9 rules for social media operations!

Theologian J.I. Packer once defined evangelism as follows: "Evangelism is the preaching of Christ Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit so that people can trust in God through Him, accept Him as their Savior, and communicate with believers in His church and serve Him as a king."

In simple terms, a preacher is someone who actively promotes a certain idea (a noble cause) and strives to make this idea a common belief in the community. They even make practicing this belief their lifelong mission.

Of course, a strong community has more than just the leader as the evangelist, but also successors and partners who share the same faith:

Jesus and his 12 disciples and missionaries across the continents; Confucius had 72 disciples, and Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, who jointly shaped Chinese culture; Buddha and his 10 disciples, Bodhidharma, Huineng's Zen Buddhism and the current Inamori Kazuo...

In the business world, it is a blessing to be in an organization or team led by an evangelist: Jobs, Musk, Nadella, Kazuo Inamori, Ren Zhengfei, Zhang Yiming and the current DTC companies with the concept of common good.

So, the first characteristic of an “evangelist” is someone who has faith and is committed to sharing the sublime things of faith practice .

As for the community, in order to better promote its growth, there are different ways to classify members:

1. For example, ordinary users, old/VIP users, and hardcore/super users can be differentiated by points;
2. According to the circle level, there are visitors, novices, members, senior members and organizers;
3. Based on contribution, there are loyal members, active members, super members, etc.

The "evangelist" rule divides members into preachers, missionaries and believers based on their degree of love for the community.

The "Evangelist" rule is to find these three types of people, cultivate them, support them, own them, drive them, and evolve them.

1. Evangelists: Sword bearers who embed dreams and practice innovation

The new role of the leader must be that of an evangelist. You need to give everyone very clear values, very clear choices, and very clear guidance for the future, because information is diverse now, and everything is coming at you. You must be an evangelist, explain the values ​​clearly, and let people know clearly what is right and what is wrong.

——Professor Chen Chunhua, National School of Development, Peking University

The same statement appeared in Refresh, the book by Nadella, the CEO who led Microsoft to its peak again. "The letter C in CEO, I hope, stands for culture . The CEO can be said to be the cultural manager of an organization and part of the exhortation-style preaching. "

The "evangelists" of the new community not only create dreams and ideas for the organization/community, but more importantly, embed them into the community so that everyone can recognize, acknowledge, and accept them, and ultimately form a common belief, thus truly becoming a vibrant whole.

In community cases such as LEGO, Aranya, and NIO, we can find people who are highly matched with "evangelists".

1. LEGO Community: "LEGO Professional Certified Master" - Delivering LEGO Creativity

In the LEGO player community, there is a group called "LEGO Certified Professionals" (LCP for short).

These users are not only super players, but also turn their interests into part-time or full-time jobs.

They are a classic example of the commercialization of "evangelists".

As of 2021, there are 21 "LEGO Professional Certified Masters" in the world.

The most well-known person in LCP is Nathan Sawaya.

He started playing with Lego at the age of 5. He was originally a lawyer, but won the opportunity to work at Lego after winning a competition.

Later, he chose to set up his own studio and held the world's first exhibition created with LEGO bricks, "The Art of the Brick", in 2007, a pinnacle experience that combines art, creativity, beauty and thinking.

To date, Nathan Sawaya’s exhibitions have been held in nearly 100 cities in North America, Europe, Australia, and China, and have repeatedly broken attendance records.

China also has 3 LCPs.

Hong Zijian from Hong Kong, who became China’s first LCP in 2015, uses Lego to spread Chinese culture ;

Jiang Shenghui, the first post-90s LCP in mainland China, established a studio called "Brick of Philosophy" in Changzhou, focusing on Lego creations with Chinese elements;

Hou Weiwei, the world's first female LCP, founded the LEGO innovation culture platform "Playable Design" in Beijing, which includes developing LEGO-related courses, and carrying out summer camps, workshops, LEGO building and other activities.

2. NIO Community: Li Bin and his partners - "Creating a pleasant lifestyle for users"

At NIO, in addition to Li Bin, the evangelist is his partner Qin Lihong, who travels to various cities 30 weekends a year, attending user meetings, private dinners, and even birthday parties or weddings.

Imagine if we didn’t have a common belief, we would probably break up before the second year.

NIO also has "evangelists" that other car companies envy - a "new community" completely dominated by users - webmasters and car club organizers from all over the world.

• Galanpai is a unique camping community of NIO (nearly 3,000 people). The organizer, Ajian, has organized many camping activities in Yangcheng Island, Huangshan Mountain, Changxing Island, etc.
• Song Yuanlong, the station manager of NIO NR Wuxi Station, has more than 3,800 fans in the NIO App. Song Yuanlong has organized and participated in 51 NIO events, including auto show volunteer, Nio Day shuttle volunteer, etc.
• At NIO Day in January every year, senior users of NIO are deeply involved in every aspect of NIO Day (city selection, process, performance, venue layout, etc.), especially co-creating content, user-hosted opening, user community singles, user story short films, touching users from the user's perspective.

It should be noted that NIO’s car club is not the car club you understand, where a public relations company organizes car owners to participate in eating, drinking and walking. It is a "car club that uses the NIO platform to create a pleasant life in their own minds, with independent consciousness and different personalities."

3. Aranya Community: Ma Yin and his friends - "Life can be more beautiful"

Since users are selected based on values, the public affairs group established by Ma Yin soon branched out into 48 interest groups spontaneously established by owners, ranging from public welfare, drama, reading, pets, architecture, music to food, group buying...

These group leaders who took the initiative to take responsibility became evangelists for each community. They actively organized various activities, continuously connected and integrated art and life, and eventually formed an ecological system from content production to life empowerment.

These new contents, new scenes, and new experiences drive the large community of Anaya to continuously iterate and upgrade itself on the road to growth, constantly injecting new energy into the community that "life can be more beautiful."

For the “new community”, the “evangelist” is not necessarily a founding partner.

Anyone within the system can become a preacher as long as they share common values.

Because those who build the "new community" understand that at any time, there will always be a group of people who will not initiate "noble causes" or realize their dreams on their own.

But those who are willing to choose to join others, actively implant themselves in them, and then make them their own, and persevere in innovating and building in the way they like.

From the above three cases, we can see that there are three necessary conditions for the evangelists of the “new community”:

1. Like-minded people selected by values.
2. Be a collaborative innovation practitioner, not just a follower and disseminator.
3. Partner concept. Not a hierarchy, not employment, but rather spontaneous and autonomous.

For a new community, it doesn’t matter whether there is a leader or not, but there must be a preacher.

Of course, not every “ambassador,” “opinion leader,” or “group leader” can become an evangelist, such as the leader of the Fan Deng Reading Club mentioned later, the brand ambassador of Lululemon, and various active managers and KOCs.

True like-minded people are those who, like you, have their hearts set on the sea and set sail for the voyage.

2. Missionaries: A deep alliance of following one’s passion and love

During the interview, Decathlon requires applicants to demonstrate a sport. They believe that employees are at least fans of a certain sport.

This approach was learned and developed by Pop Mart and TOPTOY, and the employees they recruited are first and foremost trendy toy enthusiasts.

They believe that "serving fans is the happiest thing" and what makes them even happier is that many employees spend their wages on these toys.

These actions are just small fights in front of the "missionary" ecology of lululemon and Lego.

1. Lululemon's missionaries - "store educators" and "brand ambassadors"

(1) The missionary who innovated the tone of the lululemon community - the "store educator"

Lululemon calls its offline store employees educators and believes that they are the most important people in the company . They are the ones who can truly represent the brand and convey the brand's mission and values ​​to users.

Before lululemon, retail stores generally only considered saving labor costs.

But the founder thought, “I wanted Super Girl employees to interact with Super Girl customers”. ( You need to hire employees based on your users;

Only highly qualified Super Girl store clerks can serve Super Girl well and help you find the products you need. ）

Therefore, these Super Girl store employees have a good educational background, love sports and fitness from the bottom of their hearts, and identify with the brand's philosophy and culture.

When they communicate with users, they can naturally make customers feel the authenticity and sincerity of product concepts and brand culture.

(2) Another important missionary role of lululemon is that of a “brand ambassador” that it is proud of.

At the beginning of its establishment, every time lululemon entered a city, it would contact the 20 most popular yoga teachers in the area, provide them with free clothing and invite them to teach yoga.

These yoga teachers create a warm and happy community atmosphere for users, and the three together build a new friendship, new experience, and new emotional anchor;

Especially in offline or online social interactions, teachers have more scenarios to share their product and activity experiences, thereby expanding the influence of both parties.

lululemon calls these yoga teachers "brand ambassadors". Through the social circles and influence of these "ambassadors", lululemon has found an extremely low-cost and effective way to break into the community.

In subsequent expansion, lululemon's "brand ambassadors" have formed three categories including "elite ambassadors", "store ambassadors" and "yoga ambassadors".

Except for a small number of ambassadors who are star athletes, most of the store ambassadors (1,489) are sports opinion leaders in various cities.

Including static course coaches such as yoga, Pilates, barre, etc.; athletes such as runners and cyclists; and some non-athlete professions such as photographers, entrepreneurs, and start-ups.

Regardless of their identities, these people have become missionaries of lululemon that extend to various scenarios, jointly creating the concept of "living out possibilities" and the community of "sweat life".

2. Lego’s missionary – Lego Ambassador

In 2005, LEGO launched the "LEGO Ambassador" program, selecting 20 ambassadors from more than 30 adult player AFOL user groups around the world. The ambassadors are responsible for conveying information to LEGO adult fan groups around the world and directly feeding back community issues and requests to LEGO.

At the same time, LEGO designers also collect ideas and user opinions and suggestions about the products being developed through ambassadors.

Unexpectedly, this opened the missionary journey of the "LEGO Ambassadors", who not only became representatives of LEGO's creativity and imagination, but also leaders of the "new community".

• For example, LEGO holds events around the world. “LEGO ambassadors showcase their passion for LEGO products at these large events, while demonstrating to families the benefits of using LEGO products. These events attract 2.5 million visitors each year,” said Kalcher.
• For example, in 2020, when the American version of "LEGO Masters" was broadcast on Fox in prime time in the United States, it immediately became the number one entertainment program for adults aged 18-49 in the United States. Now, the Chinese version of "LEGO Masters" has been broadcast on Shenzhen Satellite TV in October 2021, starting the competition journey of Chinese LEGO Masters.

At the same time, each "LEGO Ambassador" has his own fan group. Together with AFOL (adult LEGO players), they have established various large and small communities to form a "LEGO User Group".

When these "LEGO player groups" were officially certified, they eventually formed LEGO's exclusive RLUGs. These certified communities continued to spontaneously organize various community activities to convey brand value.

3. The missionary of Fan Deng’s reading club - “The Helmsman”

Fan Deng Reading Club was founded in 2013. Data shows that by 2020, Fan Deng Reading Club has grown to 36 million users, tens of thousands of agents, and 400+ offline stores.

In the early days, Fan Deng established a paid audiobook community, and 500 people came on the first day.

Therefore, Fan Deng and his two partners started to operate in a "membership system" way - strong offline relationships + online publicity and promotion, forming communities to amplify influence. This was the beginning of Fan Deng Reading Club.

At the end of 2014, Fan Deng’s team began to officially operate an offline reading club and established the first branch in Xiamen, which then continued to grow.

The earliest "helmsmen" of Fan Deng Reading Club were paying users who listened to books in the first group of 500 people in the community.

The offline branches of Fan Deng Reading Club mainly adopt the authorized franchise model, and the "helmsman" of each branch is a local KOC.

These "helmsmen" recognized the original intention, concept and business model of Fan Deng Reading Club. They had regional resources, offline relationships and influence. In addition, the franchise fee was reasonable at 100,000 yuan and the model was innovative (crowd), so they achieved rapid development.

Different from the missionary ecosystem of lululemon and Lego, the missionaries of Fan Deng Reading Club are relatively weak in terms of passion, evolution, cohesion, etc. It is a bit of a stretch to call them missionaries, but it has become an innovative model for investment and franchising.

To sum up, you will find that the missionary role of a brand or community can be diverse, including your executives, store salespersons, opinion leaders you find, your partners...

We can also use the same idea to understand the basic configuration of a "missionary": a certain interest, a certain love, recognition of ideas, love for the community, and willingness to use one's influence to convey community ideas to the people around him.

3. Believers: “Self-pilgrims” who have strong relationships, are obsessed with research, enjoy participating, and love to share

Believer: They believe in the concept of the community and the brand and are more focused on one aspect. They are the ones who maintain continuous dialogue with the community and actively participate in various activities.

These people are called "extreme" in the field of digital games. They are extremely intelligent and good at research, and often use their unique understanding of product aesthetics, technology, and usage methods to spread certain knowledge and skills (Bilibili).

These people are called KOC (Key Opinion Customer) in the new consumption field. They like to try new things and are willing to express themselves through text, photos or videos (Little Red Book).

These people are called brainless fans in the fan circle; they are super members and die-hard members among members; they are group-buying aunties in the community; they are super moms in WeChat business...

These people are not necessarily the ones who spend the most or even have the purchasing power, such as the “spiritual employees” and “wool-buying party” in the Weilai community who do not have the ability to buy a car;

Nor are they those who have resources and influence, such as the person who wrote “Yang Zhongqiu: On the Value of NIO – My Likes, Comments and Suggestions”;

Of course, they are not those with strong organizational skills. They cannot even organize an event with more than three people.

But these people are the ones who love the brand the most and are the most active in the community; they are the ones who worry about the community and constantly offer suggestions for its development; they are the ones who constantly contribute content and spread it spontaneously in order to attract more people to join.

These believers are the connecting nodes of the "new community" and set the tone for the growth of the community. The selection, attention, and support of these believers determine the activity, cohesion, and value orientation of the "new community."

A mature and powerful community ultimately depends on how many "believers" are truly willing to stand with you, which is also Kevin Kelly's "1,000 fans theory."

A creator, such as a musician, photographer, craftsman, actor, animator designer, video maker, or writer - in other words, anyone who creates art - only needs 1,000 true fans to make a living. True fans here mean people who are willing to pay for whatever you create and who are willing to drive 200 miles to hear you sing.

--Kevin Kelly

1. Xiaomi and his “100 Dream Sponsors”

When Xiaomi first established the community in 2010, it did not start selling mobile phones directly. Instead, it found 100 mobile phone enthusiasts to experience the MIUI that was under development.

They help Xiaomi complete new product testing, provide feedback and help fix bugs;

They achieved the first round of communication fission in Xiaomi community and attracted countless fans;

They ensured the activity and cohesion of the community; and ultimately achieved the transformation of the Xiaomi community from 0 to 1.

It is precisely because of these people who are willing to deeply explore the core values ​​of the company, products, and concepts that they are willing to spread it through their own influence and channels after experiencing and recognizing Xiaomi.

To express gratitude, Xiaomi wrote the forum IDs of these 100 KOCs on the boot page and also made them into a micro-film, in which Xiaomi called them "sponsors of 100 dreams."

2. Weilai and its “volunteers”

By crossing the boundaries of scenarios, NIO has recreated the role of "volunteer", from high-cost homogeneous social activities to returning to the natural connection of daily trajectories, and thereby reshaped the relationship between users and enterprises.

It achieves the conversion from users to believers, thereby achieving another type of improvement in the integration of users and brands.

• Delivery volunteers. Old users guiding new users to complete the process from test drive experience to community delivery is a brand new way for new users to get started and for old users to upgrade their roles, which creates a different sense of belonging.
• Car show volunteer. From being bystanders in the past to participants and service providers, with the NIO USER badge on their chests, they help solve other people's doubts. Car owner volunteers gain recognition from new customers with their own experiences and efforts. The success of this role-playing not only brings new pleasure, but also a new sense of belonging brought by a sense of accomplishment.

The contribution of such a "volunteer" to the community and brand far exceeds that of a super member who buys 10 cars at a time.

3. LEGO and its "super players" co-create a platform

(1) LEGO ideas

In 2014, LEGO launched LEGO Ideas.

This is where players and creators from all over the world gather to imagine, create and propose LEGO's future products.

• Users upload their creative works, and then look for people in the entire community who support their creativity and gain their support (Vote). If it gets 10,000 support within 2 years, LEGO will review it and turn it into a new LEGO product, sold worldwide!
• If the work is released globally, the proposer can not only participate in various activities and become a star, but also receive 1% of the sales dividend.

To date, LEGO ideas has over 1.8 million registered members who have submitted over 36,000 projects.

In 2020, the number of works selected with 100,000 votes has exceeded 26.

LEGO ideas is no longer just a co-creation platform for players, but also a connection node for fragmented players, a new solution of "personalized scale", and an expansion of the innovative driving force for the Internet of Everything.

(2) LEGO World Builder

In 2020, LEGO partnered with Tongal, a platform that connects freelancers and video production.

They provide players with a new creative development platform - LEGO World Builder , encouraging believers and fans to collaborate to create new concepts, new stories and new products for LEGO.

• First, players upload new concepts/scripts to create new LEGO characters or stories, and other players can help expand on the concept by contributing artwork, characters, storylines, etc.
• Players can then give feedback on others' ideas by clicking like or leaving a comment.
• Finally, the LEGO creative team found inspiration from these fan-created stories and used the new stories and concepts in the development of new products by paying the creators copyrights ($50,000).
• Later, Tongal will also collect the creativity on the platform, produce a series of videos and upload them to YouTube.

These players contributed creativity, even if it was a nonsensical idea, the beginning of a story, or a simple action. They were all connected and embedded into the nodes of Lego and the collective memory.

Plus they get to decide what to produce, what to change, and what to create.

Then, it is natural to roll up your sleeves to provide content, help with dissemination, and even participate in product sales and services.

Whether it is Xiaomi’s “sponsor of 100 dreams”, NIO’s “volunteer”, or Lego’s “super play”, they can be called “believers”.

Together with "preachers" and "missionaries", they form the foundation of potentially great new communities.

In addition to sharing a common belief, these "self-pilgrims" of "believers" also have different hidden skills.

① “Believers” are the best “Chief Experience Officers”

"Believers" are generally somewhat "extremely" selective - "either don't play, or if you do, play to the best of your ability."

Therefore, they are the core talents who can best experience the core functions of the product, explore the room for improvement and understand the brand.

On the other hand, they also tend to have a comprehensive understanding, an overall perception of brand culture, traceable materials, technological development, design trends, etc.

Instead of just focusing on their own interests like ordinary users, or only distinguishing between "right" and "wrong" and "good and bad".

Therefore, their experience and reconciliation are conducive to delivering a comprehensive understanding of the brand.

② “Believers” are “critics” and “ creators ”

"Compared" is the label of "believers". They can discover and find bugs from the user's perspective.

So what they pick is "extremely valuable, but if you ignore or disregard their picks", your community may become a complaining and rant community.

With the spirit of "extreme", they are also good at seeing through and digging out new directions from shortcomings, and these innovations are often closer to the market and users.

If a brand and community have such "believers", it is a huge challenge, but it will also bring unimaginable rewards.

③ “Believers” are generally “chief participants”

Without believers, there will be no situation.

Not only do believers devote themselves wholeheartedly to the activities, but they can also influence the participation of others. The atmosphere group is very important.

Think about lululemon's sweat festivals in Manhattan, London and Beijing, with thousands of participants, the once glorious Xiaomi Fan Festival and the annual NIO Day.

Without the participation of believers, there can be no activities that are considered valuable.

④ “Believers” are the best “Chief Content and Communications Officers”

Because they are relatively fair, like to think, love to share, and are willing to express themselves, they often start from the user's perspective, and their pictures, texts, and videos are highly targeted. The content they create is often more attractive and tempting.

In addition, due to their large number, their communication is more down-to-earth than that of missionaries, and it is easier for them to achieve offline experience, plant seeds in the community, and promote transactions.

"Connecting users with users and letting users move users" is the greatest happiness of a new community with a large number of "believers".

For new communities, if one of the three roles is "evangelist", "missionary" or "believer", then they can dominate the world, such as Xiaomi and Fan Deng Reading Club.

If you own two of them, you can call it a powerful new community, Aranya and Lululemon.

If all three are present, it will be a new community where people can wake up with a smile in their dreams and self-organize and grow.

Like Lego, they even created the products and directions for Lego's development in the next 10 years; or like NIO, even in the face of various complex and changing environments and pressures, they can always survive the cycles.

Finally, if you want to go on a long voyage of adventure, don't do it alone - find partners, buy ships, hire captains, and recruit sailors.

The first thing you should do is to teach people to yearn for the vastness and unfathomable depth of the sea, and of course the dreams across the sea.

Reference books and articles: "The Art of Community Operation ", "Sense of Participation", "No KOC, No Community"

Author: Brand Ape

Source: Brand Yuanchuang (ID: brand-yuan)