How to create a highly active community from scratch? An article that explains the practical methodology!

In today's article, I mainly want to talk to you about community operations based on WeChat groups . The content is mainly based on the sharing done in the early days and has been refurbished in combination with some new changes at present.

We will help you find an operating model for WeChat groups from five aspects: WeChat group construction, operation management, group copywriting, online and offline activities , and monetization to create value.

There is a lot of content, but I can guarantee that it is absolutely not diluted. However, in order to facilitate those friends who do not have enough time, I have sorted out the main framework of the article. You can pick the most interesting points first:

01

Questions that must be considered before starting a community

01 | What kind of people or businesses are suitable for developing community operations?

crowd

1. Official account operator

A complete WeChat operation consists of five parts: official accounts , personal accounts, Moments , WeChat groups, and mini-programs . When you have the ability to operate a public account, adding the assistance of a WeChat group is like icing on the cake.

WeChat groups can help your official account greatly increase its activity. Secondly, they can help you understand the thoughts of your real fans in more detail, and they will give you the most direct feedback.

For example, recently when I couldn’t find a topic for disassembly, I went to the fan group and asked everyone what kind of disassembly they wanted to see, and I got a long list of big names. Maybe not all of them will be used in the end, but at least they can give us direction, “Oh, it turns out they are interested in this kind of topic”, this is a gain.

In addition, since the opening rate of Moments and WeChat groups is higher than that of official accounts, sometimes some important information is not seen by users in time. In this case, we can remind them again in Moments and WeChat groups, such as some courses, activities, etc.

2. Expertise on a topic

You are an expert in a certain area among your friends, or you are more experienced in a certain topic, and many people consult you. You don’t have to be a big shot, as long as you can influence your circle of friends.

WeChat groups can at least incubate your first batch of hardcore fans. These group members can interact with you in real time by asking and answering questions, helping you discover the needs that you can best solve, and then launch your personal consulting services.

For example, a friend of a friend of mine is very knowledgeable about skin care products. He can even explain the ingredients and functions of skin care products in detail. Encouraged by his friends, he created a group. I joined it as soon as I knew about it. Later, whenever I had related questions, I would ask him in the group, and sometimes it would trigger other people to discuss together. If he could come up with a relatively systematic skin care product-related course, I might really place an order without hesitation.

3. Internet celebrities in the circle of friends

The "Internet celebrities" in the circle of friends are social activists or social experts.

This type of person is more outgoing, naturally sociable, and very popular. They have many friends from all walks of life, thousands of WeChat friends, and any post they make on WeChat Moments will get hundreds of likes...

If these friends find a field that they can handle well, they can open a WeChat group and often gather people more easily than their more introverted friends. They are also more experienced in dealing with people.

It is suitable for shaping personal IP. For example, someone around me uses community operation as an entry point and operates a platform for communication for friends from all walks of life. There are many bigwigs among them, who have added endorsements for it. The activities organized later were also very successful, and he has recently started to offer courses.

4. Operating offline locations

For friends who run offline venues, such as cafes, bookstores, teahouses, bars and the like, I personally suggest that this type of group is really suitable for starting their own fan group.

What is the reason? Because if you are an offline coffee shop, in most cases you will be limited by space. It is really difficult for people who have never been here to know the existence of your coffee shop, unless a friend recommends it, but how many recommendations can they make?

In addition, your content output is very limited. Not to mention the cost of an extra editor for a public account, even if you make up your mind to do it, the reading volume and dissemination rate are often not that high... However, if your cafe often has activities, it is very convenient and quick to communicate with everyone through the WeChat group.

For example, I went out for a stroll with my friends on the weekend and saw a coffee shop in a small alley. Normally, people who are not as bored as me would rarely think of finding a coffee shop in such a remote place, but it is precisely because of the remoteness that there is a lot of coffee shops in the alley.

The feeling of resting will be very quiet and comfortable. Later, I saw they put a QR code at the door, so I scanned it and added the person in charge. I can often see him posting promotional tweets about some theme activities in the circle of friends, most of which are quite interesting. If he also builds a community, the effect should be good.

business

When it comes to the business level, the product conditions are generally met, but not all products can achieve the goal of improving conversion rates and repurchase rates through community operations.

To achieve the above goals, the product should have the following characteristics:

1. Users have a long thinking cycle and a high decision threshold when purchasing products. For example, when users see the offline get out of class for media bosses we have, they will consider whether the price is acceptable, whether the investment in time and various costs can be recovered, etc.

Then during the hesitation process, when they see that there is a group they can join, most people who have even a little interest in the course will choose to join the group. The community provides them with a transition period for decision-making, applies certain stimuli and can even stimulate their shopping behavior relatively quickly.

1. For products with a high purchase frequency, the existence of the community can stimulate the repurchase rate accordingly. For example, we can regularly push promotional activities for the product in the group, and then remind users to "restock", so the repurchase rate will naturally increase.

02 | How to operate a high-quality WeChat group?

What I want to talk about here is to summarize some elements of high-quality WeChat groups:

1. Like-minded

That is, having a common interest or hobby. The best innovation of mobile Internet is that it has stimulated many niche hobbies. The greatest value of WeChat groups is that the relationships between people are connected and released.

Like-minded people are like magnets that can attract people with the same characteristics to gather together. Everyone can express their opinions and discuss the topic together, thereby increasing their "dependence" on the community.

For example, I joined a pet group before. At first, it was because I had just got a cat at home and wanted to ask other people for advice. Later, whenever I had time, I would go there to check out some tips on raising pets, and I also found it interesting to see other people post pictures of their pets.

2. Topic

Whether a WeChat group is active and how long it will remain active has actually been determined before the group is created. Why is this? The establishment of a group is often triggered by a topic, and whether this topic can be discussed continuously means whether the group can be continuously active.

For example, if you create a resume exchange group, this group will naturally have no vitality, because everyone's demand for resume making is not long-term, and everyone can leave the group as long as they complete a resume.

3. Goals

Goals are a very strong behavioral guide for everyone.

Therefore, in addition to interests, some study groups and habit-forming check-in groups are also very meaningful. Everyone joins the group for a common goal, which may be to study, lose weight, go to bed early, etc.

Correspondingly, we can name the group according to the goal to be achieved. People who join the group can know what the group is about from the name. If some group names are interesting, they can even attract more people to join.

For example, if you are a nutrition and weight loss consulting agency, there is no need to create a regular "weight loss exchange group" when you set up a group. You can directly create a "Lose weight to 90 catties together" WeChat group with a stronger sense of purpose and behavior guidance.

4. Group Rules

The point that needs to be emphasized here is that group rules are not regulations that the group owner unilaterally thinks are good, but values ​​that are commonly recognized by group members.

In order to manage the group, some group owners or managers will set many strict group rules in advance and hope that group members can strictly abide by them to ensure the order of the group. The starting point is good, but it is actually anti-human in nature. Doing so often easily causes members to feel dissatisfied or fearful, and simply quit the group.

A group with commonly recognized values. For example, I participated in an English community before. The group rules required daily morning reading check-in but it was not mandatory. Later, I saw others check-in and listened to other people’s voice messages in the group, and slowly I was motivated to join in.

This is the result of being influenced by the values ​​that are commonly recognized by everyone, because in the beginning everyone joined the group with the original intention of thinking that learning English is useful. The only difference is whether they can be inspired later or the degree of inspiration is different.

5. Threshold

"Free services will not be cherished, and communities that are easily obtained will not be cherished either." Therefore, setting thresholds is very necessary. The thresholds mentioned here can be payment, tasks, or even common goals, hobbies, etc.

Inviting people for the purpose of creating a group is a very blind behavior. There is a very common phenomenon that some friends who have just started to create a group will invite some friends to join because they are worried that the group will be boring. However, if these friends are not the target users of your group and they do not have common interests and goals, then your initial concern will become a reality - the group will definitely be boring.

The threshold can naturally screen out those people who are not your target users, so that you can have more energy to serve your users well. You should know that a chat group of 500 people is actually not as good as a study group of 10 people.

Secondly, with the threshold in place, it will be easier for everyone to agree to the group rules. To give a very simple example, if I paid several thousand yuan to join a group, would I post random advertisements?

6. Copy

Replicability refers to the operating model or method of this group, which in layman's terms is experience.

A good method or model often has underlying logic and can be replicated, just like some powerful reference books on the market. Why do so many people buy them? It is precisely because of these very essential things that I can use them and draw inferences about other situations.

You can think of this as polishing and trial and error at one point, and then expanding it on a larger scale after the methodology is proven to be effective. On the one hand, this operating model becomes the capital of your team or a competitive advantage in the market. On the other hand, it can also provide a methodology for the subsequent expansion of your community operations and save the cost of re-development.

For example, our team first established a large aesthetics group. When it developed to a certain extent, we accumulated certain experience. In addition, seeing that the group was about to reach 500 people, we struggled for a while on whether to continue to open the group. Finally, we decided to change the original plan of "opening sub-groups" to "opening sub-groups", that is, to subdivide the aesthetics group into other groups such as clothing, tea ceremony, flower art, etc., and then replicate the experience of the large group at the beginning. In this way, the target users of each of our groups will be more accurate, and the scale will also be expanded. All of this benefits from the experience we accumulated in the large group at the beginning.

7. Output

The output of group content corresponds to whether we can produce content for external publicity. This part of the content determines whether our community can go out and be known by more people.

You have to know that a community that only carries out internal activities is actually just entertaining itself. You trap yourself in a circle, and it is difficult for the outside world to know the existence of your group. Correspondingly, the attractiveness of this community will decrease, and it will be more difficult to introduce fresh blood, and it will eventually become a stagnant pool.

8. Original Intention

This element is a bit cliche, but it is also very important. The original intention is actually some principles that you need to adhere to. It is a very essential thing.

02

How to build and manage user groups

01 | How to build a WeChat group from 0 to 1?

The first thing to do is to find the unique value of the group

The so-called "unique value of a group" is actually the "positioning" of the community. That is, before establishing a group, you must think clearly about what kind of services and value you will provide to your community members?

Here are a few dimensions for reference, dividing people into groups, such as age, gender, occupation, city, income, family situation, hobbies, abilities...

In addition, you can also consider the elements of high-quality groups mentioned in the first part, such as good, topic, goal, demand, group owner...

Here we briefly mention the two elements of "demand" and "group owner". The demand is, for example, some large-scale original author docking groups. The demand of large-scale operators is to find more high-quality content articles, while some original authors do not have many fans in the initial development stage, so they need to find some large platforms to submit their works to attract fans. The birth of the docking group obviously solves the needs between the two very well.

As for the "group owner", to put it simply, it is actually about shaping the IP. Most people choose to join such a community because they think the group owner is interesting or informative. Therefore, if you plan to start from this factor, you also need to be able to meet the expectations of the members and have your own personal charm.

Find the right people

After we find the unique value of a group, the second step is to get the people on board. So which specific people do we need to get on board?

1. Administrator

The person responsible for the daily maintenance of the WeChat group can be the group owner himself or other people who will help you, so you should find someone who agrees with your ideas to be responsible for managing daily affairs.

2. Sharer

That is, someone who can create topics. The group owner is not necessarily the most talkative person, but there must be people in the group who can share, otherwise the topic cannot be sustained.

3. Target Audience

That is, those who are willing to join this group may join the group because of needs, recognition of the group owner, or because they agree with the group's philosophy, etc. At the same time, the number of such people must be large enough to support a community.

PS: Some people may have three identities, which is okay. Friends who want to join a community must think carefully about whether they can gather these three types of people before considering starting to build a group. If you haven’t thought it through yet, don’t be so anxious to build a group, otherwise it will be difficult to continue.

Finding the right operating model

After dealing with the above three types of people, what we need to think about next is the operating model, which mainly includes the following three points:

1. Entry barriers

The first is the entry threshold, which means that there need to be certain screening requirements for personnel.

As for the reason, it was mentioned above that "no one will cherish free services". In addition, the threshold can help us screen out invalid users and ensure that we have more energy to serve more people in need.

2. Group Rules

The first level of group rules is definitely to prohibit advertising while protecting everyone's privacy; the second level is to put forward your ideas and operating models, and the deeper level is values.

3. Daily maintenance

Daily maintenance includes topics, activities, interactions, etc. that are posted in this group on a daily basis.

In addition, before establishing a group, we must also consider one issue: what kind of operating model can ensure that the community can continue to operate smoothly and normally, and it would be best if it does not take up too much of the manager's time and energy.

Regarding the operating model, taking our team as an example, I would like to share here the questions that we must think about when setting up a group, including: What can I share in the group? Who can I invite to share in the group? And which friends are willing to help me do this? Who do I want to join the group? How to set group rules? How to maintain it on a daily basis? …

02 | How to build a WeChat group from 0 to 1?

How to promote your own WeChat group?

1. Moments

The first batch of users will definitely come from the target users you are more familiar with in your circle of friends. But here I want to remind you that starting with the circle of friends in the initial stage of building a community does not mean that you can just throw a QR code and be done with it. Do you remember the "threshold" of high-quality group elements mentioned above? If you forgot, you can look back.

At the same time, I also suggest that if there are any interesting conversations in the group, you can take screenshots and share them on WeChat Moments to let more people know about the existence of this group, which can also stimulate everyone's interest in this community.

2. Official Account

This channel may have some barriers to entry. Friends who have their own official accounts can try to put an introduction about this WeChat group in the background custom menu. If the official account has new fans every day, they will click in to take a look. Another way is to put it at the end of each day's article to drive it forward.

3. Weibo/ Douban / Jianshu / Toutiao

The third method is to use other external forces to drive the exposure of the WeChat group, such as on Weibo, Douban, Jianshu, Toutiao, etc. As long as it is suitable to put articles, you can expose your WeChat group, but it is best not to put the QR code directly, because it is easy to expire and be full of people, so it is best to leave the WeChat account of the group owner.

Another thing I want to say is that if friends who operate public accounts want to quickly increase the number of fans of the public accounts through WeChat groups, I think it is rather difficult, and this idea is too roundabout. It is better to just make the content of the public account better and attract fans more directly.

The value of WeChat groups lies more in the deeper relationship connections between people rather than rapid dissemination. It is more important for WeChat groups to provide valuable services than to spread information.

How to organize and manage a large number of users?

When you have more groups, you will need other people to help you manage these WeChat groups, so it is very important to select group owners and volunteer administrators. Our team can operate so many groups because each group has its own group owner and there are many volunteer partners who are willing to spend time helping to operate and maintain the community.

Here are some of the main factors our team considers when selecting group leaders and volunteers:

1. Values

The first factor is naturally values. We need to consider whether the other party can agree with our ideas, which are actually the so-called three views.

This is very important because he directly manages many things. Specific considerations can be what he usually says in the group, everyone's evaluation of him, etc. These can directly or indirectly understand whether this person's values ​​​​are consistent with our team.

2. Organizational skills

Since the daily operation of the community cannot be separated from some activities to promote activity, the organizational ability of the group owner or administrator is very important at this time.

It is also worth noting that some people have stronger online organizational skills, while others have stronger offline organizational skills. This requires considering what kind of activities your community tends to do more. However, for our team, we generally choose people who are stronger in online activities.

3. Communication skills

Having good communication skills is the most basic requirement, because WeChat groups are essentially used for chatting and communicating. Also, there are bound to be some disputes in WeChat groups, and how to deal with the specific situations will test the group owner's communication skills.

4. Offline resources

The fourth is whether there are offline resources. Because our community activities are more likely to combine online and offline, it would be better if there are certain offline venue resources, such as operating book bars, coffee shops, tea houses, etc.

How do we consider the above points specifically? First of all, it requires long-term daily observation and accumulation. In addition, if someone applies to open a new group in a new place, we have to stay in the big group for at least a period of time so that we can have a certain understanding of this person.

Secondly, after deciding to open a sub-group, we will generally retain the group owner status for a period of time. After a period of time, we will see his organizational and communication skills, and then transfer the group owner status to him. After that, we will promote it in other WeChat groups and public accounts. The main considerations are the above four aspects.

Once again, I want to emphasize that the early assessment is very important and you must not be careless. If you accidentally choose an unreliable person, not to mention the impact it will have on your own social network brand , the time and other costs spent on cleaning up the mess for the other party later will not be worth it.

03

How to set relevant in-group copy?

01 | How to set the WeChat group name?

A good name can quickly attract target users and also build a sense of belonging. Here are a few methods for setting WeChat group names for reference:

1. Population Nomenclature

The first naming method is to name according to the target group, such as occupation, position, identity, etc. For example, the Guangzhou HR Director Exchange Group, the Most Attractive Editor Group, the Post-90s Entrepreneur Group...

In fact, you can simply name it according to the group of people you want to attract. The advantage is that it is intuitive and clear. Just by looking at the group name, you can know who will participate in the group. The disadvantage is that it is easy to be similar and have no characteristics. If possible, it would be better to add a little bit of characteristics.

2. Target Nomenclature

The second naming method is to name the group after a common goal. We have mentioned this before. We name the group after a goal that we have found that can be accomplished by a group of people, such as reading for an hour before bed, losing weight to 90 catties together…

Just looking at the group name will give you a sense of excitement and stimulate others' desire to join this community. However, you should avoid making the name too abstract and awkward. Don't make it so interesting that others can't understand it, which would be bad.

3. Functional nomenclature

The third method is to name it by function, which is to tell everyone in the simplest and most direct way what your group is used for, such as a docking group for high-quality large-scale original authors, etc.

Next, we use an example to illustrate the specific usage of the above three methods: if your target audience is people who keep cats, we can name it after the audience and call it "Cat Owner Concentration Camp", name it after the target and call it "Let's Become Cute Pet Internet Celebrities", and name it after the function and call it "Cat Hugging Online Everyday".

02 | How to set group rules?

A good group rule not only protects the communication environment of the group, but also explains: what should be done, what should not be done, etc.

The reason why I emphasized before that group rules are not unilaterally set by the founder, but a commonly recognized convention is because you need a reason for everyone to believe in you. Now I would like to share with you some ideas of our team in setting group rules.

The first sentence is to explain the purpose and significance of your group, and then explain the origin of the group. The third part is to explain the group rules in detail. The detailed explanation of the group rules elements and applicable setting methods are as follows:

1. Group nickname

In general, group members are required to set the group nickname in the format of "region + nickname". In addition, you can add other necessary information depending on the specific situation. For example, some topic groups recommend that you add your interests, hobbies, zodiac sign, age, etc.

2. Share content

This can be specifically applied in some topic-based communities. The scope of topics can be limited in the group rules, including which topics are recommended to be discussed more and which topics are prohibited.

For example, in an English learning group, you can emphasize that only topics related to learning can be discussed, and irrelevant topics are prohibited. This is to prevent people from spamming the group or spamming the screen, which can cause trouble and disgust to other members of the community. It would be unfair if such emotions were projected onto the community...

3. Prohibition of advertising

Advertisements, promotions, false information, and unverified public welfare, charity , and donation information. General advertisements are relatively easy to distinguish, but fundraising information is more difficult to deal with.

It is recommended that you specify in the group rules that in addition to certain content, any other external links to be posted need to be reported to the group owner for review first. I believe that most members can understand this.

4. Adding multiple friends is prohibited

There are many micro-business people or people with unknown purposes who will continue to add people after joining the group. Although we have no way to monitor these, they will be removed from the group once they are discovered. Appropriate warnings can be given in the group rules, and reminders can be made that those who are disturbed can report the situation to the administrator, etc.

5. Prohibition of initiating voting, collecting likes and other activity information

In particular, many public accounts will attract fans through voting and collecting likes. This requires special attention. If it is not handled immediately and a warning is issued, other members will assume that this behavior is allowed. On the one hand, it will easily cause screen swiping, and on the other hand, the sense of value brought by this community will be reduced.

6. What are the penalties for violations?

Some group rules will kick people out directly if they violate the rules, while others will only kick people out if they violate the rules twice. Later we found that if we kick people out if they violate the rules twice, it means that everyone has one chance to violate the rules, so we changed it to kicking people out if they violate the rules once.

7. Group members specify actions

This involves the ongoing services that each community needs to provide. The situation of each group is different, so you need to formulate the group's behavior based on your own group.

For example, for a reading group, there is a requirement for a certain number of books to be read every month; for an early rising group, there is a requirement for getting up at a certain time every day, and so on. You need to think about this yourself.

8. Implementation standards of group rules

After the group rules are set, we need to control the scale of their implementation.

First of all, it should be clear that the builders of the community are essentially just a "aggregator". Don't be too arrogant and think of yourself as a "ruler". This is a ridiculous idea.

However, if we don’t set some rules, the community will easily become chaotic. Therefore, it is difficult to control the scale and give you very specific advice. Here I will give you some reference based on the example of the community our team has run before.

We previously established the group, formulated the group rules, and strictly enforced them for a short period of time. However, we issued warnings frequently, causing many people to simply stop speaking. Later, we reflected on our original intention of establishing this group, and came up with a method - we wrote an article specifically for the members of the community. The content was about our original intention and purpose of establishing the group, and what problems the original intention of setting the group rules was to avoid and solve, etc. Later, many people were moved by us and cherished the opportunity to stay in our group even more. Sometimes they would even take the initiative to help us supervise and remind those who violated the rules. This is a relatively healthy community ecology.

03 | How to write a script to kick someone out?

For some people, if their violations are not too serious, such as they are able to withdraw the message in time after being warned, or they take the initiative to apologize and make some compensation, etc., we usually just remind them not to do it again.

However, another point that needs attention is the way of speaking. Sometimes you should not be too stiff, as this will make you seem inhumane. For example, one time a mother in the group wanted to canvass votes for her cute baby, but we didn't allow that. So we used the group owner's account to click in and vote for her child, and then told her that we had voted for her, but canvassing for votes was not allowed in the group. We let her know this, and she was more willing to accept it, and the group members didn't think we were too inhumane.

Another type is the fundraising type. Because the authenticity of this type of information is difficult to verify, it has always been difficult to handle. In addition, there are many people involved in the group, so we have always been conservative about fundraising information. Similarly, individual donations from the team are fine, but if we want to use our power to mobilize everyone to donate, it will be more complicated.

If the violation is caused by posting advertisements, this is a somewhat malicious violation, but it still depends on the situation. If there is no threshold to join the community, the violation can be kicked out directly; if it is a group with a threshold, such as paid entry, it must be handled more cautiously. You can first directly remind the person who violated the rules in a private message. If the person has a good attitude towards correction, then he can be forgiven (but you still have to explain it in the group to prevent other members from thinking that the behavior is allowed by default). If he keeps quibbling, then there is nothing you can do.

Another point that needs to be emphasized is that the group rules must be made public before or when each member joins the group. The purpose of doing this is that if someone violates the rules in the future, we, the party in the right, will have the right to speak, thus avoiding some unnecessary trouble in advance.

04 | How to publish event notifications?

A complete event information includes at least the following aspects: event theme, event form, event time, registration method, etc.

If you have a public account, you can first write the copy of the event on the public account, then copy the introduction of the event, and use a group announcement to notify everyone. That’s enough.

If there is no official account, the most direct way is to write the event copy in the group, clearly state the theme, form, time, registration method, etc. of the event, and then directly copy the copy and add your own name at the end to take over the registration. Of course, you can also use third-party platforms such as Interactive to help you complete the registration, etc.

05 | How to adjust the tone of speech?

The last one is the language and tone used during the overall daily maintenance. If you are using a customer service number for management, then you can consider the tone you want to use to present your personal image that is more in line with the tone of your own community.

However, if you use a personal account or entrust it to someone else for management, it will be more difficult to control. After all, the way of speaking varies from person to person. Some people are naturally good at speaking, while others may need to pay attention to their tone. But one thing is that as long as your attitude is relatively correct, there will not be too many problems with your speaking. If you say something wrong, you can withdraw it if there is still time. If you don’t have time, you can send a red envelope to explain.

At the same time, if you have been operating for a long time, you will know which questions are frequently asked by new group members. You can then organize these words and put them into the shortcut phrases of the mobile phone input method. This can help you save a lot of time.

04

How to maintain and improve the activity within the group?

01 | How to retain , activate and attract new members in the community

Retention Activation

1. Welcome message + red envelope

When a new member joins the group, the group owner can design a welcome message based on the tone of the community and guide the new member to send red envelopes, and then the group owner can send red envelopes in return.

For example, the welcome message of the “Most Beautiful Editor Group” we created before is: Congratulations! Your beauty has been certified, send a red envelope to celebrate. Doing so can give new members a sense of ritual and a feeling of "becoming a member of the community", thereby strengthening their stickiness to the community accordingly.

In addition, the purpose of sending red envelopes is, on the one hand, to promote interaction between old members and new members, and on the other hand, new members will also have a sense of participation and feel that they are valued. In fact, red envelopes are equivalent to an enhanced version of welcome words.

In addition, it is recommended that you use the WeChat group management plug-in to set the welcome message. The robot will automatically send a welcome message to every new person in the group, so you don’t have to keep an eye on it and it can save some time.

2. Upgrade + retention mechanism

The establishment of the upgrade + retention mechanism is essentially a blood exchange mechanism. The specific operation is to open two groups. Those who have not met the requirements (for example, the number of check-ins in the study group is too small) do not want to stay in the group to take up positions and affect the enthusiasm of others, but do not want to take overly tough measures to make them withdraw. In this case, we can pull them into the so-called "retention group".

The advantage of doing this is that, on the one hand, we can carry out a wave of blood transfusions relatively smoothly, and on the other hand, it gives members who may not be able to actively participate in community activities for other reasons an opportunity to fight for it. At the same time, it will also bring a sense of scarcity to other members, making them feel that the opportunity to join this group requires their own efforts, and they will pay more attention to it accordingly.

3. Surprises beyond expectations

That is, you can choose to adopt some routines. For example, you use A to attract users to join your community, but the service you can ultimately provide can actually reach A+. Then users will have a feeling of "making a profit" and they will want to stay more.

So in the actual operation process, you need to consider in the promotion link what content you will use to attract users to join your community. At the same time, these attractions are only part of the value and services that your community can provide, which means that there are reservations. These are worth your consideration.

Attract new customers

1. Step price increase

After the old members have been retained and activated in the early stage and have accumulated a certain amount of user reputation, we can promote these things as endorsement resources, add the routine of step-by-step price increase, create scarcity and urgency, and make users "pressured" to join;

The so-called step-by-step price increase routine is actually to set a tiered entry threshold. Taking the membership fee for joining the group as an example, the fee for the first 100 people to join the group may be a yuan, then the fee for the 100-300th people may be 2a yuan, and so on.

2. Distribution Mechanism

If the step-by-step price increase is a "pull" mechanism, then distribution is a "push" mechanism, that is, the development from content to the outside world. You can start with old members to drive distribution, and then rely on a reasonable distribution mechanism + community charm to generate self-propagation in the later stage.

As for the establishment of a distribution mechanism, it is a big question. It is recommended to use some small tools to assist, such as Knowledge Planet...

02 | How to carry out offline activities?

In addition, if you want to activate the WeChat group, if conditions permit (it is not recommended in the early stages as it will be very tiring), I personally strongly recommend organizing more offline activities. This is a way for everyone to quickly get familiar with each other. At the same time, after becoming friends in real life, everyone will naturally become more active in the WeChat group.

However, when considering how to carry out offline activities, it is recommended that you not only consider what should be done at the event site, but also consider some more detailed and comprehensive issues before, during and after the event.

Because the activities we want to do are not just the kind of activities that come to participate on the same day and leave after listening. We hope to form: start preparing content before the event, everyone can become a sharer during the event, and everyone can become an outputer after the event, etc.

The following several elements provide cover almost the entire process elements of most offline activities:

1. Theme

The first thing to do when organizing offline activities is the theme, that is, what kind of theme do you want to attract everyone? For example, we have done our own aesthetics of life, travel, writing, reading, etc.

2. Venue

The second thing is to find a suitable venue that suits our community tone. You can also find it according to different themes. For example, we can create a period of the beauty of Chinese calligraphy in the Huangpu Ancient Village in Guangzhou. This venue is more in line with the theme of our "Chinese Characters" and is very antique.

When looking for venue resources, we first consider finding our friends’ venues, because the corresponding price will be relatively low. If we don’t have them yet, we will find some suitable cafes or book bars, etc.

After the community has a certain reputation, more people with venues know that our organization will in turn invite us to hold some activities to their side to drive some popularity.

3. Personnel

• Staff

The third thing is to find people. First of all, we are staff members. We also call the curatorial team. Some people with strong organizational capabilities can handle everything by themselves, and some still need help from others. There are usually the following roles in the curatorial group.

Initiator: Responsible for the execution of the entire event, including docking with sharing guests, venue docking, enrollment publicity, etc.;

Role host: Be responsible for the hosting of the day. You need to draft a hosting draft based on the guest’s information and PPT. You must have certain hosting ability, and more importantly, the ability to control the field, and you must also control the time;

The service for the day: responsible for signing in tea, snacks and so on that day. Sometimes the initiator is busy with other reception matters, and the service for the service can help receive some people;

Photographer: This must be available! It is difficult for people who don’t participate in the event to perceive the effect, but if you take good photos, it can attract those who haven’t participated and join.

• Share the guest

In addition to organizers and staff responsible for coordinating offline events, our sharing guests are naturally indispensable. Here are a few ways to find suitable sharing guests:

The first way is to mobilize people in the group. For example, sometimes we will observe in the group and see some group members who are more able to share, and they will ask them to share. For example, Lu Bai, one of our media boss’s tutors, also discovered it from the community;

The second way is to introduce it through friends. For example, if you set a topic, you can ask your friends around you if there are any suitable people to recommend it. Generally, reliable friends recommend it more appropriately;

The third way is to find big Vs online. You can find the people you want to find through Zhihu, Weibo, WeChat and other channels. At the same time, since you can find them, you can naturally see some of their existing sharing on the Internet. Then, at this time, you should mainly consider their eloquence and expression skills.

Here, someone may want to ask questions about funding. Don’t be embarrassed to let me answer you. This mainly depends on the nature of the event. You can look at it according to the situation:

For example, the offline activities you plan to hold are non-profit and may not have much funding. At this time, you can appropriately invite guests and staff to have dinner together, give some small gifts or a small promise, such as doing your best to expand your influence for the other party, etc. As long as you can negotiate in the early stage, it will be done;

However, if it is a profitable event, the guests' class remuneration should be paid in a certain proportion, and the staff's fees should also depend on the situation. Some activities themselves are more valuable and attractive, so you can recruit volunteers to participate.

4. Activity process

After setting the theme and getting the people in hand, we need to set up the activity process for the day. We usually set it according to the trilogy, first of all, the guests share, secondly, the group discussion, and finally the summary. If the time is long, the tea break can be arranged in the middle.

5. Event publicity

Once your theme, guests, and event procedures are all set, you can start promoting. If you have a public account, you can use the official account to edit copy and push it. If you don’t have one, you can publish it through the WeChat group, or use a third-party platform.

If you don’t have a lot of people, you can choose some activity platforms to launch them, such as event stores, Douban City, where to go on weekends, heating, natural players, etc. You can post them on these platforms. They will introduce a certain amount of traffic to you, and then forward it in your circle of friends, remind you many times in the group, and it will be almost the same.

In addition, I would like to recommend a gadget suitable for event operation - the Event Operation Assistant. The main function is to enable multi-platform distribution of content in one-stop. I have written an article about how to use this tool and some precautions for event content delivery. Interested friends can reply to the keyword "Activity" in the background to get a look.

03 | How to carry out online activities - Case

Finding people in online activities and event processes are similar to organizing offline activities. The main difference is that the "site" has changed, and the offline space has been transferred to a WeChat group. Therefore, some changes should be made in form. Here are a few practical cases to share the points we should pay attention to when we have obtained online activities:

1. Make everyone feel a sense of belonging

For example, the aesthetic group of our team held a "Poetry Reading Relay" activity. At first we adopted a poem that was read by one person, but most of the poems selected were long and tiring and awkward to read. Later, we changed the method and changed it to read by one person for a short paragraph, and continued in the order of everyone's registration. After the event, many people reported that they felt very warm.

2. You can try to choose some complementary partners

We had an online reading appointment activity for 21 days before, which roughly imitated the form of an offline reading club, allowing everyone to check in and write reading reviews online after reading the book. However, due to the high operation cost and the manpower could not keep up at that time, it was put on hold after only one time;

Later, we also played similar reading sharing activities in other communities, but since the other party specialized in this, the entire activity process was more systematic and automated, and there were tool assistance. In addition, they built a new app at that time, which required traffic, and we also needed such a tool, so we cooperated.

You can think about it based on the above examples. Is it possible to organize similar activities in your group that allow group members to participate in? If so, you can refer to similar forms.

04 | How to regularly distribute benefits?

Welfare can form an encouragement mechanism in the community, reward high-quality users in the community, and stimulate more people's emotions. For example, if there is a check-in session in your community, you can design a "Most Diligence Award" to reward students who attend all check-in, and there are many such things.

The more critical point is that the setting of the cycle must be reasonable, and it cannot be too long or too short. If it is too long, the user will be impatient. If it is too short, the team may be easily tired of execution. However, it still depends on the specific situation of the team. At the same time, once the cycle is set, it must be strictly implemented, otherwise it will easily give people a feeling of "playing" and the trust and viscosity will also decrease accordingly.

In addition, when choosing benefits, I do not recommend using money, such as red envelopes. This is because red envelopes may make users continuously improve their psychological expectations. Personal satisfaction requires more money to satisfy them. At the same time, red envelopes do not have the function of dissemination. Many people accept red envelopes and do not want to show off. This is undoubtedly a thankless and gradually increases burden for our community managers.

So what to give? My personal advice is to give some peripherals, which can be products that suit our tone. For example, literary or learning numbers, you can consider sending books, etc.; or you can also design and produce some brand peripherals yourself. These are good choices, especially those with their own logos, which can also be promoted by the way, thereby improving sustainable and low-cost secondary communication.

05

How to realize the commercial value of WeChat groups?

When the WeChat group reaches a certain scale, you can actually consider introducing some commercial content, which is actually monetization. This is a very realistic problem. Most people should have been focusing on the community that ultimately realizes monetization, hoping to introduce some of their own products or develop some commercial models, etc.

01 | How to push graphic and text messages in moderation? Carry out secondary transmission?

If you are the operator of the official account, if it is just a normal push, especially for activities or product promotion, unless it is really attractive or has its own communication effect, the opening and conversion rates will generally be low. At this time, you can choose to forward to the WeChat group moderately.

However, it is generally not effective to forward it to the group, so here are a few points to pay attention to: first, you need to enter the user's key points, second, pay attention to the timing, and third, make good use of the group functions.

Simply put, first of all, you must ensure that the content you produce is what the group members like and need; if you are carefully creating an article, you can give it a different form before, during and after the article is produced. For example, you can preheat it before the official push. After the official push, you can add a few touching words and then send it to the group using the group announcement. If the article has received relatively high recognition, you can also talk about your feelings in the group.

For specific practices, please refer to Li Jiaoshou ’s early WeChat groups. Li Jiaoshou only updates one article a week, but there will be a discussion in the group two days before the official push. When the article comes out, the people in the group will immediately start reading and disseminating. Sometimes they will see their opinions and examples being adopted, and the people who are adopted will feel more satisfied and the possibility of forwarding, spreading and disseminating will also increase.

02 | How to build a paid community?

If you really want to make a profit directly through WeChat groups, the best way is to charge membership fees. However, this charge cannot be charged as long as you want, and requires your own hard power to provide a lot of value output.

Take Teacher Kunlong as an example. If he now launches a community service that charges new media operations , I believe many people will choose to respond. This is because Teacher Kunlong does have his own set of methods in new media operations. More importantly, he is also recognized by many industry insiders, with strong abilities + authoritative endorsement. If you are interested in new media operations, what reason will you refuse when you see these?

However, according to the actual situation, if you want to open a community that can be charged, you can first do a free community test, with about 100 people, which is equivalent to a small-scale trial and error. If they all think that your group is good and can meet their needs, then you can try and charge for the second batch of people who join.

03 | How to develop e-commerce in WeChat groups?

The second direct profit model is actually through the sales of goods or courses, which is WeChat group e-commerce.

However, the difficulty of WeChat groups may be higher than that of Taobao , because Taobao's traffic has clear demands, and WeChat's shopping needs are deeper and often need to be stimulated to be effective. At the same time, it should be noted that it is necessary to try to adopt some more natural and willing to accept them.

As for how to stimulate everyone’s purchasing needs? My suggestions are: limited time, purchase limit, and quantity limit.

First of all, when choosing products, you should give priority to finding things that are not easy to find on Taobao and are not common, such as collectibles, crafts, or limited-edition signature books, etc. Secondly, due to the scarcity of quantity, you need to purchase at most one copy per person, and finally, you can buy them for a limited time. If you still look for those bad products in the past, and the advertisements you put out say there is a lot of inventory, please buy more such promotions, it will definitely not be attractive.

For example, a WeChat group built by a collector I have met. He usually shares a lot of collections about purple clay teapots and calligraphy in the group. Sometimes he auctions it in the group, and he grabs it very quickly every time. The reason is that he clearly displays the value of the collection before the auction and has also established a good personal brand credit. So when he can produce some good things for auction, he can make a move soon.

Another suggestion is not to post your own product advertisements in other people's groups, as others will be more disgusted and will not have any effect.

summary

Finally, let’s summarize the main content of this article today. You can make a review of the content based on this mind map:

They are:

• There are three questions you must think about before becoming a community;
• How to build a community from 0 to 1 and then 10 and manage it well;
• Some specific copywriting methods and points to be paid attention to;
• How to maintain and improve group activity, what specific needs to be done for the development of online and offline activities;
• And finally, the content about community monetization.

The above content almost covers the points that need to be considered when building a community. I hope it can bring some inspiration to you who want to do it or are working in a community in front of the screen~

Source: Zeven (wxid: Zeven96728)