How to build a community from scratch?

The benefits of Internet traffic are gradually disappearing. Both individuals and enterprises are seeking low-cost and high-conversion operation models, so private domain traffic came into being, among which communities are also the most common form of private domain traffic. If you have no experience, how can you build a community from scratch?

1. A few questions to think about before creating a group

1. What is the purpose of creating a group?

The purpose of forming a community is different, so the type of community is different.

There are event-based activity groups, temporary work groups, interest-based industry exchange groups, resource exchange groups, etc. Event-driven is not as good as interest-driven, and the levels of activity in the two types of communities are also different.

Creating a group must be to meet certain needs. Before creating a group, you should first think clearly about why you want to create the group. It is important to think clearly.

2. Who are the target users?

After thinking clearly about the purpose of creating the group, think clearly about who will join the group.

Why these people? What do these people have in common? How and where to find these people?

For example, someone wants to switch careers and do community operations , but has no previous experience. Recently, he has been thinking about setting up a group to test the waters and accumulate experience in advance.

Based on this background, you can start with what you know:

• Start from your interests. If you like playing badminton, you can create a badminton group. Badminton can only be played offline, so the target users must at least be interested in badminton and be geographically located within the same area.
• Start from professionalism. If your position is finance, then you can create a finance group. The target users should at least have financial experience or be interested in finance. Other conditions, such as industry, job level, etc., can be further refined based on the purpose.

Here is the key point: target users have at least three common attributes. If you want to build a high-quality and highly active community, the members themselves should also have a sharing spirit.

In the book "The Small Group Effect", the concept of "three close and one opposite" was proposed for the attributes of community members.

• 3. Close: ① Geographical proximity ② Similar interests ③ Similar age
• 1 Anti: refers to two parties that help each other but also have conflicts and collaborations

That is, the community members should be as close geographically as possible, have similar interests and ages, and have social relationships such as supply and demand or gender differences that allow for conflict and collaboration among members.

Through previous observations of some active groups, I found that active communities all have one thing in common: there are so-called Party A and Party B or upstream and downstream relationships at work within the group.

"One reaction" is very important. Many community managers focus on bringing similar people together but neglect "one reaction", resulting in insufficient vitality of the community in the later stage.

It is not acceptable for a job-seeking group to consist entirely of job seekers. Everyone's questions are similar, everyone is asking questions, but no one is answering them. There must be employers such as interviewers, HR, headhunters, and leaders in the group so that there will be collisions of topics, communication within the group, and growth in the dialogue.

So how should the “three nears and one opposite” be applied?

Taking the badminton group as an example, the community members are geographically locked in the community or the neighboring community, their interest is badminton, their age is 25-35, their gender is reversed, and they must pay attention to the balanced ratio of men to women.

The finance group can be locked in the region of Beijing, interest as finance, age 20-30, and work experience as the opposite. Of course, when facing a real group creation scenario, the attributes can be freely adjusted according to the purpose of group creation.

3. What can you provide to users?

Ask yourself from the user's perspective: "There are so many groups on the market, why should I join your group?"

Geng Xinyue, vice president of technology at Douban.com, summarized the user demand model from the perspective of user behavior characteristics.

When thinking about the value of a community, you can design and package it according to the above user needs to attract users to join.

You also need to understand your users.

Previously in "How to understand the real needs of users? 》 mentioned that we can understand users by understanding their daily life. You can also follow the user’s circle of friends to see where their eyes are focused.

What do they focus on every day? Where is the information source? Which public accounts do you follow?

There is also a form of focus group interview, which is to communicate with users face to face to obtain information that is not in the database and cannot be collected through questionnaire surveys. Direct conversations with users always lead to unexpected discoveries.

4. From which channel?

1. Own channels: APP, public account, TikTok, Kuaishou, etc.
2. Other channels: Guangdiantong advertising, cross-industry cooperation, etc.
3. Word-of-mouth introduction: Users think it is good and actively recommend it to their relatives and friends.

There is also another form that is very similar to word-of-mouth recommendation, which is called the virality of product functions. The two are slightly similar. If I talk about NetEase Cloud Music's annual report, everyone will understand.

NetEase Cloud’s annual report is always on the WeChat Moments screen at the end of every year. This seems to be a spontaneous action by users, but the actual reason is the virality of the product’s functions. Taking advantage of users' desire to show off, this function is designed to guide users to forward, thereby achieving the purpose of promotion.

Similar viral functions include Alipay’s annual report, QQ Music’s lyrics poster, and WeChat’s reading days.

2. Think clearly and start preparing to build a group

After saying so much, we can finally create a group. I can’t wait to try it out, but I still have to pay attention to a few details.

1. What is the path for users to join the group?

In my previous article “Low-Cost Social Media Traffic Generation Techniques to Grow 500 People Per Week”, I broke down the user’s path to joining a group, trying to understand each step from the user’s perspective and then optimize it.

When designing a path to join a group, the first thing to consider is: 1. Whether users can understand it; 2. Whether the path is clear enough.

Never underestimate user laziness.

We have all heard of the funnel model, which is often used to show user churn. Countless experiences of our predecessors tell us that the longer the path, the higher the attrition rate , and the path to enter the group should be as short as possible.

Here is a small question: Why can’t more than one QR code be placed on one mobile phone screen?

Think about it yourself first, and if you know the answer, hold back and don’t say it.

The answer is: when using WeChat image recognition QR code, only one can be scanned. If the scanned picture is exactly what the user does not want, the user may find it troublesome to crop the picture and scan the code again, so he or she may give up scanning the code. In this case, the user will not be able to participate and will be lost.

When designing operational activities, no details can be missed.

2. Guidance before joining the group

Tell users clearly who you are? What can you offer him? What can he do? What can't he do?

Users must be made aware of what they can and cannot do, so that they will not be confused after joining the group and it will also be easier to manage in the future.

If it is a highly operated group such as an enterprise, the community rules are more important and must be made clear before joining the group. If a user crosses the red line in the future, you can take a screenshot to save your life and put yourself on high ground.

3. Welcome ceremony after joining the group

The most common one is the one shown in the picture below, which reminds you to change the remarks and introduce yourself.

Many communities make their welcome ceremonies a bit formal. The most essential purpose of self-introduction is to enable group members to get to know each other and establish connections.

If you don't follow the "three closes and one opposite" principle to bring people from the same circle together when you create a group, it won't be of much use even if you introduce yourself because no value is created between each other.

Although the welcome ceremony has been overused, the sense of ceremony prepared for new members after they join the group is still very important. It’s a bit like the ice-breaking ceremony organized by the company after new employees join the company to help them integrate quickly.

A common welcome ceremony, such as guiding old group members to line up to welcome new group members after they introduce themselves. The group owner can also introduce the members by bringing up a topic and tagging a few relevant group members to get to know them. This will help the new members integrate.

You should have an idea in your mind after reading this. It turns out that it takes so much effort to operate a high-quality community.

3. Seize the golden time after creating a group

The time it takes for people to make a first impression on each other is 30 seconds, but between people and groups, I define it as 24 hours after joining the group.

(1) The golden 24 hours after joining the group

When inviting users to join the group, the time must be chosen one day before a (regularly organized) community activity.

If there is no activity, we will organize some micro activities in the group 2 days in advance to activate the community in advance. After new members join the group, we will try every means to give them the feeling (illusion) that the community is worth staying in.

(2) The golden 7 days after joining the group (30 days)

The 7 days (30 days) after joining the group are also important.

In order to ensure the long-term activity of the community, some community activities need to be organized regularly. For example, weekly online topic discussions and monthly live broadcasts/open classes on themes. I have planned both forms, and they are both valuable for the activeness of the community.

In conclusion: when a community is first established, it is important to control the number and quality of group members.

"Lean Data Analysis" mentioned the three major engines that drive the growth of startups, namely sticky growth, viral growth and paid growth engines.

Extended to the social community, it means first ensuring that the service products are in line with the users, then increasing traffic and growth, and finally finding a model and scaling up.

I have seen many communities where a lot of people flocked in within a short period of time, but they died in less than 3 days.

I didn't think it through when I created the group and I created it in a hurry. As a result, there was no interactive environment in the group and everyone just watched and didn't speak. Those who occasionally speak may just post small advertisements, and the group will gradually die out.

Author: Tomato

Source: Tomato