Solid info! A brief discussion on 4 ideas for community user growth

Well, let’s start from the small circle again.

Recently, Yiren organized an event, a brainstorming activity on how to increase the number of fans in Xiaomiquan, and I read many answers. Well, the reason why I bring up this topic today is because this is another very typical scenario.

A paid community product has a certain scale and reputation, so how to grow it next?

I know that the concept of growth hacking is very popular recently. There are many skills, methods, routines, and related extended topics on how to guide users, how to make use of various traffic platforms, and how to use some communication techniques or special traffic media.

I have also mentioned that many entrepreneurs have no concept of traffic introduction and user acquisition cost. Many products are placed there unilaterally without users. Therefore, many entrepreneurs should have traffic awareness and traffic acquisition skills.

But everything has its limits. When all topics and discussions are focused on traffic acquisition, I think there is a big problem here.

Many new entrepreneurs now have some bad habits. When they see some traffic techniques and some tricks to get free stuff, they want to learn them quickly. They pursue short-term and fast results, and are eager to get traffic and then eager to cash in. From the perspective of the media, or some tools , there may be such a routine. But when it comes to building a community, some things really cannot be rushed.

For community products, what is the basis for user growth ? It is not the entrance of traffic, but the user's engagement and satisfaction.

If the satisfaction and engagement of existing users are not high, then it is meaningless to add new users. Developing users at this time will only accelerate the death of the product. Yes, bad reputation will expand rapidly, and few users will give you a second chance.

We say that an excellent product manager has a core quality, which is subtraction. Brainstorming will bring many new ideas and new thinking, but what most reflects your value is not how to reconcile these ideas, but to figure out what cannot be done and why it cannot be done.

When designing a strategy or a function, product designers often have simple and ideal assumptions, but users may not necessarily think as you imagine. Some functions will be abused, some bad users will come to take advantage of you, and some people will take advantage of certain rule loopholes to arbitrage and then walk away; and you will have to face and bear all these negative consequences.

As far as the specific product of Xiaomiquan is concerned, these problems actually already exist.

Improving user satisfaction and engagement is the foundation of all development; and the premise of the so-called improvement is to curb and crack down on behaviors that lead to decreased satisfaction and engagement. What behaviors are they? Arbitrage behavior.

From my point of view, I think the most urgent task is not how to attract more users to enter or how to attract more big Vs to start a circle. On the contrary, it is to start limiting the threshold for starting a circle and protecting the rights and interests of payers.

Here are a few possible ideas.

1. Default user opening circle three prohibitions

1. It cannot be searched publicly;
2. Public joining is not allowed, only invitation by circle owners is allowed;
3. No charges are allowed.

Once the number of invitees, activity level, and content reach a certain standard, other permissions will be gradually opened up.

Of course, some well-known big Vs with good credit can go through special channels. Yes, this seems a bit unfair, but there are already some circle owners who set up circles indiscriminately, cheat money through introductions and a few posts, and then walk away.

2. Strict restrictions on multiple openings by one person

Simply put, you can open more circles, but for each new circle, the threshold for public joining and charging fees must be doubled, referring to the three prohibitions above.

3. Strict restrictions should be imposed on the behavior of posting advertisements to attract people in various circles.

It cannot be said that it is absolutely prohibited to post advertisements in different circles to promote one's own circle, but there must be restrictions on the frequency and scope. For excessive behavior, the circle, account, and deposit will be blocked.

4. Deposit and refund mechanism

Users pay a fee to join the circle, which can be refunded within a certain period of time.

Of course, in order to protect the rights of circle owners and prevent the reselling of information, the user experience during this period is incomplete. For example, users cannot ask questions, cannot speak, cannot browse the highlight area, or can only browse the content of the day. Then only after the user confirms the payment for the second time will it be confirmed as the circle owner’s income.

Part of the circle owner’s receivables will be deducted as a deposit to prevent disputes or other adverse events.

Similar to the pressure on WeChat public accounts .

Why are there restrictions everywhere when it comes to developing user base?

The purpose of the restrictions is to ensure the overall quality of the circle, the satisfaction of users joining the circle, and the users' trust in payment behavior.

I have always emphasized that product credit is a very core value. When we talk about user acquisition costs, the first is to gain user awareness, and the second is to gain user trust. Many people only see the first point and ignore the second point.

If some behaviors of exploiting community arbitrage are not controlled, the atmosphere and reputation of the entire community will plummet and eventually become uncontrollable. Good users will leave, and a group of arbitrageurs will swarm in to plunder the remaining resources.

Of course, in addition to the above, there is also a more important basic work for small secret circles. Do a good job in system optimization and load support capabilities. If you can't do this, everything else is meaningless.

So, do you think I'm advertising for him? At least not now.

When your core users are not just satisfied with your product but are dependent on it, you don't need to worry too much about so-called user growth. Users will do it for you and you can't stop them.

I have worked with the legendary grassroots entrepreneur, Li Xingping, for several years. Of course, it would be wrong to say that he does not understand traffic operations or does not care about traffic operations. But unlike what many people imagine, Li Xingping does not actually emphasize traffic operation and hardly mentions this aspect in daily life. What he emphasizes more is the details of product operation , where users are dissatisfied, why they are dissatisfied, and how to make them satisfied. Outsiders may wonder why his SEO is so great. I have said before that the highest level of SEO is to understand and optimize user experience based on search terms, and ultimately make brand terms become hot search terms. This is actually very different from the SEO techniques understood by many people.

The best quality growth comes from internal spontaneous growth and from word of mouth among users.

Traffic operation is meaningful for some new products or some untested products. After all, you need users to verify your products, point out your shortcomings, or give you enough product feedback. But I must emphasize that for entrepreneurial teams, from 0 to 1, you rely on traffic operation. Even from 1 to 10, traffic operation is also very important, but if you want to go further, you must pursue spontaneous growth and user satisfaction and activity, rather than simply numerical growth.

I have mentioned this before when I talked about how to make money with games . There are a lot of money-making data analyses at the beginning, such as retention rate , payment rate, average payment value per person, etc., but there is a very important data at the end, which is the player's life cycle. Products with almost the same data at the beginning may have revenue differences of several times or even orders of magnitude over the entire game life cycle. This is because for some games, veteran players only quit after playing for three to five months, while for others, they can play for three to five years, or even longer.

I have talked about this before when talking about the business routines of search engines . There are a bunch of data at the beginning, such as ad display rate, click-through rate , and average click-through price, but there is a more core data at the end, which is the customer renewal rate. A high renewal rate indicates that the business model is stable and has development. If the renewal rate cannot keep up with the other data, no matter how good it is, it will be difficult to sustain.

I have talked about this before when talking about the routines of e-commerce . There are a bunch of data at the beginning to calculate revenue, ad click-through rate, order conversion rate , average conversion price, gross profit margin, etc.; but there is a core data at the end, which is the customer repurchase rate. If the repurchase rate is high, you don’t have to worry about losing money on advertising. If the repurchase rate is low, you definitely cannot afford to advertise.

All of the above are based on the same logic, which is to make your users continuously satisfied with your products and services. This business model is reliable and long-lasting.

The Xiaomi circle is too close to money. Once it develops a little, a bunch of people will try to arbitrage from it. This is the biggest risk and challenge in the development of the Xiaomi circle. If it cannot be solved, the faster it develops, the more dangerous it will be.

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