There is more and more consensus on doing private domain, and community has become the main battlefield for many companies to transform. For many companies, "community is private domain" and "community is the standard configuration of private domain." But the following is becoming more and more common:

No way to operate, social media actions are just posting advertisements and coupons

Blocked upon joining, users will leave the group after receiving benefits

Not only is there no interaction in community activities, but no one is participating either. The community is gradually becoming a dead group.

The miserable operation partner also made a couplet:

Left Alliance: Raising accounts, creating groups, and posting advertisements

Right link: forward, kick people, sell things

Horizontal banner: Community operation

This article will comprehensively explain how to build a community operation system from 0 to 1 through 3 major community classifications, 5 development stages, 8 key steps, and 5 community operation combinations. The article is long, so it is recommended that you save it before reading.

WeChat for business or WeChat for personal use

Before building a community, first clarify whether to use a corporate WeChat group or a personal WeChat group. Although the difference between corporate WeChat groups and personal WeChat groups is not as big as the difference between corporate WeChat accounts and personal WeChat accounts. However, from my operational practice, I recommend using the corporate WeChat group for the following reasons:

First, connect other tools in the WeChat ecosystem to form a synergy

As the infrastructure of WeChat for Business becomes more and more complete, WeChat for Business can be connected with other tools within the WeChat ecosystem, including WeChat official accounts, mini-programs, video accounts, WeChat users, etc. Therefore, a new form of enterprise micro-community marketing has been formed, forming a complete operational closed loop.

Tencent also hopes that personal WeChat will be the main platform for chatting, while corporate WeChat will be used to maintain users and do marketing.

Second, quickly gain trust through corporate WeChat image

I remember when I was doing micro-community fission, there would often be competitors coming to the community to "explode fans". A common method is to modify the profile picture, nickname and wording, secretly guiding users to add their WeChat. This made us very depressed, but Enterprise WeChat can solve this problem to a certain extent.

Users can directly add corporate WeChat and enter the community. Corporate WeChat has professional avatars, real-name authentication and company names, which can quickly win the trust of users.

Third, protect corporate assets and avoid user loss

This is the same advantage as WeChat for Business. If an employee leaves, the customer base can be inherited and transferred with one click. Employees cannot take users with them when they leave, and the company can continue to provide services and maintain the community.

Fourth, abundant operation tools reduce operation

Enterprise WeChat itself provides a large number of community operation and management tools, including group active codes, welcome messages for joining the group, chat sidebars, customer group mass messaging, group live broadcasts, group member deduplication, anti-harassment, group chat data statistics, etc. In addition, there are third-party tools that perfectly integrate with WeChat for Business, reducing the difficulty of operation for operators.

In addition, we have used WeChat for Business to convert online education communities before, and the results are no worse than those of WeChat for individuals, and the operation is simpler.

Therefore, I still strongly recommend corporate WeChat communities. Of course, there are still many companies that use personal WeChat to manage communities. If it is in the startup phase of the private domain, it is recommended to use personal WeChat communities. If it is in the rapid development phase, it is recommended to use corporate WeChat communities.

3 major business community categories

Different product forms and different business models determine different ways of operating communities. Currently, there are three main types of commercial communities on the market.

First, mass promotion type

We see this type of community quite often, such as luckin coffee, Baiguoyuan community, etc. There are more than 50-200 messages in the community a day, most of which are information about coupons, group buying, and flash sales.

This type of method is mainly used in high-frequency and low-price industries, such as fast food and lifestyle retail. The user decision cycle is short and the average order value is low, which makes it suitable for direct conversion through welfare incentives. This type of community is not very active and its actual life cycle may not exceed 6 months.

Second, refined operation

This type of community is suitable for high-priced and high-frequency industries, such as high-end beauty, medical care and other categories. The decision-making cycle of this type of community users is relatively short, so it is suitable to use a large amount of intensive content to plant seeds, and then provide appropriate welfare incentives to complete the conversion. This type of community is very active and people will discuss and exchange ideas around the community theme.

Representatives of this type include brands such as Watsons and Zui'e Niang, which retain users through sign-in and content, and complete user conversion through community-exclusive benefits.

Third, customer service

This type of community is dominated by high-price, low-frequency industries, such as jewelry, furniture and home appliance companies. Because the price is higher, users take a longer time to make decisions, which makes it suitable for long-term refined operations. In addition, the customer acquisition cost of such enterprises is generally higher, and they can acquire customers through referrals.

This type of community often requires operators to have a lot of industry expertise and operational knowledge. Representatives of this type of community include Sofia, Zhufaner and other companies.

Community Building

Okay, now that we have talked about community selection and community classification, let’s talk about community building in this part. I would divide the building of a community into two parts: preliminary preparation and regular operations.

1) Preliminary preparation

During this stage, we will carry out preparatory work before operations, including community positioning, community organizational structure, community rules, basic content and testing work. Let's talk about them separately:

Community Positioning

Before building a private domain community, you must first determine what type of community to build. Different community types determine the operation actions and focus. The three common types of communities are as follows:

Traffic generation group: The purpose is to increase fans, mainly undertake traffic, accumulate fans, and screen accurate users through operational means;

Welfare group: With conversion and repeat purchase as the main purpose, it completes refined operations based on the user's life cycle, tag attributes, etc.

Flash group: With rapid conversion as the main purpose, it guides users to complete designated actions in a short period of time, including attracting new users and conversions.

After determining the community type, we can integrate community activities into the regular operation phase, which will be discussed in detail later.

Community Organization Structure

Community operation is actually a very heavy job. For example, in the online education company I worked for before, many community operations were responsible for conversion work. The evaluation indicators included conversion rate and transaction amount. It can be said that it was done around the clock, and users were responded to at any time if they had any questions. So how do we ensure that each group operates normally and generates benefits? We need community structures. Usually includes: group owner, group management, atmosphere group (KOC) and regular members.

Group owner: The group owner is responsible for the overall operation of the community. Diverse expertise and interesting interactions can increase group activity.

Group management: Each group has 1-3 administrators. On the one hand, they are responsible for preventing the group owner’s account from being blocked, which would result in the community being unable to be maintained. On the other hand, they can also participate in the community operation as appropriate, including answering frequently asked questions, maintaining community rules, etc.

Atmosphere group KOC: discover active community members through operations, encourage content production through brand care and welfare content, and drive other community members to be active. Several "atmosphere groups" can be arranged in the community, especially in the early stages of the community. Their active responses and participation can drive the community atmosphere and get through the ice-breaking stage.

Other members: Other members are group members other than those listed above. They will watch and lurk in the community.

Establish community rules

As the saying goes: No rules, no order. A community should have clear rules at the beginning of its establishment. Community rules can not only allow users to understand the value of the community at the first time, but also regulate the behavior of group members and improve the efficiency of community management.

If there are too many group rules, you can express them in the form of pictures. Community rules generally include: what the community does (group positioning), rules of speech and behavior (such as no advertising, verbal violence, disrupting community order, etc.) and punishment rules.

Basic content

Basic content will include welcome messages, automatic replies, and group announcements.

Welcome: A good welcome will add a lot of points to the community. Its main function is to make the purpose of joining the group clear and let members know what they can get and what they can do.

Automatic reply: Provide answers to universal questions in the group, which can be in the form of copywriting, pictures, and official account articles. For example, a check-in community will inform users of the check-in rules, how to check in, etc.

Group announcements: used to publish notices and announce rules and regulations, which can be seen by all members of the group and let them know the latest activities and rules and regulations of the group at the first time

2) Regular operations

By directing users to the community through other channels, we can start the regular operation of the community. These contents will include content planning, community incentives and value systems, product conversions, promotional mechanisms, and data optimization.

Content Planning

To ensure the activeness of the community, high-quality content is indispensable and is also the best medium to keep the community active. The content here is not limited to text, but also includes H5, pictures, videos and live broadcasts.

According to the content production path, we can divide content planning into four steps: content classification, material library establishment, content production and content optimization.

Content classification: Based on different operational purposes, content can be divided into three major directions: activation, conversion, and brand promotion.

Material library establishment: After determining the content classification, start to establish the material library. You can organize the corresponding content according to three major directions, including knowledge sharing, picture sharing, etc.

Content production: After determining the corresponding material library, you can start producing content, which can be original, reprinted or collected.

Content optimization: Content optimization is to analyze and optimize the content that has been sent, select the content with the highest user opening rate, the highest comment rate, and the most favorite interaction, and increase the frequency of such content; analyze the content with low user interaction rate and dislike, and find out the reasons, and reduce the frequency of such content

Community incentives and value system

Achieve user retention, activity and conversion by building community incentives and value systems. Common media include:

Group points: By setting up a community division system, some virtual rewards are used to guide users to complete designated actions, such as daily check-ins, speaking, and inviting friends to join the group.

Product incentives: Stimulate group members to participate in community interaction through flash sales and limited products to achieve social trust

Material incentives: including interactive lucky draws, holiday red envelopes, etc.

Spiritual motivation: Publicly praise and affirm active users in the community to build a sense of belonging among members

Product transformation

It involves two aspects: product selection and product assembly.

Product selection: The products in private domain communities are generally traffic products, welfare products, profit products and exclusive products. In daily sales, the exclusive combination of festivals and customized channels can more easily trigger user impulse and complete paid conversion; it can also be combined with highly topical and high-quality content to promote

Grouping: There are 4 suggestions for grouping. Generally, it is a combination that is not available in the public domain; a more favorable combination of popular products + slow-moving products; a combination of three items for 99 yuan; a combination of slow-moving products + popular samples at a low price

Promotional Mechanism

You can use promotional mechanisms such as flash sales, lucky draws, free gifts, and limited coupons to complete user conversion and purchases

In Section 8, we will break down and analyze data optimization according to user stages and key indicators.

3) Community SOP

After going through the above steps, we can basically determine the community SOP.

SOP, also known as standard operating procedure, can record the experience gained in a unified format to guide and standardize daily work. The following is a community's one-day SOP, for reference only:

How to operate a good community

In addition to maintaining good community order and solving common user problems, daily community maintenance also requires relevant content planning, which is the content of the third part of regular operations. In this section, I will share several good operation methods that we often use and have been proven.

First, send messages at fixed times

Make community operation plans in advance and schedule daily message sending. For example, in the online education industry, users are often reminded to learn the day’s content at 7-8 in the morning, and to do morning check-ins, afternoon sharing, and evening Q&A.

Second, column-based management

Divide community content into columns, such as daily goodies, featured recommendations, limited-time flash sales, and useful information sharing, and then match the columns to daily and weekly operations to increase the diversity and fun of community content.

Third, membership management

This is mainly carried out for members, and during the operation process, it emphasizes member day benefits, member-exclusive benefits, etc.

Fourth, order chain

With the help of the robot assistant in the community, the customer's order information in the group can be automatically sent to the group in the form of a chain, encouraging users to follow suit. You can also combine quotas, quantity limits and other methods to stimulate users to place orders.

Fifth, Activities

Both regular and irregular activities should be actively carried out, and online and offline methods should be chosen based on actual conditions, such as flash sales, group buying, buy-one-get-one-free, raffles, red envelopes, etc.

Sixth, form a replicable community operation model

Community operation is a relatively heavy task. We can tap into active users within the group and complete replicable community operations through screening and training. In my previous work, I built a volunteer system of more than 20 people and managed 300-400 communities.

Common community operation combinations

Community operation needs to combine different operation methods to help enterprises build private domains. Common community operation combinations include:

First, community + mini program (live broadcast/mall)

This is the most common operation method in community operation. Based on this community scenario, the mini program, as a content carrier or conversion carrier, perfectly solves the problem of opening the mini program, and live broadcast can be carried out if conditions permit, which greatly improves the efficiency of community conversion.

Second, community + activities

In fact, there is also a set of methodologies for community operation activities, such as flash groups, etc. I can summarize this in a separate article later.

Third, community + private chat

This combination is often used in the online education or knowledge payment industry. Conversion is first carried out within the community, and users who cannot be converted are then converted a second time based on the class, region, and behavior. This includes private chat and telemarketing, which requires a relatively high level of manpower.

Fourth, community + membership management + user stratification operation

Many companies will adopt this method to operate communities. For example, the Internet finance industry stratifies members according to the total investment amount, and manages users with the highest total amount in one group to improve efficiency.

Fifth, community + gamification

Create content and topics in the community through gamified interactions.

Data indicators at different stages

In fact, a community is equivalent to a product and also has its own life cycle. We divide the life cycle of the community into 5 stages and focus on 9 key indicators.

First, the initial construction period

The initial establishment period is the period when the community is established, and the main focus is on the entry rate and the exit rate, increasing the entry rate while reducing the exit rate.

Group entry rate = number of people joining the group / number of exposures of the group entry channel

Quitting rate = number of quitters/number of members

Second, activation period

The key to operations at this stage is how to increase user activity. Generally speaking, the higher the activity of the community, the greater the value of the community. Here we will focus on two data: interaction rate and average number of messages per person.

Interaction rate = number of effective speakers on the day / number of community members

Average number of messages per person = total number of messages/number of people in the community

Through these two data, we can see how many people are active in the community and what the message data is like. If it is not ideal, we can further analyze the user's interests or improve community activity through points and atmosphere groups.

Third, retention period

After the first two stages, the community has entered a mature stage. At this stage, we need to pay attention to user retention.

Retention rate = number of people in the community during the period / total number of people in the community

If the retention rate is too high, we need to analyze the reasons for the loss, whether it is the service or the tone of the community. Then think about solutions, such as coupons or other valuable information.

Fourth, the realization period

The focus of operations at this stage is how to achieve monetization. Focus on conversion rate, average order value, and input-output ratio

Conversion rate = number of orders / total number of community members

Average order value = total order amount / number of people in the order

ROI = sales data / cost

Fifth, the transmission period

This stage mainly measures user loyalty and satisfaction, distinguishes the proportion of different types of users, and designs different activities, paying special attention to "user classification" .

According to the level of satisfaction and loyalty, users are divided into four types:

1. Loyal users (high satisfaction, high loyalty): repurchase every month and successfully recommend friends to purchase more than once

2. Woven-type users (low satisfaction, high loyalty): will buy because of the affordable price, will not make product-related recommendations, and the average customer unit price is less than xx yuan

3. Demand-based users (high satisfaction, low loyalty) : strong demand for products, low brand loyalty, no repurchase within 3 months

4. Low demand users (low satisfaction, low loyalty): users who only purchase once or have never purchased

Then, we classify and count the users in the community and adopt different operation strategies accordingly, such as:

For communities with many free-to-use users, you can launch combination discounts to increase the average order value, or promote sales by inviting friends to bargain and increase activity traffic. For communities with many loyal users, you can recommend some items with high average order value and provide more thoughtful service.

Final Thoughts

From the perspective of user life cycle, the benefits of WeChat as a whole are slowly disappearing, and the simple and crude community operation methods are no longer suitable for the current era. This requires us to carry out user operations in a more refined manner and provide good service to every user who enters the community.

The most important thing in a community is people. Everything done in the community is ultimately about maintaining relationships with users.