The community is dead? These 6 tips will help you keep your social network active!

As the Internet continues to integrate into our lives, online customer acquisition is becoming increasingly important for all industries. Especially for the education and training industry, word-of-mouth marketing is very important. If we can take advantage of the rapid online dissemination and spread the good reputation to a wider range, we can achieve lower cost and more efficient enrollment.

In addition to high-quality course content, good customer service is also important for the formation of a good reputation. In order to retain users, communities have become an important tool for educational institutions. Through the community, you can reach users directly at any time, interact and communicate with users, and receive instant feedback from users, which is very helpful in improving user experience.

Moreover, through active communities, people with common learning goals and consumption preferences can be gathered. Whether it is to promote repeat purchases or conduct fission communication, the effect is better than directly placing advertisements indiscriminately to all new and old users.

Therefore, building their own online education platform through technology service providers such as Maker Artisans, especially knowledge store platforms such as official accounts and mini-programs based on the WeChat ecosystem, using high-quality courses + communities to accumulate private domain traffic, and then spreading it in the interconnected WeChat social circle has become a must-have weapon for current educational institutions to achieve sustainable growth.

However, if a community is not well managed, it can easily become lifeless, thus losing our original intention of retaining users through the community and conducting word-of-mouth marketing.

At this time, we can promote community activation through the following six steps.

01 Clear theme and clear classification

One advantage of using knowledge stores + communities is that teachers can create thematic communities based on courses. For example, Chinese medicine training institutions can set up [Pediatric Acupoint Plaster Therapy Exchange Group], [Pelvic Repair Exchange Group], [Hand and Foot Reflexology Exchange Group], etc., and gather people who are studying the same courses and have the same learning goals and confusions in one community, which can better serve users and facilitate better communication between users. Moreover, the teaching area and discussion area in the community are separated, so teaching and discussion do not disturb each other, and the communication experience is better.

In addition to dividing by courses, you can also create different exam preparation groups according to learning purposes, such as [English Level 4 Exam Preparation Group], [English Level 6 Exam Preparation Group], etc. Such communities will be more active, and the information and questions and answers provided by teachers in the group will be more targeted, which will also make it easier for students to learn from each other and exchange experiences.

In addition, institutions can also create communities based on teachers. Institutions with many famous teachers will inevitably have loyal fans of the teachers, and each teacher also has his or her own areas of expertise. Creating communities based on teachers and their areas of expertise can also attract users who have a high degree of recognition of the teachers.

For institutions with users across the country, or institutions with chain physical stores that regularly hold offline activities, they can also create communities according to regions, such as [Fujian Parents Exchange Group], [Zhejiang Parents Exchange Group], [Xi'an Parents Exchange Group], etc., to provide users in different regions with more down-to-earth content and services, and it is also more convenient to organize offline activities.

2. Group administrators promote community atmosphere

If you want the community to remain active, you must have a leader, such as an active teaching assistant, class teacher or other group administrator, who is responsible for maintaining order in the community and doing daily work in the community such as event notifications, discount announcements, answering questions and solving problems, so as to truly solve the problems encountered by users in the learning process.

So, how do group administrators create a positive community atmosphere?

In addition to routine, fragmented communication with students, high-quality information should also be provided on a regular basis. for example:

Regular content sharing: You can plan a theme content sharing every week, organize several students to put forward their own views, and invite other members to discuss. Regular sharing can create bonds and a deeper sense of belonging among community members.

Knowledge value: Group administrators can summarize some knowledge and information every day or every other day and send it to community members.

Resource sharing: Community members are likely to be in the same industry or have resources that they need from each other. Group administrators can take the initiative to build resource sharing or business partnership alliance mechanisms, such as providing channels for peer resource exchange and communication, or setting up community distribution mechanisms, etc., to create opportunities for community members to match supply and demand resources.

3. Newcomers bring about a positive atmosphere

Regularly injecting fresh blood into the community is also a great way to revitalize the community. The addition of new members not only keeps the community fresh, but also enriches the community’s internal resources (connections, information, and materials, etc.).

When new members join a group, they can often stimulate the attention of old members. Group administrators can create a unique community impression during this time of high attention, strengthen the connection between new and old members, generate more topics, and stimulate community activity.

For example, in a welcome ceremony, when new members enter the community, the group administrator can take the lead in welcoming them and create a warm atmosphere.

In addition, a self-introduction session for new students is set up. In order to facilitate new members to introduce themselves smoothly, the group administrator can first list the format template to facilitate new members to smoothly present themselves. For example, based on the attributes of the course, new members can express their understanding of the learning content to help new and old students quickly open up topics, or they can provide something to facilitate in-depth communication between students when needed later.

4. Check-in to maintain community activity

The communities of educational institutions are mostly created to match courses and to better serve the courses. Therefore, in order to activate the community, you can also start the check-in mode.

For example, using the Maker Calendar to check in, group members can develop a good habit of daily learning and checking in, such as daily word memorization check-in, daily yoga check-in, etc. Or you can enable homework punch-in and punch in by homework task, which will help students flexibly control their time, make homework more interesting, and help improve learning efficiency. For example, when children check in for English recitation, parents can record voice homework for their children and upload it, which can also maintain parents' long-term attention to community activities.

After checking in, a QR code daily signature, completion certificate, etc. will pop up, allowing students to post pictures to show their learning achievements, remind each other to complete the check-in, and also post to their social circles, helping to increase the platform's exposure.

For students who are most active in checking in every day, teachers can specifically like and comment on their check-in content in the community. On the one hand, this will motivate the students, and on the other hand, it will make them feel that they are valued, which will also make more people want to join in the check-in.

In addition, teachers can also compile a collection of students' high-quality homework content and display it in the knowledge store, or regularly publish articles on the official account to display it, so that the topics of community members can be transformed from single-point dissemination to network dissemination, and also satisfy the "vanity" of active members, thereby driving community activity.

5. Promotion Activation

Interests are always a great way to activate a community. Group administrators can regularly launch promotional activities in the group to increase the activity of community members.

For example, store coupons with no threshold, course/offline activity redemption coupons, store points (which can be redeemed without any threshold in the points mall), lucky wheel (lottery), limited-time member flash sales, group-exclusive group buying activities, etc. The delivery time can be chosen during major holidays, such as the Spring Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, May Day, National Day holiday, etc., which can make good use of the holidays to stimulate students.

In addition, you can also create discussion topics regularly and offer exclusive discounts to students who communicate well to activate everyone's attention on the topic. For example, students who participate in the discussion can earn points.

6. Raise the threshold and screen high-quality users

In order to screen out better quality users, the threshold for the community can also be raised, such as creating a paid community, or an encrypted community that can only be entered after passing an exam and reaching a certain score, etc., to filter out those inaccurate people and find the real high-quality users.

From a psychological perspective, people will not cherish free things, but if they are rewarded after their own efforts, they will cherish them more. Setting certain thresholds can ensure better survival, development and monetization of the community.

Through the above six steps, educational and training institutions can effectively activate the community, build their own private traffic pool, improve user experience and reputation, get rid of the "lifeless" state, and continuously achieve traffic diversion, retention, conversion, and monetization.