6 core concepts of community operation!

I recently reread Professor Xu Zhibin’s "The Small Group Effect", which gave me a lot of new inspiration for community operations . I have sorted out the key contents of this book, including six core concepts and some thoughts, hoping that it can help everyone. At the same time, I highly recommend friends who are engaged in community operations to read this book.

Here is an outline of the catalog:

1. Six major drivers of social interaction 2. Three approaches and one opposite <br /> 3. Roles of community operators and 12 ways to activate communities 4. Big fish in a small pond 5. Strong operations and weak operations 6. Skills of operating a circle of close friends 7. Inspiring ideas and some extended thoughts

1. Six social drivers

【Six major drivers】

Honor driven, benefit driven, relationship driven, event driven, region driven, interest driven.

In the design of distribution and drainage elements, honor (rankings), benefits (distribution cash), and relationships (relationships in friend circles) are necessary, while events (taking advantage of hot events) and interests (improving skills) are common. This is one of the fundamental reasons why distribution can currently stand firm.

Commercialization will drive the upgrading and evolution of communities, but the balance between commercialization and user experience requires more meticulous community operations through six major driving forces.

【Thoughts on honor drive】

WeChat Reading, Honor of Kings, Alibaba, and games all create super paying users through competition among users. (Game operation is the one that best understands human nature and is worth studying). The loss of logical thinking users and the “headshot” experience in CrossFire: the difficulty of the honor-driven game must be continuously upgraded to continuously stimulate users to gain satisfaction and invest more time.

[Profit-driven]

The benefits that users hope to obtain include various pleasant experiences, the image they want to create, and even tangible benefits such as red envelopes. Of course, it also includes knowledge, help, etc. Interests play a very significant role in guiding user behavior.

[Interest Driven: Principle of Mutual Benefit]

1. Personalization: Users can decide whether to send money or not, to whom to send money, and the dynamic amount.

2. Easy participation: It is like automatic giving, and anyone can directly initiate and share new benefits after enjoying the service.

3. Zero cost: It is available for free, and enterprises do not need to allocate a large amount of manpower to carry out daily maintenance and docking.

4. Beneficial to both communities and enterprises: The interfaces set up have always been centered around the core demands of the enterprise, allowing every participating community and partner to access and benefit from it.

5. Benefits can be shared: Benefits can be shared by users to help friends also obtain these benefits. This is the basis for achieving virality in social networks.

6. Accumulative: Accumulative benefits will attract users to continue to invest time in order to obtain greater benefits.

【Interest-driven】

The upper limit of the intensity of interactive discussions in interest-based social networking is the lower limit of social networking among acquaintances. Interest-based social networking opposes meaningless chit-chat. The more you talk, the more members will reject and flee. On the contrary, small talk among acquaintances is considered as a way to maintain relationships.

Relationship Driven

* Three people make a tiger: To influence a person, you don’t need to confront him directly. Influencing 2 to 3 friends in his circle is enough.

* Relationship drive forms the basis of the small group effect, and also forms the basis for user conversion and decision-making influence. The density will allow small circles to ferment into big events.

[Thoughts on profit-driven and honor-driven]

1. If you want to enter the world of the top players, you need to enter the world of the top players through massive trial and error and the diffusion of information brought about by social driving forces.

2. Products that provide users with a pleasant experience in a simple way are more likely to succeed.

3. "The fastest way to touch the market is interest, and interest is the fastest way of spreading", so it is necessary to grasp the point of reciprocity.

4. Use reciprocal interfaces to trigger users’ advancement points and make them willing to share

5. Grasp the honor drive and profit drive to continuously stimulate user activity

Continue to strengthen areas of expertise and use the long-board effect to attract strong players in other fields to cooperate.

【Event-driven】

I treat your goals as my goals and consciously allocate time, energy and resources to help you work towards achieving them. Operators need to tell fans a goal.

2. Three Approaches and One Reversal: Relationship, Interest and Regional Drive

Three Nears : Assisting countless users to aggregate into various communities, or to spread, stay and be active in the communities. For example, WeChat Reading spreads naturally among reading groups through books.

1. Proximity – Users are most sensitive to information within 1,000 meters

Distance is an important relationship that determines the development of community operations or the construction of stronger relationships.

Case: Momo supports group functions through geographic location

2. Similar interests – users only pay attention to issues related to themselves

In social networks, similar interests are one of the main driving forces for the emergence of vertical communities (BBS era) and large communities.

3. Similar age - young people

Case: Kuaishou has captured the market with more than 87% of young people

Opposition : refers to two parties that help each other but also have conflicts and collaborations. For example, relations between the sexes, parties A and B, and parties of supply and demand.

When users join a community (or group, or group), they will probably have several demands, which are:

(1) Question and answer help (profit driven)

(2) Show off

(3) Find resonance

(4) Sharing knowledge and information (honor-driven)

(5) Manage and reserve potential relationships, maintain relationships, etc.

(6) Commonly recognized long-term goals and values.

The six demands are similar to Maslow's needs model and are also consistent with the "one opposite" in "three closes and one opposite". Many people join and continue to stay in a community not only because they have a common foundation, but also because there is a clear "need" to help each other, as well as to have conflict and collaboration.

3. Community Operation Roles and 12 Ways to Activate Communities

Community Operation Role:

[Ordinary people] The silent majority, the formation of the large group effect, reading, participation, purchase conversion, etc., all rely on this huge foundation.

Effectively influencing and activating "ordinary people" will not only make the community more active and efficient, but will also attract more people to become "connectors" and "opinion leaders."

Case: WeChat shooting; Moman; Face Meng

【Connector】 (Key Opinion Leader): A community member who shares information. They connect different communities and groups of people, are key figures in promoting the spread of information in countless closed "small groups", and are also key to helping information spread for a second or even countless times. It can be an ordinary person.

[Local opinion leaders] can only influence the fans they cover. Most of these fans are not diffusive, so their "opinions" cannot be spread.

[Globally Significant Leaders] Global opinion leaders can influence social circles and close friends on a small scale, or trigger a series of viral spread reactions. On the graph, they are like the starting point that triggers ripples.

"Global opinion leaders" include many "local opinion leaders" and "connectors".

[The upgrade and transition of the community are affected by four forces]

1. Whether there is frequent interaction between members

2. Is there a large enough mainstream population?

3. The intervention of commercial forces

4. External forces intervene

【12 characteristics of active communities】

1. Scale. How many members participated.

2. The number of interactions between members.

3. Density. It reflects the degree to which members of a group know each other.

4. Average weight. It reflects the connection strength of the relationship network. The higher the weight, the closer the relationship between the two members; the lower the weight, the more distant the relationship between the two members.

5. Member new and old (ID). The number of old members and new members participating in the interaction.

6. The maximum number of members and the number of people who have ever joined the group.

7. Number of connected branches. Two members can interact with each other through the relationships of other members, indicating that the two people are connected.

8. The maximum connected branch size refers to how big the mainstream group is within the group.

9. The ratio between the maximum connected graph and the total number of group members. This ratio can be used to observe the influence of the mainstream group in the group.

10. The density of the maximum connected graph, that is, the degree of mutual understanding and interaction between members.

11. The average weight of the maximum connected graph, i.e., the strength and number of interactions between members.

12. The average number of members in the largest connected graph, the number of members in the largest small circle.

【Thoughts on active communities】

1. Active communities, in general, involve result-oriented reverse thinking through the characteristics of 12 active communities, and then grasp two core indicators: the size of the mainstream group within the community operation and the frequency of interaction between members.

2. There is no community with good interaction but scattered members. Frequent interaction will inevitably lead to close relationships between members. In groups/communities with frequent interactions, members rarely split into multiple small circles, and the core group has a huge influence on community operations.

3. Real social networks are cold, and interactions between each other are not that frequent. Interactions between members in small and medium communities are more frequent. In communities with frequent interactions, members rarely split into multiple small circles, and the core group has a huge influence on the community.

4. The community must maintain a certain level of activity, but also grasp that degree, otherwise it will produce the opposite effect. If the community is large, it will lead to cold interaction between members, which will in turn cause members to split into more small circles.

5. The efficiency and innovation probability of the community can be improved through interactions among community members, communication with the outside world, and the number of explorations.

6. Establishing interest-driven communities based on regional drivers may bring better results. If the number of people in a community is too large, you can create new small groups with different categories, which can be divided according to geographical location and occupation, so that users can find a sense of belonging and continue to communicate and improve. Active leaders can get special permissions and join several communities, allowing the community to enter a virtuous circle.

7. The larger the community, the more conversations there are between members. If the group/community is large, it will lead to cold interaction between members, which will in turn cause members to split into more small circles.

8. The upper limit of the intensity of interactive discussions in interest-based social networking is the lower limit of social networking among acquaintances. Interest-based social networking opposes meaningless chit-chat. The more you talk, the more members will be repelled and even flee. It is easy for acquaintances to talk endlessly, and small talk is considered to be a way to maintain relationships.

9. The larger the large community, the weaker the influence of KOLs and mainstream people. In large communities, members are looking for topics and having small circle discussions. There is no KOL that everyone knows.

【Knowledge Planet Key Data】

* Seven-day three-time active users (the number of users who log in three days out of seven days) are core users and deserve more attention. This data is intended to reflect user stickiness.

*DAU (Daily Active Users)

* Daily active users of Android

*IOS (Apple) daily active users.

The “seven-day three-activity” concept is currently only proposed by Knowledge Planet, which is different from the “seven-day retention” concept of the mobile Internet (referring to new users registered on mobile apps).

[Adjustment of the four-wheel instrumental usage of "Knowledge Planet"]

1. "Small circle, more intimate", the problem to be solved is how to accumulate high-quality information in WeChat groups.

2. "Mobile collaboration tool" to solve the mobile collaboration needs of team members.

3. "Work happily and share with peace of mind" solves the sharing problem of small teams and allows all members to focus on the needs of community creators and organizers.

4. "Connect one thousand hardcore fans", focusing on solving the KOL's fan management and payment channel needs.

【The starting point of a good community】

1. Instrumentality. What fundamental problems have you solved that will make users join when they see you for the first time? Reasons why people join and stay in a community.

2. Viral. Viral spread and massive outbreak. How to not only get users to join, but also encourage them to bring in their relatives, friends, classmates and colleagues.

3. Long connection. Refers to the long-term stickiness, retention, and even monetization of users. How to attract users and their friends to use or buy every day.

4. Big Fish in a Small Pond: Honor Driven and Relationship Driven

The phenomenon of users competing with each other in a small circle to highlight their own image and status

【Big Fish】 Represents the image and status that the user wants to create

【Small Pond】 People comparing themselves with each other

Use the rankings to let people in the "small pond" know the results of the "comparison"

The three foundations of the social model

User characteristics:

1. [Hope to make continuous progress]

Case: Luoji Siwei

Add user advancement mechanism.

When users continue to stay in a specific group of people (usually weak relationships), it is difficult for them to remain active because the pleasure brought by "comparison" cannot be continuously supplied.

2. [A sense of accomplishment makes users stay longer]

The term "flow" is used to measure the sense of achievement

If personal ability and the ability required to solve difficulties are on par, users will remain active; if the ability required to solve difficulties is slightly higher than personal ability, users will feel a greater sense of accomplishment after completing the game challenge, which will be more attractive and allow users to invest more time.

Only when there is challenge can there be pleasure, and users will invest more time.

【 Two directions for user advancement】

1. Field, arouse users' curiosity, so that they can further understand the fields they want to advance in, etc.

2. Ability or class. Putting this type of users into the right group, communicating with people at a higher level, and ensuring that there are always people from a slightly lower level asking for advice is the core idea of ​​this advancement.

【Design method of dynamic small pond】

1. Compare yourself to your past self.

Content-based products themselves do not have a relationship chain, but they can be featured, which will bring a sense of accomplishment to users.

2. How to set up a small pond.

Users pay more attention to groups similar to themselves, and are therefore more easily inspired by this group and more easily motivated during the process (such as playing games or using products).

【Enterprise practices】

(1) Set up a small pond;

(2) Let the user make the comparison and tell him/her the result of the comparison;

(3) Let the user know that someone is comparing with him.

[Communities are divided into 7 types based on simulated scenarios]

Street markets, community circles, clubs, community parks, shopping malls, large amusement parks, and large commercial centers.

[Method of dividing "small ponds"]

*Compared with all users (applicable to products without relationship chains or mainly strangers).

*Compare with friends (the relationship chain is a natural small pond).

*Compare with users who are “three close” (similar level, similar combat power, similar ability) (dynamic advancement mechanism).

*Compare with a smaller circle of friends with similar interests (a smaller pond, such as the strategies adopted by “WeChat Reading” and “WeChat Sports”).

*Compare with the user’s past performance (such as the number of times a player has become a “God” in King of Glory).

[Users want to create the image they want]

Honor drive: The purpose of “comparison/competition” is to create the image you want to create. People often compare themselves with each other in various occasions and even in real life.

Allowing users to compare and compete with each other will greatly increase user activity and stickiness, and will also increase payment conversion rates.

In order to gain virtual honor and status and shape a certain image they want, people will continue to invest time, resources, money, etc.

[Main axis of community operation]

Users want to shape their image in front of others

↓

Big fish in a small pond

↓

"Bi" (forming a dynamic pond)

↓

Create an automatic advancement mechanism for users to “reach”

↓

Attract users, achieve stickiness and conversion

↓

Clarify the business model

[How to advance offline stranger user communities?] 】

1. Define a “small pond”

It can be all members who are discussing something, or people who have researched a certain field, industry, or topic.

2. Let users compare and tell them the results

Taking the discussion and research on a certain industry or topic as an example, the number of readings, likes, rewards, collections, and comments obtained by different members can be ranked, and the rankings can be made public.

3. Let the user know that someone is competing with him

Encourage people to spontaneously form new circles and hold offline gatherings, salons, etc.

【Summarize】

1. "Similar people" help increase the stickiness and retention of new users, and "competition" helps users shape the image they want to present, attracting more users to join in the process of showing off and spreading.

Rankings are used to encourage users to continue upgrading and fighting monsters, thereby forming a habitual dependence on the product. For example, when we have a reading check-in activity, at the end of the check-in activity, the winner of the best notes will be selected. The winner of the best notes will be on the list and receive a bonus. Users will actively participate in shaping their own image and spread it to group members to join the competition.

2. If the number of people in the community is too large, you can create small groups with different categories, which can be divided according to geographic location and occupation, so that users can find a sense of belonging and continue to communicate and improve. Active leaders can get special permissions and join several communities, allowing community operations to enter a virtuous circle.

3. Allow users to share their knowledge regularly. Knowledge sharing can infinitely magnify the value of the community in the long term. The core idea of ​​this advancement is to place high-quality users in the right group of people, communicate with people at a higher level, and ensure that there are always people from a slightly lower level asking for advice. For example, when we are doing community operations, we pull all the added Kols into a high-quality group and gather all the big guys.

4. Record the user’s current status, such as the skills they have and the skills they are learning, and conduct a visit every once in a while to generate a growth card unique to the user.

Generally, new user communities are extremely active, while old user communities are relatively quiet. Think about how to activate old users. The user advancement mechanism is also the reason why our community invites community operation experts to conduct live broadcasts and sharing in the community every week. The publicity points of the experts in the community let users know that this is a valuable community. The experts invited in the community are becoming more and more powerful, which encourages users to stay in the community for a long time.

5. In community operations, the emergence of big R, the increase in platform revenue, the natural growth of users, and the viral spread of information have allowed a small number of people to become big fish in a small pond, turning them into new connectors.

Share everyone's growth in the community and let everyone participate. At the same time, they can also compare the progress of others and the status of similar groups next door, build an excellent community, and give users a sense of collective honor.

5. Strong Operation and Weak Operation

[The difference between strong operation and weak operation] The core is about who is the operator or the user himself.

[Classify community members according to their contribution and influence on the community]

Original users, interactive users and browsing users.

[Strong operational essence] Operators strive to consume users’ time.

[Strong Operation Concept] By creating a series of topics and activities, members are encouraged and attracted to participate, or a series of strong rules are set for every member to abide by, so as to expand the group of people who contribute content and interact.

Case: "Carbon 9 Academy" learning community: homework submission; peer reading; lesson preparation; regular classes; experience classes and open classes

[Strong Operation Emphasis] Community rules and opinion leaders emphasize the management, topic management and guidance of community operations, and require a large number of community operations personnel to provide services.

[ Factors determining the size of a community ] The number of opinion leaders and mainstream active people; the maximum number of members that the community operation team can take care of.

Strong operations emphasize opinion leaders, but the benefits will gradually flow to the mainstream population, opinion leaders, and even community operation teams and controllers.

【 Cost pressure faced by strong operations】

Search cost: the time required to find the member and remove it.

Emotional cost: the complaints and anger that may arise from members being excluded.

Operating costs: actual costs of maintaining the community, launching various activities, providing services, etc.

Potential loss: If the member is a high-level or active member, removing the member may also affect the activity of the community.

Noise generation: If not removed, it is tantamount to tacitly allowing members to continue breaking the rules, which will lead to more noise generation, and then drive away other members who abide by the rules.

[The essence of weak operation] Let people spend each other's time happily.

Make full use of various characteristics, mechanisms and basic needs, and integrate them into the functional design of the product, allowing users to act spontaneously and seek results spontaneously.

In the context of weak operations, the team manager/community operation creator actually transforms into the designer of advanced mechanisms and the user of driving force.

[Classification method of user roles under weak operation]

Plant: Low-frequency browsing.

Animal: Highly browsed.

Human (people type): produces actions and content.

God (Great God Type): Produces influence.

The user status is not static, but constantly switches between these four states. Just like in an ecosystem, the four states are interdependent and interact with each other.

[The essence of weak operation ] Let people spend each other's time happily.

Make full use of various characteristics, mechanisms and basic needs, and integrate them into the functional design of the product, allowing users to act spontaneously and seek results spontaneously.

In a weak operation context, the team manager/community creator actually becomes the designer of advanced mechanisms and the user of driving force.

【Summarize】

1. The specific community operation strategy is determined based on who is the operator or the user themselves.

2. Opinion leaders need to be emphasized in strong operations, and the number of opinion leaders and mainstream active people also determines the size of the community.

3. Adopt a mechanism operation strategy with the purpose of building a small circle of users, fully exposing content, and fully interacting; adopt a benchmark operation strategy with the purpose of finding typical users and typical content in the community; adopt an atmosphere operation strategy to guide users to "break the ice."

6. Tips for operating a girlfriends circle

[ Three operating skills of "girlfriend circle"]

1. [ Mechanism operation] (the basis for building a small circle of users, fully exposing content, and fully interacting)

Step 1: Segment the user population.

Step 2: Classify the generated content in real time into reading type and discussion type, and allocate different traffic resources for promotion according to different content.

Step 3: Decentralize content. All content has basic exposure traffic. According to the different content attributes, we can make full use of friend relationship chains, segmented populations, etc. to make relevant exposure recommendations, so as to maximize the use of traffic.

2. [ Benchmark operation ] (fully cooperate with mechanism operation)

Find typical users, typical content and typical gameplay in the community, and provide resource recommendations, including commonly understood community "hard" resources such as location, traffic, event display, and "soft" resources such as event incentives, medal achievements, and user advancement.

3. [ Atmosphere Operation ] (Users care whether their friends are in the circle)

Content will help the community build a huge external pool during the diffusion process. Filtering users into various small circles will also guide users to "break the ice". Watching how others play is the fastest way for new users to learn.

7. Inspiring ideas and some extended thoughts

【Inspiring Views】

1. Top topics attract the vast majority of users, attention, traffic and orders. Platforms have a love-hate relationship with the top world: they love it because top applications and topics mean that users have cast their votes for them, and they hate it because the platforms have to work for them without making any real profit.

2. When user benefits far exceed the time and trust costs, the long-term retention and income of the community will be very considerable. But when the community contains less and less valuable information and brings less and less help or pleasure to users, users will gradually become silent and then gradually leave the community.

3. "Community sharing" is a policy of laissez-faire, where users gather together spontaneously; behind the "authority sequence" is the powerful community operation work for the community and fans, emphasizing "operation", "community rules", "opinion leaders", etc. The larger the number of small groups, the smaller their value. When it comes to the "authority sequence", that is, when KOLs dominate community operations, commercial value begins to emerge. These two stages can be seen as "building a community" and "operating a community."

4. In actual community operations, the first thing to do is to identify the target user group. If a large number of inappropriate new users are introduced into the community, it will only backfire. Not only will the new users not receive positive feedback, but it will also cause the loss of old customers.

5. Only by reflecting on yourself in a timely manner, sorting out your own small circle, discovering, deleting and abandoning wrong relationship chains, can you see the "true face" of the world.

【Extended thinking】

1. [Why do we only send links to small groups every time we share them? 】

The underlying principle is that the structure of small circles is more vertical, and the connections between circle members are closer. The probability that users will get the expected psychological feedback by sharing in small circles is much greater than sharing in large circles. Therefore, users are more inclined to share in small circles. Family groups, friend groups, reading groups and good friend groups all have several common characteristics: there are not many people, they know each other and they keep in touch with you frequently. Sharing with close friends and small circles and groups has become a subconscious action for users. We call the phenomenon that people actively share in "small groups", triggering huge social communication and conversion results, the "small group effect".

2. [What is the value of community for most ordinary people? 】

Since ancient times, humans have been social animals and like to live in groups. For most ordinary people, joining a community is to meet certain needs. Users have six demands for groups: asking questions and asking for help, showing off, finding resonance, sharing knowledge and information, managing and storing potential relationships, and commonly recognizing long-term goals and values. Among them, asking and answering questions, sharing knowledge and information, and managing and reserving potential relationships are rational demands; showing off and finding resonance are emotional demands; and commonly recognized long-term goals and values ​​belong to cultural appeal. After analyzing user behavior habits, Tencent product managers found that most people want to join large groups because large groups contain more valuable information. Most users are active in 4 to 6 groups for a long time, which are small groups of less than 20 people consisting of relatives, friends, classmates, colleagues, and close friends. This is the smallest and most solid existence in the community.

3. [How do communities evolve and grow? 】

Commercialization helps the growth of communities. Once a community has generated advertising value, it will not return to its past form, but will continue to grow and eventually stabilize. The constraints of community positioning on the future development of the group/community and the more influential core groups and KOLs within the group promote the leap and growth of the community.

4. What data do you need to analyze if you want to prepare user portraits and target audiences before a project or activity? 】

①Account data (user tags, attributes → user portrait)

② Information data (what information the user has published → the user’s interests, hobbies and attitudes)

③ Relationship data (including data on users’ followers and friends who follow them → how information spreads, from which key nodes the gap is opened, how long it takes to reach which groups)

5. What kind of communities are people willing to stay in? Why do people join communities? 】

Communities can be divided into the following categories based on their members:

① Communities that emphasize relationships can go further, so when we operate the community on a daily basis, we can maintain good relationships with active members in the community, treat users as friends, and share, discuss, learn and operate content on a daily basis.

② Altruistic behavior can help us better operate the community and drive honor behind sharing. Manage and reserve potential relationships. For example, we will attract traffic through mixed target groups, and we can get to know some KOLs while participating in training camps to improve our learning.

③ Douban’s many interest groups bring together all like-minded people with the same interests, which is the use of social tools.

6. [How to operate a good community? 】

We can think about the functionality of the following communities:

Instrumentality: What can communities bring to community operators in various industries? What needs do they meet?

Virality: How to not only get users to join, but also encourage them to bring in their friends, family, classmates and colleagues?

Long connection: When starting activities and monetization courses, how to attract users to join and keep them in the community for a long time? Attract users and their friends to use or buy every day?

7. [How to increase the probability of new user stickiness and conversion? 】

Use new users to enter the community and meet more friends.

Case: Data indicators of the "Laoyuegou" APP show that users can add more than 3 friends and remain active for 6 to 9 months. If the number of friends increases to 7, these people will become hardcore users. Users who do not have 3 friends will quickly leave.

8. What does a company need to do to influence someone’s purchasing decision? 】

The best way to take advantage of the saying "three people make a tiger" is not to rush up to the other party and sell to him directly, but to influence him through his 2-3 friends. If you find friends in a circle and recommend to target customers through them, the conversion efficiency will increase several times or even dozens of times (trust endorsement comes into play).

9. [How to influence other people, and how to influence people around you and even in a wider range? 】

The prerequisite for influencing other people's decisions is to influence the people around him. Telling users that "your friends are here" is not only a reason to attract users to join (instrumentality, filter), but also a tool to attract users to retain and convert for a long time (long connection).

10. [How to clarify user needs through relationship-driven and then summarize and transform them? 】

Chat with users and clarify what kind of "relationships" and "information" they want to obtain, and continuously influence users' decisions through several specific dimensions: what friends are watching, what everyone is watching, what is most popular at the moment, users with the same interests as you are also watching, editors' recommendations, and what you may like.

The above are all the highlights and reading notes of "The Small Group Effect".