Practical Guide to Community Building and Operation

The next part of the practical guide to community building and operation will mainly talk about: community activity and community conversion (that is, HOW in 5W1H).

Active community

1. Set entry threshold

If we want to keep the community we operate active for a long time, we first need to clarify the target users of the community, that is, the composition of the group members. As mentioned above, a community is a group of people with common interests, cognitions, and values. Then interact, communicate, collaborate and infect each other. Therefore, community activity actually refers to the activity of group members.

Therefore, when we operate a community, we must set corresponding joining thresholds. Even free communities have certain requirements for joining. If the group is formed purely for the sake of group size, without considering other things, then the result of anyone being able to join is: there are no common attributes, no common topics, and eventually fewer and fewer people are willing to communicate until the group becomes a dead group.

Therefore, setting appropriate entry conditions is the first point and prerequisite to ensure the activeness of the community. If this step is not done well, all the subsequent work will be in vain.

2. Sense of ritual in joining a group

One of the natural attributes of a community is sociality. So no matter what your original intention is for joining the group, as long as it involves social topics, issues about human nature should be taken seriously.

In the process of socializing, almost everyone has a desire in their heart, which is to be valued. So when it comes to joining a group, everyone hopes to attract other people's attention when they first enter. Therefore, an excellent community operator will come up with very clever ways to allow new members to join the group. How to set it specifically?

I wonder how many of you have experienced transferring schools when you were in school? Or are there new students in your class who transferred from other schools? Think back to that scene, when a new student comes to the class, does the teacher always publicly introduce this student in class and ask him to introduce himself?

Therefore, we can also refer to this scenario when setting up new members to join the group.

Then let’s think about it from another perspective: what kind of problems will every newcomer to the group have? Let me take myself as an example. I am engaged in operations, so the communities I usually join are also operations communities. Whenever I want to join a community, I always have the following questions:

What kind of group is this?

What types of people are in the group?

What do these group members like to talk about?

How should I introduce myself after joining the group?

Who can I talk to first?

Who are the great people in the group? What areas of operations are you respectively good at?

Of course, communities in different industries and fields will have different problems, which requires our community operators to do detailed work on community positioning, user research, etc.

Having said so much, how can we make users feel a sense of ritual when joining the group? Let me take a group I joined some time ago as an example:

My entire user path to joining this group:

The self-introductions of new members in the group are roughly as follows (I intercepted one of the new members):

The group I joined is a paid group, with annual payment. This group is an operations exchange group. Members of the group are related practitioners, and they usually share some knowledge and experiences about operations in the group.

You can't join the group immediately after paying. Instead, the customer service staff communicated with me one-on-one first. During this process, they basically solved the problems I might encounter when joining the group (the problems I mentioned earlier). So for me personally, the process of joining the group fully satisfied my vanity and made me feel valued. I instantly felt like the money I spent was well worth it.

3. Group Member Growth System

1: Building a points system

The community building points system is a method that almost all community operators currently use. The advantage of the points system is that it can help operators increase the efficiency of community operation and management several times, making community customer management more standardized, professional, and systematic.

There are four key points to pay attention to when building a points system:

Core 1: The points system must be designed around the core goals of the community

The core goal of the community is that the actions taken by group members in the process of obtaining points are all aimed at the final conversion. For example, the points system of the following community:

All actions taken by group members to earn points are intended to encourage members to place orders for clothes in the end. When members see the buyers’ shows in the group, they will be motivated to buy clothes. Then they can earn points by buying clothes and showing them to the buyers. The points can also be exchanged for discount coupons to pave the way for the next purchase. The whole process forms a closed loop of user actions.

Core 2: Points-based grading drive

I believe that many community operators will design several more ways to earn points. For example, in the example above, the ways for group members to earn points include buyer shows, inviting friends to join the group, etc.

The so-called integral graded drive means that these core actions should form a process from low to high and from easy to difficult. To put it simply, it is about solving a problem: what kind of actions can earn how many points? !

The benefit of this design is that it can increase user engagement. At the same time, different points levels can obtain different benefits. In this way, for users, the more complex the actions, the more points they get, and the higher the points, the better the rewards they get, which can get more drive.

Core 3: Points rewards, validity period, etc.

Once you have designed the actions members need to take to earn points, as well as the points grading system, you then need to determine the points rewards. This core point can be said to be the most important part of the entire points system and the fundamental factor driving users.

To put it simply, the design of point rewards is to solve a problem: how many points can get what reward? ! The most taboo thing at this point is for the operators to make decisions on the spur of the moment. This requires reference and design based on multiple dimensions such as community positioning, price of community conversion products (services), etc. As shown in the previous picture: 1 point is equal to a 3 yuan voucher. This 1:3 ratio is based on the average order value of the clothes and analysis of users.

For example, the operation group I mentioned earlier:

These communities do not primarily sell products but provide services. Because it is a paid community and the fees are calculated on an annual basis, its points rewards are mainly based on extending community services. In addition, the points of this group have other uses, such as being a core member and being introduced as a key member when new members join the group (as mentioned in Figure 1: Group Entry Path Diagram, customer service will proactively introduce some big names in the group when introducing the community to new members). Or you can make internal referrals based on the members’ core business.

As an operations staff, joining some operations groups, in addition to wanting to learn some operations-related knowledge, another very important reason is to get to know some peers and get some internal referrals or business opportunities. Therefore, this point reward can be said to have fully tapped the inner needs of operators like me.

In addition to designing point rewards, you also need to design a point clearing mechanism, or a validity period. The advantage of this design is that it effectively motivates users and allows them to go further after earning points. From a psychological point of view, this series of actions fully utilizes sunk costs + loss aversion + herd effect. As the saying goes: the more bait, the greater the harvest.

Core 4: Stimulate users’ comparative psychology

The first three core points have basically completed the construction of the points system, but it is not enough and we need to go further.

It is necessary to stimulate users' comparative psychology, set up a points ranking list, sort the points obtained by group members, and fully stimulate users' comparative psychology, thereby forming a herd effect.

2: Let group members see growth

In addition to building a community points system, another important method for many learning and training communities is to show user growth. It is mainly reflected through the growth stories of outstanding members and the comparison before and after the growth of the community. In fact, I believe that many people who do community operations will pay attention to this point. The only problem is that many newcomers will put this point in advance and use it when conducting community traffic diversion. But in fact, in addition to paying attention to it when attracting traffic, you also need to pay attention to this when operating a community, especially a learning/training community. It is very helpful to enhance the value of the community by sharing group members’ learning situation within the community, their respective learning experiences, growth stories, etc. from time to time.

In addition, if this growth can be presented in a data-based form, the effect will be even better. It has a strong boosting effect on community fission.

4. Community Upgrade

In the previous article, we talked about the question of where to build a community. The number of people in different private traffic communities is different. Taking the most commonly used WeChat ecosystem as an example, a WeChat community can have a maximum of 500 people. However, in actual operations, the number of people in a community generally does not exceed 300, and it is best to control it at around 200. I believe many of you are aware of this. After all, a large number of people is not conducive to management and maintenance.

At the same time, an active community is bound to be accompanied by the flow of people, with new people joining the group and old people leaving the group. This is actually normal, and sometimes operators even need to take the initiative to clear out unqualified users.

The above four points are the basic guarantee for community activity. As long as you do these well, your community activity will basically not be too bad. Of course, these are just the basics. As for how active a community can be, it still needs to be operated based on the actual situation.

A mature and active community does not need to use all means at the beginning. The decision on when to adopt a strategy can be made based on the following:

This actually tests the operator's practical ability. With the current Internet, almost all operational knowledge can be learned online for free, but learning is one thing and practice is another. In the actual operation process, even if a community operator has mastered all the operational knowledge, it will be useless if he does not know how to apply it. Therefore, during operations, we need to constantly evaluate what stage our community is currently in, what its commercial value is, and so on.

Social Conversion

We all know that communities have natural advantages in conversions, and community commercialization is also the trend of the future. Therefore, how to grasp the rhythm of community operation and improve community conversion have become issues that all operators cannot avoid. Uncle Pi will explain it through 5 dimensions and 1 theory.

5 dimensions to improve social conversion:

Information promotion: Effective promotion of community operations is not simply sending content to the group. You need to at least @ everyone, so that all members in the group know that it is best not to forward the articles directly, but it is better to add some personalized copy and pictures.

Divided into guidance: As mentioned in the previous article, the core content of community operation is actually the topic, and a high-quality topic can often activate users. So when we push content to the group, in addition to @ing everyone, it is best to pair it with an attractive topic to resonate with users.

Rich product categories: Although community members are gathered together because of common interests and cognitions, even so, group members still have different needs, so the products or services provided by the community cannot be too single. It is best to provide different services according to the needs of different group members.

Make good use of hot-selling products: Of course, a community still needs to have a core hot-selling product. Because a hot product can effectively increase user stickiness. Then combine it with some promotional activities or tools, such as group buying, bargaining, etc., to achieve user fission.

Dynamic pricing: This is actually very easy to understand. Your product or service cannot always have only one price. It can change. As for the basis for the change, there can be many ways, such as lowering the price or deducting discounts appropriately according to user activity, or using promotional activities to reduce the price in disguise, such as pre-sale, 1-30 people can enjoy 50% off, 31-60 people can enjoy 30% off, and so on.

These five dimensions can effectively help us achieve the goal of group conversion. Of course if it works

To achieve social conversion, we first need to stratify the user conversion value:

Then adopt different strategies according to different levels of users:

These five dimensions can greatly improve the conversion effect of our community operations. Of course, these are just basic theories. For new operators with 0-3 years of experience, we should first master these theories and then combine them with practical operations. After summarizing the experience, we can accelerate the improvement of our operational capabilities.

Here, Pi Ye will give you another theoretical knowledge: Demand Triangle Theory

Regarding the demand triangle model, it is most commonly used in the marketing stage, but community operations can actually also effectively use this theoretical model to achieve our community conversion. This theory is actually to solve the HOW (how to cash out) in 5W1H:

Many times, demand often comes from the user's sense of lack, that is, the gap between ideal and reality, so the entire demand triangle theory is: find the user's sense of lack, then give others the ability to take action and provide appropriate targets.

For example: You are shopping on the street in the summer, and you feel thirsty (a sense of lack), and you want a glass of ice drink to solve the problem of thirst (this drink is the target object). The target object should be able to fill the gap, so this drink should preferably be an ice drink that can quench your thirst, rather than filling your stomach or reducing internal heat. It would be best if it can be purchased nearby, without having to spend energy and time going to a distant place to get it. In addition, the price should be within your acceptable range (ability).

The demand triangle model is complementary and indispensable. When we operate a community, the community itself is built to solve a certain user need, but it is not enough to just understand the customer's sense of lack. You need to package your community's products or services into the user's target, give the user motivation, and thus stimulate their interest. Finally, based on user attributes, sell your products or services to them in a way that they can accept (including price, etc.).

So do you know how to monetize the community? Utilize the demand triangle theory to achieve the ultimate sales goal through the five dimensions of community conversion.

Summarize

Having written this far, we have basically finished talking about community operations. These contents are relatively theoretical, but are still quite useful for new operators with 0-3 years of experience. After all, for many newcomers, they can only do some trivial things in actual work. Without certain theoretical knowledge support, it is difficult to understand the significance of their work, let alone understand the entire operation system from the details.

Author: Pai Ye Operation

Source: Paiye Operation ( pyyunying )