Community structure, strategies, KPIs, and networks
By: Kengo Iwata
Tags: Community Engagement, Marketing, Customer Success, Community Management, Network Theory

Chapter 4: Tactics with the Community Growth Pyramid

Did you define your community growth pyramid?

Think about growth from lower tiers to higher tiers and user retention and activation.

Community tactics can be summed up in three questions.

Question 1

How do you develop followers into leaders?

How do we retain leaders?

Question 2

How do you develop active audience into followers?

How do you keep your followers?

Question 3

How do you develop non-active audience into active audience?

How do you keep your active audience?

Let’s take a look at some specific examples to illustrate the tactic.

Question 1: How do you develop followers into leaders? How do we retain leaders?

Here we need to get them to overcome three barriers: the barrier of interest, the barrier of anxiety, and the barrier of continuity.

1–1. the barrier of interest

Very few users who have just joined a community want to be a leader. You have to convey the appeal of being a leader to your users and get them interested.

In B2B community marketing, an effective approach is to hold several events to discover users who are potential leaders. *6

A game app called LinksRings has designed an ambassador program. They have an ambassador program and call out to attract leaders who will actively contribute to the community.

Ambassador Rank

The more points you accumulate, the higher your rank. You will receive a certification card according to your rank.

1–2. The Barrier of Anxiety

Even if a user is interested in taking on a leadership role, it takes courage to take the first step. You need to overcome this psychological barrier.

ChannelTalk conducted a project to solicit articles on how to use the product, and users submitted many articles on how to use ChannelTalk.*7 This kind of plan makes it easier for users who are interested to take the first step.

Mirrativ, a community app for live game play, regularly runs campaigns to encourage people to post live games in their app.

They have users prepare an excuse by running a campaign called “Let’s stream Fortnite”!

When a campaign like this is launched, users feel scared to post, but since it’s a campaign period, they might as well give it a try.

I think the key is to “provide an excuse”.

By observing users, I found that many people become less resistant to delivery when they have an “excuse”. To use the example of Mirrativ, people who want to start distributing would first tweet, “Is there any demand for my distribution? or take a survey. In other words, they want people around them to say, “I want you to deliver. If they have an excuse, they can say, “Oh well. But it’s mute. And then they start to deliver. Then, my followers and friends would come to me to chill out, but they would also praise me and say, “Surprisingly, you have a high rank. When people gather, they feel like they need to be entertained, so they say, “Next time, I’ll deliver with a voice. Then, when I deliver with a voice, I get compliments like, “You have a great voice. Before you know it, you’ll be saying, “I’m going to do it again today! and the delivery becomes a habit. In fact, this pattern is the typical path to becoming a Mirrative distributor. Mirrative talk about the theory of setting up a “lighted” community *8

1–3. The Barrier of Continuation

Even if a user has the courage to try to become a leader, there is a barrier that prevents them from continuing. The key to breaking through this barrier is the presence of followers. The key to breaking through this barrier is the presence of followers, because leaders are able to act as leaders thanks to the feedback of their followers.

Take a look at “How to start a movement” by Derek Sivers. *9

Followers make leaders into leaders.

Increase the cluster’s network density.

Let’s gather followers under the leader to keep the leader active. The circle of sympathy will expand.

The cluster will grow like a bonfire.

First, create a small, strong community.

Second, expanding little by little.

Third, grow into a thriving community. Mirrative talk about the theory of setting up a “lighted” community *8

Question 2: How do you develop active audience into followers? How do you keep your followers?

Question 2: How do you develop active audience into followers? How do you keep your followers?

Bring users who are just looking at your community posts into your circle of interaction. In other words, you need to achieve the steps of “taking the first step” and “safe environment”.

2–1. Taking the first step

Peloton, a fitness bike service, has an excellent flow line for users to take a step forward. When you join a training session with a trainer, other users join in at the same time. This naturally leads to interaction with other users.

It’s hard to keep up with fitness alone. It’s designed to help you make cycling friends naturally.

2–2. Safe environment

Does it take an ambitious goal like winning the football league to build a strong community?

Not necessarily. It is important to have a place where users can be who they are and feel safe.

For example, if users do not know each other’s faces and names, there will be no peace of mind. A safe space is created when people become acquainted with each other and meet face to face on a regular basis.

The most important thing is to ensure your safety and security. The most important thing is to ensure “safety and security.” The form of “safety and security” varies from person to person, such as “having people who approve of you,” “being welcomed to speak out,” and “having people who are close to you. In the beginning, I thought that people would be motivated by enthusiasm. However, enthusiasm is a good start, but it does not last long. Instead, if you ensure safety and security and then give each person an appropriate role, people will start to move spontaneously. I launched the Minowa Editing Room in June 2017, and my original motivation was to ask for help because I was busy with work. For that reason, I had a catchphrase, “Except for dying, it’s a scratch”, and I had been hitting everyone with “run, run”. But at one point I said, “Those who want to run can run, and those who want to rest can rest. If you want to take a break, you can do it at your own pace.” When I sent out the message that “you are contributing to the project when you participate, so I want you to do it at your own pace,” more and more people raised their hands and took action.



Common features of organizations that last 1000 years *10

Question 3: How do you develop non-active audience into active audience? How do you keep your active audience?

It is very important to reach out to people who are not part of the community in the first place and bring in new members to the community.

This is because if no new people join, the community will disappear.

For a game app called “Megido 72”, we implemented a promotion using twitter hashtags. They created a hashtag called “#what is Megido 72 for me” to bring the voices of users in the community to the outside world.

Point1: Discover highly engaged customer feedback.

Point2: Create a hashtag that makes it easy to communicate your feelings about Megido 72

Point3: Boost twitter ads and make the hashtag “#what is Megido 72 for me” trend on twitter. DeNA reveals the concept of community marketing and its effects *11

By examining the above three issues, the tactics for growing a community will become clear.

If you can define the customer experience you want to provide at each level of the pyramid, users will be able to “choose” the experience that best meets their needs.

You can provide knowledge to users who are not interested in interaction but just want to get information from the article content. You can provide interaction value to users who want to interact with other participants as well as knowledge. Users will be able to utilize the community according to their needs.

And some users will grow into the upper tiers as they experience the value of each tier’s experience. The user’s commitment to the community goes up.

If you can draw a “commitment curve*4 ,” you have an ideal community.