Recently, a member of our Community Research Institute asked for help in the group. His startup company launched an educational course, but he encountered many problems in the process.
I think this is a very good case of community operation in online education. This article is to help this group member sort out the various problems they encountered in community operation. To facilitate the subsequent explanation, this student will be referred to as Xiao A.
If you are also doing community operations or are interested in how to iterate and optimize community operations, this article will definitely be of great inspiration to you.
In order to let everyone gain reusable experience, here I will summarize the various problems encountered by this group member from the three processes of early preparation, mid-term execution, and late closing:
1. Preliminary preparation
Because Xiao A's company is a startup, their community operation work needs to assist in the iteration of courses and provide feedback in the early stages. In addition, they also need to design promotional scripts for their circle of friends and their previous community, as well as the SOP for the entire training camp.
The bigger tasks in this part are the design of recruitment scripts and the design of scripts for the entire training camp and the design of scripts for promotion in the circle of friends. Their actual workload is quite large. Their training camp has 5 days of courses, but these 5 days include group entry rules, course-related rules, design of morning reading articles, guided discussion topics, and small classes every evening. They need to find different ways every day to give users a sense of freshness. If they want to do a good job in the entire training camp, there are actually many details that need to be polished.
The following is presented in the form of a dialogue for your convenience:
1. Xiao A: How should community recruitment work be arranged?
We originally wanted to test different recruitment tactics, so we used different tactics in different communities. Because we have dozens of communities, my colleagues and I divided the work and were responsible for the recruitment of different communities. Some registered users added several teaching assistants, and the final statistical data caused confusion among users. And the problem we encountered during the registration process was that some colleagues were too busy, and some colleagues had few people to add.
Optimization plan:
In fact, the reason you encounter this series of problems is that your original recruitment process is not designed well. You want to test the effects of different sales pitches in different communities, but you don’t consider the control variables.
You can first divide your communities according to their activity levels, which groups are more active and which are relatively less active, and assign each person some active communities and some less active communities, using different wordings. In this way, the team will not panic.
As for adding registered users, it is not recommended to let users add registrations directly. You can use some links, such as the registration page of the course poster. After the user registers, a WeChat account with a designated work number will pop up and you can directly record the registrations through private chat. I do not recommend this. As you said yourself, some people have added administrators, and some have added several teaching assistants, and in the end they need to check them one by one. The energy and time spent on this are actually unnecessary.
In addition, some users may not add a teaching assistant after signing up, so the course link may pop up the teaching assistant’s WeChat QR code multiple times. After these preliminary actions are designed, the teaching assistant will send out the successful registration script, and finally invite everyone to join the training camp group.
2. Xiao A: We posted on WeChat Moments, but it seems that it has little effect. We are not sure whether they came from the social network or WeChat Moments.
Optimization plan:
The purpose of promoting the training camp in the circle of friends is to make more people interested in the next training camp. How many Moments did you post during the promotion period? Is your content attractive enough? Have you made users feel that they have earned something?
In fact, to successfully convert users, just one circle of friends is not enough. You need to reflect the value of the course in the circle of friends and make users who have not registered look forward to the course. Secondly, you need to learn to guide users to continuously output valuable ideas in the training camp, and you need to consider whether this content can bring about an increase in registration for the next course.
In your next course promotion, you can use wave-like sales copy to warm up your circle of friends, and then take screenshots of previous users' reviews to attract users to sign up.
The purpose of wave-style sales is actually to warm up the market. It can be at the opening of the camp, during the course, at the end of the camp, and as part of user evaluation and feedback after the camp. The focus of wave-style sales is on mastering the rhythm of promotion. You can't keep people in suspense, nor can you keep bombarding the group with posters.
Next, when we forward the promotional posters in the circle of friends, we can let different accounts generate their own posters. This way, we can clearly see the number of people invited by each account, which is convenient for the subsequent statistical recording of data, rather than relying on guesswork.
II. Mid-term Implementation
3. Little A: What should I do if the morning reading after the camp starts is dull?
We arranged morning reading, which contained very useful content, though a bit long. However, we interacted with users but received few responses.
Optimization plan:
The length of the content also needs to be considered when reading in the morning. Very dry content requires time to digest and absorb, so you can choose some shorter and faster content. For example, the common morning newspapers, morning chicken soup, business golden sentences and the like.
4. Xiao A: There are also daily homework designs, and some people do their homework, but no one pays attention to the interaction.
Optimization plan:
You have designed the assignments, and users may not know where to start. You can provide some templates for outputting the assignments, and you can make a preview if needed. For example, if you have evening snacks, you can make a preview at noon or after morning reading. You can also start to liven up the atmosphere before the camp starts and guide the topic. Don't wait until the camp officially opens and have only one person talking there. Early rendering is still very important.
Another thing to consider is that many people only have time to watch video courses after get off work, so the topics should be more relevant to the course so that people will discuss them.
Therefore, choosing topics is also a very particular matter. You can choose some that are not very professional to avoid students who have not had time to watch the course not knowing how to answer, so that everyone can participate in the discussion of the topic. It is also best to obtain valuable opinions from group members. This will be of great benefit for subsequent wave-style promotions. The topic selection should preferably be related to subsequent conversions, leaving users with suspense and attracting users to participate in subsequent courses.
3. Final stage
5. Xiao A: How to control the rhythm of the award ceremony? Should the champion be notified in advance?
At the end of the last day of the camp, we selected 5 excellent assignments and let the group members vote for the first place. Then after the results came out, we notified the first place winner half an hour in advance because we were afraid that he would take too long to prepare his acceptance speech or didn't see the group message. As a result, the whole pace progressed too fast, as if everything had been arranged, and the atmosphere was not created. But if the voting results are not notified to the other party in advance, there is a risk that the other party will not be there or will not have time to prepare an acceptance speech. How should this be balanced?
Optimization plan:
In fact, there is no need to let the first place winner of the assignment prepare an acceptance speech in advance. Before the end of the camp, you can privately chat with the top five people who participated in the voting and ask them to pay more attention to the group message so that they can know the Top 1 on the spot. It will be more lively if the winner wins on the spot. Even if it takes a long time to prepare the acceptance speech, it doesn't matter. You can start the next step first.
6. Xiao A: Do we need to mute everyonewhen closing the camp?
When everyone was chatting happily, the whole process became awkward because of the muting. The atmosphere became very quiet, but if we didn't muting, we were afraid that the students who were climbing the stairs would be confused.
Optimization plan:
There is actually no need to ban speaking at the end of the camp. Everyone is actually in a very excited state at the end of the camp. Whether or not a word-of-mouth effect can be generated is not only determined by the polishing of the course itself, but also by the atmosphere of the community. If we forcibly silence everyone at this time, we will end up in a very strange situation.
7. Xiao A: In addition to the circle of friends, are there any other ways to amplify the value of this training camp? Or how to build word of mouth?
Optimization plan:
1. You can organize the essence of the entire training camp group into a graphite document and use it as bait for the next training camp.
2. To design the value output in the training camp, you can use different methods to conduct the 5-day course, such as sharing and discussing cases and theories, or adding a "brainstorming", "camp leader's personal sharing" or "private class" service. You can design all of these. If the user experience is good, they will naturally be willing to help you spread the word.
The above is the answer to the problems encountered by Xiao A in community operation work. In fact, you just need to constantly discover your own problems and then think of optimization strategies so that you can do better next time.
