped their jaws on the table, saying that they had never seen it done this way. Generally, vests are operated on the management backend, and the backend is usually on the PC. The reasons why I insist on doing this are as follows:

1. Operation staff always have to go off work. Who would turn on the computer after get off work? Mobile phones are quite convenient.
2. How to quickly notify the operator once a dynamic or comment is posted? Mobile push seems to be the best option;
3. From a technical implementation perspective, there is no need to repeatedly implement a set of logic for posting updates and comments in the background, you can just reuse the app.

As the scenarios become more diverse, vests need to be designed as global switches . In fact, when Xiaozhong (our junior product manager) was designing the vest at the beginning, he mainly considered the comment scenario, so it was natural to make it so that users could choose a vest after filling in the comment. This design may seem to have little impact, but it is actually quite complicated. If a scenario of posting updates or chatting is introduced at this time, it will be too invasive to the original logic of the product. In my words, it is not elegant. A better product solution is to only make a global switch, which is theoretically a shortcut to quickly log out and log in.

In order to enable timely interaction, unread messages are aggregated on any real identity and alias . The real identity is the real user, and the so-called vest is a bunch of small accounts assigned to this real user. On the one hand, vests serve the purpose of setting a tone and proactively posting certain types of content that we expect users to copy and post; on the other hand, they serve to interact with real users. Interaction can be as simple as giving the other person a like, or it can be a more humane comment of encouragement. In the community, the human psychology of reciprocity is actually the most reflected. If you comment to a stranger, the other party will generally reply to you, and the atmosphere will be created over time. When others interact with you, giving them feedback in a timely manner is undoubtedly the most effective. So we designed it so that no matter you are in real life or under an alias, as long as someone interacts with you, the number of messages will be transparently transmitted. You can click into the alias list to see which alias has messages. This way you can switch to the corresponding vest in time to handle the problem.

Allow operations to identify at a glance who are the real users and who are fake users, so that the best steel is used where it is needed most . When designing the product, we took into account that there would be more than one community operation. If you mix the fake accounts and real users together, it will be hard to tell them apart. The fake accounts will have fun with each other, but the real users will be left out. How to identify new users is also a detail worth considering. Xiaozhong initially didn't want to give users a badge or something. Dazhong felt that it was inappropriate at first glance. It was another UI design that was too invasive and increased the complexity of the layout in some scenarios. Finally, we only made some changes to the font color of the user name without disrupting the space.

2. Topic

In the previous section, we talked about vests, whose function is to post a bunch of pre-planned dynamics and comments to achieve the purpose of maintaining the community's tone. In this section, we will talk about another way to maintain tone: topics. I believe you can see how important the tone of the community is. We repeatedly support the implementation of the tone through the design of different product functions.

For UGC communities, there are certain considerations on how to guide users to generate content. For example, Zhihu uses questions to guide experts in the field to give answers. In this regard, we actually mainly draw inspiration from Weibo. Okay, I admit that the operations girl often asks me: "Uncle Dazhong, do you want to do WeChat Moments or Weibo?" At this time, my answer is: We used the WeChat Moments format that the county people are most familiar with and created the county's Weibo.

In a community that focuses on expressing one's daily life, routine topics like "what to wear today" and "show off your beautiful thighs" are more popular. There is a saying that goes, where there are women, there are men. In conjunction with our business, there are two types of topics that are particularly effective: one is topics that are combined with offline activities , such as: "XX invites you to sing karaoke", this XX may be an official operator or an internet celebrity ; the other is topics that are slightly combined with business, such as "the most beautiful boss lady", so far the most comments come from this topic. Here are the welfare time:

In terms of product design, we allow users to directly select topics when they post updates; we display popular topics at the top of the information flow; and users can click to enter related topics in the updates. These functions are all standard, and the greatest value of a product manager is often to decide what to do.

3. Points

In community operations, we often think about a question: how to motivate users to be active. There are many methods, the most effective one is to give fans, others include material rewards for activities, and the regular minimum is the points mechanism.

Just like vests, we hope to give users the fastest points feedback, so we distribute points on the app . Whether it is dynamic or comment, you can quickly operate. Here is a small detail: How to avoid multiple operators repeatedly rewarding the same dynamic or comment? We provide a reward record for each update or comment on the reward interface. Taking into account the need to not give users points rewards too frequently, the user’s recent points reward records are also displayed on the interface.

Points are automatically awarded for each user's first interaction. Interaction includes posting updates, comments and likes. So, how many points are appropriate to give?

There are two angles to consider this issue:

1. From the perspective of the value of points, 1 point is equivalent to 1 RMB, so if you have more than 10 points on your phone, you can basically redeem small items.
2. From the perspective of continuously and relatively frequently motivating users, 1 point is equivalent to 0.1 cent or 0.1 cent, which is more appropriate.

How to make new users realize that they can get points by interacting? Xiaozhong said that we should display the reward points directly next to the updates or comments. If we are designing a web product, I think this solution is acceptable, after all, the page space is large, but on the mobile terminal, such a design is basically not advisable. Therefore, we added a separate marquee at the top of the homepage information flow. This marquee is suitable for exposing high-quality content and encouraging clicks to enter, and it also completes the policy of educating users that good content will receive points rewards .

4. Message

If you observe community apps, they often promote "publish" and "message" to the first-level navigation. This design is actually to give users the shortest path, whether it is posting content or interacting. So what would happen if we put “messages” in the personal center? That means you need to go through two transparent transmissions, which is cumbersome. We took this into consideration and placed the message at the first-level entrance .

In order to enable people in the community to interact in a timely manner, we need to remind users in the form of messages to pay attention to any movement related to them , such as when their updates are liked and commented on by others, when their comments are replied to by others, or even when A's comment in their updates is replied to by B.

For low-activity users, messages may not be enough and push notifications must be added.

When we were cold starting , I insisted on doing something abnormal. Every time a real user posted a dynamic message, I would push it to the operations colleague's phone , so that he would like, comment, and reward after receiving the message, thus completing the entire set of services. When the development colleagues received this requirement, they thought it was exaggerated and said that I didn't consider the feelings of the operations colleagues. I retorted that in such an important cold start process, only the user's experience should be fully respected, and we ourselves have no experience to speak of. After the cold start phase, you can consider canceling it. For example, there is no need to push updates when some old users post updates.

To sum up

1. Vests lay the foundation for the community's tone, and switching to interact on the app around the clock is more convenient and timely;
2. Topics are the real handle for operations, and data explosion points all come from here;
3. Points are a long-term product mechanism to maintain user interaction;
4. Message notifications are the infrastructure for community interaction.

As I discussed during the product manager interview, the first iteration of a community product needs to be relatively complete, and small steps and quick progress are not suitable for the cold start phase. You can save the display of quality content for later iterations, and you can save the function of posting short videos for later iterations, but you should not save the vests for later iterations. Once the community becomes cold, it will be difficult to heat it up again.