My thoughts on the community

From BBS 14 made in 2004 to Aauto now, it's really related to the community and I really like it.

After killing several communities, I dare not touch this thing again, knowing that I am not capable enough. Throughout the industry, a lot of communities have died in the past decade, and only a few are struggling to survive. Zhihu's small red bean paste has also been commercialized, otherwise it will not be successful. It's really hard.

At present, the communities that are doing better are Weibo and Aauto. Before reaching this conclusion, there is a question whether these two products are considered as communities, or what is a community.

Ten years ago, I thought the community was a BBS forum. At that time, the popular concepts were called web2.0 and SNS. With the development of Internet industry, the definition of community has a new interpretation, which is more extensive from the perspective of product form.

The product form that can precipitate social relations with a certain medium is the generalized community.

The media here can be short videos, such as Weibo A Auto Fast; It can also be the act of hitting on people, such as Mo Mo.

The social relationship here can be acquaintances, such as friends circle, or strangers, such as strangers.

I think the ultimate form of Internet community is to move offline cities and countries online, and truly make it a platform with strong inclusiveness and diversity and social elements. From the human level, there are individuals from all walks of life and groups of individuals who keep in touch with each other; From the platform, there is a relatively perfect infrastructure construction, which can carry people and groups.

For example, Beijing is a city with good inclusiveness, strong diversity and perfect infrastructure construction. IT migrant workers like me gather in the north, in the West Second Banner of Zhongguancun; Practitioners like Wenchuang Finance are mostly in the East, Chaoyangmen International Trade and the like. No matter what industry or class you are in, you can find your place in Beijing.

As far as the "infrastructure" of the community is concerned, Beijing is a very good and safe city, which is the most basic element of the community. Then there are many "functions" to carry social activities, such as parks, shopping malls, restaurants, bars, KTV gyms and so on.

In addition, there is the economic system, and so on. The topic of community vs city is very long, so let's stop here. Don't discuss the quality of Beijing, take this as an example.

I read the book "The Art of Community Operation" these two days and strongly recommend it. I just read and think about what a community is and how it operates. Use the time of this book to break, iterate and reorganize my previous understanding of the community.

I am thinking, to focus on the core and the source, what is the most important thing to do a good job in the community?

The conclusion of thinking is that the core of doing a good job in the community is to establish the sense of belonging of users. A sense of belonging will bring user loyalty and stickiness, which is the core competitiveness of an excellent community.

The concept of ownership is relatively empty and can be disassembled into the following things:

1. Mission, vision and values of the community

2. A safe and credible community environment

3. Social capital is generated among users.

4. Have a story of your own community.

We said one by one:

1. community mission, vision and values

This was formulated by the founder of the company and implemented from top to bottom. It should be implemented in all aspects of the company, not only products, but also corporate culture.

Just give an example. The following is a passage from Cheng, the founder of Aauto FMCG, in the media:

Why the company Aauto exists faster is because it wants to connect with the most neglected people in society. Aauto Quicker does not exist for stars or big V, but for the most common users. Inclusiveness is a very important reason. The fundamental logic of Pratt & Whitney is that we think everyone deserves to be recorded. Not only the lives of stars and big V need to be recorded, but also the lives of ordinary people.

We hope that users can feel happy on Aauto faster. How to understand happiness? A user pays attention to an interesting person, or understands something or truth, grows up through understanding, or gets a buzz, which increases the user's happiness.

This passage is the values of the community of A Auto Fast, which is fair and inclusive. This is not just talk, but also in all aspects of the product. For example, there is no popularity list and user list in A Auto Fast, and every work has the opportunity to be exposed in A Auto Fast. This is a truly decentralized community product.

When making this product, the whole company is observing and believing in this value, which makes the community have its own soul and is also the strategic fulcrum of this community product.

The culture and tonality of the community, like a person's temperament, are internal things and spiritual strength, which is very important. This is determined by the mission vision value and is initially preset.

Looking back on the rise and fall of Douban for more than ten years, I have experienced so much, but the temperament of Wen Qing has never changed; Weibo is also a comprehensive community of media attributes, but the key direction is from big V to short video, and then to vertical network celebrities; Although Zhihu is getting smarter, it doesn't affect his knowledge community positioning, or you are embarrassed to post because you don't write much.

These sources are the values of the community, just like when a person is young, it determines what kind of person he will become when he grows up.

2. A safe and credible community environment

This is a basic work that the community must do. It's not a bonus, but it's enough to kill you. There are two meanings, the first is to be safe, the community should exist safely, and the personal information of users should be safe and not leaked.

There are still many cases in which communities have been shut down because of violations, so I won't give you an example. The blow is fatal, so follow the rules.

How serious is the problem of personal information security? Just look at Facebook and I won't say much. This will make you lose the trust of users. Without trust, the community is scattered.

Therefore, the security of the community, like the urban security mentioned above, may not be a bright spot, but it will be a necessary condition.

Secondly, we should manage the community well, maintain order, reward the excellent and punish the bad. A person in charge in Zhihu has an interesting metaphor. She said: I regard users as my first love, and users regard me as property.

What needs to be done to specifically govern the community, citing an example of the person in charge, Zhihu:

This kind of work, when the community is small, ordinary community operators can work part-time, relying on the authoritative image and influence of operators. No matter how serious the matter is, as long as the operator comes forward to say something, he has to give face, a bit like a "boss."

However, if the number of users is large, there will be an independent team responsible for it. This management method of relying on the boss's words will not work, and it will depend on the rules. Operators are the makers and executors of this rule, more like judges and police.

3. Social capital is generated among users.

What is social capital? In human terms, it is a general term for positive interaction between people, which is embodied in the forms of credibility, authority and moral norms.

The logic is that the interaction between users will precipitate social relations and produce social capital. The more social capital is generated, the stronger the sense of belonging to the community.

You can understand that the more energy or material resources you put into this matter, the more you will care about it until you can't extricate yourself. To be a community is to hope that users will pay more in the community, so that they will have a sense of belonging and stickiness.

Give an example of a game.

The boy met a girl in the game and promised to take her to make a copy at ten o'clock in the evening. The girls were very happy and praised the boys as "nice".

At this time, the boy made a promise to the girl in the game. In order to maintain his personal reputation, he must go online on time at night to ensure his authoritative image in the game and abide by the moral principle of "keeping his word" that he follows in the real society.

Boys will generate social capital in the game, and his investment in the game will be deeper and his sense of belonging will be stronger, so boys will be more likely to pay in the game.

Give another example of Weibo.

Weibo wants users to pay more attention to big V like Zhang Dayi and less attention to stars like Dilraba.

Because there are not many stars in the head, they can only suck especially loyal powder, and Weibo has poor control over the stars. What and when a star sends it depends mainly on his own situation.

Big v is different. First of all, it is of great magnitude, and the content output and activity are also great. It is more willing to cooperate with Weibo officials and will rack its brains to serve its fans. In this process, the fans of Big V will generate social capital, and their dependence on Weibo will be higher, which the stars can't give.

After deeply cultivating the vertical category, the DAU and cash flow in Weibo have increased, because the vertical category V has covered a large number of users, and users can't live without Weibo, and the frequency is getting higher and higher.

The emergence of social capital is one of the most involved things in operation. If you think this statement is not grounded, then learn more about it.

Aha moment, when it comes to growth, it is to add 10 friends on Facebook within 7 days and upload the first file on Dropbox. You will find that adding friends, uploading files and watching articles/videos are actually the specific landing points of social capital. Similarly, the same is true for making lists or recommending high-quality content in the community.

Specific landing steps:

First of all, draw a complete flow chart of the core functions of the product, and give the internal logic of the community operation.

Secondly, in this flowchart or internal logic, find several key nodes. For example, sending a tweet is the most important key link.

Then, from the operational point of view, the specific measures to improve this key link are given. For example, if more people want to post Weibo, it is necessary to do head author operation by category, topic guidance of hot events, and scene triggering at different time and place.

After these three simple steps are completed, the operational framework comes out. Remember not to shout about doing activities and being users as soon as you start, and you can't skip the decision-making logic and dive into the implementation details, because it is possible that you are all going in the wrong direction, and the harder you work, the worse you get.

4. Have a story of your own community.

This sentence is a little Jianghu, like saying that there is a legend about my grandfather, which is probably what it means.

There are many stalks, hot words and grass roots on the Internet, which generally come from a certain community and then spread all over the network. This is the story of my own community.

For example, the ghost blowing lights in the Ming Dynasty, the end of the world began to be serialized. The word diaosi comes from the post bar; The representatives of Sina blog are Xu and Han Han. Last year, Netease also released Fiona Fang's idea and bought a watch. Aauto Quicker's old iron 666 and the invention of manual Geng and so on.

These are stories handed down from the community. First of all, there are many stories to be screened in this community, and only one of them is detonated. Secondly, it shows that all stories in the community have a unique community culture, which is also a cultural output from a certain perspective, which can confirm the success of this community.

In addition, I also want to talk about the explosion.

The essence of the explosion is the spread of a story of the community in the whole network, which may be planned by the operation packaging or spontaneously spread by netizens.

The benefits brought by the explosion to the community are to continuously strengthen users' awareness of this community, deepen their understanding of community culture, make this product a topic in the streets, and increase the number of users by using the herd mentality of netizens. There is a reason to use the product: everyone around you is using it.

Plus, explosions and screen swiping are two different things. The explosion is covered by the whole network and can probably be measured; Brushing the screen is to brush the circle of friends. What's the point? It can only prove that everyone around you has done it, and the boss will get it when he gives the order.

Having finished the above four points, the relationship between them is as follows:

From the operational point of view, observing values and ensuring safety and reliability are the restrictive factors for doing a good job in the community. The core things to be done are: how to make users generate social capital and how to do a good job of external communication.

Finally, the product form of the community should abide by the commercial law, which is commercial, and should have the ability to realize commercialization and realize the closed loop of self-income.