How to build a good community? 6 must-read thoughts!

As the growth rate of offline channels and e-commerce channels slows down, everyone says that the future will be a traffic "war" between communities , but do you know how to operate a community well? The 6 thoughts about community in this article may give you some ideas.

A community is like a product. The life of a community begins from the moment it establishes a rules framework and invites users to join. It survives in the alternating operation of daily content and activities. It prospers when community members gain value and thus help the community to operate independently. It declines when the monetization conversion rate gradually decreases and the community is unable to make ends meet. It dies when the only options left are advertising or leaving the community.

According to relevant statistics, most communities cannot reach the stage of self-operation, let alone monetization. Less than 8% of communities can truly monetize. I have also participated in the operation of communities that have influenced more than 10,000 people.

I have experienced two failures in community building, so I have been thinking about “how can I best build a good community?” After observing my own active communities, I found that they all have precise positioning, division of labor and collaborative operation models, clear user group structures, and can even be converted to offline.

After breaking down the logic behind these communities and consulting with individual operators, I finally dared to write down these 6 thoughts about the communities, because the people who can write them down truly understand them, and the people who can put them into practice are the best. I hope this can inspire you and encourage you to put them into practice.

1. What is a community?

A community is a chain of relationships, which means that there is a certain relationship between a group, whether it is a blood relationship, campus relationship, workplace relationship, interest partnership, or a relationship of mutual benefit. This relationship supports everyone to identify with this group, be willing to socialize within this group, and be willing to do things together.

Even when there was no Internet , this kind of relationship chain at the bottom of the community existed. Families are related by blood, companies are based on contractual relationships in the workplace, classmates are based on campus relationships, and swimming and fitness classes are social relationships based on interests.

In other words, communities have existed since ancient times, but after the popularization of social communication tools such as WeChat and QQ, and community operation tools such as Planet and Qianliao , community relationship chains have become more easily visible to people, and weak relationship chains have become easier to establish. Communities then became popular in 2016.

If I have to give a concept to the community, the concept I agree with is:

“A community is a group of people doing something together.”

For example, there is a very popular article recently, which is "3 months, 700 paying users , 1,000 UGC operation cases, how did they do it?" This article is written about a paid community . I am also a paying member of it, so I know that everyone in this community is actually doing one thing: finding the best cases in the market that are worth repeated study, and then studying them.

For example, members of the "Qiuye PPT" community all want to "learn PPT together and not embarrass themselves when reporting in the workplace"; members of the "Books" community all "keep reading every day."

Finally, you might as well try to see if those “high-quality communities” in your eyes are all doing the same thing? A group that is created on the spur of the moment for "resource cooperation" probably won't last more than two weeks, because it's just a WeChat group and doesn't have a common, clear purpose. Resource cooperation is a particularly vague goal, and the information gap and disparity are too great.

So when you are building a community, you need to think carefully about what you want to do with the community members?

2. Why do you want to build a community?

Although communities are said to be on the verge of an explosion, e-commerce and traditional offline channels are still the main players in terms of channels. Competition between communities is mostly fierce in the fields of knowledge payment , WeChat business, Taobao Affiliate Program, etc.

So before you build a community, you should think about whether your products and services are suitable for building a community. Why do you want to build a community?

Let’s first look at the advantages of communities compared to other channels and what a good community can bring us?

In the past, traffic for most products came from external sources, such as Baidu search , Toutiao’s information flow ads , and Tencent’s social marketing ads. The users of these platforms are large and comprehensive, not accurate enough, and many users leave after using them, making it difficult for you to establish further relationships with them.

For Internet companies, traffic equals revenue, this is absolutely true. Thanks to the huge traffic of QQ and WeChat, Tencent has expanded into many areas, and even if it cannot swallow some of the new products, it can still purchase enough equity at a preferential price by exchanging volume .

However, it is difficult for Internet companies' short-term projects and traditional service providers to have traffic. They have to constantly place advertisements in Internet companies and offline supermarkets, subways, and communities. This approach is changing with the emergence of the concept of community. Every company wants to be able to connect with its own users, and every freelancer hopes to become an influential IP.

In the absence of high-frequency scenarios, communities are the lowest-cost way to gather users. They are also very low-cost for users. Even if they do not join your community, they at least have the WeChat APP. As long as you can provide corresponding services, solve some of their pain points, and do something related to your own field with users, communities will come into being.

Here is an example: On a platform like Everyone is a PM, there will be an author group, maybe a WeChat group or a QQ group. In this group, everyone "writes articles on product operations and marketing, and strives to publish them on these platforms." The platform will give the authors certain benefits.

On the surface, author communities are where everyone encourages each other and competes in writing articles. There are potential opportunities for work, publishing books, and participating in offline activities . But from the perspective of the platform, why should we establish author groups if everyone is a PM?

All platforms have corresponding courses to monetize, and free articles to attract traffic and establish brand image. Generally speaking, content is the basis for attracting traffic to these websites or apps. The content of the website is relatively vertical and professional, and the output of these articles is generally relatively low.

As a platform, how do we motivate authors to continue writing? How to obtain the right to publish an article in the shortest possible time? How to establish a deeper connection with the author? How to expand the scope around the author?

The basis of all this is that authors continuously publish articles on the platform. The platform gets to know and screen authors through the articles. When the supply of articles on the platform changes or there is a huge shortage of articles in a certain category, the platform can also find authors in time to cooperate in producing manuscripts.

Therefore, the author group is the basis for the normal operation of the platform content. They establish links with the authors, provide benefits to the authors, encourage the authors to produce content, and lay a solid content foundation for the platform, thereby monetizing the traffic brought by the content.

When you are creating a community, have you thought about why it is for? What benefits does it bring to yourself? Can this interest point be combined with the interests of users, so that users can benefit first and then consider one's own interests?

3. How do you position your community?

The common categories of communities are product-based, education-based, service-based, connection-based, learning-based, value-based, and interest-based communities. Some of the corresponding ones include the Knowledge Circle Test Group, Gravity Member Group, Douyin Official Community, Beijing HR Talent Exchange Group, Ten O'clock Reading Club, Illustration Club, etc.

If you want to build a community, how should you position yourself?

In order to identify the type of community, we must first understand that "community is about everyone doing something together", rather than you or your company asking users to do something. If the user himself does not need to do this thing, no matter how many red envelopes you give, it will be of no use.

So first you have to think about what users need? What do you want to achieve?

For example, if you are in the health field, can you work with your users to "run every day"? For knowledge training, you can have users "read a little bit of book every day"; for skill training classes, such as art studios, you can work with students to "draw a simple sketch every day".

If the competition in your field is fierce, it will be difficult to ask users to pay directly because there is no trust. The community is a tool to build trust and strengthen relationships bit by bit. As everyone does a common thing, trust between you and users is established.

So how to position the community depends on what field your product belongs to, what people in this field care about, especially what they have always wanted to do but couldn't stick to, such as universal ones like running, reading, writing, singing, etc., or vertical ones like memorizing 10 words, memorizing 1 financial knowledge, etc.

4. How to acquire customers accurately?

If you understand the above three considerations and have positioned the community according to your own situation, the next step is to design rules and deliver copy to find target users as much as possible.

After positioning the community, you should know what to do with community members, but this is not enough. I believe that no one is perfect. Since most people cannot persist in completing a task, why do you have the confidence that you can do it well and set an example for everyone else?

Next, you need to make a plan to achieve the community's goals, help future community members to achieve their goals, and build trust. After completing this plan, you can then design the community rules and structure. All of these things must be done before inviting people to join the group.

The community must have an entry threshold, such as paying to join the group, real-name verification to join the group, etc. If you just put a QR code to create a group, the group will most likely go silent quickly. Of course, those big guys who come with their own buffs are excluded. They have influence themselves, and users are extremely enthusiastic about them and what they do. As long as they appear in the group from time to time, the group will still be active.

Since the big guys come with their own buffs, when we build a community, it is best to first invite a wave of KOLs to join, and then use their endorsements combined with the entry threshold to attract and screen users. After users enter the group, they must have a sense of ritual of meeting each other too late, and they must be informed of the group rules and how to play in a timely manner.

When a disharmonious incident occurs, those mentioned in the group rules should be handled according to the rules. Those not mentioned should be handled through emergency discussions, and the group rules should be supplemented in a timely manner. In addition, the group's structure should be established in a timely manner, and both external volunteers and internal departmental resource support should be coordinated and divided into different parts in an orderly manner.

When the group is running properly, you can open up an internal invitation system to allow members who recognize the community to invite their friends. The invitees must endorse the community and represent their own values. In this way, the community will expand on the right track and become more and more influential.

5. How to continuously operate the community well?

A community is also a product and needs to be operated in terms of content, users, activities, etc.

Content operation mainly focuses on outputting valuable content based on the positioning of the community. If you want to continuously output content, you must have sufficient content sources. Before establishing the community, you must collect channels for content sources and understand how to find relevant content more quickly.

Planning content source channels in advance can reduce operating time costs and provide valuable content to community users in a timely and continuous manner. Everyone can see the persistence and timeliness of this. The form of content does not need to be limited to the field in which it is selected.

You need to have sufficient understanding of the users in the community. If it is on WeChat, it is best to add a friend and regularly chat privately with highly representative users to discover the satisfaction of needs and the feasibility of new needs incubated, increase user stickiness, and cultivate opinion leaders in the area.

At the same time, users can be labeled and noted from many aspects such as their expertise in the field and their activity level. WeChat's label notes are quite useful. As long as you work hard to lead users to fulfill their pre-promises, trust will gradually be established, preparing for future monetization.

In order to better meet the needs of users in the group, we need to understand why users join your community? Why are you active in your group? In addition to work, users also have lives, and communities are just simple social activities outside of the two. There are so many communities, why should you only be active in your group?

In my opinion, there are three reasons:

1. Consistent values. You can find fun that you can't find in real life in the group, just like playing games , it is easy to satisfy users' certain value needs. This is why groups with many beautiful women are generally very active, because everyone loves beauty, and it is naturally great to be able to communicate more with beautiful women. This is the same as the essence of live broadcast platforms .
2. There is a lot of valuable knowledge in the group, which is very practical. I feel like my status in the industry has improved suddenly by being in the group, and I have really learned a lot.
3. There are many potential opportunities in the group , but users have not yet found the right linking opportunities.

In terms of activities, when you first announce the rules of the community, you can agree on a simple, easy-to-execute small activity within the group, so that users know what will happen in the group at a certain moment. Of course, if conditions permit, you can be generous with rewards and reward users who contribute more.

In addition to online activities, offline activities can also be organized according to the situation. They can also be organized by KOLs in the group and the official will provide resource support.

With such an operational strategy that adheres to the three aspects of content, users, and activities, do you still have to worry about not being able to operate a community well?

The purpose of operating a community well is to monetize it, so how can we monetize it with the help of the community? Community monetization is divided into direct monetization and indirect monetization.

Direct monetization: charging for joining the group. There are often many scammers in this model. They find many agents to create the impression that the group has a large number of members and powerful resources. In the end, they are all used to defraud the group membership fee. Everyone just needs to be vigilant about this.

When we are running a paid community ourselves, we must make users feel that they are getting value for money, and there must be a strong sense of trust outside the community, so most communities cannot do this.

Indirect monetization: It is to connect products, such as Qiuye PPT’s courses, the wine sold by Wu Xiaobo’s channel, the books sold by Shidian Reading, etc.

I think there is actually a trigger formula for purchasing:

Purchase = trust + need + ability to pay + sense of urgency + cost-effectiveness + convenience

The operation of the community builds trust, the precise positioning makes users feel the needs in your field, and then a sense of urgency is created through purchase restrictions. The pricing is great value for money, and purchasing and receiving services are extremely convenient. Under such circumstances, won’t users with the ability to pay buy it?

So when you do it step by step, monetization is waiting for you ahead.

6. What is the core point of community operation ?

Having said so much, you may also be wondering: What is the core of community operation? It’s just right that we summarize it at the end, which can also be regarded as the last thought. I hope these 6 thoughts will be helpful to you.

In essence, whether a community can be established successfully depends on your insight into users and your experience in your field. If users don’t care about what you want to do with them, the community cannot be established successfully from the beginning.

Secondly, there must be a screening threshold to keep out users who do not meet the community's positioning and prevent advertising parties from infiltrating the community; the rules of the community must also be promulgated and adjusted in a timely manner and implemented according to the rules. There is no order without rules, and the community must not be in chaos.

The initial community goals must provide timely progress feedback, take appropriate measures to motivate users, and truly provide value to users. It is also important to think clearly about what the community can bring to you and the company. After all, everyone is profit-seeking.

Finally, when you recommend products and services, you must weigh the pros and cons. It is best to recommend what users really need. It is important to find the right balance between interests and emotions.

7. What does a good community look like in my opinion?

The above has said a lot about how to build a good community. If we ourselves have no impression of a good community and don’t know what kind of community is considered well-operated, then it will be difficult for us to even set the community’s operating goals.

I think a good community has three common characteristics:

1. The positioning of a community must be consistent with its own atmosphere. It is best for you to feel proud in this community, even if it is just to satisfy your vanity of showing off. Spiritual recognition is the ultimate motivation for participating in the community.
2. The content is highly convincing and recognized in their field, just like the courses produced by the Qiuye team have received rave reviews.
3. A good community must be full of creativity, leading users to achieve planned goals while having fun, making users feel that the community is extremely attractive.

Well, having written here, I have finished my 6 thoughts about community. I hope it can inspire you.

The author of this article @王亮 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games