From the beginning of September to now, I haven’t written any articles. The main reason is that I am really too busy. In September, I conducted an internal training for the operations managers of Zhongsou Nationwide, and then participated in the Northeast Webmaster Internet Conference. Then he pushed some of the offline students from the Marketing School to graduate from work, and helped them worry about work together. During the National Day holiday, I rushed back to my hometown to visit my parents, and immediately started writing a book after I came back. These past two months have been like riding a rocket. He came over in a flash, and he was not idle at all. He was very busy all day long.
In the first two days, I was invited by Zhang Xiang, a classmate of discuz!, to share some topics about forum operations with friends in discuz!'s "Webmaster Lecture Hall", so I borrowed flowers and offered them to Buddha to share these contents. Because some content and experiences cannot be disclosed to the public, some parts have been streamlined and processed during the compilation of this article. I hope you will forgive me. At the same time, I would like to thank the organizer of this event and the organizer of this article, beauty Zhang Yuan of discuz!:) Back to business, the following is the transcript of the lecture:
With the rise of the concept of WEB2.0, communities have attracted more and more attention from everyone. Everyone understands that WEB1.0 has difficulty adapting to the development of the new era, and community development is the future direction. So how do you make a community? People often ask me how to promote a forum, or how it is not popular. Many people think that a forum is the same as a website, and it needs to be well promoted. In fact, this is a wrong understanding. Let me correct this mistake first.
The focus of the forum is operation, not promotion. Forums are different from traditional 1.0 websites. The so-called WEB1.0 is content-based. As long as it is promoted well, there will be traffic. And promotion is simple, just one step: you find a way to pull users to your website to browse, and that's it.
But communities are not good. A community takes at least five more steps than an information station: just attracting users to browse is not enough, because just having people browse is still a dead community and meaningless; this requires the improvement of the second step, so that User registration, but is it OK if the user registers? No, if you register but do not post, it will kill the user; so the third step is needed, let the user post, but does it count as successful after the user posts? No, Even if you post occasionally, the forum still won’t become popular. Users need to post frequently, which is the fourth step. Let users post frequently. Is it OK to post frequently? It’s definitely not possible. If the net Posting some worthless posts cannot be called a good community, so the fifth step requires users to be able to post some valuable posts and frequently participate in community discussions and interactions.
Among these five steps, except for the first step that can be completed through promotion, the other four steps cannot be completed through promotion at all. The remaining four steps have to rely entirely on operations. Therefore, for the community, no matter how great the online promotion is, it is useless. On the other hand, even if there is no promotion but the community itself operates well, it will develop very well. And for the community, the biggest promotion is the word-of-mouth of users. As long as the operation is good, users will spontaneously use word-of-mouth to help you promote it.
Now let’s talk about the operation. I am an old user of the DZ forum, and I have been doing the forum before DZ appeared. From the emergence of forum programs to the present, the forms of expression are similar, but the specific functions are constantly improving. Therefore, over the years, I have also accumulated a set of forum operation methods, which I will share with you today. I mainly summarized them from nine aspects:
1. Section strategy
2. Content strategy
3. User group policy
4. Points strategy
5. Mission strategy
6. Medal Strategy
7. Activity strategy
8. Star strategy
9. Team building
Since there is too much content, I will talk about the first four points today:
1. Forum section strategy
As we all know, when building a forum, the first step is planning and positioning (not covered today), and then planning specific section classifications. I won’t go into the specific classification of different fields. Today I will mainly talk about some things to note when classifying sections:
The first one is to be rough in the early stage and thin in the later stage.
In the early stages of a forum, be careful not to make the sections too thin. Some forums have hundreds of sections as soon as they go online, which is very unwise. First of all, the forum will definitely not be popular in the early stage. If there are 10 registered users online at the same time in the early stage, it will be very difficult. However, the forum has a hundred sections at once, with an average of 1 point and only 0.1 people in each section. The popularity will be divided immediately. Who wants to wander alone in an empty forum? On the other hand, if a forum only has two sections, then among the 10 online users, there will be an average of five in each section, which makes it less popular.
Secondly, users are very "stupid". When building a website, you must treat users as "idiots", especially Chinese users, whose behavior is completely opposite to that of foreign users. Chinese users don't like to use their brains when surfing the Internet. They like to look at and play with ready-made products. But we If there are too many sections, users will not know how to choose and how to play. Take the Tui Yi Forum as an example. If you have ever been to the Tui Yi Forum, you all know that there are two sections for solving problems in the forum: one is called the FAQ section, which is positioned to solve various specific problems. ;The other is called the website diagnosis section. This section is positioned to comprehensively analyze and judge the website. Apart from these two, there are no other sections. I should say that I want to ask questions in the forum. It’s very clear, there are only two questions. And the instructions for use are clear, but users often add me on QQ, and then come to ask me, Lao Jiang, I want to ask a question on the forum, which section do you think should be posted? Just two questions The forum for the question, and the positioning is so clear, but some people still don’t understand which forum they should post it in. In fact, to extend it a bit, the same goes for websites. Be careful not to integrate too many functional modules, especially community-based ones. If there are too many modules, users will be confused and will not know where to play. Tips: This article is the original work of Jiang Likun, the founder of Tuiyiyi and a member of Blue Beacon. Friends who want to participate in the training of Tuiyiyi Internet Marketing Academy, please search for Tuiyiyi or Jiang Likun, or log in to Jiang Likun (Pinyin) to click on the card. Please retain this copyright information when reprinting.
The second thing to note is that the forum must have key points and secondary points, and the key points must be clearly highlighted.
When many friends design sections, the reason why there are so many sections is because they feel that there are many important things, and everything is the most important, and they cannot be put down. When designing these sections, I didn’t know which one should be the focus. It felt like the palms and backs of my hands were all flesh. This won't work. A forum must have several clear key sections. These sections should be the main section, the featured section, and the core section. Then rely on these sections to gather popularity, and the remaining sections can be used as auxiliary ones. For example, in a forum, I only visit three sections every day. I may not look at other sections for a month, because those three sections are the focus. So if your forum still has many sections, regardless of priority, we will immediately reduce the weight of the forum and prioritize these sections.
The third point is that there should be a section for communication and learning, but there should also be a section for leisure and entertainment. This is called the balance between work and rest.
If a forum is full of water, it won’t work. Such a forum has no connotation, but a forum full of boring learning content will definitely not work. You can just ask people around you what they usually do on the Internet. Most people will definitely tell you that they go online for fun and fun. This is a characteristic of netizens. The main content of surfing the Internet is entertainment. And this is also reflected in CNNIC’s investigation report. Whether it is an academic forum or a communication forum, if you want to be popular and retain people, you must have something to play with.
The fourth and most important point is that there must be a section that can help users solve problems, or a section that can provide services to users.
In fact, this is true not only for forums, but also for websites. If a website wants to become bigger and stronger, and if it wants to gain reputation and brand, the most important thing is to solve the most urgent problems for users. And it doesn’t take much, it’s OK if you can help users solve a problem like this.
2. Content strategy:
In terms of content, many people also have misunderstandings, especially those who do SEO. Many people think that original content is good content, but a lot of this perception is wrong. Especially those who do SEO, in order to obtain originality, they even use so-called pseudo-original tools. As a result, even the Martians can't understand the final product, which completely deviates from the original intention of the search engine. Original content is not necessarily good content. Really good content should be content that users like. Whether it is original or reposted, as long as users like it, it is good content. After reading a good article, any user will first check to see if it is original to this website. If so, they will shout that this article is really good and is original to this website. If not, they will say that this article is too bad and is not original to this website? How many users will research who the author is after reading a good article?
So what kind of content is considered good content for a forum?
Forums are quite special and different from information sites, so the first thing everyone should pay attention to is not to just reprint them. Even if a good article is written by an awesome author and posted in a forum, it cannot be considered as good content. Because for forums, the prerequisite for good content must be real words posted by real people, so that such content has a soul. For forums, words without soul are useless no matter how beautiful they are. For example, even if it is just a sentence "I choked on drinking water today", if it is posted by a real member, then it is good content for the forum. Therefore, the original content of the forum is very easy to create. A sentence, a complaint, or a trivial matter in life are all good content.
In addition, it is necessary to post more content that can guide user interaction, so as to stimulate the atmosphere of the entire forum. In fact, it is not difficult to guide users. For example, if you post a post on the DZ forum now, the title is "I want to marry XX" and the content probably reads like this: I saw XX's photo and was deeply attracted by his beautiful appearance and kind heart. I decided to marry him. Marry XX and so on.
The last one is to never post illegal content. As we all know, the country vigorously rectified community forums last year and this year. Many people don't understand or understand why, especially some banned webmasters. They feel very wronged and feel that there is nothing wrong with them. In fact, from a small perspective, there are indeed people who have been banned by mistake, but for the most part, you have not been wronged. Broadly speaking, the reason for this rectification action is that many webmasters do not have self-discipline. Maybe everyone will say that we all know that illegal content cannot be posted, but the problem is that many people know that illegal content cannot be posted, but they cannot tell which content can be posted and which content cannot be posted. For example, I often see these situations. Some content must not appear, but some forum administrators think it is good content and actively repost it or even recommend it. If you say this, can you avoid being blocked?
So what content cannot appear? I just click here.
First of all, all kinds of negativity cannot appear. Including attacking others and attacking other units.
Secondly, if it involves government, politics or current affairs, we will definitely not show up.
Once again, there are some disharmonious contents that are detrimental to the national stability and stability team, and we must not let him appear.
Finally, try not to post any posts related to the names of national leaders, such as making fun of the leaders.
3. User group policy
As we all know, the forum itself has the function of a user group. However, many webmasters ignore this function. Many people just use the default one, or even change the name casually. In fact, the role of this user group is still very large. If you are good at user groups, here are the following four points to note:
First, the name of the user group should be fully integrated with the forum theme. For example, I thought about the recommended user group name for several nights before finally deciding on it. Because push is for marketing and promotion, the name must be related to promotion. The same goes for our forum. When designing the name of the user group, it must be related to the theme of the forum, so that it will be friendly to everyone.
The second is to make it as interesting as possible. The name of the user group should be as interesting as possible. The reason I just mentioned is that everyone goes online mainly to have fun, especially forums. If a forum wants to be popular, it must be fun.
Article 3: Try to satisfy the user’s vanity. Everyone has vanity, especially when many people go online to find spiritual sustenance. Why are online games so popular? Why are online games called spiritual opium? The reason is that many people are not doing well in reality, so they like to go online to find sustenance. For example, becoming a big brother in the game, building a gang in the game, etc. The same goes for the forum. Although it cannot be as in-depth as the game, it can also meet everyone's psychological needs as much as possible. The same is true for the name of the user group. For example, if managers, directors, general managers, and presidents are added to the user group, those children who have no hope of promotion in reality will probably like these titles very much and find them useful. Especially when the forum calls him the general, he will get great psychological satisfaction. Tips: This article is the original work of Jiang Likun, the founder of Tuiyiyi and a member of Blue Beacon. Friends who want to participate in the training of Tuiyiyi Internet Marketing Academy, please search for Tuiyiyi or Jiang Likun, or log in to Jiang Likun (Pinyin) to click on the card. Please retain this copyright information when reprinting.
The last one is that the way to upgrade the forum must be easy first and then difficult. This is the same as online games. All online games are very easy to upgrade in the early stages. For example, the first 20 levels may be achieved in two days, but the further you go, the harder it becomes. I remember that in the earliest Shanda Legend, if you wanted to upgrade to a level, it would take longer than the upgrade time of all previous levels plus one. The reason for doing this is to let everyone quickly integrate into the forum and experience the fun of the forum in the early stage. When everyone sticks to the forum, the difficulty will be increased later to give them the motivation to continue to stay here. In fact, when building a forum, you should learn more from some concepts and strategies of making online games. Although the product forms are different, many of the concepts are the same.
4. Forum points strategy
As mentioned earlier, if the forum wants to do well, operation is the key point. You must learn to guide users. In fact, many children's shoes also know this truth. But how to guide? This is what many people don’t understand. In fact, people often ask me this question, including promoting forums. People often ask, how to guide the forum? Here I tell you that if the forum wants to guide users well, there are several key factors that must be present, or set up well. One of them must be present. The most important and core thing is the forum's points system, or the forum's economic system.
This is just like in reality. If a country's economic system is healthy and complete, and can form a virtuous cycle, then the country will definitely develop better and better, and the society will be stable and united. If there is a problem with a country's economic system, various social conflicts will continue to emerge, and even affect the entire world's financial system. The same goes for forums. If the forum can have a perfect economic system, a virtuous cycle will be formed, and the enthusiasm of members will be fully mobilized. Let’s talk about the points system:
First of all, don’t have too many groups in the points system and don’t be too blind.
As we all know, the default forum groups have prestige, gold coins, and contributions, but when planning a forum, useless groups will not be opened. If you open an account for a points group, it must have a clear purpose and function, and its role is necessary and irreplaceable. Each additional group may affect the smooth balance of the forum economy, and users may be easily fooled.
Second, the name of the product analysis should be as personal as possible.
For example, forum gold coins are the default names for all forums, but when we use them, we should not use such vulgar names and think of a unique and interesting name. For example, pushing a forum's gold coins is called pushing beans. This name can first be combined with the theme and promotion of pushing a handful, and the word bean sounds naughty, interesting, and cute.
The third and most important point is that the integral function must be given.
Only when these virtual currencies are harmonious will their value be reflected, and the greater the role you give them, the higher the user's desire for them will be. Only when users have the desire to get him will their enthusiasm be mobilized. Just like Tencent's Q coin, why can Q coin affect the real currency system? The reason is that it plays a great role.
Here are a few examples, which can be used in general forums.
The first point is to link points with levels. The higher the points, the higher the level. This is a basic usage. The points are reduced and the level is also reduced. This is very interesting. Take gold coins for example. The more gold coins you have, the higher your level will be. But once you spend gold coins, you will lose your level. Psychologically speaking, it will definitely be painful to lose something you have gained, and you will definitely want to get it back again. In this way, the role of gold coins is reflected. Even if this gold coin can no longer do anything, it can support my level.
Second is the medal. The forum has a medal system, and we can link this medal to gold coins. For example, some very beautiful medals can only be purchased with gold coins. Another example is resource downloading. The forum can open a resource board based on user needs, and then publish some resources that users really want. The resources are set to be downloaded through forum gold coins. Another example is auctions. Some items are often auctioned, either virtual or physical, and then auctioned with gold coins through the forum.
In short, when we design the gold coin function, as long as it is helpful to users or something that users like, we can consider linking it with the gold coin system. When the gold coins in your forum are effective, you will find that the enthusiasm of users will be greatly improved.
Fourth, don’t let points come too easily, and rationally design channels and methods for obtaining points.
Because points are earned too easily, inflation will easily occur, and the economic system of the forum will collapse. The specific calculation can be based on the actual situation. The latter one is to learn to use points to guide users, or in other words, your methods and methods of obtaining points must be linked to your purpose.
What do you want users to do, then set the method of obtaining points to this. For example, if there is a lack of original content in the forum and you want users to post more original content, you can set it up like this. For every piece of original content posted, 100 forum gold coins will be given as a gift. If it is not attractive enough, then a thousand. If you want users to repost more content, then set it up like this. For each piece of content reposted, you can get 10 gold coins. If you want to make the forum more interactive, set it to give 5 gold coins for every reply to a post. If you want to focus on developing a forum, OK, then post and reply in this forum, and the gold coins given will be doubled. Or if you want users to upload photos or resources, the main way to earn gold coins is to upload resources. Tips: This article is the original work of Jiang Likun, the founder of Tuiyiyi and a member of Blue Beacon. Friends who want to participate in the training of Tuiyiyi Internet Marketing Academy, please search for Tuiyiyi or Jiang Likun, or log in to Jiang Likun (Pinyin) to click on the card. Please retain this copyright information when reprinting.
If you can make your points have a big enough effect, and the way to earn points is still related to guiding the user's behavior
How could the forum not be popular?
Attached are detailed explanations of the interactive questions in this issue:
Q: New webmasters don’t know how to set many points. Can you give me an example of a reasonable point setting?
A: Generally speaking, the forum has just been launched, so there must be a gold coin group. For example, a push is called a bean push, and other things can be ignored for the time being. If you don't expect it to be of any use, you don't have to use it. The default settings of general forums are to give 2 gold coins for posting a topic, and 1 gold coin for each reply. This is basically the default setting. Later changes will depend on your own situation. For example, the key section can be designed to issue four gold coins for the theme and two replies. Some unimportant sections are set to the default, and some sections can even be set to 0. The details depend on the specific needs. In fact, making a forum is all about these details.
Q: In local communities, which sections should be established first?
A: This depends on the local situation. First of all, there must be an irrigation area, but it is best not to call it irrigation, but a hodgepodge or something; then there are some local news and gossips for making friends; there is also a classified area, which publishes various news, such as transactions, job hunting, etc.; The rest depends on the situation. For example, if local people like to eat, then add some food items; if local people like to wear clothes, add some clothes-related items. In addition, the section settings are just basic, like local forums, there is not much difference. The key is how to guide users to post content.
Local forum, let me talk about the two most important points. The first is that you must do more activities, especially offline activities; the second is that the level of your core personnel must be high. These are the two most core ones. Because places are different from other types of communities in that they are aimed at local people, in such a large and small circle.
Q: In terms of content, is it advisable for the community to use physical rewards to attract users to the forum?
A: It doesn’t matter what kind of reward you use, the key is that users like it. As long as users like it, it is good, and as long as it helps users solve their problems, it is good.
Q: For example, if I create a forum in Zhengzhou, the area code of Zhengzhou is 0371, my website is called 371 Floor www.371lou.com , and I have 371 user groups set up. They are the 1st floor, the 2nd floor, the 3rd floor and the 371st floor. They are just like the levels of online games. Is more than 300 user groups too many?
A: Putting aside the question of whether there are too many or not, the name of this user group itself is not good. It has no characteristics or interest, and in other words, it is indeed a bit too much.
Q: I recommend two ways to motivate netizens. Thank you.
A: The economic system is the most important and core, and the specific incentives also say a lot. For example, if you want users to post original posts, then set it up to give 100 gold coins or even 1,000 gold coins for posting an original post.
Q: Please tell me, when doing community operations, the focus is on operations. But where do users come from? Simply SEO won’t do it. What are the promotion methods?
A: There is more to talk about in terms of promotion. Due to time constraints, I want to talk about one thing: for the community, there must be seed users. In fact, the promotion of the community has already started before the community goes online. Even if you just have such an idea in your mind and decide to build a community, you should start promoting it immediately. The main purpose of early promotion is to accumulate seed users. As soon as your forum is online, a thousand people will join immediately, and the first hurdle will be passed. A simple method is to accumulate seed users in advance by building a group.
Q: Where to start with content for local forums?
A: The content of local communities should also highlight the word local. For example, local discount information, local gossip, news, local supply and demand information, etc. are all sources of content. The rest is what I mentioned earlier. As long as it is real text posted by real people in the forum, it is good content. The key to forum content is topics. Only with topics can there be interaction; only with interaction can people be retained.
Q: The points system of my forum ( http://bbs.02488.cn ) is very important. Because in the early days, members had to rely on points to support their posts. One group buying coin is equivalent to one yuan, or even more. Now it is a bit difficult to earn group buying coins, but some people have earned more than 100. I would like to ask how to measure the difficulty of this points system? (Question added: "Now many members have begun to spend money to recharge. I don't want this to happen. I still want them to post more original posts. I also want to make more inactive members active." Shouldn’t the difficulty be lowered in the early stage?”)
A: It’s hard to say how to measure this. To put it simply, if you do some calculations, it is more reasonable to calculate the final value of these points in how many days it is earned. If it is linked to physical objects, then the range of funds must also be considered. Guilty, you can bear it.
For example, if a user spends 20 minutes a day with you for a month, he can earn 2,000 RMB, which is definitely unreasonable.
Q: There are too many sections and no one is the moderator. What should I do? I feel too tired and cannot keep up with content updates.
A: The content updates cannot keep up with the section reduction. It must be tiring to organize so many sections. The forum is not an information station. The content should come from members. If you reprint it yourself, it will be useless to repost 10,000 articles a day. It is better to just become an information station. Regarding the team, I will talk about it later.
Q: People who participate in the event like to chat and communicate in the QQ group. How can we better guide group members to the forum?
A: This question can be divided into two parts. Every question has two sides. For example, many people think that having a group will have an impact on the forum. Everyone will join the group and stop going to the forum. In fact, this is not the case. Their characteristics are different, and the problems they solve are also different. And if used well, they can still complement each other.
For example, in a forum, the communication is not instant, but it can allow many people to participate, and the content can always be saved online. It is public and open to all the public; while a group is only limited to a small group of people and its Communication is instant, and the content cannot be retained. People who are not online will not be able to see it. Therefore, there is no conflict between them, and even the group complements the forum. For example, there are few people in the forum in the early stage. Someone comes to the forum and finds that it is not popular and may leave. At this time, after the person leaves, you can't find them if you want to find them, and you don't know who this person is. But if you can get this person into the group, you will be able to firmly capture this user. In this way, it doesn't matter whether he goes to the forum or not, because you have already caught him. Then when there are activities on the forum or something that everyone knows, tell everyone in the group. But if there is no group, then users who came to your forum today may not come again after they leave.
Q: That means as long as you can retain users, it’s the same through groups and forums?
A: From the perspective of retaining users, groups have greatly helped the forum. If there is no group, then you simply cannot find a better way to capture your user resources. And even if you want to find someone alone on the forum and send him a site message, they may not read it.
Q: What is the development potential of a forum with the theme of organizing and planning friends’ gatherings in the same city?
A: The forum should not be themed around activities, but activities should definitely be the most important and core content. Will users come to the forum every day to discuss this topic? Will users come to the forum every day to play because of this topic? Everything should be user-centered.
If you focus on activities, no one can participate in activities every day, or participate in activities every week, or participate once a month for half a year, which is not bad. Secondly, if your theme is activities, then users will go to the forum, but the purpose of going to the forum is to sign up, look at event photos or see if there are any latest activities. There is nothing that can make users stay here and play in depth. Therefore, activities are very important, but it is not appropriate to focus exclusively on activities.
Q: Our forum has just been online for more than half a month. We currently have more than 300 members, but the number of posts every day is very small. As a local forum, how can we attract netizens? Do you have any good suggestions on section settings? ?
A: It’s easy to set up sections, don’t have too many, just keep the best sections. The key is that the most difficult hurdle in the early stage is to gain some initial popularity, especially the core members, which is the most important. The first hurdle for all forums is how to accumulate some people when there is no one. It is recommended to first attract relatives, friends, classmates, and colleagues around you to increase popularity.
The above is the full text of the lecture. Finally, let me make a small advertisement. The 7-session online training of Harbin Academy is now open for registration. Anyone who wants to learn about online marketing and promotion is welcome to sign up. My contact information is as follows:
Author information: Jiang Likun, founder of Tuiyi ( www.tui18.com ) and member of Blue Beacon. If you want to see more articles by the author, please search Tui Yiyi or Jiang Likun, or log in to Jiang Likun (pinyin) and click on the card. New operation/promotion exchange 43 group 122320427, welcome to join.
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