Summary of practical experience in 3 steps of community operation!

A while ago, a friend of mine just started a business in Beijing and asked me if there were any operating communities in Beijing that he could join. But there aren’t too many regional communities, so I discussed with my friends and decided that we should build our own operating community in Beijing. In this way, vertical communities with regions as the core can be established to facilitate people with the same frequency to strengthen connections, and offline exchange meetings can be established in the future to further strengthen connections and communication among everyone.

So, we immediately thought about a point:

1) What is the community positioning? What is the difference from other communities?

2) Based on our positioning, what kind of value can we bring to everyone?

These two questions are the main ones we think about. Positioning is to let all community members understand what our group does and why we are gathered together. The value that the community can provide is a core key point for a community to remain active for a long time and maintain user attention.

If a community loses its own value, it can easily become a simple chat group. Once it becomes a chat group, if the people in the group do not have deep connections, it is basically not far from death. It has basically reached the decline period of a product's life cycle, and the group needs to be migrated and its value reshaped.

1. Market Research

Before determining the positioning, we found some currently well-run communities and analyzed and studied them to see what enabled them to remain active. I found two groups as research objects to study the different structures between communities.

A community was established a long time ago, but it remains active. There are people chatting in the group every day. It’s not just a simple chat. Sometimes I am inspired by business-related things, and sometimes I enjoy eating gossip about the Internet. (It is human nature to eat melons, and curiosity cannot be concealed)

In my opinion, this group no longer exists simply as a group, but a community with Internet/operation as keywords, and a community atmosphere has been formed (the highest level of community operation ). And some active users, as maintainers of community order, will find some topics to trigger discussions and maintain the atmosphere of the community. However, the replicability of this type of group is very low, and it takes time to gradually cultivate this community atmosphere. It is not something that ordinary people can create.

The other group, as a representative of strong operations, is also very interesting. Originally, this group had no value, but with the strong management of another group owner, the group was reactivated, allowing more people to discover the value of the community and gradually maintain their attention to the group.

How did the group leader do this? One is to find clues to solutions for group members’ problems. Some problems may not be solved by her, but she is very familiar with the strengths and resources of group members and can find clues to solutions for group members. The second is to output valuable and opinionated content in the group, which includes the output of opinions and practical information. In her words, out of the 10 hours a day, perhaps 8 hours are spent in this group.

Community operation is really a heavy operation job that requires a lot of time and energy. If time and energy do not permit, it is recommended not to try it lightly.

Therefore, my friend and I finally chose the second operation model, which is a strong operation model. We determined several columns of the community and continuously output operations, so that the community can continue to be active and attract attention.

2. Determine positioning and value

In the previous process, we found objects that could be imitated through market research, and also roughly determined the prototype of the community and its future direction.

At this stage, we need to find the unique positioning and value of the community. Therefore, through discussions with friends, we finally determined the positioning of the community as: Beijing operation exchange. Based on this positioning, we determined the columns that can be developed in the future:

1) Offline communication activities on operational topics

2) Online case sharing and analysis

3) Job search and recruitment

Offline activities and job hunting and recruitment require time to prepare, so they are not included as regular operating columns. Therefore, we made case analysis and sharing a regular operation column of the community. On this basis, we also extended the operation topic interaction and daily morning news columns.

The daily morning news is designed to keep everyone paying attention to the community, and it is also a way to increase familiarity among everyone. The operation of topic interaction is to enhance the interaction between community members, while at the same time it does not violate the community's positioning. Everyone expresses their views and opinions around a topic, sparking sparks of thought. Case sharing and analysis is a column that continuously outputs community value. At the same time, some cases can trigger everyone's thinking and interaction, allowing everyone to find a point of community value. After all, there is a planet that specializes in case analysis, and everyone is willing to pay to join, which shows that this demand is real and strong. If it is done well, a lot of valuable things can be left behind and continued to be disseminated.

3. Community Building and Activation

After determining the community's positioning and basic columns, the next two most critical stages come: community establishment and activation.

It is not difficult to create a group, but the difficult part is to keep the community running continuously. The key to its continued operation is to activate the community and output its value within about a week.

When they first join a group, many people will remain curious about the group, many people will watch quietly, and some people will just hang out in the group. However, if value output is not done well in the early stages, the community will easily die.

The method of establishing the group this time is to post the community QR code in the circle of friends. Anyone can scan the code to enter the community. Although this method is fast, it also has some disadvantages: the personnel structure of the community is unclear, and it is easy for some advertising personnel to sneak in and disrupt the order of the community.

Therefore, it is recommended that friends who want to create a community in the future, if resources and time permit, adopt the model of using Moments advertising to join the group (introducing the value points of the community and requiring invitations to join the group) + targeted invitations to join the group. By adopting this model, we can fully guarantee the personnel structure in the early stage and ensure that the community will not be invaded by some advertising parties.

The composition of a stable, active, and high-quality group that has been widely circulated before emphasizes the stability of the group member structure.

When creating a group, you can also start from the structure of the community members so that the community can maintain a good, active and stable relationship from the beginning.

After the group is created, the next step is to activate the community for 7 days to quickly break the ice and establish a good and active interactive relationship.

In fact, after the group is established, it is operated according to the original established columns. We also find that it is difficult for everyone to participate in the interaction, which is actually quite frustrating.

During this process, my friend and I also found some familiar friends in the community to conduct research. The purpose of the research was twofold: one was under what circumstances would they speak in the group, and the other was whether they were still paying attention to the group.

In the process of investigating group members, we found that most people actually just pay attention to the messages within the group silently. As for when they would speak up, everyone’s unanimous answer was that they would speak up on topics that they were interested in and that they could speak about.

However, this survey also allows us to better understand the positioning and value output points of the group. Many people pay great attention to case sharing, which can be regarded as the core value point of the community. Secondly, some topics may be too closed or profound, making it difficult for many people to participate in the topic.

In the following operation process, the topic of our community may be mainly "operators' gossip", which is related to the positioning of the community and allows everyone to participate and express their opinions and views. After all, eating melons is human nature.

3. A few conclusions about community operations

The previous part recorded the whole process from thinking about creating a group to finally creating and operating the group. Here I would like to share some of my own conclusions! Everyone is welcome to leave a message in the comment section and express your opinions.

1) Community positioning: Our group is determined to be an operation and communication group.

Of course, many communication groups may eventually become chat groups. The groups lose their sense of value and slowly die! Therefore, within this positioning, we have identified an important link, daily case sharing, analyzing some interesting cases on the Internet! This will increase the value of the group and prevent it from becoming a meaningless water group.

When you first create a group, you must think about what value you can bring to the group. Only by benefiting others first can you retain users.

2) Community building

In fact, it is not difficult to create a group. What is difficult is to keep the community active and produce value.

When a group is first created, many people will join the group to watch out of curiosity and to join in the fun, but many people don’t talk much at this time.

Therefore, the first week of a group is critical. Strong operations are needed to stimulate user activity and make users perceive value. The group owner shares useful information and group members are encouraged to follow up. At this time, you need to find those more active users in the group, enhance relationships and understanding with them, so that they can continue to be active in the community in the future.

3) Active community

Of course, it is impossible to rely on group members to keep the group active, and it is easy to go astray and turn it into a meaningless chat group, thus losing its value.

Therefore, at this time, the group owner needs to operate strongly, share section operations, and produce content. We have currently identified three sections: morning news + good article sharing in the morning, interaction on hot topics in the afternoon, which requires strong guidance to operations and Internet-related content areas, and case sharing in the evening. Case sharing is the product of the group and can be organized into documents for subsequent community endorsement.

The above is my recent summary of community practice!

Finally, I'll tell you how I feel:

1. Community operation is hard work. It really takes time and energy to keep the group active and output content and value. If you can’t, think again before you act!

2. Only by doing more practical operations can you have more ideas and sparks, run MVP and AB testing experiments, find the most optimized method, and form your own methodology.

Author: Wang Ting

Source: Operation Wang's Growth Diary