The number of followers increased by 20,000+ in 2 days, and the retention rate exceeded 90%. Only 5 things need to be done right for fission growth

In mid-April, we planned an online micro-class sharing event.

The event took a total of 4 days from preparation to completion, and the number of followers increased by more than 10,000 within 2 days after the event went online.

Subscription account background data

Maybe you will say that compared with the micro-courses that have been popular on Xin Shi Xiang and NetEase, your data is nothing, but our difference is that we have transitioned the communities that have been split into our regular communities in 10 days, and now there is a good and active atmosphere in the groups.

Next, I will review this event and share 5 experiences and thoughts with you.

The topic is more important than the guest.

Many people would think that whether or not an event can attract fans to participate depends largely on the importance of the guests.

But through this activity, I found that to make a popular micro-course with high forwarding volume, it mainly depends on the following four factors, and their corresponding importance is:

Topic selection > Title > Copywriting > Guest (fame)

So, what kind of topics do users want to see?

1) The topic must be small

I’ll give you a topic: “How to operate TikTok ”, will you read it?

I guess most users would be like me. Even though TikTok is the hottest topic right now, they would feel that the topic is too big when they see this title. Moreover, the time for online micro-class sharing is generally 40 minutes to 1 hour. If the topic is too broad, the guest may not be able to explain it clearly in order to compress the time, and can only say some "big words" on the surface and finish the matter hastily.

Therefore, when choosing a topic, you must choose a very small topic. Although the angle is small, it can directly hit the user's pain points. Moreover, as long as the knowledge points in the topic are explained clearly, users will feel that they have gained a lot; remember, users seek quality rather than quantity.

2) The topic selection should be differentiated

Choose a topic to share that is different from the content on other platforms.

For example, topics such as “How to quickly gain fans on TikTok” and “Teaching you how to shoot TikTok” have been discussed a lot (and to be honest, these needs are actually very niche). In order to reflect differentiation, we finally chose the topic of "How to direct traffic on Douyin". Judging from the data, the topic we chose was indeed correct.

3) The content should be informative and down-to-earth

Some topics do not have real substantive content or are not "down to earth". Users think that no problem will be solved after listening to the event, so they will naturally not participate in the event.

The key to rapid fan growth

Let me ask you all, what is the key point in the gameplay of NetEase's New Year's Course and New World Course that achieves rapid growth and fission and saturates the circle of friends ?

Let me share a formula with you:

Viral spread index K = X (number of clicks after users share the activity to their Moments) × Y (the proportion of people who receive invitations and become spreading users)

For this event, after looking at the data, we calculated that X = 7, Y = 35%.

Therefore, our final virality index is 7 × 35% = 2.45

What is the concept of this?

Normally, when an ordinary activity is shared on WeChat Moments, on average only 3 people will be interested and click on it (X=3), and for every 4 people who enter the activity, only 1 person will be willing to share the activity on WeChat Moments (Y=1/4).

That is to say, the viral index of a campaign that reaches a passing level is approximately 3×¼=0.75.

For an activity that can create a screen-sweeping activity in the circle of friends, its final dissemination value K should be greater than 1. We achieved 2.45 this time, which is indeed a very good result.

Now, we can answer the previous question: What is the key point of screen swiping?

The answer is: work hard to increase the X value (the number of clicks after users share the activity to their friends) and the Y value (the proportion of people who receive invitations who become disseminators)

So, what is the key to improving X and Y values?

Let's talk about how to increase the X value first.

In our experience, the key is to polish your promotional materials, especially the sharing posters.

It is no exaggeration to say that the importance of posters in the entire fission activity accounts for at least 70%. To make a complete micro-class fission poster, at least the following four elements are required:

1) Attract attention

First of all, the main title must be very clear. Don’t be too broad or too complex. Focus on only one pain point at a time.

Secondly, the copy should be short, concise, and direct so that people can understand it at a glance without having to think at all.

Furthermore, the font size of the main title must be large enough! Make sure people see the title at first glance and receive the most important information you want to convey immediately. What size is appropriate? A very simple standard is to post it on WeChat Moments so that others can see the text of the topic without clicking on the picture.

2) Generate demand

How to generate user demand through posters? The key is to clearly state "what value you can bring to users" and clearly list the highlights that can provide value to target users .

3) Increase authority

This can be shown through the guest's Title. When writing guest titles, don’t be greedy and choose the most relevant and awesome title for the topic.

Other ways to increase authority include recommendations from other KOLs , certification from authoritative organizations, official data, etc.

4) Increase the sense of urgency

You can also add some text on the poster, such as: "Original price 99 yuan, free entry in the last 3 hours", "Free for the first 200 people who scan the code , first come first served", and use urgency and scarcity to get users to quickly participate in the event.

I believe that everyone had a very deep feeling about the role of a sense of urgency on the day when the New World Marketing Course was all over the screen.

User fission method

The above is a method to increase the X value (the number of clicks brought by users sharing the event to their Moments). So how to increase the Y value (the proportion of people who receive invitations and become spreading users) is to polish the event fission process and the writing of copy.

The following figure shows the main process of this activity fission:

Users see the event poster → scan the code to follow the official account → send the poster to Moments → take a screenshot and send it to the backend → verify successfully and add the operator (staff) to the city group

The fission process is not difficult to replicate; the key lies in the quality of execution of each specific detail. Below I will use the packaging of WeChat Moments rhetoric as an example to illustrate this point.

In addition to guiding users to share posters on WeChat Moments, it is also best to allow users to add a [recommendation] in their WeChat Moments, which can further increase the conversion rate .

There are generally two ways to write the copy of the "recommendation" in the circle of friends:

The advantage of this writing style is that it is very authentic, which means that the user is endorsing you with his or her own credit. In addition, this type of copywriting has a weaker advertising feel, so users are more willing to forward it.

This kind of copywriting has a "micro-business feel" and may easily be disliked by others if not handled properly. Therefore, the first sentence must make the user feel that this matter is related to him/her, then describe the scenario, deepen the pain point, and finally provide a solution.

In addition, the copy must be concise and clear, and it is best to leave blank lines between paragraphs. The word count should be controlled within 200 words, otherwise it will be automatically compressed into one line.

Don’t ignore follow-up communication

The end of an event does not mean the end of the entire new customer acquisition campaign (this is the most common mistake made by newbie operators). During the event planning stage, you should think about: how to further leverage its value after the event ends?

On the evening of the event, we converted the lecture content into text, further polished the content overnight, and produced a practical article suitable for online dissemination.

The reason for taking this step, in addition to publicity considerations, also stems from a simple idea: we hope that more operators can benefit from such high-quality content.

After the article was published, the effect was very good, with the number of readers reaching twice our usual level.

You see, many times, even though the activity seems to have ended, you still have a lot of room for operation. Through this follow-up dissemination, our followers increased for several days, with the number ranging from 700 to 1200 per day.

(Subscription account fan growth data after the event)

User Retention

What is the biggest drawback of the community fission gameplay ?

Retain !

This is the most difficult problem in community growth at present. Many fission communities fail in less than 7 days, and some even fail at the beginning of their creation.

Therefore, I have been thinking about "Are growth and retention natural enemies?" and whether there is a balance point in user scale between the two, at which both growth and retention can be achieved.

1) The user scale balance point of community fission growth

The balance point is 1,000 people? Or 10,000 people? It mainly depends on the number of your community administrators (volunteers). If you have 50 administrators, you can reach 10,000 people. If there are only 5 administrators (volunteers) then the equilibrium point is 1,000 people.

According to current tests, the configuration of communities with relatively high activity is as follows: every 2 people manage a group, and each group does not exceed 300 people.

2) Transform event-driven communities into region-driven communities

Tencent officially discovered through a study of nearly 10 million community data that the activity and life cycle of communities created based on regions show a positive trend. Based on this conclusion, when we were doing community fission this time, we assigned users in the same city to one community.

You may be curious, how do we identify which city the user is in?

It’s actually very simple, just label it manually, haha, isn’t it stupid! Later, we should develop a set of algorithm tools to speed up the labeling process.

3) Do not advertise in the group

I have observed many fission communities. The reason why they die very quickly is that users are guided by advertisements the moment they join the group, which is equivalent to telling users that this is an advertising junk group.

Therefore, in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes, we have always required ourselves not to post advertisements in the group and not to guide users to take screenshots and forward them in the group.

So when should we guide users to forward? What I do is to put the forwarding request in front, either by making the request before scanning the customer service number, or by privately chatting with the customer service number. This will keep the community clean.

4) Connect with active users

Users can only stay if they are connected. In a fission community, the initial connections are mainly between group owners and users.

For this fission, we have prepared many benefits that users need. They only need to change the group name and then they can privately chat with our group owner to receive the benefits (material package/course).

In this way, not only can users introduce themselves, but they can also subtly establish a connection with the group owner (administrator).

We require group owners to introduce the rules of the entire community to users when they come to claim their benefits, and guide them to create a check-in atmosphere in the community.

5) Try your best to survive the 7-day life and death period

In fact, this is very difficult. After all, many people do not have long-term operation plans when doing community fission. If you want your community to survive as long as possible, you need to think about a long-term service, and this service must be needed by the target population and have a very low marginal cost.

For example, what we are using now is reading, and reading is necessary for all operators! You need to think carefully about what is suitable for you. I can’t give you the answer here.

In addition, in order to survive the 7-day life and death period of the fission community, you need to create a very active atmosphere. How do you create it? Have a discussion around the theme of fission and get everyone thinking and outputting (prepare 10 vests for each group).

Summarize

Finally, let's summarize what we need to think about when doing a fission activity:

1) Topic selection is more important than guest speakers when sharing

You can think carefully about the posters that are flooding your circle of friends. What attracts you is not that the guests are particularly famous, but that the theme is very attractive. Therefore, choosing a good theme is the first step to creating a screen-sweeping effect.

2) Viral spread index K = X (new traffic brought by users sharing the activity on WeChat Moments) Y (the proportion of people who receive invitations and become spreading users). Only when X Y＞1, there will be a chance to flood the circle of friends.

3) A complete micro-course poster has four essential elements: attracting attention, generating demand, increasing authority, and creating a sense of urgency.

4) Activity risks must be strictly controlled

This time, because our followers increased too quickly, we were severely punished by WeChat by having our account blocked and our followers purged.

In the past month, in order to protect the healthy environment of the WeChat ecosystem , WeChat officials have taken increasingly stringent measures against screen-sweeping in Moments. Therefore, I suggest that when the number of followers of a public account instantly increases to 5,000, you should switch to a new account in time to attract more followers; when the number of friends added to a personal WeChat account reaches 400, you should switch to a new WeChat account in time.

5) User retention is as important as attracting new users, and it takes a much longer period of time to maintain than attracting new users. We must not only be obsessed with the glitz and glamor of attracting new customers, but ignore the long-term value of retention. This is something every operator needs to keep in mind.

This article was compiled and published by @Operation Research Society (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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