The 4 core elements of B-side community operations!

As a community operator, he started to engage in community operations in 2018, and began to lead the team to build a B-side community operation system from 0 to 1 in 2019. At the end of 2020 (October-December), the community GMV exceeded 100 million for the first time in three months, with the highest monthly GMV reaching 130 million, completing the scale from 0 to 100. What I want to share with you today are the four core thoughts I summarized after stepping into many pitfalls, based on my experience of leading a team from 0 to 1 to build a B-side private domain community operation system with a monthly turnover of over 100 million.

1. Find the community positioning that best suits the company's development status, rather than directly copying the mainstream model.
2. The essence of community operation is to create a trust chain for user transactions. Service, content, and interactive feedback are all indispensable.
3. Classified and phased operations are important strategies for rational resource allocation and improving social marketing efficiency.
4. Standardized SOP processes and strict implementation are the guarantee for achieving operational goals.

Focusing on the above 4 core viewpoints, I would like to share what we did right, hoping to provide some inspiration to colleagues in the advanced community operations field.

1. Community positioning that matches the current state of business development is the core

The first thing to think about is still positioning, after all, this is the core of all businesses.

When it comes to community positioning, many people’s first reaction is that there are only a few types of communities. We just need to follow the mainstream market and what our peers do. There is no need to worry about it... I used to think so, but later I found that if we want to build a competitive community, this is a cognitive trap we must get out of.

What exactly is community positioning? In short, community positioning determines what type of user groups you want to introduce into the community, and how you achieve your business goals by providing services , solving user problems , and satisfying values.

Different product forms, business models, and development stages determine that the purpose of community operation is different, and the resulting community positioning is also different. Due to different positioning, the operating system designed with this as the core will naturally be different.

So how do we find a community positioning that fits the current business development situation? Here I share my previous experience for your reference.

After a period of in-depth operation, we found the community positioning that best suits the company's current business needs - the shopping guide group. That is, to provide diversified shopping guide services for small and medium-sized customers below the middle level of the platform to promote conversion and improve retention.

Why is it a shopping guide group instead of a welfare group? After-sales group? There are three reasons: First, whether it is the after-sales group or the welfare group, it is just a transfer of the platform's existing basic services, rather than a value-added service derived from the characteristics of the community. It is impossible to build core competitiveness and widen the gap with competitors; second, the shopping guide is the core element that links customers and goods and facilitates transactions in offline transaction scenarios. It is also the warmest touch point. Amplifying this element can greatly weaken the invisible and intangible uncertainty of online transactions and enhance the sense of transaction security. For B-end users, transaction trust is particularly important; third, based on the complexity of our platform's B2B business model and the limitations of the knowledge level of the community's target users, shopping guide services are needed.

So how do we do it specifically? We mainly promote it through collaboration among three groups: "official", "peers" and "water army" in the form of periodic online shopping guide columns.

1. Official Shopping Guide

The purpose is to provide multi-dimensional decision-making information, improve users' efficiency in finding funds, and assist users in quickly completing order decisions. Based on the interpretation of user needs and big data analysis, we have planned four periodic online shopping guide columns, including the "Stall Evaluation" evaluation column to help users quickly familiarize themselves with the platform merchants and find the merchants that suit them, as well as shopping guide columns such as "Today's New Arrivals", "Star Product Recommendations", and "Community Stores" which are anchored by new models, hot-selling products, and low prices.

2. Shopping guide from peers

The purpose is to recommend good products and stalls in a more convincing way through endorsements from peers. On the one hand, it can discover and cultivate potential KOCs to amplify user value; on the other hand, it can shorten the sense of distance of official recommendations and leverage the power of peer role models to motivate novice users to complete follow-up conversions. With this goal in mind, we launched the "Good Product Recommendation Officer Support Program" incentive policy and the "Store Owner Endorsement" shopping guide column.

3. Online shopping guides

The purpose is to allow the operator to participate in the daily operations of the community under a pseudonym, and to guide other users to participate in the daily operations of the group in an ideal manner. It mainly includes actively initiating/participating in topic creation, recommending good products from time to time, posting orders, C-end user feedback, daily business operations, etc., and even resolving crises as a bystander in times of crisis.

I would like to emphasize that shopping guide is neither a new concept nor the current mainstream community positioning, but it was the positioning that best suited our business development status at the time. Regardless of the product form, a qualified community operator needs to solve the problem of combining one's own business model and operating objectives, choosing the community positioning that best suits one's own community, and designing one's own community operating system around this positioning , rather than directly copying the mainstream community model .

2. The essence of community operation is to create a transaction trust chain

The second point to think about is what is the essence of community operation?

Based on this practical experience, my view is that the essence of community operation is to link platforms and users and build a transaction trust chain . Compared with C-end users, B-end users have more factors to consider when making transactions due to the complexity of their business model, and their decisions will be more rational and cautious. Therefore, the establishment of a trust relationship is particularly important for the B-end community.

So how do we build a transaction trust chain for the B-side community? There are three core points:

1. Improve basic service experience

Good service is the foundation for building a trusting relationship. There are currently three main types of services provided by communities on the market: information transmission, after-sales processing, and practical knowledge. For these basic services, the experience of each community is very different. We should have in-depth experience of typical communities in the market, draw lessons widely, and create the ultimate experience in basic services as much as possible.

For example, information delivery services. Including policies, functions, activities, etc., mainly in the form of point-to-point text and picture announcements or videos. Common problems include: irregular time and frequency, more today and less tomorrow, and disorganized; the information is scattered and not aggregated enough, and important information can easily be drowned out by group chats. The optimization items that can be made for this are: first, form a fixed daily promotion schedule, which clearly stipulates the number of messages to be sent each day, what to send at each point, and in what form; second, launch a weekly activity calendar, and spread the most valuable information to group users this week with morning and evening goodnight messages, to ensure the awareness rate as much as possible; third, set automatic keyword replies for hot and important information to ensure that the information users care about is responded to as soon as possible.

2. Continuously input high-value content

If good service is the foundation, then high-value content is the focus of operations. What is valuable content for users? Let’s go back to the community positioning and user needs. Any content that is useful, interesting, business-related and in line with the community’s value positioning is good content.

With the shopping guide group as the core and combined with the interpretation of user needs, we have launched 4 types of content and a total of 10 specific columns in the process of community operation to meet the diverse needs of users. Some of the content can be found in the table below.

In terms of content column creation, we have tried to invite external experts, internal IP (senior buyers, consultants), brand managers, and high-quality users to share topics. After multiple verifications, the "Guest Sharing Session" column, which is based on users' practical experience sharing, has the best data effect. There are only two reasons for attribution:

• The topics shared by group users will be more direct and focused, focusing on a single issue. For example, how to set the price? There are systematic and professional courses on specific scenarios such as how to deal with bargaining customers. This kind of experience sharing is easier to implement and replicate.
• The tone of sharing by group users is more confident and there is no sense of distance. Because they are in the same industry, it is easier for them to understand each other's points. Compared with professional teaching, the whole sharing is more like chatting, which can influence a wave of target users through high-frequency interactions.

3. Multi-directional interactive feedback

Multi-directional interactive feedback is an important part of building trust relationships in user transactions by leveraging community characteristics. The so-called interaction means give and take, questions and answers, information input and value gain. Guiding group users to communicate in multiple directions with KOC as the core can allow more group users to participate. Only with a sense of participation can there be a sense of gain, and only with a sense of gain can there be a sense of trust.

How to effectively guide users to provide multi-directional interactive feedback? In addition to the common interactive topics with prizes, there are two points for reference.

Create a group of KOCs through benchmark cases

The community brings together peer resources from all over the country, and there are many excellent role models worth learning from and making friends with, which are resources that are difficult for users to obtain on their own. Discover and cultivate group KOCs, build a social relationship chain among user groups with KOCs as the center, and strengthen the sense of belonging of user groups through KOC operation, maintenance and fan effect.

Encourage group members to make more friends

On the one hand, after joining the group, users can change their nicknames, introduce themselves, hold regular topic discussions, publicly commend outstanding members, and even hold offline group meetings to help group members meet more "friends"; on the other hand, usage reviews, shopping experiences, and product recommendations from other members of the group will also subtly strengthen this sense of trust.

The ultimate basic service experience, continuous high-value content input, and multi-directional interactive feedback among group members complement each other and jointly build the user's transaction trust chain. This is the essence of community operation. Only by understanding this essence can we know more clearly what to do and how to do it in the daily operation of the community.

3. Formulate community operation plan with classification as the core

After understanding the nature of the community, the next step is how to do it specifically, and the core here is classification.

Classification is one of the important basic layers of operations. Whether it is "classification", "stage" or "layered" operations, the essence is to start from user needs, design reasonable marketing solutions, achieve reasonable resource allocation, and improve the input-output ratio. One of the most important experiences I have had in community operation is to carry out planned and focused classification and phased operations.

1. Community classification operation

User classification solves the problem of which users are the main body of our services? Which groups can potentially be conquered? Which groups do we not need to pay attention to at the moment? Classify user groups according to service priorities and group commonalities, and allocate resources to improve resource efficiency and marketing effectiveness.

In the early days of community operation, we did not operate by categories. All users were indiscriminately grouped together, and then group crises kept breaking out - because we unknowingly put two groups with conflicting interests in the same space - physical store owners who mainly operate offline and WeChat and online store owners who mainly operate online would quarrel when they got together. The physical store owners felt that the online merchants had snatched market traffic and lowered market prices, making their business increasingly difficult; the WeChat merchants said that the physical store owners could not keep up with the development of the times and were complacent... It was through a series of conflicts that we realized the importance of classified community operations.

Therefore, later in the process of attracting traffic and establishing groups, we will verify the identity of users through the process of user information review and entry, and classify operations according to identity types: entities enter entity groups, WeChat businesses enter WeChat business groups, and C-end users are prohibited from joining the group.

Ultimately, through behavioral data analysis and research, we found that there are obvious differences in the core demands and behavioral habits of physical users and online business users, as well as obvious differences in operational results. It was also from this point on that we tried to classify users according to their identity type (physical, micro-business, online business), channel source (ground marketing, Douyin, application products), and regional distribution, and provide different solutions for different user groups. The results were better than indiscriminate grouping.

For communities with highly concentrated users, simple business models, and small scale, there is no strong necessity for classified operations; however, for communities with obvious user clustering characteristics, complex business models, and large scale, classified operations must be an important means to improve operational effectiveness.

2. Community operation in stages

Compared with classified operations, phased operations are more execution-oriented, and mainly address what strategies and actions we should adopt at different time points to achieve the ultimate marketing goal.

Taking the user joining the group as the starting point, community operation can be divided into three stages: early, middle and late stages. In each stage, the user's needs, experience satisfaction, and input-output ratio are different, and the corresponding operation strategies are naturally different.

Early stage: strong operation

It takes about 1 month from the time the user group is full (not reaching the upper limit of WeChat group members, but reaching the upper limit of your ideal target group members). This is the most critical period for community operation. The key is to establish a sense of belonging to the group while establishing rules and order through a ceremonial entry process, a clear reward and punishment system, and 7-day intensive operation activities.

• Sense of ceremony for joining the group: information review before joining the group, prohibition of non-B-end joining the group, welcome message upon joining the group; after joining the group, guide users to modify the group nickname with the specified template, guide self-introduction, and receive group benefits; finally, break the ice with the opening activity, organize a "Newcomer Q&A Session" to answer questions online, and answer user questions in a centralized manner to let group members know what this group is for? What benefits can this group bring to me? What can/cannot I do in this group? How to deal with common problems? Who should I contact if I have questions?
• Group reward and punishment rules: Tell group members what they can and cannot do, what they are encouraged to do, what punishments they will receive for doing things they shouldn’t do, and what rewards they will receive for doing things advocated by the group rules.
• Strong operational activities: Based on the community positioning and interpretation of user needs, design 7-day/21-day/30-day strong operational activities, use specific activities to tell group users what the group is about and which core demands it can meet, thereby strengthening user awareness and consolidating trust. Below is the 7-day intensive operation activity plan for new customers that we designed earlier, which can be used for reference.

Mid-term: Daily operations

Usually, a community that is not run well will become a zombie group in a week or two, while a community that is run well can remain active for more than a year or even longer. At this stage, which is the daily operation stage of the community, compared with the early stage, the system is mainly self-operated through policy design, and human intervention will be lighter.

There are three operational priorities at this stage:

First, we will continue to iterate the basic service experience, so that we can provide what you don’t have and what you have is better than what we have;

The second is to continuously input high-quality content to guide more users to participate, ensure users' sense of gain, and thus consolidate their sense of trust;

The third is to design incentive policies to support high-quality KOC users, influence the behavior of other group members through the influence of KOC, and achieve self-operation to a certain extent.

Late stage: Weak operation

In the middle and late stages, the community will gradually become silent and eventually become a zombie group. At that time, what you need to do is to judge whether to keep it or disband it based on the input-output ratio. Don't torture yourself thinking about how to reactivate it. You only need to select the still active users and transfer them to other active groups, and disband the remaining groups. This will ensure the maintenance of active users; secondly, it will avoid the waste of resources caused by maintaining zombie groups, and release more manpower and material resources to do more valuable things.

Focusing on community positioning and combining classified operations with phased operations, we can initially build a big picture of the community business, and then come the final execution and implementation stage.

4. Standardized SOP process, strict implementation

The implementation stage is the most easily underestimated stage, but it is directly related to the operational results.

Looking at the community models on the market, they are similar, but their operational values ​​vary greatly. A very important but often overlooked point is whether a standardized and systematic SOP process has been formed and strictly enforced. No matter how perfect a business plan is, the effect will be greatly reduced if it is not implemented properly. In order to reduce the negative impact of inadequate implementation on the results, it is recommended to break down each scenario and each strategy into standardized and implementable behaviors, and assign a monitoring indicator to each behavior.

Here, taking community traffic as an example, I would like to share the 7 standardized steps that our community used to direct traffic from existing APP users to WeChat private domain.

1. Screen target user groups

As mentioned earlier, the core of community positioning is to understand what services the community provides to what groups and what problems it solves in order to achieve its business goals. Remember not to introduce groups indiscriminately. You must screen the target group. Taking our community as an example, we hope to increase the repurchase of small customers below the middle level of the platform, so the ones screened in are the bottom long-tail users.

2. Set up social media advertising space

After confirming the target user group, the next step is to attract users to add WeChat by placing advertisements. In this stage, we mainly use pop-ups, floating layers, banners and other resource positions to deliver ads, and have set up a total of 7 scene advertising positions.

3. Enter the WeChat guide page

After the user clicks on the ad space, he or she will enter the WeChat details page, which will show customers what value joining the community can provide them, thereby increasing their willingness to join the group.

4. Jump to WeChat from App

If the user intends to join the group, he will jump to WeChat by clicking the Add WeChat button or scanning the QR code. Usually this step has the highest bounce rate. In order to reduce the funnel bounce rate, the attractiveness of the details page and the smoothness of the jump process are particularly important.

5. Add friends to automatically reply

After users jump from the APP to WeChat, they can set up automatic replies through third-party tools. The main content is to say hello, send some welfare red envelopes, and guide them into the group. In this link, since we serve B-side users, we have added an identity verification mechanism - strictly controlling user accuracy through information such as registered mobile phone numbers and business photos.

6. User Information Audit Records

This is also an additional set of processes we have compared to general communities. After reviewing user information, we will record the user information one-to-one and enter it into the information management background, so that the user's mobile phone number, WeChat account, group name and other information can be matched with the background user ID one by one to ensure that each user's information is highly matched, providing a reference basis for subsequent classification operations and personalized maintenance.

7. Add to corresponding category community

This is also where we are slightly different from other communities. Based on the user information review records in the previous link, we will classify users according to their identity type (WeChat business/online business/entity), source channel (ground promotion/TikTok/application market), and regional identity. Through the information review process and background tags, users will be allowed to enter the corresponding category to better carry out classified operations.

Only after completing these 7 steps can the process of creating a user group be completed. If we break it down further, there are clear requirements for what kind of visuals and wording should be used in each step, and there are corresponding monitoring indicators for each link in the entire funnel process. The same is true for every other specific business scenario. Through clear standardized SOP processes, every operator knows clearly what actions to perform at what point in time to ensure what results, and gradually optimizes through continuous review and iteration. Over time, it will eventually burst out with amazing power after reaching the critical value .

For the same business model, with other conditions being similar, the company that pursues excellence in every detail will be most likely to stand out. This is a very simple truth that is often overlooked by us. So, if your community model is really nothing new but you must do it, you might as well start with the details, figure out a set of standardized SOP processes that can be implemented, and replicate them on a large scale .

The above are some thoughts on building a B-side private domain community operation system with a monthly turnover of over 100 million from 0 to 1. Although some of the methods shared may not be suitable for all companies, designing a community operation system that suits your own needs based on different product forms, operating objectives and business status is a problem that a qualified community operator needs to think about and solve.

Finally, I hope that my thoughts on community management can provide you with some different cognitive perspectives. Welcome to communicate and make progress together!