Building nearly 10,000 private maternal and child communities from 0 to 1

When doing community operations , the important thing is not to know how to do it, but why to do it? Why is it best to keep the number of people in a group to around 200? Why do we need to divide community roles? Why should the time for joining the group be limited to 4 weeks?

To understand these clearly, we need to refine them based on actual project results and a large amount of project data feedback. Instead of making assumptions or copying from other people’s private courses!

My name is Da Nian. I entered the social marketing industry in 2015 and have been deeply involved in the industry for 7 years. He has managed private community projects for more than 20 leading domestic and foreign brands, including Wyeth, McDonald's, Bosideng, Fotile, Converse, and AstraZeneca.

I will use a maternal and infant brand community project that I have actually implemented to explain my community operation methodology. This brand is a Fortune 500 company, and its customers have established more than 10,000 mothers’ communities through offline channels.

Through our operations, we converted more than 300,000 new customers from the community in one year, and the cost of acquiring a single maternal and infant user decreased by 5 times (the average price of acquiring a new maternal and infant customer on the market is 800 yuan). If you want to understand the work of community operations, or are also exploring community business, the seven experiences I summarized all come from actual combat and should be of some help to you .

01 Find and magnify the common characteristics of users and help them find reasons to stay

What is a community? It is a circle of people with common characteristics. It is a very natural behavior for a group of people who are gathered together by commonalities to have conversations and communication, and the depth of commonalities will affect the life cycle, activity and value of the community . During the cold start-up phase, because the volume was small, I tried to pull mothers from different cities and channels into the same community, but found that the effect was very average.

Not to mention that the people who speak are always the same people. After a while, some people will either feel too disturbed and choose to leave the group, or a few familiar people will form a small group privately, and the group will gradually die . I believe this is also a common problem that many operators will face in the early stages of group creation. So where does the problem come from? When analyzing the data, we found that the people with whom users interact most frequently in large groups are always the same few people, and these are generally users with whom they have more in common.

For example, they all come from the same drainage channel, their babies are in the same age group or are similar in age to themselves. These people are also more likely to form small groups, remain silent collectively or leave. Then if these people who love to cuddle were surrounded by mothers like them, wouldn’t the problem be solved!

Based on this insight, we immediately adjusted our strategy. Before the mothers joined the group, we first obtained accurate information about them through questionnaires . The backend pushed group active codes based on the age ranges filled in by the mothers (one age range every 3 months, such as 1-3 months of pregnancy and 1-3 months after delivery), and further accurately diverted mothers from the same channel by age range. This was actually the earliest label-based operation thinking .

In this way, the mothers in the community are from the same city, the same channel, are of similar age, and have babies of the same age. Not only do they have endless topics to talk about, but they may also develop into offline friends and buy parenting products in groups... There are no less than 10 reasons to stay in the community .

User stickiness from different channels varies greatly

02 Three actions to help newcomers quickly find a sense of belonging in the group

After a new member joins the group, you should quickly tell her what value the community can bring to her through three steps: sending a welcome message, requesting a nickname change, and clarifying group rules. At the same time, group members should also quickly understand the new member’s basic information to facilitate subsequent communication and connection.

Of course, these three actions don’t have to be performed every time someone joins the group. In the early days, we had experienced a situation where some mothers left the group due to excessive sending frequency. Upon seeing this, we immediately adjusted our strategy. During the peak period of group joining, we would adjust the frequency of posting based on the number of people joining the group, and extend the notification frequency to 15-30 minutes . The problem of leaving the group was immediately improved. There is another detail worth noting. When creating a group, the group owner should name the group in advance using key information such as region name, age group, etc. (naming rules should be prepared in advance if the group is large in number) to help newcomers understand the user structure of the community and strengthen trust when they join the group .

The "three-piece set" for joining a group helps new members find a sense of belonging

03 Control the number of community members and the time of joining the community to determine the life and death of the community

During the community testing phase, we found that two groups of mothers with babies of the same age range, established through the same channel and at the same time, also showed completely different churn rates . After comparing the data, we realized that there is a very subtle relationship between the size of the community and the group activity rate. The optimal size of a stranger mother-and-child community is 150 to 350 people in a single group, which represents the highest group activity, content opening rate and activity participation rate, and the lowest group withdrawal rate.

We have also observed that when the number of community members exceeds 150, multiple active users (or community opinion leaders) will almost 100% automatically appear to stimulate discussion and interaction within the community.

At the same time, the speed with which the community reaches the critical size of 150 people is very important. Once the recruitment cycle exceeds 4 weeks, early users will choose to leave the group in large numbers because they doubt the value of the community .

04 Make good division of roles in the community to avoid the group from becoming a dead group

We often see this situation: a clothing store owner sets up a WeChat group for customers. Every day, he posts dressing tips, product links, and coupons in the group, but no one pays attention to it. Over time, it becomes a dead group. The boss’s thinking is actually very clear. He first creates value for customers to strengthen their trust, and then throws out the hook and sells goods to realize cash. But what he didn't think through was that if all these tasks were completed by one character from beginning to end, it would become like Wang Po selling melons .

Looking at it from another angle, if a celebrity on Xiaohongshu posts a trial review, would you buy it? Maybe I'm a little tempted. What if a user in the comment section places an order and gives high praise? Prepare to place an order. What if the merchant happens to offer a limited-time discount at this time? Buy, buy, buy. In fact, the community administrator is equivalent to the KOL here, but when the KOL has obvious business attributes (for example, the community is named after the merchant or brand, or the administrator directly uses the brand name), the strong advertising flavor will immediately capture the user's mind . Obviously, such an "advertising group" will not be welcomed from the beginning (of course, except for those with particularly strong brand power).

During the testing phase, our mother and baby group also encountered the same problem. However, after thinking through the above logic, we adjusted the division of roles in the community. We set up four types of roles: " Squad Leader", " Water Army ", " Little Assistant ", and " KOC ". The class monitor is an administrator and also a mother. She will take the initiative to share parenting tips in the group and will also enthusiastically answer other mothers' questions. In her circle of friends, there will be various parenting experiences to share. Most importantly, the class monitor will actively share with the mothers around her the good products she has used and the good benefits she has experienced. There is no need to explain too much about the water army. It is mainly used to activate and respond to the community atmosphere in the early stage.

As the deputy of the monitor, the assistant is mainly responsible for the process management and rule management of the community. We mentioned earlier that when the group size exceeds 150 people, there will be multiple active users (KOC) in the group . These key node users will play an active role in enhancing group stickiness and subsequent user fission.

How to discover KOC? We have designed a points system in the group. Actively responding to the monitor's instructions or assisting the monitor in answering questions can earn corresponding points as rewards. When the points accumulate to a certain value, they can be exchanged for corresponding benefits. With the incentive of points, not only did the monitor’s popularity within the group improve, but our community also quickly entered an advanced form of “users actively serving users” , and the community stickiness was greatly improved .

This division of roles has several advantages:

• To improve the management efficiency of the squad leader, in many cases, it is sufficient to maintain several key KOCs;
• The role of the squad leader can greatly reduce the mothers’ vigilance and is a key node for the later brand realization ;
• KOC's self-worth is reflected, the interaction and connection between users increases, and the stickiness of the community is greatly enhanced.

After building trust, the squad leader's monetization will come naturally.

05 Properly plan community content to avoid over-exploitation of users

Many people know that community operation requires a combination of "dry and wet ". It requires both dry knowledge to allow users to gain a sense of value by staying in the community, and "wet goods" to achieve monetization goals. So how should the dry and wet ratio be combined? Does this ratio run through from the beginning to the end, or is there a phased combination? Yes, as you may have guessed, during the testing phase, we also conducted data analysis on the impact of different content ratios on community activity, and finally, based on the community’s growth cycle, we came up with the most ideal content ratio for community delivery ( take this super useful picture, no thanks ).

06 Disassemble the team capability model and replicate the team in batches

After understanding the first five points, the chain from establishment to operation and monetization of a community has been run through. The next question is how to replicate it in batches and quickly increase the volume.

There are three very important points in this link:

1. Training of offline traffic generation personnel

The first communication between offline traffic generation personnel and users determines the users’ initial impression of the community. Therefore, in addition to providing concept training to traffic generation personnel, they should also provide standardized traffic generation and emergency scripts.

2. Design a mature incentive mechanism

The incentive mechanism of traffic generation personnel determines the efficiency of traffic generation, while the incentive mechanism of squad leaders greatly affects the monetization efficiency of the community.

3. Disassemble the job competency structure and recruit people quickly

The community roles and the content that needs to be delivered have been clarified. The next step is to break down the corresponding capability structure according to the positioning of each role. For example, the squad leader should preferably be a woman who has given birth to a baby and worked in customer service. For example, the designer of the useful posters in the group needs to be someone who is good at cute illustration style, and so on.

07 Review in time and use data to continuously optimize operational ideas

For private domain operators, MVP (running test) thinking and data-driven thinking are essential. MVP thinking can help you discover problems, especially structural problems, in a timely manner before the project quickly starts to grow and scale; data-driven thinking allows you to quickly find the root causes behind the problems through data.

Making good use of data has really helped me avoid many detours in community operations. In addition to the examples mentioned above, I have two key data of mother-baby groups to share with you:

1. The proportion of the class monitor's conversation volume has a significant impact on the community activity . The group activity slowly increases with the increase of the class monitor's weekly conversation volume. When the class monitor's weekly conversation volume accounts for 5%, the community activity can reach the most ideal level.

2. Through group data, we found that the peak activity of the prenatal mothers group generally occurs at 11-12 o'clock, 16-17 o'clock and 20-21 o'clock; the peak activity of the postpartum group generally occurs at 11-12 o'clock, 13-15 o'clock, 16-17 o'clock and 21-23 o'clock. Based on this, we have formulated a rhythm for the class leader’s social content delivery.

Author: Da Nian, has been deeply engaged in private domain operations for 7 years and is good at systematic construction of brand private domain and traffic fission. He has managed private domain projects for Fortune 500 companies such as Wyeth, McDonald's, and AstraZeneca, and fissioned 80 million available social traffic in 90 days. Public account: Da Nian Chat Private Domain

Author: Da Nian Chats about Private Domain

Source: Da Nian Chat Private Domain