Community monetization: the unbearable pain of community operators

1. Why do we need to talk about monetization?

What I want to talk to you about today is community monetization, including the elements of community monetization, basic processes, the limited differences between strategic and non-strategic, and business models for community implementation.

First, let me explain why I chose this topic. I believe that everyone who operates a community has only one goal, and that is to monetize. But the boss often asks us to realize monetization within a very short period of time, which becomes a very painful thing, so I gave it a subtitle called "The unbearable pain of community operators ." Next, I will share with you how to relieve this “pain”.

Taking the product I am currently responsible for as an example, it mainly aims to help entrepreneurial projects and mentors to establish deep and seamless connections through an acceleration system. It mainly plays two roles: the first role is to promote information symmetry, allowing users and mentors to listen to each other's voices; the second role is to provide product experience scenarios, allowing users to understand our entire acceleration system. Because the community is directly facing the users, all work becomes very direct and can determine the iteration direction of our products.

I have a very important concept in doing community building, which is that "we" are smarter than "I". That is to say, our product may not know where the product should go, but it must know how to collect user opinions, and the final debugged product direction must meet user needs. With this foundation, it is relatively easy to monetize.

2. What is community monetization?

The monetization I am talking about is not the "cash" in cash, but "different from the traditional definition of community monetization - non-cash monetization." When people talk about monetization, they usually consider the conversion rate , payment rate, package purchases, sharing and recommended purchases, etc. Therefore, most of the previous monetization methods were based on the WeChat business model, which achieved the so-called conversion by adding a large number of fans and posting advertisements to find a probability. I don’t quite agree with this approach, because it is undoubtedly killing the goose that lays the golden eggs when it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire users in the later stages of a community.

Everyone now has many groups and has joined many groups. But how much does this group mean to you? How many groups do you check every day? In which groups do you interact and even invite your friends to join? If members do not participate deeply in the community, they will not be able to see the content of the community, and the community owner will not be able to monetize.

Therefore, I believe that everything from viewing groups, interacting, commenting, sharing useful links to forwarding, sharing information, and inviting friends to join groups, that is, any action that is beneficial to the community, is community monetization. Previously, we had a term called KOL (opinion leader), and recently a new term KBL has emerged, which stands for Key Behavior Leader, or key action leader. By extension, all actions that can help communities connect and split are critical and can be called community monetization, which is the foundation.

3. Important indicators of community monetization

The indicators of community monetization include the following aspects:

• Sense of participation : Sense of participation refers to the output of each person in the community. As for what form of output is adopted, we need to design it.
• User thinking. We must stand in the user's position, time, and space to consider how our products can be integrated into their scenarios to give them a better experience. To achieve this, active research is needed. Before, during, and after sharing, or before, during, and after the launch of an activity, you must actively interact with users through private messages to collect timely feedback.
• Sense of immersion. We need to set up a process to allow all users to fully experience the platform or product they come into contact with from 0 to 1, rather than just coming in halfway and accepting it one-sidedly. Then, sooner or later he will buy the product or follow some actions you want to monetize.
• Sense of rhythm . In order to coordinate with the user's work and rest schedule, we need to understand when he can absorb the information best, when he can participate in the interaction, the amount and depth of the interaction, etc. A detailed setting needs to be made.

After mastering the above factors, we also need to grasp the following issues:

1. The pitfall of social media monetization – being too active. This is the reason why 90% of the communities I have seen die, also known as the bad money driving out good money phenomenon. Some people join the community just to make their presence felt and to build social connections . They keep chatting and spamming in the group, but do not add any value to the community. Moreover, once the first person takes the lead, others will follow, and it is difficult for the community operator to restrain them, which will lead to excessive activity, cover up truly valuable information, and cause opinion leaders or core members to leave the community.
2. You are not the only one. We should serve individuals, not control the group. You can adopt an active research method. After each sharing, let the content settle down, and then send a private message to all members so that they can receive it. At the same time, don't try too hard to control this group, but build a fair and equal environment. The ultimate effect is that users can quickly find that the group is worth watching and are willing to pin it to the top within one to two seconds of opening the group.
3. From categories to communities, just to gain trust. Now is a free era. Everyone uses the free model to obtain traffic and then realize monetization, but it needs to be done differently. For example, Xiaomi used mobile phones to tell everyone that its products were very cost-effective. Later, other products it launched also represented cost-effectiveness. As a result, it developed from a single mobile phone to a Xiaomi community. So, why does Xiaomi want to produce cost-effective mobile phones, even if it doesn't make any money? The reason is simple: to gain the first layer of trust.

In fact, it is not difficult to monetize. As long as you provide good service, members will trust you and will be willing to try any product you recommend. Even if he doesn't try your product, he will listen to you and tell you after you're done. If the product meets certain conditions, he will choose to buy it, which can help you polish your product better.

4. Community Monetization Process

The process of community monetization includes the following steps:

1. Soft article. Soft articles are used to introduce how to play in a community. When you see a soft article and think it is very good, you will want to participate directly.
2. Attract new customers. When inviting new people to join the group, pay attention to real-name authentication, exchange business cards, and understand the other party's needs. Only when you have a clear understanding of the user's precise portrait can you serve him better. Then, you need to classify the community members. Some of them you should care deeply about, some you should treat calmly, and some you should ignore. At the same time, you also need to position the members and distinguish the stakeholders, such as which are direct payers, which are cooperative agencies that help you direct traffic, and which are potential competitors, and confirm different plans for treating them.
3. Experience . This step may need to be polished in advance, and it needs to be done in great detail. For example, joining the group, announcements, sharing, prompts, etc. all require detailed planning. Take my micro-share as an example: First, I will set the topic, and then publish an announcement three to five days in advance to let everyone know the information. Two days before the sharing, I asked everyone to ask questions about the topic and collect and summarize them. On the day of sharing, there will be a warm-up two hours in advance, and once it starts, we will directly enter the practical information sharing session. Doing this not only saves the instructor's time, but also lets everyone know when they should be in place.
4. care. I show my care through group messages, and many people will receive my private messages, such as "Good morning, sorry, have you eaten?", "You've been working hard recently, take care of yourself", etc. It's like a point-to-point chat.
5. interactive. If he responds to your greeting, you can continue to interact with him in depth, check out his recent updates on his Moments, and chat about related topics.
6. peer to peer. If you want to sell products, you must not post them in the community. You must talk about them point-to-point during the interaction. Unless you have already determined that he likes to be direct, then just sell it to him directly. This kind of person will also be easy to close a deal with.

5. Differences between strategic and non-strategic levels

War, campaign, and battle, the levels decrease from large to small. By using these three concepts, I want to emphasize the priority of resource allocation. If social media monetization is to truly achieve a super high conversion rate, it must be set at a strategic level. What is strategic level? In other words, in order to achieve product sales or conversions, the company must import the highest level of resources, and these highest level resources are often the boss's resources. If the boss doesn't bring in resources and only tells the operations staff how much to sell, that is impossible.

Therefore, you must involve your boss in community monetization. Once your boss gives you resources, you will be given priority when dealing with emergencies in the community. If you want your boss to think about these things from a strategic perspective, you need to explain community thinking to him clearly. What is community thinking? In other words, in order to cultivate users' trust, I will do anything. Then, the company will match you with a lot of resources and assign many people to you. When your priorities are raised, you have time to think. Once there is time to think, operations will not become so hasty, and the user experience can be improved, gaining trust faster.

Therefore, in the process of social media monetization, if the company puts all its resources into the strategic dimension, you will find that every link is smooth. This is the difference between social strategy and campaigns and battles.

6. Business Model of Community Landing

If a community wants to be truly implemented and realize commercialization, it must go through the following sections:

1. Free diversion. People will be skeptical about anything unfamiliar, but if you provide a free opportunity, they will be willing to take a look and try it, thus diverting traffic.
2. Low consumption conversion. After the traffic diversion is completed, we cannot sell products directly because trust has not been established yet. We first set up a product with a low threshold and a paid fee, let people experience it, and see everyone’s willingness to pay. When this group of people comes in, I can bind their time, let them listen to my speeches, watch my groups, digest my content, and establish opportunities for deep links. Slowly, they will identify with our products.
3. Chinese consumption improved. The so-called mid-level consumption improvement refers to the improvement of mid-level consumer goods, which is mainly used to examine users' willingness to participate. We provide a high-end product, for example, it used to cost tens of yuan, but now it costs thousands of yuan. If he still participates, it means that this user is very high-end and is our target user. At the same time, we also gained confidence, knowing that the community we operate has a good sense of trust and we dare to monetize.
4. High consumption stimulation. According to common sense, users will not buy the product you push directly to them. He will be willing to buy expensive products only if he has experienced the benefits of the products and has the purchasing power to consume them. Therefore, through community operations and product improvements, we screen out this type of people in a hierarchical manner and carry out targeted marketing for them. If he experiences the professionalism of your service, something that he would never consider buying before will now seem worth spending any money on. This is called value pre-positioning.
5. Benefit sharing. The community should form a closed loop and share good things with users who are willing to split for you. Some people like money, so you give them money. Some people care about services, so you provide them with services. That is, by customizing some fission rules, and then going through a process of diversion, low-consumption conversion, medium-consumption improvement, and high-consumption stimulation, you can make the whole circle turn.

Therefore, I think the community is a product experience scenario. As long as you are patient and as long as you stand from the user's perspective, monetization is a matter of time. But I suggest that you act quickly. If you are too slow, your users will be snatched away by others and your trust will be established by others first. At that time, it will be very difficult to succeed.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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