7 operational ideas for community operations!

When it comes to community operations , many newbies will ask this question: "What is the difference between a community and a social group?" At first I didn’t quite understand this, but after reading many articles and answers, I had my own understanding.

Here is a very good explanation from Liang Ge:

Community: You, me, and him live in the same community. Even though you don’t know me, I don’t know you, and you don’t know him, we have built a community.

Community: You, me, and he live in three different communities; he is an opinion leader, we all follow him, and with his lead, we build a community.

The essence of a community is actually users + content + community culture , which are also the three core elements of a community.

When it comes to community, whether it’s content or users, what matters is being down-to-earth and speaking human language, which is also a challenge to the operator’s capabilities.

And you must know that the community is a platform for users with certain labels and barriers to exchange value. For example, WeChat community, Knowledge Planet community, Tieba, Zhihu community and so on.

After understanding the nature and characteristics of the community, let's get to the point. This article will start from the following points:

1. Acquisition of early seed users

2. Content community building and content system labeling

3. How to plan the content ecology of UGC/PGC

4. How to achieve mass production of early community content and output of high-quality content

5. User classification

6Content System Tags

7. New Dilemmas and Thoughts on Community Operations

*Because the content is a bit long, this sharing is divided into two parts (this part is the first one)

1. "Acquisition of early seed users"

At the very beginning of the project, I have been thinking about whether a community should have users or content first. In fact, this is the same principle as whether the chicken or the egg came first. I personally believe that content first can attract seed users.

So how do you get the first wave of seeds?

Before acquiring the first wave of seed users, you need to determine the tone of the community (that is, the main features and highlights). For example, when you think of Zhihu, the main focus is Q&A, Xiaohongshu is reviews, Mafengwo is travel notes... They all have their own tone, which is also the first impression given to users. This can also prevent the first batch of seed users from being inconsistent with the community positioning, and can also deepen users' memory of the community.

Here is a reminder: In fact, most communities meet three elements: communication + knowledge acquisition + deep needs

After determining the tone of the community, the next step is to introduce content. How to guide PGC content to settle in?

The initial PGC content can be obtained through original creation, authorized reprinting, invited creation, crawling, etc., and it also needs to undergo strict review, which will produce the first wave of original content.

How to find the first batch of users with basic content?

There are three ways:

Use money, name, give a title, support and publicity (in other words, just empty promises), personal connections

Channels: Competitive apps, websites, major forums, QQ groups, and even your circle of friends, etc.

2. "Building a user growth system for the community "

Building a content community is also a step that stumps many operators. After all, this is a huge project, which is equivalent to the human brain, so the complete route and logic must be thought through clearly in the early stages. This is where the most communication and friction with the product occurs, and it is a great test of the operator's communication and coordination skills.

Construction of user growth system for content communities

Level system : helps to improve user activity and retention. It is mainly composed of the user's current level and promotion and demotion prompts, relative level incentive policies, promotion and demotion rules between levels (quantitative indicators), and the number and relationship of level levels.

Common examples include daily login, sign-in, etc. Appropriate downgrades can also reversely motivate users to be active.

Points system : It has the main functions of increasing user activity, stimulating consumption, increasing stickiness, improving user loyalty, and increasing user leaving costs. It is an operational strategy to control virtual currency in the product end. The corresponding matching one is the points mall, and you can also set up a lucky draw (big turntable) to recycle points.

Membership system : This depends on whether the community has this demand. Generally speaking, it is not necessary. The membership system is basically applicable to video, audio, e-commerce and other platforms;

Task system : Corresponding to the points system is the task system. Users can take different actions through novice tasks, daily tasks, event tasks, medal tasks, game tasks, etc., and they can get corresponding rewards if they meet the relevant requirements.

Medal system : It can exist independently or be incorporated into the task system. It mainly allows users to obtain relevant virtual medal incentives and other honors through corresponding tasks.

3. How to plan the content ecology of UGC/PGC

When planning the community’s content ecology, we must remember that we are the platform: the creators and guides of the rules, but definitely not participants. They may act as seed users in the early stages, put on a vest or create their own image, but the ultimate goal is to guide creators and regulate the community.

After the introduction of seed users, they will have the motivation to spontaneously produce and consume content, but it does not mean that these behaviors will occur on their own.

How to trigger users to generate and consume content? There are three key points here

Operation guidance

Establishing some rules or mechanisms to connect the motivations of content producers and consumers can initially lay the foundation for the healthy production of content. For example, the review and discovery function in Xiaohongshu is to enhance support for consumers’ purchasing decisions. The purpose of the review is also for content producers (buyers) to express their feelings and for consumers (buyers) to find resonance, thus “planting grass”.

Community

Why build a community atmosphere?

1. Early communities need to build emotional connections through atmosphere to satisfy those who have rigid needs and strongly identify with the community culture.

2. It helps to strengthen the connection between content and people. The community has two important components: content and users. The relationship between the two is: users produce content, and content links users.

How to cultivate a good community atmosphere?

1. Then we have to ensure that the community environment is clean enough, for example, there are few internet trolls and no advertising content, and users express their emotions very authentically.

2. The content can accurately match the audience, users feel satisfied with the content, and creators can gain a sense of recognition (spiritual motivation)

3. The community has little pressure, no limitations, few rules, and is open

Good incentive system

How to guide community users to create valuable content?

(1) Sense of Honor

1. There are many ways to give users a sense of honor, such as rankings, levels, medals, etc. It is recommended that you fully combine your own resources and carry out micro-innovations. You must give users what other communities cannot give, and users will like to come to you.

2. Building a good IP image is crucial for top users. The product mechanism should not only have a good "follow" function, but also a batch recommendation of high-quality authors to make creators feel like internet celebrities.

3. Prepare daily, weekly and monthly rankings, and give honors such as medals and posters to users on the list

(2) Material rewards

In fact, material rewards are a problem for startup companies because they don’t have a high budget. They think about how to save money every day and hope to live one more day. So what is the solution? I think we can start from these two aspects:

1. Customize your own product peripheral gifts

Give users things that they cannot buy in real life. Here I would like to mention that you must give them things that they cannot get in their life and work, such as useful information sorted and selected by the community, officially co-published books and courses, or gifts with beautiful designs and exquisite packaging, etc. This is still possible. If the company’s CEO is an IP, you can also attach a handwritten letter from the CEO (printed), etc.

2. Solve user needs

You can combine your own products based on user portraits and specific needs, and you can release a fixed basic reward mechanism out of your own pocket. Each high-quality content can get xx reward, which will provide positive feedback to the creators and gradually form a closed loop, which is suitable for daily content collection. It can also stimulate users to produce high-quality content that matches the tone, which is suitable for filling short-term content gaps. Such activities include productized task levels, reward topic resonance, special events, etc.; users/customers can also pay out of their own pockets to incentivize production users. The most common ones are paid reading, rewards, graphic and text promotion, and advertising profit sharing.

(3) Sense of participation

In fact, this is a direction that is worth pondering. Many seed users also have feelings. We can communicate with users frequently to explore their potential needs and their real thoughts to see if they can be productized. One of the factors for the success of Xiaomi's fan marketing is actually allowing users to participate in the design and development of products.

In fact, one of the ways to express this is to name the levels, locations, weapons, and characters in the game with the user's ID, giving the user enough sense of honor and participation. Of course, most of these are early users of the community who have made great contributions and may have also participated in the early design and development of product functions.

(4) Sense of belonging

A sense of belonging refers to the feeling that users have when they are recognized and accepted by community groups or community officials. The most important factor affecting the sense of belonging to an Internet community is user relationships, followed by satisfaction with the community atmosphere and participation in community activities.

There are three entry points to increase user sense of belonging:

1. User relations: focus on key users, focus on maintenance, and use the point to lead the whole

2. Community atmosphere: official guidance + strict law enforcement

3. Community activities: This is divided into online and offline. Online: organize some high-quality activities that resonate with people for festivals, products, and content. Offline activities: set up role models, learn from shared photos and some content, establish the company's IP, and allow users to organize activities spontaneously when the company does not have enough experience and resources to organize some local activities. The company will provide users with some resource support to help the activities proceed in an orderly manner, support the image of the big V, and at the same time generate a wave of strong exposure. (Resources must be fully coordinated here, otherwise it will easily backfire)

There are several typical characteristics of community operation, and we will focus on a few major points:

First, you must reach out to real users. The number of valuable core users you can control and retain determines the strength of your operational capabilities.

Second: Rely on 20% of users at the top of the user pyramid to drive 80% of users;

Third: There is no quick success; practice and experience are the key. People who have dealt with 100,000 real users will naturally have a different opinion.

Fourth: You must understand user psychology, and you must know how to set rules and understand how to play;

Fifth: If you understand the product and can think about the product content and users together, you will reach a higher level;

The above is some of my own experience. I hope to record my own experience, project experience and ideas.

Author: jerry

Source: Education and Training Institution Operation (gh_4d60f1a5cd0b)