Offsite Meeting #4 was held to share knowledge of fan community operators

Background of the event

On November 15, 2021, eLife Inc. held the Offsite Meeting #3-1 online. This meeting is held on a regular basis, inviting people in charge of corporate community management to discuss several issues in the management of fan community sites. We hoped that the exchange of information and knowledge sharing among companies in charge of community management and user communication measures would bring new insights to the participants.Seven persons in charge from seven companies participated in this event.

The moderator was Mr. Shinya Mizuno, senior analyst, ITR CORPORATION. He has been involved in digital marketing at KAGOME CO.,LTD., and in the advertising department, he managed the fan community site "＆KAGOME" as a "nakanohito"(community manager).

Shinya Mizuno Senior analyst, ITR CORPORATION. / Representative, Mikke Tech .LLC Worked in the Information System Division and Advertising Division at KAGOME CO.,LTD. He promoted digital marketing utilizing websites and SNS as well as information system construction including supply chain management. In the advertising department, he managed the fan community site "&KAGOME" as "nakanohito"(community manager). Currently, he is involved in IT market research at ITR CORPORATION. and writes articles and provides consulting services to companies on customer engagement with a focus on corporate communities.

There are two main themes for this discussion. "Revitalizing online fan communication" and "Internal awareness through inner marketing." Both are an essential part of running a community site. The lively discussion also generated new themes. We present excerpts and summaries of the day and its contents for the benefit of those who are in the same position and facing the same issues. Same theme as the third session. But how does it change with different participants? Please enjoy the comparison.

Theme1.-Stimulating online fan communication

Q: I think that how to boost fan communication on community sites is an eternal theme. And, for a long time, offline events have not been able to be held, and i am sure that you have all taken various measures and devised new ways to do so, given the restrictions. I would like you to speak from that theme. How have you been working to revitalize the site, whether it be through the fusion of online and real life, or actions involving social networking sites?

A1: We conducted a project to sol icit willow poems from users. The theme was "Memories of blankets." Call for willow entries and introduce the grand-prize winning entry on Twitter. We also collaborated with stores nationwide and displayed the willow as POP in the stores.

A2: We delivered product samples to members who applied, asked them to try them, and wrote comments on them. Those voices were published in the flyer paper.oices were published in the flyer paper. The members not only tried the samples, but also felt various benefits such as the usefulness of the product promotion, the fun of having their comments published, and the pleasure of telling others about the goodness of the product.

A3: We are working on three social networking sites: Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Each has its own media characteristics, so we tailor our pitch to match the characteristics of each. I have the impression that TikTok is the most likely to generate comments among users. Even when posting photos, people upload photos of their real lives, rather than photos that are "cool" or eye-catching. Perhaps it is the ability to post unadorned photos that makes TikTok so interesting.

The willow project has been implemented by other companies and has been very well received. Rather than a company sending something one-way, a community needs to be interactive, with users actively participating. It is a very popular project. The most desirable thing is for the users to spontaneously speak up and get excited. In this sense, your sites had effective actions. If UGC is actively generated and diffused, the value of the community will increase.

Theme2.-Internal awareness through inner marketing

I think it is a common issue regarding inner marketing or internal awareness, such as getting cooperation internally, doing something together, or reporting to the top management and calculating the effectiveness. It would be meaningful if all of you in the same position could ask each other what kind of innovations you are making.

Q: How are you working to promote the value of community sites within your company?

A1: I think it is important to link with various places, not just the community site alone. We have a system in place that covers the corporate site, official SNS, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and can link all of them with the community site. Not just the community site by itself, but also collaborate with various other places such as SNS, corporate sites, etc. By doing so, we believe that the value of the community site will be better recognized within the company.

A2: An initiative that was well received internally was a column in the community website. When we held a presentation of a new product for the media this fall, the developers took the stage and shared their stories about the development of the product. Although those episodes made the news, we felt that they did not quite reach the point where they could be touched by the general public. So, we compiled the developers' stories into small columns that could be read in a minute or two and sent them out within the community, and we received messages of support and comments from customers saying that they were very happy with the product. That's why we include the story of the development in the content articles we deliver to our customers. We ask the person in charge of development to appear in the article and talk about what kind of thoughts and feelings went into the creation of this product. We get cooperation by having people from different departments within the company appear. And we planted a questionnaire in the article and gave feedback on information that development people wanted to know. By creating such a cycle, we are raising the visibility of the community site internally as well.

As the discussion progressed, a new theme emerged. The question is whether you want quality or quantity of users to register on your community site. If only quality users are carefully selected, the number of users will be limited. However, blindly pursuing only the number of registered users will not necessarily activate the site. This will be an eternal issue. What do the participating companies think about this?

A1: We are chasing numbers. Since this is only our first year of operation, we wanted to focus on increasing the number of users first. Of course, if we neglect the quality part, the atmosphere on the site will deteriorate. We believe that this will have a negative impact on the people who have become fans of the site. We believe that if we keep launching campaigns, the number of users will increase, but it is important to be aware of attracting quality fans firmly.

A2: Our community site is, to put it nicely, a "pure fan site. Of course, we want people to purchase our products, but we try to avoid showing that aspect of our site. So, for example, we don't follow up on whether or not a user who won a campaign to win a sample product actually purchased the product afterwards. Rather, we focus on how active the action is on the site. I look at how many users are accessing the site every day. Rather than just increasing the number of new users, we are focusing on activating the current users. The current guideline is to increase the number of actions, active users, and unique users. However, there are some users who have quit, so we will continue to increase the number of new users, and overall, we still want to increase the number of users. However we are trying to keep the number of visitors to the site increasing naturally.

A3: When we launched the community site, we naturally cared about the number of new users. We actively launched campaigns and took many measures to attract new users. However, there is a double-edged sword aspect to such campaigns. If we try to increase the number of actions by adding action points, we will end up with more users who are looking for gifts rather than fans of our company. In the community, we had basically limited talk to that related to our products and genres, but when the Corona disaster occurred, we loosened the restrictions, saying, "We don't care about anything anymore, just have your normal conversations. Then, the conversation became lively with completely unrelated topics, which made our fans feel uncomfortable. I realized that we must also value quality after all. After the renewal, we have reduced the incentives considerably and rather emphasize quality.

Thus, we found that while communities were chasing numbers in the early years of their establishment, as communities matured, they tended to focus more on quality.

Participant's voice

Here are some of the comments received from this year's participants.
There were a lot of lively questions from the participants as well as on the topics we set here. We are happy to see that many of them regretted the time that flew by so quickly.

I found everyone's opinions very helpful today. Especially the willow story, I thought I would definitely think about it. One of my future issues is how to increase the number of members in their 20s and 30s. If there is another opportunity like this, I would like to ask you all some questions.
I could see that you are running the site from a completely different perspective. I have been a member of various sites and have been looking at them from the outside, but there are many aspects that I cannot see just by being a member. Today, I was able to understand how each of you feel about what you are making, and it was very helpful for me. I look forward to working with you in the future.
I learned a lot by listening to the real voices of those who are in charge of community websites. I learned a lot because I found that I have the same questions as everyone else, and even though we deal with different products and services, our approaches are similar. If I am allowed to participate in such meetings on a regular basis, I would like to work a little harder in the future so that I can produce content that everyone can use as a reference.
When we were considering a fan site, we were wondering whether to focus on quality or quantity and what KPIs to set, so it was very helpful to hear what you had to say. Next time, if we do this, as the person in charge of operations, I hope we can talk about a lot of things.

Organizer's postscript -reflections on Offsite Meeting #4

The companies that participated in this event also started operating their community websites at different times. However, they all shared the same problem of how to approach their diverse and ever-changing user base. By talking with people in the same position, with whom we do not usually have the opportunity to interact, we were able to empathize with each other and get hints on how to solve the problems.
eLife Inc. will continue to hold meetings like this one, as well as various other events and information dissemination.
If you have any suggestions for topics you would like to discuss with other companies, please feel free to contact our staff!

Thank you for reading to the end.

■Related Information List of Participating Company Projects
OBENTO HOME(AJINOMOTO FROZEN FOODS Co., Inc.)
Coop Deliche(CO-OPDELI CONSUMERS’ CO-OPERATIVE UNION.)
Kodawari Sour Fan Club(Suntory Spirits Ltd.)
Minna no Sleep Labo (NISHIKAWA Co., Ltd.)
Cocorohto Park(ROHTO Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.)