How do communities with millions of members operate?

Since 2016, countless knowledge payment platforms have come into people's attention, content entrepreneurs have embarked on the road of content monetization, big names in various industries have actively built their own knowledge payment communities, and various community operation tools have also emerged.

The emergence of social tools has greatly improved the efficiency of community operations and the ability to monetize knowledge, but it has also exposed the biggest shortcoming of most current paid knowledge communities: focusing on short-term interests and not paying attention to community ecosystem construction. Because of this, although many knowledge-based paid communities achieved monetization in the short term, they lacked follow-up momentum and quickly went extinct.

Against this background, the community under the famous media person Liang Dong - Keyi Shufang (formerly Zheng'an Life Asset Management College) has created an original online calligraphy operation model and used thoughtful community services to turn calligraphy teachers into community IPs. Subsequently, it has created a complete three-dimensional community marketing system through a combination of calligraphy courses and calligraphy peripherals.

Overall operational ideas:

Step 1: Accurately position the community and focus on vertical segments

Step 2: Provide good community services and create exclusive community IP

Step 3: Optimize product structure and enrich community sales system

Step 4: Operate layer by layer to build a community ecosystem

▲Keyi Study Community Operation Process

1. Accurate community positioning, focusing on vertical segments

Before starting community operations, the Zhengan team conducted an in-depth research on the market environment. They believe that the current vertical segment of calligraphy courses has huge consumption potential, but at the same time most people believe that calligraphy classes are more suitable for offline face-to-face teaching rather than online teaching. After careful consideration, the community decided not to set sales targets for now and to focus on later operations.

In August 2018, Zhengan Community officially launched the first large seal calligraphy course for 199 yuan. The calligraphy course includes 12 video tutorials, and the teacher is Zhengan’s specially hired calligraphy lecturer: Mr. Keyi.

After the course was launched, Zheng’an released teaching posters to promote it in WeChat Moments, related cooperative groups and public accounts. The course became a hot seller as soon as it was launched, with more than 780 copies sold within a month. Zheng’an gained the first wave of traffic and formed an initial community.

In the previous research, Zhengan also found that calligraphy is the category with the highest self-interest preference and investment among the majority of people born in the 1980s, and that this group has a higher overall disposable income and is more likely to make repeat purchases.

In order to facilitate the service to this group, Zheng'an divided the community into daily communication groups and live teaching groups. The daily communication groups are mainly used for students and teachers to communicate in daily life and reduce the sense of distance between group members; while the emergence of teaching groups ensures the high quality of teaching and live broadcasts. The two types of communities complement each other and ensure the membership experience of the early communities.

▲Calligraphy ranks first among the investment preferences of the post-80s generation

2. Provide good community services and create exclusive community IP

The successful experience of knowledge-based paid communities such as Luoji Siwei and Wu Xiaobo Channel tells us that it is very important to build teachers into community IPs. Building IPs can, firstly, enhance student stickiness and increase their willingness to stay in the group; secondly, it can enhance teacher authority and lay a solid foundation for subsequent courses and product sales.

Based on this understanding, Zheng'an Community started with community services, created a good community atmosphere, increased the frequency of contact between teachers and students, and then built Teacher Keyi into a community IP to enhance the overall value of the community.

▲Teacher Keyi

In order to create a good learning atmosphere, in addition to daily group activities, Zhengan Community has also taken the following measures:

① Set up a Q&A area to answer questions in a unified manner

The Zheng'an community has set up a student-only graphic Q&A area. When students have questions about calligraphy, they can directly post to the Q&A post to ask the teacher, who will then grade their answers in the evening.

② Live broadcast in WeChat group to answer typical questions

For particularly typical questions, the teacher will answer them through live broadcasts in the WeChat group every week. If students have any questions, they can ask them directly in the WeChat group, and the teacher will explain them on the spot until the students have no questions.

③21-day check-in event to create an overall community atmosphere

In order to further motivate group members to learn more, the Zheng'an Calligraphy Community also imitated most of the knowledge payment communities on the market and launched a 21-day check-in activity. Similarly, teachers will promptly correct the homework generated by the check-in activity, so that students can receive feedback on their submitted homework as soon as possible, which will increase their trust in teachers and enhance stickiness.

Through this combination of live broadcast + Q&A + check-in, Zheng'an Community has been constantly improving relevant community services and successfully built this calligraphy community into a high-quality community with a strong learning atmosphere and accumulated considerable value.

At the same time, since the questions related to calligraphy learning of community members can be answered in a timely manner, their trust in the community and the teacher gradually increased. In the later period, whenever they had questions related to calligraphy, they would ask in the group or the Q&A area, and the teacher successfully became the IP of the community.

▲Live broadcast and Q&A area

3. Optimize product structure and enrich community sales system

After the initial careful community operation, the Zheng'an Calligraphy Community has become a community of extremely high value. Group members have a strong stickiness to the community and will take the initiative to find the community every day to discuss calligraphy-related issues with students in the group.

At this time, Zheng'an Community felt that the time for monetization was ripe enough, but if it only made profits by selling advanced courses, it seemed a little lacking. Zhengan hopes that the monetization of their community will not be limited to the sale of courses. They hope to create a three-dimensional product sales system.

Through background data research and analysis of members' daily speeches, Zheng'an Community has determined that most members in the group have a rigid demand for calligraphy supplies, but are just struggling to get started. Most members do not know how to distinguish calligraphy products on the market and need guidance from professionals.

Teacher Keyi, who has become a community IP, is undoubtedly the best candidate for this "professional". First of all, he has a strong ability to distinguish and the quality of the products he selects is guaranteed; secondly, community members have great trust in the products recommended by the teacher and are willing to pay for the products he recommends.

In order to meet the needs of members at different income levels, Zhengan Community launched beginner and intermediate brush packages at 399 yuan and 698 yuan, and later launched customized seals at 800 yuan and text cards at 58 yuan.

It is precisely based on the strong sense of trust established in the early operations that calligraphy supplies became a hot seller once they were launched online, becoming another major source of income for the Zheng'an Community in addition to calligraphy courses.

▲Zhengan Community’s beginner calligraphy tool set

4. Operate layer by layer to build a community ecosystem

While putting calligraphy supplies on the shelves, Zheng'an Community also began to simultaneously put a new batch of advanced large seal script courses on the shelves. The advanced courses are only open to students who have studied the first course. In order to maintain the service quality of the community, Zheng'an decided to adopt a group operation model and pull users who sign up for advanced courses into an exclusive group for service.

Once the course was launched, the repurchase rate reached over 60%. Subsequently, Zheng'an Community launched the third and fourth level elementary courses for large seal characters and tutorials related to cursive script, and combined with physical products related to calligraphy, created a complete product marketing system with courses as the main body and physical products as the supplement, and achieved profits of millions.

It was based on the layer-by-layer community maintenance that the Zheng'an Calligraphy Class was finally a great success, and was officially renamed "Keyi Study Room" this year, becoming a classic case in the community operation industry.

The great success of this calligraphy class also demonstrates, in some ways, the operating trend of the current knowledge-based paid community. The operation of this type of community is not only for the one-time sale of goods, but also to increase the bargaining chips for subsequent services and product sales. In the early and middle stages, it establishes its own IP through continuous services and creates its own community ecosystem. Subsequent monetization will naturally come naturally.

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Author: Xingxiu Community Operation

Source: Xingxiu Community Operation