Community Operation | 0 cost, how to efficiently build a strong community system

Since 2015, the first year of the community , the concept of community has been rapidly spread in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. With the popularity of the hottest keywords in 2017: content entrepreneurship and video entrepreneurship , people are gradually realizing that communities where content is king are an undeniable trend.

In the past, business models were basically based on channels being king. If you mastered the channel information, you had the right to speak. Today’s business model is an era where content is king. Everything that happened before has been broken up by the Internet. Everyone can become a channel promoter and everyone can be a content creator. Today's channels have become the inseparable media platforms that everyone knows (Weibo, Weibo , Toutiao, Baidu Baike , and Dayu ); the higher the quality of content, the more valuable it is, which directly promotes the arrival of the Internet charging era.

The rapid development of the trend is bound to cause chain thinking in the industry. Regarding community positioning, building of community framework, recruitment and operation of community members, as well as community monetization and maintenance... In order to facilitate a better understanding for everyone, we will combine down-to-earth practical cases and rich practical content to show how to play the community step by step from 0 to 1.

1. Vertical positioning of the community

What is vertical positioning? Simply put, it means focusing on a vertical field. For example, mother and baby communities, painting communities, lawyer communities, music communities... Most people can start by establishing a community based on a hobby or area of ​​expertise of themselves or their team. In this way, the target group is relatively clear and the operation may be easier to start. Imagine that if you are a mother and the community you set up focuses on maternal and infant products, and the content you write every day is about "parent-child education" and "baby care", when a mother sees this, she will naturally follow your community first, and she will also give priority to the products you recommend.

In the fragmented era of mobile Internet , all walks of life in the entire society will show social development. When we first established a community brand, we did preliminary research and knowledge accumulation for more than half a year in order to position it. (I watched all the videos and audios of relevant communities online, took notes and analyzed them, held meetings to discuss them, conducted offline surveys of real users, listened and watched again, and held meetings again…)

Furthermore, before operating a community, you must have this kind of community thinking: with accurate positioning in the general direction, try to present vertical development as much as possible. The more vertical your community is, the stronger the user's sense of belonging will be. This is also determined by people's consumption psychology: material needs are the main focus, and spiritual and cultural needs are secondary.

From this perspective, communities can be simply divided into two categories:

1. A material-oriented primary product resource community serves your members by providing tangible high-quality product resources. Members spend a small amount of money to buy high-quality products, which naturally strengthens their sense of belonging.
2. A high-level knowledge community oriented towards spiritual culture, relying mainly on KOL (opinion leaders) or teams to input and output high-value skills, knowledge or experience sharing. "Standing on the shoulders of giants", you can see higher, go further and earn more.

Of course, there is no clear boundary between the two types of communities, and both must be taken into account in the later maintenance. This classification is just to help you make a vertical positioning for your community. After all, positioning means direction.

The worst thing a community can do is to have a vague direction. If the direction is wrong, no matter how hard you try, it will be counterproductive.

2. Building a community framework

Once the direction is chosen, the next step is to build the community framework system, which is a tedious, important and constantly revised process. It mainly includes the community value system architecture, community management architecture and community membership architecture.

The community value system architecture mainly refers to the value content that the community can output, whether it is specific resource products, practical knowledge, or sharing of practical experience. At the same time, it is also the core value of the community, among which the output of values ​​is more important. There is a saying that goes, "When I join the community, I come for your people, not your products." As long as your content continues to be valuable, making money is just a by-product.

The community management structure emphasizes the knowledge system of the entire community opinion leaders, which will be the pillar of the entire community system. The team members' understanding of the system content and the degree of tacit cooperation directly determine the system genes.

The membership structure is to better serve community members. It is determined by the 80/20 principle that a small circle must have 20% active members to drive the overall atmosphere of the community and infect the remaining 80% of members. Xiaomi Community is the most vivid example. The original elite users of Xiaomi Community can now directly enter Xiaomi Company or participate in the "Mi Fan Festival" with priority, becoming prominent among community members.

It is very worthwhile to spend more time discussing how to accurately position vertically and how to build a more stable community framework for individual or team brands. The premise is that it is best to set a time node and cut each module time into block time to complete it, so that the efficiency will be increased exponentially. I remember seeing an answer from Kai-Fu Lee on Zhihu Q&A about time management for posting on Weibo. Here is a reference:

I post one every half hour because I use a timing tool , but each one is chosen by me. I use tools because my free time cannot match the prime time (9:00-11:00 a.m., 3:00-5:00 p.m., 9:00-11:00 p.m.), and I cannot post too frequently (it will flood the screen). The process is roughly as follows: go to Weibo at 6 a.m., and use the tool to automatically sort out the 100 most valuable Weibo posts in the 8 hours since I went to bed at 10 p.m. last night. Read them once, and decide which ones to forward and comment on while reading. Schedule a post to be published every half hour during the golden period (if there is something that is particularly time-sensitive, post it immediately; if there are fewer Weibo posts that day, post one post per hour).

6:30 The forwarding is completed, and then check the cumulative submissions, cumulative original works, and employee suggestions, and then send a few more at regular intervals.

If I have time, I will check out the keyword monitoring and hot topics in the tool, and search for the day's major events and important keywords. If I still have time, I will see if the people I most respect have posted anything.

Finally, based on my inspiration from work and other aspects, I’ll publish my original work for the day and finish at 7 o’clock. In this way, usually about 10 Weibo posts are scheduled for the morning and afternoon.

Take 30 minutes to repeat the above process during work hours, and then take another 30 minutes after get off work to do it again. 3 times a day, 2 hours in total, and you're done.

The whole day seems to be very busy, but Mr. Kai-Fu Lee uses time cutting and block time nodes to complete the work. In the early days of founding Chuanshihui, my team members and I still use the method of setting time nodes to control daily work tasks, and even now, from practicing it, I have found that it is indeed a good method.

Today on Weibo, I saw this life insight: "I would rather be an entrepreneurial wolf than a working dog." Wolves and dogs are essentially one family, starting from the same strength, and in the process of animal evolution through survival of the fittest. Wolves choose to take the initiative and become recognized as capable fighters; dogs choose to be kept in captivity passively, leaving such an impression on everyone. The same applies to human competition and social competition. Instead of being passively kept in captivity, it is better to take the initiative. To put it in a heroic way, if you succeed, you will be a fighter and a hero in everyone's eyes; if you fail, you will also be a martyr and a hero.

However, wolves have one most important characteristic: they are social animals. Wolves live in groups, usually seven in a pack, and each one has a responsibility for the prosperity and development of the group. The tacit cooperation between wolves becomes the decisive factor for their success. No matter what they do, they can always rely on the strength of the group to accomplish it. If we talk about it from a brand perspective, the core brand value of wolves is obviously better than that of dogs.

3. Recruitment of community members

The above dialectical analysis of wolves and dogs refers to the division of your target membership users . With a clear user portrait , you can achieve twice the result with half the effort. Before doing community marketing and recruiting members, you must have very clear ideas. In an age when attention has become scarce, content has become particularly important.

In community operation , while streamlining the content, it is also necessary to closely follow the tastes and needs of target users. Who is your target user? (Group attributes: age characteristics...), who are you in contact with? (Action attributes: social circle…), what do they look at online? What do you prefer? (Other attributes: interests and hobbies…).

After identifying the target users, the next step is to come up with specific practical methods.

The recruitment of community members mainly includes two categories:

1. Online streaming promotion
2. Offline activities to attract traffic

1. Online streaming promotion

Online streaming media refers to the transmission of audio, video and multimedia files in a streaming manner across the Internet. It can basically be divided into: content traffic and platform traffic.

These two forms are closely related. Content diversion covers illustrated text creation, video, audio, and live broadcast . Regarding the construction of the content value system, if the early content part is done well, it will be able to quickly attract a group of accurate and high-quality users on major platforms. Obvious content advantages and outstanding differentiation are the key to success in the fragmented information age. Of course, if you are an internet celebrity , a self-media tycoon, a celebrity, or other well-known figure with your own IP, you can simply ignore this article.

Platform diversion mainly refers to the diversion of traffic . Previously, large platforms with large traffic, such as Taobao , Tmall , and JD.com , began to see a decline in traffic under the impact of fragmented information, and the traffic was dispersed to other small and medium-sized platforms. According to relevant data analysis , Taobao's online traffic is declining year by year. On March 24, 2016, Taobao released its latest strategic direction for 2016, with the theme: Traffic is dead, content is king.

In an era like this, it is particularly important to make efficient use of fragmented time. When Chuanshihui was just starting out, my team and I each opened about 10 self-media accounts to seize the forum for public opinion. Among them are WeChat public accounts based on "user-initiated forwarding recommendations"; self-media platforms such as Toutiao, Baijiahao , Dayuhao, Yidian Zixun , and Sohu Public Platform , which focus on "algorithm and machine recommendation"; as well as Himalaya audio programs, videos and live broadcasts will also be on the agenda. We need to seize any traffic entrance we can in the shortest possible time so that you will see us when you open or search on any platform.

Since the second half of 2016, opportunities on large mobile Internet platforms have become increasingly rare. If you want to become famous early, you need to choose to embed your information on multiple platforms and in multiple dimensions. It is precisely because of this that whenever a platform-level opportunity emerges, it will quickly become popular in the market. For example, ofo and Mobike , both of which have very rapid development momentum. Although there are fewer platform-level opportunities, there are still opportunities for some small platforms and non-standard product platforms. For example, products such as Qianliao , Xiaomiquan , and Jianshu are all based on a large platform. Currently, opinion leaders on major self-media platforms are also using this type of product to occupy their own speech positions in multiple dimensions and recruit their own community members.

Having said that, content diversion and platform diversion can also be understood in form as word-of-mouth marketing and leveraging marketing . The value of the content you provide is high enough, and it really helps members grow quickly and multiply their wealth. Word of mouth will naturally be good, and members will develop exponentially, and the community will grow on a large scale. There are two ways to understand leveraging marketing: one is to seize a small opportunity on a large platform, such as the red envelope battle two years ago. As long as you give out real money, the number and quality of members will multiply exponentially. The second is to learn to leverage the power of others, which is what the previous article mentioned as “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Here is an example of a specific opinion leader - Peng Xiaoliu. After participating in the 100-day reading training camp organized by Ten Points Reading in July 2015, I later joined communities such as Qiuye PPT, Book Sharing Gang, and Action Party. In addition to greatly helping Peng Xiaoliu improve his own abilities, these also took advantage of the influence of these communities.

The promotion of online streaming media is a long-term and chronic accumulation process that requires continuous input and output of the latest valuable content. This is in line with the development trend of knowledge productization. Content is knowledge. Creating good content is definitely a huge challenge. Good writing skills are only a basic requirement. What is more important is to understand users' hearts, behaviors, industry products, competitive market strategies, etc., and use simple words to resonate with users.

2. Offline activities to attract traffic

Offline activity traffic generation mainly refers to ground promotion traffic generation, which uses specific offline activities to reach users, establish connections with a wide range of users through gift giving or free sample distribution, and then screen them step by step through the community model to finally identify accurate members. Although this method seems low-level and traditional, offline promotion is always the most direct and effective. The reason why the WeChat business development agent model was able to capture the market so quickly is that it relies on the frequent large meetings and small meetings every quarter every year.

This process can be understood as the intellectualization of products, which means giving the product an anthropomorphic image of culture, warmth, emotion, attitude, etc., and transforming the product from a functional sales product to a cultural value product. For example, changing "Made in China" into "Created in China" gives it a sense of cultural identity and national identity. This is a typical example of product knowledge. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, material needs are the most basic needs, and needs for soft power such as spiritual culture are advanced needs.

The two plans AB, the combination of online and offline, can be summed up as the productization of knowledge and the knowledgeization of products. The former can better guarantee the rapid monetization of the community in the later stage; the latter can gradually enhance members' sense of belonging and identity in the community and promote the healthy development of community operations.

Payment for knowledge is dormant, while payment for services is awakening.

There was such a story shared in the group: When a pregnant mother was pregnant, she joined the hospital's pregnant women group. There was a mother in the group who didn't have a store and made cakes at home. She just posted two cake pictures and asked everyone, "I plan to make a cake, but I don't know which one to make. Please help me choose." The group suddenly became active and said that the second one looked good, so she made the second one and posted the picture for everyone to see. The group praised her, and immediately several people in the group booked her cakes, and she delivered them to their homes.

This is a good operational strategy: building a sense of scenario-based participation . It means opening up the process of making products, providing services, building brands and selling products, allowing users to participate, and building a brand that is touchable, ownable and grows together with users! The fission brought about by such sense of participation is word of mouth.

The reason why a sense of participation can be quickly transformed into a word-of-mouth event is "trust endorsement." Ever since Alibaba opened the entrance to Internet trust assets, from today on, anything can go bankrupt, but never let your credit go bankrupt! Word-of-mouth operations may be a little slow, but they are effective operations.

4. Community operation includes brand operation, user operation and content operation

The overall steps of community operation:

1. Explore the characteristics of the target group and achieve accurate communication (the previous article mentioned the specific practical methods);
2. From the overall perspective, control the pace of knowledge accumulation from 0 to 1 and the progress of productization;
3. Enhance the interactive stickiness of community members, enrich scenario-based content, and continue to provide valuable people and output valuable things.

Analyze from three aspects:

1. Brand Operation

Regarding branding, don’t just focus on building the company’s brand, but focus on building your personal brand. The reason is that the entire mobile Internet is becoming decentralized, the era of self-media is flourishing, and personalized and differentiated personal brands are easier to build and spread. Overall, from the labeling, productization, and branding of personal brands; step by step, quantify, split, and execute goals; form a closed loop of self-branding. American management scholar Peter also said: "The rule for survival in the workplace in the 21st century is to build a personal brand." The importance of building a personal brand is mentioned in articles such as "Why everyone should have brand awareness in this era" on the Chuanshihui official account. I won’t go into details here.

2. User Operation

When doing membership operations, you should put the problems and needs of your community members and potential members first, rather than what you want to sell. Invite as many community members as possible to participate in the establishment of the community operation system or the construction of the product. Combining fixed activities with non-fixed activities, fixed activities can cultivate habits among community members and also build the community's operating framework. Scenario-based interaction is the most direct way to maintain community members.

In the early days of Xiaomi, the MIUI product team only had 20 people. It is Xiaomi's first attempt at user participation. Xiaomi has specially designed an Internet development model called "Orange Friday", the core of which is the MIUI team interacting with users in forums and the system being updated weekly. By allowing employees and users to have close contact through the forum, well-made features will be praised by users, and the team will naturally be happy; poorly made features will be criticized, and the team will naturally work overtime and do their best to improve them. Because of this, users are deeply involved and Xiaomi's user base has exploded. Their original number of precise fans was only 100, but now there are tens of millions of users.

" DaV Store", invested by Yu Minhong in 2016, is a platform that provides professional services to mothers. Its model is similar to Babytree , and its members are both consumers and distributors. Their operation of members is based on autonomy, empowerment and participation. From large groups being split into local groups, and local groups being split into various activity projects, member users are following every step and witnessing its growth. This model is also the "partnership system", a popular business model in recent years. Driven by mobile Internet , decentralization has become a general trend. Let users see the changes in the community, witness the growth of the community and even share the achievements of the community. For member users, they will naturally have a sense of self-resonance and a doubled sense of belonging.

3. Content Operation

When doing content operations, it is recommended to follow the idea of ​​"usefulness, emotion and interaction" and to do valuable content marketing . The core is not "what you sell", but "what substantive problems the product resources or knowledge services you sell can help the other party solve and what benefits it will bring to the other party". Only send useful information to avoid information overload. Each piece of information must have personalized emotional output and guide users to further interact, share and spread. Not everyone will read the articles you write, and you don’t need everyone to read your articles. You only need your group to see and understand them.

5. Commercialization of knowledge content and maintenance of community interaction based on scenarios

The purpose of operation is to realize the commercialization of knowledge. When your knowledge is valuable enough, your self-confidence, resources, influence and various possibilities will be magnified. At this time, monetization is a natural thing, and the monetization models are also diverse: channel e-commerce monetization (supply chain), IP traffic monetization (community team), and brand influence monetization (personal brand).

• Channel e-commerce monetization : product sales monetization mainly based on channel supply chains such as Taobao, JD.com, WeChat merchants, etc.
• Platform traffic monetization : mainly in the form of team-based business charges (resource support, technical training), advertising charges (advertising on self-media platforms such as Toutiao and original revenue sharing)
• Brand influence monetization : mainly refers to membership fees, agency fees, and revenue sharing from resource cooperation with B-side companies (invitations from organizations to share knowledge), etc.

A community cannot be too large. A small and beautiful one will make it easier to control operating costs. The most important person in a community is not the group owner or KOL, but the integration, participation and contribution of a group of people with positive energy, positive thinking and ideological pattern. Only in this way can a community become more dynamic, more vital, and more lasting; only in this way can the cultural value of the community be reflected. A good community relies on members enhancing each other's potential and amplifying energy, rather than simply relying on forming a circle of people.

KOLs and team members should constantly enhance their potential energy and create exchangeable equal value for themselves and others. Why do others join your group? Because joining the group is valuable to him. He can obtain personal connections, ideas, methods, successful experiences, purchase products, etc. Why do you let others join your group? Because other people's participation can bring value to you and the community. Set a threshold so that people who cannot provide value are not allowed to join the group. Everything is an exchange of value, everything is of equal value to each other.

A community is a collection built on a certain sense of identity, but a sense of identity can only provide initial enthusiasm, not lasting consumption motivation; if you want to successfully manage the Internet community and allow it to continue to develop, the ultimate focus must be on improving product services, maintaining community relationships, and other aspects. 2017 is a new era of social network competition. The momentum of knowledge payment, which is mainly based on content, has gradually stabilized since the second half of 2016. The focus of community operations in the future should be shifted to service payment mainly for solving practical problems, which will begin to grow slowly under the new opportunity of mobile Internet. The amount of payment is no longer the only criterion for judgment. If the community can provide enough and good services, everyone will be happy to pay for it.

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The author of this article @米阿特 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map