Community operation: skills to keep the community active!

Since college, I realized that proactively creating groups is actually a way to proactively construct resources. Including the need to set up groups for work and spontaneous needs, there are a total of about 40 groups of various sizes.

The reason why we want to list the fields involved here is that each group is a small arena, and different situations will bring different results. In order to ensure the rigor of the article, the conclusions and reasoning of the article are summarized from the groups in these fields.

The areas covered by the created groups are as follows: fan groups (football fans and music fans), student groups (international students, clubs, etc.), transaction groups (e-commerce coupons, promotional coupons, etc.), and regional groups (communities, provinces, etc.).

This article mainly analyzes the essential reasons for social interaction and summarizes the common characteristics of group activity and common ways of group death. Of course, each commonality is followed by the measures I have taken and the results.

Out of respect for group members, this article will not involve data analysis of group content (but will provide analysis ideas in the comments) and screenshot results display.

1. Why do we need to socialize?

In ancient times, the formation of tribes was the prototype of social interaction.

With the progress of the times, tribes have disappeared today and have been replaced by one "group chat", "group" and "circle" after another in the virtual world.

These words all describe one thing, that is, a group of people gather together to communicate and do things for one or more common interests (interests can also be benefits).

From an evolutionary perspective, social interaction is beneficial to survival, and the primitive reward for friendship in our brain's reward mechanism also illustrates the same point.

So what does social networking bring us?

I think most social behavior revolves around ego and mutual benefit.

• The self is a kind of cognition, consciousness and image that a human being produces about his or her own individual existence, personality traits and social image.
• Mutual benefit is the exchange of information to increase the probability of survival.

Zhang Xiaolong, the father of WeChat, said in the WeChat Open Class:

“What is the origin of social interaction?

Of course, there is no standard answer to this question, and everyone can imagine it for themselves. This is how I imagine it: Maybe in ancient times, if people were individuals, they would not have any social interactions. When humans became social animals, primitive social interactions arose.

The biggest demand of people in a community is not to be excluded, so people must talk to others.

What can I say?

In fact, it’s just bragging to show that you are valuable to the community. In order to make others take what you say seriously, you must add a little exaggeration. ”

As Zhang Xiaolong said, "don't be excluded" and "have value" just embody "mutual benefit" and "self".

This topic is very profound, but it can be summarized as follows: In social behavior, the first category is self: feeling one's own existence, demonstrating one's own value, pursuing status, love and respect (strengthening oneself); the second category is mutual benefit: conducive to survival.

2. Several Ways of Community Development

• The number of people in the group gradually increases (about 200-300 people), and the activity level increases (development stage)
• The number of group members further increases (500 people), but the group activity decreases instead of increasing (saturation period)
• The number of people in the group remains unchanged and the activity is stable (stable period)
• 4. The number of people in a group remains unchanged, and no active group dies (dry period) 5. The number of people in a group drops sharply, and the group dies (decline period)

3. Common methods of mass death

Before talking about how Qun survived, let’s first talk about how he died to give a deeper impression. Because there are always more dead groups than living ones, they can resonate more with you.

1. Inconsistent interests of target groups

This way of dying is quite interesting, often with both latent and explicit characteristics.

An implicit example is that in a certain new customer acquisition activity, the activity claims that "you can make a lot of money by just moving your fingers", and everyone is still willing to participate in the activity in the early stage when the new customer acquisition bonus is still there, but the cash back is reduced in the later stage. The goal of this group of "wool-pulling parties" is "easy to make money", while the output of the group value is "easy but difficult to make money". The end result was that no one participated in the event, no one spoke, the number of people leaving the group increased, and the group died.

Reflecting on the loss of the group at that time, perhaps the effect would have been better if we could immediately lock in the crowd with new value output instead of simply binding them with money.

An obvious example is a fan group, where two groups of fans with different opinions quarrel and eventually quit the group and split up.

2. Poor management and excessive advertising

This is easy to understand, so I won’t explain it in detail.

3. No value output

The definition of value here is broad and can be new learning points, benefits, or even the simplest social pleasure.

A typical example is the group of international students. At the beginning, everyone is keen to meet fellow countrymen and make new friends. The group also shares some experiences on study abroad visas, accommodation, etc. from time to time. But after school started, due to different majors and very different accommodation locations, there was not much overlap. Gradually, fewer people spoke, and occasionally one or two advertisements came in, which completely laid the foundation for the group's demise.

This phenomenon is a typical example of value drying up. Everyone has no common topics to talk about, everyone is busy with their own lives, and there is no relationship binding them together, so the group naturally cannot survive.

Think about your own family group of distant relatives. Even though there is not much value output and only health tips, your relationship flows in your blood. If you want to quit the group and keep silent, you should give the uncle some face and think about it.

4. Highly substitutable, no unique features

This is easy to understand, so I won’t explain it in detail.

4. Why are some groups still alive?

A living group has the following characteristics: clear goals, unified values, continuous value output, the ability to feel oneself in the group, community thresholds, and community rules.

1. Clear goals and unified values

An example of a group of mothers explains this factor: In the dead group, I mentioned the group that attracted new members whose interests were ultimately not unified, while on the other side there were colleagues who specialized in attracting people by using knowledge as a selling point.

The end result is that this group of mothers, which uses knowledge as its selling point, receives an average of more than 80 messages per day, and the conversion rate is also particularly high. Our management method is to send professional parenting knowledge every day, and at the same time operate a small account to proactively raise those common parenting confusions.

After the habit was formed, the value of this group became answering parenting questions and sharing information. But what is most heartwarming is that there is someone who listens to the troubles that mothers are having in raising children.

Compared with the groups directly tied to money, the interests of this group are not on the same level——

Parenting confusion: knowledge can be said to be infinite and endless in one’s lifetime.

But what about money? It's easy to dissipate. Therefore, at the beginning of creating a group, setting a more "noble" and clear goal may help the community go further.

Even though everyone needs to make a living in the end, knowledge can also be converted into money.

2. Continuous value output

Groups such as football fan groups, music fan groups, and mothers groups can easily achieve continuous value output.

Because among the fans, everyone is concerned about the home team information, game updates and various related news.

Think about how many media professionals are supported by the sports industry. New information will be continuously produced, which also means that there are always hot topics of all sizes to spark group discussions.

Take the NBA as an example. There are basically transactions throughout the entire season. Every rumor and every deal can spark discussion within the group. What about those groups that do not produce obvious new information?

Taking the international student group as an example, we need to carefully identify the purpose of everyone gathering in the group? How does the purpose change at each stage?

Grab these and you'll find the hot spots.

For example, among international students, before enrollment, hot topics include recognizing alumni, visas, accommodation, etc. After entering school, school troubles of all sizes force group members to return to the real world and deal with life. What should we do if the group becomes inactive?

After careful positioning at this time, you can find that the value output of the group should be to communicate about troubles and group members work together. The specific measures are: to increase group members' understanding of the group, "It turns out that there are people here who care about my troubles and who can help me."

This requires the administrator to speak first and then ensure that everyone's concerns are heard.

During the management process, one of the group rules I set is: If you have any troubles or requests for help, please directly chat with the group owner privately, and the group owner will send a message to everyone on your behalf.

3. Feeling like a part of the group

In addition to ensuring that everyone's voice is heard and respected (actively speaking up), more opportunities for speaking up should be provided.

For example, among the group of international students, some are in the field of materials engineering, and some are in the field of finance. Not everyone can say a word or two on all topics, so as a manager, providing a variety of topics and hot spots to give everyone the opportunity to speak is also an important way to help everyone feel more themselves. Interestingly, the topic of being single and finding a partner seems to interest everyone. Either they want to show off, or they want to find a partner to demonstrate their value.

4. There are community thresholds and community rules

The threshold is important because it ensures that the portrait of the crowd is consistent. It is difficult to bring basketball fans and football fans together and expect everyone to have a good chat.

The threshold here is not necessarily how much money you have to pay to join the group. Ultimately, the threshold is a guarantee that everyone’s interests and values ​​are consistent. At the same time, community rules are actually a way to maintain the consistency of portraits.

V. Conclusion

In these small rivers and lakes, I saw different lives and many interesting phenomena.

For example, in a successful moms’ group, everyone said in a conversation that they did not want to leave the group because there was Aunt Zhao (an ordinary user who gave very professional answers) in the group.

This phenomenon shows that when there is a high-value resource in your community that is hard to come by in daily life, you are reluctant to leave the group even if no one speaks in the group anymore. Because the cost of keeping the swarm is small, but the cost of losing a potentially high-value resource is high. But no matter how you run a community, the most important thing is for each individual to be honest with each other.

Author: Wymund

Source: Wymund