How to operate WeChat communities and UGC communities?

Many people who are new to operations often confuse " social group operations " and "community operations", but in fact they are very similar.

The only difference is that community operation is to move the service content and users to various WeChat or QQ groups. The content and people of community operations are in a specific community product, such as Douban and Zhihu.

However, while social group operation and community operation are similar, the operation methods are different.

Next, let’s talk about how to do a good job in social group and community operations.

1. How to operate a good community?

Take the “English Fluency” WeChat learning group as an example:

We have mentioned before that communities and communities are actually very similar, except that community operations migrate service content to groups.

A healthy community is essentially the same as a community, with people producing content, people consuming content, and specific rules to regulate the community, but the specific operating methods are slightly different.

Let’s take the “English Fluency” WeChat learning group as an example to analyze how to operate a good community.

1. Create a community

Before creating a community, we need to determine the theme of the group, the group members, and what value the group can provide.

For example, the theme of the English Fluency group is to supervise everyone to learn paid courses. The value of the group is to provide practical information for English learning, and the group members are all students who have already purchased paid courses.

After creating the community, we need to prepare the words to enter the group and prepare group supporters to liven up the atmosphere.

As shown in the picture, the entry script of the "Understanding Your English" class group of English Fluency is concise and clear, including a welcome message and an urge to take immediate action .

Normally there should be a part introducing the community , but since the members of this group were attracted by the VIP class of "Understanding Your English", they already knew that there would be such a study group, so this step was omitted in the group entry script.

Let me interject here that before we create a community, don’t forget to build a good image for the group owner , including the group owner’s avatar and circle of friends, which need to be consistent with the tone of the community.

For example, the avatar of the English Fluency WeChat group is a standardized cartoon image with the "Understanding Your English" logo and the introduction of "Class Teacher Float".

At the same time, Banban’s circle of friends is also filled with English-related songs, sharing of little knowledge, or reminders to group members to study on time, as well as the promotion of other related paid courses.

This is in line with the tone of the study group, allowing group members to develop a sense of trust and create a good community atmosphere.

2. Maintaining order within the group - group rules

Some communities are often flooded with advertisements, or have 999+ ads, which makes it difficult for people to visit even if they want to. Such a community undoubtedly cannot play a role, or the value it can play is very small.

In order to prevent similar situations from happening and allow the community to play its original role, we need to set group rules.

Group rules generally include four parts: rules, rule explanations, special question outlets, and personalized expressions.

Rules explain what can and cannot be done in the community, and have corresponding penalties for violations.

Rule explanation is to explain the rationality of formulating rules. Generally, you can start from the user's pain points, explain the problem, and finally make a call.

The special problem exit is the solution to various special situations, and the working hours of the relevant personnel must be clearly stated.

Personalized expression is to show that the group owner is a living person, which can be reflected through exclamations, expressions, blessings, etc.

As shown in the picture, the rules of the "Understand Your English" class group are "check-in for the language partner group" and "prohibiting advertising, voting, and spreading negative energy."

The rule explanation is "The class group is a learning and communication group. In order to better standardize and serve everyone, every class needs everyone to cooperate, so please pay attention to abide by the group rules."

The answers to special situations are "notify the team leader and class leader when applying for leave", "if you have any questions, please send a private message to the class leader instead of asking in the group", "class leader working hours...".

Personalized expressions are some interjections that reflect the lively and friendly character of the class, such as "ha", "da", "oh", etc., as well as the final blessings and remarks.

3. Energize the group atmosphere

After the group is established and the group rules are formulated, the most important thing is to liven up the group atmosphere.

The fundamental reason why a community can remain active is that it can provide some value to its members. I think English Fluency does this very well.

First of all, administrators can liven up the group atmosphere by posting some valuable content in the group.

For example, the English Fluency app allows group members to recharge their batteries by publishing various English-related tips such as "Good Morning Greetings," "Daily Reading," "Listening Class," and "Translation Class," as well as sharing English songs.

Secondly, as for group members, you can get them to participate in group chats by asking them to check in regularly or do exercises .

For example, the English app Fluency will require students to send their daily check-in records to the group. At the same time, every class will give a fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice question, asking group members to answer and comment on it, which will naturally increase the activity of the group.

Finally, promotion is not just within the community. Sometimes, in order to increase the enthusiasm of group members, the group owner needs to chat with group members privately , inform the group of upcoming activities, or send important information to group members.

For example, when there is a class meeting, the English Fluency Speaking class will privately chat with group members to pay attention to the meeting time, and a collection of knowledge points shared in the group will be privately sent to group members every week.

This can not only remind group members to pay attention to group chat messages, but also maximize the value of information within the group, so that the community can truly serve users well.

4. Disbanding a group chat

Generally, communities have a service cycle, especially learning communities like this one.

When the service cycle of the community ends, in order to prevent the community from becoming a "dead group" or "advertising group" , you can notify group members to disband the group chat after properly handling related matters.

As shown in the picture, this is a study group for another course of English Fluency. After the group was disbanded, the name of the group chat was changed to "Class 26 has been disbanded - please send a private message for refund & renewal." It not only highlights the nature of the group being disbanded, but also adds the subsequent things that need to be dealt with into the group name, which is very clever.

Banban will also notify each group member of the disbandment via private messages and inform the students how to deal with subsequent matters.

What’s interesting is that Banban’s avatar has also changed from colorful to gray, suggesting that group member Banban has “gone offline”, which is very humane.

To sum up, the process from creating a community to disbanding it is actually the time when we operators are closest to users - this is also the most valuable part of community operation.

Running a community may seem simple, but it actually requires a lot of empathy.

Once operated well, the community can bring great value to our product iteration, conversion and dissemination.

2. How to operate a good community?

Take the emerging Q&A community product “Zhima Q&A” as an example:

(1) We know that after a community is established, content must be added to it, and this content is produced by the users of the community.

So how to build a UGC content system? Let’s see how Sesame Q&A is done.

The first step is to determine the tone of the community.

As shown in the picture, the introduction of Sesame Q&A in the App Store is "Sharing high-quality answers", so its positioning is a question-and-answer community product.

The second step is to invite users to create content and provide incentives.

Unlike other question-and-answer products such as Zhihu and Wukong Q&A, Sesame Q&A did not invite celebrities to join in the early stages to increase the popularity of the product. Most of its content creators are "grassroots", and the areas of answers are not vertical.

Users can answer any question they know how to answer, and high-quality answers will receive cash rewards.

The third step is to attract more new users.

Here, Sesame Q&A adopts two methods of attracting new users.

The first is to encourage users to share their answers on WeChat or Moments.

Because the number of reads, likes and comments on the answers are directly linked to the revenue, this will encourage users to share the answers, thereby achieving a promotional effect.

The second is the traditional "recruiting apprentices" model to attract new customers. This method will bring benefits to both the master and the apprentice, and therefore can also effectively encourage old users to recruit apprentices and attract new customers.

As shown in the picture, Sesame Q&A scrolls the user’s income from recruiting apprentices in real time at the top of its App, and publishes a total list of income from recruiting apprentices to attract users to recruit new apprentices.

As more and more new users join in, users continue to ask and answer questions and earn revenue, the community will become more and more active, and UGC content will be basically built.

At this time, the community management team needs to have a series of measures to maintain UGC content and manage users, so that the community can become a benign and "self-circulating" ecosystem.

Let’s take a look at how Sesame Q&A does it.

(2) In terms of user development and retention , Zhima Q&A mainly adopts two incentive measures: "original" label and V expert certification.

1. “Original” tag : This is the first step for new users of Sesame Q&A to advance. When users continuously produce high-quality answer articles and meet the time and user score requirements, they can apply for the "original" label.

Users with the "original" label will receive income and answer ranking weights, which means more funding, traffic, and exposure support.

2. Add "V" certification : This is the highest level for Sesame Q&A users.

When a user can continuously output high-quality answers in a certain field, produce original content, participate in platform construction, have his own unique perspective, and the number of fans reaches a certain level, the system will automatically issue a big V certification invitation. As shown in the picture, they are various experts on Sesame Q&A.

In terms of establishing community rules , Zhima Q&A has the following measures:

1. All answers must be reviewed before they can be published;

2. Unqualified answers from users will be folded;

3. Users will be deducted points for reasons such as picture matching, malicious likes, infringement, etc., which will directly affect the level of income;

4. If a user engages in serious plagiarism, frequently posts advertisements, or spreads sensitive information, his account will be blocked directly.

To sum up, when operating a community, you first need to build a UGC content production ecosystem, introduce users into the community, and encourage users to produce content; then the community management team should formulate a series of rules and regulations.

In this way, the community can operate on its own and form a healthy community ecology.

Source: Operation Gongju Xiaoleilei ( gongjulei )