What is a learning and growth community?

In 2016, you must have seen many WeChat friends posting their writing practice in Moments, announcing that they have joined a writing study group; you must have also seen some people regularly posting their growth insights, most likely joining a growth group and announcing that they are transforming themselves; and we believe that you have also joined many similar communities , and perhaps you are learning through self-discipline, competing secretly, and looking for your own value.

Yes, this year, we have demonstrated unprecedented enthusiasm for learning and an extreme desire for self-growth, and we have witnessed the explosion of the “learning and growth community”.

What is a learning and growth community? We believe that it is a community formed by a group of people with the same temperament and tone in the current community craze, with the method and goal of learning and growing together.

Compared with product-based communities, enterprise-based communities, etc., learning and growth communities are more universal and typical. Therefore, after interviewing hundreds of excellent communities, we selected learning and growth communities as the first batch of targets, starting from this point and gradually showing the entire community.

1. Reasons for the rise of learning and growth communities

Why has the learning and growth community experienced a huge explosion in 2016, which is about to pass? With a little thought, we will easily find that many factors that contribute to the development of learning and growth communities have reached an inflection point.

1. From the perspective of the historical background

At the economic level , the great economic development has brought unprecedented material prosperity and improved living standards. People have begun to pay more attention to their "soft self" and "spiritual self", and are therefore very willing to participate in various forms of learning groups.

At the social level , the rise of 200 million emerging middle class people has brought about the awakening of self-awareness and the worship of rationality. They tend to be more thoughtful and rational, so they are eager to achieve self-improvement through rational learning of knowledge.

At the commercial level , economic development and the rise of the middle class have put forward more and higher demands on consumer goods, especially knowledge-based consumer goods. This is the popular consumption upgrade. Under the wave of consumption upgrading, people are extremely enthusiastic about learning knowledge, skills, and spiritual knowledge that are related to their own growth. A large proportion of this consumption upgrade comes from the need for self-improvement brought about by women's awakening.

At the policy level , the entrepreneurial boom triggered by the government's slogan of "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" had reached extreme saturation by 2016. Community entrepreneurship, which has a low threshold, has become the first choice for entrepreneurs who have entrepreneurial dreams and pursue self-worth. At the same time, entrepreneurial learning communities brought about by the entrepreneurial fever are also springing up everywhere.

2. From the perspective of social individuals

Against the backdrop of economic development, the rise of the middle class, and consumption upgrading, group members, as social individuals, will naturally have a strong desire to learn knowledge and improve themselves. With this desire, they frantically join communities related to knowledge and skills learning, self-growth, etc., in the hope of learning knowledge, improving themselves, and becoming better versions of themselves .

At the same time, the fast-paced development, strong desire for progress, and overload of information will deeply give people a sense of uneasiness and anxiety. In order to fight anxiety and find a sense of self-existence, we would think of fighting anxiety through learning and fighting emptiness through organization. So we seek companionship, huddle together for warmth, learn together, and grow together.

3. From the perspective of community entrepreneurs

As a group of people with the most sensitive business sense, faced with a favorable era background and a thriving individual state, community entrepreneurs will often take advantage of the situation, meet needs, and form communities as soon as possible. Among these, two types of community entrepreneurship are the most common:

First, the socialization of self-media with the genes of learning and growth .

For example, Wu Xiaobo Book Club, Chenzao Community, Woman with Fragrant Soul, etc., all first had their own media and then had their own communities. Since 2016, the entire Internet, including content entrepreneurship, has encountered problems with traffic and monetization. In order to solve these problems, some self-media with learning and growth capabilities and social advantages took the lead in forming communities and brought very good results, which undoubtedly gave a boost to the explosion of learning and growth communities.

Second, the socialization of personal IP .

In 2016, many KOLs with personal IP started small-scale businesses by forming learning communities. At the beginning, the knowledge, actions, opinions, etc. of these personality IPs or KOLs were only personal. Later, they had followers and began to form communities to learn and grow together, and to achieve certain monetization goals, starting emerging community entrepreneurship such as Qiuye PPT, Peng Xiaoliu Community, and Piaohan Yikemao, etc.

Driven by all the above forces, learning and growth communities experienced a huge explosion in 2016. You can truly feel this explosion from your own circle of friends and WeChat groups .

2. Classification of Learning and Growth Communities

Although the core value of learning and growth communities is to improve the skills or knowledge literacy of members, each community has its own characteristics in specific positioning, personnel composition and organizational operations . According to different forms, we divide them into the following categories:

1. Self-growth: Keep learning and keep growing

Self-growth communities meet the needs of individuals to improve their knowledge and literacy in a rapidly developing society. They increase learning enthusiasm through the power of the community and are often formed starting from a specific skill , such as the co-writing of the Li Xiaolai community, the collaborative innovation of the Action community, the PPT production of the Qiuye community, and the English learning of the ScalersTalk community.

This type of community emphasizes that the learning process is more important than the learning outcomes, focuses on the formation of habits, and allows everyone to discover a different self in the learning process. Community members have strong coordination and interaction and can act together towards a goal. For example, the Better Me community is based on the concept of "one person walks fast, a group of people go far". Through continuous check-in and upgrade, members can accompany and supervise each other in the group and become better versions of themselves. The Haobao Writing Community regards writing as a spiritual meditation, allowing everyone to get to know a different self through writing.

In order to enable members to truly improve, such communities often have systematic operating procedures and strict group rules, which is equivalent to a virtual classroom. The main role of the community is not to impart knowledge, but to organize and supervise. For example, Scalers originally studied computer science, but the community he formed is for English interpretation learning, relying on mutual assistance and self-study under rules. In the Cheese Club, there is a set procedure for the admission and elimination of members. Even the group leader cannot decide whether a person stays or leaves or the direction of many things.

2. Reading and learning: Making friends through books, reading books together

In the era of information fragmentation, reading has become a luxury, and reading communities focus on recommending books and knowledge guides to help people improve efficiency and save the cost of acquiring knowledge . This type of community is often linked to self-media and is essentially content entrepreneurship. For example, Shidian Reading uses public accounts as a carrier, Youshu Gongdu and Fan Deng Reading Club use APP as a carrier, integrating book knowledge and using multimedia communications such as audio and video to obtain traffic.

This type of community is often loosely organized, with books as the medium for virtual connections. The community is not closed and anyone who loves books can join. People share their reading experiences on social platforms, analyze the contents of books, and make friends with like-minded book lovers. For example, on the Youshu Gongdu APP, individuals can join co-reading plans, discover good books, and discuss topics, etc.

Offline reading salons are the main form of activity for such communities. The community has branches in various cities and will occasionally invite the community’s own IPs or writers to share topics and create a community atmosphere. For example, Wu Xiaobo Book Club and Fan Deng Reading Club have split into a large number of self-organized groups. These activities, combined with online knowledge, help establish and promote community brands and become the basis for community monetization.

3. Women’s Lifestyle – Be bold in your pursuit of beauty and improve together

Social development has promoted the rise of women. They are not only creators and consumers of wealth, but also attach great importance to personal growth and are extremely positive, becoming a unique landscape in the learning community. These women's lifestyle communities are mostly composed of independent urban women and middle-class groups. They have a relatively good economic foundation, are able to invest in self-improvement, and can gain a better sense of identity and belonging from the community .

The learning content of the women's community is not limited to the simple acquisition of knowledge, but includes various lifestyle cultivation, such as running and fitness in the Chenzao community, beauty salon and afternoon tea in Lizhihui, and baking in Bread Commune. Members influence each other through participating in the community, improve their quality of life, and pursue changes in their attitude towards life and improvement of their spiritual cultivation.

The values ​​of this type of women's life community are often very contagious, and coupled with a variety of community activities, the members are very sticky. For example, the slogan of "The Woman with a Fragrant Soul" is "Growth is more important than success." The Xiangmihui community she founded has spread to more than 40 cities across the country and has 12,000 members. The slogan of the private community is "Only focus on beauty and goodness", which encourages everyone to find shining things in ordinary life, which can easily touch the soul.

4. Entrepreneurship services: sharing practical information and innovative thinking

With the rise of mass entrepreneurship, learning communities specifically for entrepreneurs have also emerged. The main learning content is to share knowledge in the Internet field, share entrepreneurial practices and expand innovative thinking. Through a combination of online course sharing and offline self-organized learning, they help entrepreneurs improve their cognition and master skills. At the same time, they often combine the learning process with activities such as investment and financing , networking and resource matching.

This type of community is represented by Li Shanyou's Chaos Study Society, which aims to establish a new Internet university to cultivate innovative talents with Internet thinking and global vision for start-up companies. Influenced by Li Shanyou's ideas, investor Feng Xin founded the Carbon 9 Academy, which focuses on training in the competitive learning process to meet the growth needs and deep social needs of entrepreneurs. The "Xueba Shisanmei" community, which split from the study group, has opened a content live broadcast room dedicated to providing knowledge services to entrepreneurs, and is also growing rapidly.

3. General Operation Strategies of Learning and Growth Communities

Although learning and growth communities can be divided into many different categories, the need for mutual companionship and mutual supervision, as well as the deep need to resist knowledge anxiety and inner loneliness behind learning and growth, leads this type of community to pay special attention to certain specific operational strategies.

1. Attach great importance to the shaping of values

Learning within a learning and growth community is not only about professional knowledge, but also includes the expansion of interests and horizons, as well as the improvement of knowledge literacy, in order to realize more personal possibilities. Therefore, this type of community pays special attention to the shaping of values. It uses distinct values ​​to gather members with similar personalities and highlights the unique influence it can bring to its members as a learning community.

For example, the values ​​emphasized by Wu Xiaobo's Book Club, "recognizing the beauty of business, advocating self-struggle, being willing to contribute and share, and opposing the Diaosi economy," have captured the hearts of the rising middle class. The reading community Zhigeng Community established by Guangxi Normal University Press advocates "living a profound life", which captures people's ever-increasing spiritual needs and their yearning for intellectual life.

2. Build a decentralized organization and emphasize autonomous learning

Learning and growth communities intentionally weaken the centralized model of “teachers teaching and students listening” and instead emphasize the learning autonomy and high participation of each member in the community.

For example, the Carbon 9 Academy advocates the "three-no model", that is, no teachers, no textbooks, and no reference books. Everything has to be found and learned by yourself. After the group is established, if there are students who have researched and understood the topic of this course, they can share the books they have read and recommend them to everyone in the form of a book list chain. In addition, the Carbon 9 Academy will divide the students into groups of 6 and select a group leader from them. The group leader will coordinate and each group will organize various learning activities.

3. Set strict entry threshold

Learning is not an easy thing, and different people have different learning abilities. In order to ensure the high quality and high participation of the learning process, it is naturally very important to set up strict entry thresholds . In addition to the most common payment of membership fees, many learning and growth communities also have steps such as written applications, interviews, and submission of certain assignments that can demonstrate ability.

For example, Li Xiaolai’s common growth community needs to meet the following conditions: more than 10,000 Weibo fans, more than 20,000 WeChat public account fans, and an online group of 2,000 people before an application can be submitted. The Cheese Club requires applicants to pay an 89 yuan membership fee to the staff, fill out a detailed personal information form, and pass two rounds of telephone interviews before they can officially join the community. Its strictness is no less than applying for a job.

4. Establish special community rituals

Learning needs rituals to promote it, and growth needs rituals to mark it. In the traditions of many nations, coming-of-age ceremonies are used to truly confirm the growth of individual life . Therefore, learning and growth communities also need to use some special rituals to allow members to gain psychological understanding of growth and a sense of companionship and belonging.

There are various forms of community rituals for learning and growth communities. They can be checking in, posting photos, and sharing at fixed times every day, or they can be conceived as community slogans, peripherals, or a specific method of participation in a community activity. For example, when Lizhihui holds an offline salon, it requires community members to dress according to the salon theme. Qiuye PPT requires members to complete three steps after joining the group: introduce themselves, expose private photos, and send red envelopes to the group.

5. Build a detailed incentive mechanism and elimination mechanism

Continuous learning is difficult, and continuous and spontaneous learning is even more difficult. Mutual supervision and encouragement among community members can help better accomplish learning tasks. Therefore, it is essential to build detailed incentive and elimination mechanisms within the learning and growth community.

Incentives and elimination are mostly based on members' behavioral data such as sign-in, clock-in, speaking, discussing, and sharing. For example, in an operations learning community , when the attendance rate of the community is less than 45%, the group owner or administrator will clear out those users who sign in less than fifteen days a month, and then recruit new users to maintain the activity of the community.

6. Online activities are linked to offline activities

The daily learning tasks of many learning and growth communities are carried out through online channels , but the strong social attributes of offline activities can maximize the characteristics of learning and growth communities in supervising each other, growing together, and resisting anxiety and loneliness. Therefore, most learning and growth communities will implement community relationships offline, allowing members to truly communicate face to face.

At the same time, many learning and growth communities will also establish "city branches" based on regions to facilitate offline communication among members. For example, the Cheese Club has established six branch offices in different cities. Any member who arrives in a branch city can contact the leader for a welcome. They even formed a study tour team, designed routes based on the cities where the branch offices were located, and traveled around the world together.

4. The business model of learning and growth communities

The business model of learning and growth communities is basically the same as that of other types of communities, but the specific monetization method is mainly based on the level of knowledge value. Specifically, there are the following aspects:

1. Membership Fees

Membership fees are the most basic monetization method for learning and growth communities, and are reflected in different forms depending on their attributes: A. Membership fees as the threshold for the community; B. Learning and training fees; C. Fees for participating in activities. For example, Li Xiaolai’s common growth community has an annual fee starting at 1,000 yuan, and increases by 2,000 yuan for every additional 100 people, up to a maximum of 28,000 yuan. The online membership fee of Chaos Study Society is 600 yuan per year, and then one is eligible to sign up for offline courses. The cost of one class is about 1,500 yuan. The 919 Community Carnival hosted by Wu Xiaobo Channel on the yacht requires a fee of 919 yuan to qualify, and then the fee ranges from 3,999 yuan to 29,999 yuan depending on the cabin type.

2. Knowledge Monetization

Learning and growth communities are mostly content-driven. These high-quality contents are not only the core value point to attract members, but can also be directly monetized, that is, knowledge monetization. For example, on the "Get" platform created by Luoji Siwei, each big-name teacher who joins represents a learning and growth community, with a subscription fee of 199 yuan per year; the subscription fee for content related to Wu Xiaobo's channel is 180 yuan per year; except for a small number of free audio content, all high-quality book introductions need to be paid, 388 yuan per year; the Ten Points Classroom opened by Ten Points Reading mainly teaches tutorials on beauty, life hand-painting, social skills, etc., with fees ranging from 69 yuan to 199 yuan. As content entrepreneurship enters the integration period, the distribution of traffic has become stable, and paying for knowledge has become a social consensus, and its weight in the community business model will become increasingly important.

3. Social e-commerce

The values ​​of learning and growth communities are inspiring, and their members are very loyal and can easily be converted into e-commerce customers. In addition, the products they sell are in line with the characteristics of the community, making e-commerce an important monetization channel. For example, the Wu wine created by Wu Xiaobo Book Club costs 199 yuan per bottle. The first batch of 5,000 bottles were sold out in just 33 hours. The "Beautiful Store" micro store it opened has a rich variety of categories including books, daily necessities, tea and wine, mainly targeting mid- to high-end products for the middle class. In addition, the e-commerce products of Shidian Reading are mainly books and cultural and creative items, and the e-commerce products of "The Woman with Fragrant Soul" are mainly women's products, both of which are designed according to the needs of their respective community members.

4. Advertising

As an emerging traffic channel, advertising revenue also accounts for a large proportion of social networks. For example, social networks such as Chenzao, Soul Fragrance Woman, and Private Seat Seat have a large fan base, and the female group is the main consumer group, so they are very popular with sponsors and advertisers.

5. Investment and IP incubation

Learning and growth communities for entrepreneurs are often linked to investment institutions. The learning process is also accompanied by personal connections and resource matching activities, and naturally investment and financing events will occur. For example, the purpose of the Carbon 9 Academy is to examine and screen suitable entrepreneurs through learning, and then make investments. The Action Group, which originally focused on self-organized learning, also founded the AS incubation space in Shenzhen earlier this year to help members implement their creative projects. It also introduced a group of best-selling authors in the community. Qiuye PPT Community also focuses on discovering young talents, forming a team of lecturers, doing course training together, and building personal brands. Then they can join Qiuye's books as authors and monetize by incubating IP.

5. Future Trends of Learning and Growth Communities

Due to the explosion of this round of learning and growth communities, in addition to the promotion of community enthusiasm itself, it is also closely linked to the rise of the middle class and consumption upgrading. Therefore, its development trend can also be glimpsed from it. We can make two basic guesses about this.

First, learning and growth communities will see a situation where “the big ones become bigger, and the small ones become more and more.”

The so-called "the bigger the bigger" refers to the communities that are already mature and influential at this stage, such as the Wu Xiaobo Book Club and the Chaos Study Society. In the coming period, they will further aggregate and expand to form big IPs and big communities . With the emergence of various communities, the traffic that has been slightly reduced by the communities will hardly become a problem again. Only mature communities that truly have the ability to provide value and output services will be attractive. Most of the people who are eager to learn and grow, driven by the rise of the middle class and consumption upgrades, will be attracted to these large communities.

At the same time, community monetization will also be concentrated in such large communities, and their business models will become more standardized and mature. At this stage, the popular knowledge-based IPs will quickly complete social networking, and knowledge monetization will be achieved through the community. For example, "Speak Well", jointly launched by Ma Dong and the star debaters of "The Rap of China", sold 5.55 million yuan in a single day. A more typical example is as mentioned above. As a representative of the large-scale monetization of knowledge IP, the "Get" column has launched a study group function and is undergoing a community-based transformation.

"The more small ones" means that in addition to large communities and big IPs, some more vertical, more private, and more regional small learning and growth communities will flourish. When the wave rises, it is the mainstream that fills the riverbed, and it is the streams and creeks that nourish the earth. This trend of "connected sinking" may also bring a new round of opportunities. However, these flexible and diverse learning and growth communities from all over the world will have very clear learning and growth goals at the beginning, and then become more and more interest-oriented and value-oriented, giving rise to various subculture communities. Different from treating communities as startups, they will be more self-organized and have no obvious need for commercial monetization.

Second, the status of community tools will become more prominent, and one or two proprietary tools/platforms will emerge around learning communities.

In 2016, a series of community-related software appeared on the market, focusing on learning, training, micro-courses, live broadcasts, etc., but none of them has formed a unified authoritative position. E-commerce startups have Taobao, content startups have official accounts, but community startups have no comparable tool platforms. This results in typical learning and growth communities being diverse in form and fragmented in size, making it difficult for them to gain popularity.

The platform and the B-end have always grown together. Many of today's social networking tools start with micro-courses and sharing, and penetrate into a corner of the learning and growth community, but they are a little lacking in terms of community relationship support, community operation, and community management. As learning and growth communities continue to explode, they will rely heavily on an independent community tool to support them.

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This article was compiled and published by @150幂 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!