Today, the editor invited a senior community operation expert with 5 years of experience to share with us a successful case she once managed: it took her only 6 months to go from a cold start to the number one community in the pet category (it is inconvenient to specify which website, so pet.com will be used instead below).

PS: Of course, many of you may be concerned about the cost. Don’t worry, it’s not much. We will give specific instructions at the end of the article.

Before establishing a community, you must first determine the community’s goals . This is the basis for the implementation of all subsequent operational strategies for the community. If the direction is wrong, all efforts will be in vain.

We established the following goals at the outset :

Once you’ve determined your goals, it’s time to start building a community .

You can see the picture below. We divide pet communities into ordinary communities and VIP communities . Under ordinary communities, there are 3 types of communities: comprehensive communities, local communities, and category communities .

Why introduce so many communities? Because the functions of each group are different, different types of communities should be established based on product attributes and the scale of group development.

1) General community

Ordinary communities have four main functions: gathering pet lovers; user sedimentation and guidance; classification guidance of VIP communities; sales conversion, etc.

The general group can be divided into 3 categories:

Let’s first look at the national comprehensive community. If your product does not have a very clear positioning, for example, your product is a financial product , then it is recommended that you start with the national comprehensive community.

PS: If your product has a clear positioning, for example, if you are running a local food public account , you can ignore this step and directly establish a local group.

Once the scale expands, you can start considering category communities or local communities .

Take us as an example. At the beginning, we established a national pet exchange group. Later, as the size of the group continued to expand, we found that many group members had different demands.

Some people keep cats, some keep dogs. The cats include British shorthair and orange cats, and the dogs include Teddy and Husky, etc., so we have established pet groups of different categories to facilitate refined operations.

We also found that many group members wanted to meet in person. Of course, group members are from all over the country, which is not easy to achieve. Therefore, we established local groups to facilitate offline activities and enhance user stickiness.

Finally, we discovered another bug during the operation .

We found that there were many people advertising in the group, so we set up a special advertising group and asked the group administrators to regularly organize their demands and publish them on our website, circles, or WeChat groups (of course, we will obtain the consent of our group members).

2) VIP Community

VIP community is an advancement of ordinary community and is the core part of the entire community. It is mainly divided into two categories: one is the product monetization group; the other is the core management group .

Let’s talk about the first type first. I believe that many friends will not set a threshold when they first create a group, so the people joining the group will be a mixed bag, so we have to screen out the real target users (the legendary seed users ).

These people may pay for our products, and adding them to the VIP group will make it easier to convert future products .

What is the second type of VIP community? We found a type of user in the group who is very active or often comes out to help answer questions.

This type of user has a high stickiness to our group, and we can develop them into our group managers to reduce our costs and workload.

Baidu Entry also used a similar method before:

Full-time staff alone do not have the energy to review the tens of thousands of entries edited by users, so they found more active users (college students), gathered them in a community, gave them certain rewards, and asked them to edit entries produced by other users.

In this way, the employees of Baidu Encyclopedia only need to manage these people, and the burden on their shoulders is suddenly lightened.

PS: In the early stage, it is recommended that internal employees manage it. When the scale becomes larger in the later stage, this method can be adopted.

Three months after our regular community was established, we started to develop the VIP community. So how do we screen users? How to attract users to join?

Here are some of our experiences:

VIP community conditions:

VIP community members can enjoy the following benefits:

Many friends may have a headache because usually no one talks in the group, and any message is just an advertisement, irrelevant to pictures or videos.

Have you ever thought about where the problem lies, is it because there are no group rules? Or is it because of management problems?

Next, I will share with you from four perspectives how we build an orderly and active community.

1) Group rules and regulations

In addition to regulating group order and facilitating management, group rules will also conduct in-depth screening of users, eliminate invalid users, and select loyal users, so group rules must be determined before creating a group.

General group rules involve two aspects: one is the group introduction, and the other is the specific group rules.

Our group introduction includes 3 aspects: who we are; what benefits will you get from joining our group; and introducing the group owner .

The group rules include three aspects: guiding the modification of group business cards, encouraging sharing, and explaining prohibited matters .

To make it easier for you to understand, I share our group size board here:

Group introduction template:

Specific group size board :

Note: If you want users not to send ads, you must do it first. If a user violates the group rules, he or she must be kicked out immediately and the information must be explained within the group .

Of course, the specific rules of each group should be determined according to the nature of its products and its own purposes.

If you are engaged in Internet education, you can let everyone modify the group business card according to their position, for example: XX - New Media Operation . Everyone is welcome to share operational tips , study photos, etc. in the group.

2) Group owner system

In the group introduction section, we mentioned the group owner. The group owner plays the role of a KOL in the community, but the group owner alone cannot guarantee the normal operation of the group, so we need to establish a group owner system.

You can see the following group leader division of labor chart:

As can be seen from the picture above, the group owner system has three levels: chief group owner, sub-group owners, and administrators .

① Group leader

In terms of operations, the chief group owner is equivalent to the director, responsible for the overall operations of all communities.

He needs to be responsible for the activity and product conversion rate of all groups.

② Group owner

The sub-group owner is equivalent to the boss of each group, and is mainly responsible for assisting the chief group owner in managing relevant communities, conducting topic discussions, planning activities , etc.

Here is a small suggestion. In the early stage, since the group has just been established, the sub-group owner should be a company employee, which will help to manage the community. It is recommended that one sub-group owner manage 2 groups .

In the later stage, as the group size expands, you can screen out some active members, give them relevant benefits and wages, and ask them to take the role. It is recommended that one sub-group owner manage 3-4 groups.

③ Group Administrator

It is definitely not enough energy for a sub-group owner to manage 2-4 communities. Some administrators are also needed to do daily work and maintain the normal operation of the group .

We match each sub-group owner with about 3 group administrators, who mainly cooperate with the sub-group owner to do 4 things:

3) Group activity mechanism

Group rules and group owner system can help build a standardized and orderly community. So how should we activate group members next?

Many friends said that it was very simple, just share red envelopes in the group and invite some people to give lectures.

Congratulations on getting started, you are right. However, sending out red envelopes without reason and without limit, and inviting experts to give lectures are very expensive, and may only have a temporary active effect.

Therefore, if we want to build a continuously active community at a low cost, we should establish a group activity mechanism.

I do this by dividing activities into regular and irregular .

Regular activities include basic activities: such as online lectures, food tasting activities, prizes for showing off your pets, and prizes for invitations, to cultivate users' sharing and inviting habits. If there are funds left over, other activities can be undertaken.

Irregular activities include various online and offline activities. Sometimes we organize offline gatherings, mainly to increase user activity and stickiness.

What is the purpose of conducting irregular online activities? Here we have to mention the peak-end rule: users' memory of product experience is determined by two aspects: peak value (whether positive or negative) and terminal value .

Therefore, we need to carry out irregular online activities to create a sense of surprise (create peaks) and make users feel that our group is valuable.

How to attract new users during the cold start phase? How to keep users on our website and make them spend money? This is an issue that many friends are concerned about. To accomplish these three goals, we split the process into two phases:

Phase 1

1) Goal

● Improve new customer acquisition methods and gradually master retention skills

● Create 6 groups with more than 400 members

● Put relevant group administrators in place (2 part-time group owners, 5 part-time administrators, etc.).

2) Attract new customers

① New customer acquisition channels

After establishing a community, the first step is to attract new members. Of course, it is definitely not about blindly attracting new customers. Not only does it cost high labor costs, but the effect of attracting new customers is also poor.

This is what we do by dividing the new customer acquisition channels into our own platforms and other channels .

What does it mean to have your own platform?

We have our own pet website, which can be used to attract traffic; we also have our own official accounts, circle accounts, Penguin accounts , Toutiao accounts , and Weibo accounts, which are considered my own platforms.

Our own platform is only part of it, other channels can also bring us a lot of traffic . But there are many other channels, which ones should we choose?

If it is an app or website, two dimensions need to be evaluated:

Website data: PV, IP, registered users, and daily active users of the channel (relevant data can be found on Alexa).

Data related to my business:

After evaluating other channels according to these dimensions, we found that there is a certain base of pet-related topics on Tieba and Zhihu. In the later stage, we also attracted traffic through mutual promotion and cooperation.

Note: For cold-start products, it is recommended to start with your own platform and other free channels , and then conduct mutual promotion cooperation later.

Here is a little trick for you. Before discussing cooperation, think about 4 questions first, which will help increase the success rate of cooperation:

② New customer acquisition execution

The rules of each platform are different. For example, WeChat cannot add many people at the same time, otherwise the account will be blocked.

So next, I will share with you what points to pay attention to when attracting traffic through different channels and how to maximize the effect of attracting new customers.

a. WeChat secondary account

Because we want to divert users from all platforms to the WeChat group, in order to prevent the account from being blocked for adding too many people at once, you need to register small WeChat accounts (the number of registrations depends mainly on the size of your current group).

We registered 5 small accounts, 1 was allocated to the general group owner, 2 were allocated to the sub-group owners (the main executors, so there were more), and the remaining 2 were used as lurking small accounts (backup).

b. Today’s headlines traffic

We have two accounts on Toutiao. At the end of all articles, the WeChat account of the sub-group owner (including the sub-group owner’s small account) is left. The sub-group owner will gradually pull relevant group members to the designated WeChat community.

c. Tieba traffic diversion

Tieba mainly attracts some traffic through the large + small drainage method.

Register more than 20 accounts, including 1 internet celebrity account, 2 ad-free accounts, and 5 main advertising accounts. The rest are small accounts for top posts.

Why is it configured like this? Internet celebrity accounts are equivalent to KOLs, and their effectiveness in attracting new users is self-evident, but they cannot advertise frequently, so they need small accounts to do daily traffic generation.

Small accounts are divided into non-advertising accounts and advertising accounts.

Let me ask you a question first. If you often see people advertising the same brand in posts or comments, would you think they are water armies (if I am not mistaken)? So this is when an ad-free account comes in handy.

Next, I will share with you the 5 specific steps of Tieba drainage:

But please note that it is not recommended to use a small account to push a post to the top immediately after posting. After all, the post you just posted is already at the top (except for pinned posts). It is not too late to push it to the top after a while when it has been moved down. Otherwise, it will be easily regarded as posting spam by the forum administrator and your account will be blocked.

3) Activities to attract new customers and promote activation

The activities here have already been planned in the group activity mechanism, including what activities to carry out, the schedule of activities, etc. All we need to do here is to execute them.

4) Initial establishment of VIP community

In the later stage of the first phase, the ordinary community has reached a certain scale. The next step is to initially establish the VIP community, guide users to join the VIP community, and publicize the benefits of the VIP community.

At the beginning, we have already talked about the specific methods of screening VIP users and attracting them to join. For your convenience, we will repeat them here.

VIP community conditions:

VIP community members can enjoy the following benefits:

How to improve the community in the second stage, please see below~

Phase II

After the first phase, our community has reached a certain scale.

After the community exceeds 5,000 or even 10,000 members, attracting new members is no longer the main purpose. The focus is on maintaining users through various activities and topics, and precipitating and converting more accurate users.

Therefore, the focus of this stage will be on community activities .

1) Goal

2) Gradual improvement of VIP community

In the first phase, we have already screened out potential users and added them to the VIP group.

The task of the second stage is to further screen users, find part-time workers who can help us carry out our work, and build the VIP community into a core administrator group.

Of course, no matter which type of VIP group (administrator group, paid member group) is created, the management method is the same as that for ordinary members. It is also necessary to establish group rules, group owner system, and group activity mechanism. You only need to iterate on the previous version.

Here is a little trick, the group name should be high-sounding, XX Research Center; XX TOP Management Center; XX VIP Member Center .

Next we are coming to the end. This question is also a concern of many friends. What essential resources do we need to operate the community normally? How to allocate resources rationally, spend less money and do more things?

1) Personnel

Personnel should be divided into two aspects: one is group management personnel (required), and the other is activity-related personnel (depending on the situation).

The group management personnel should be determined based on the goals, number of groups, and group owner mechanism.

After comprehensive consideration, we have equipped 3 to 5 people (full-time) and more than 10 part-time administrators. Each person is responsible for the management and maintenance of 2 to 3 groups. One person can have 5 accounts on channels such as Tieba, and they are responsible for attracting and retaining new users every day.

Note: If the group expands to a certain number in the future, more part-time administrators will be needed.

Let’s talk about the event staff. Our group holds online sharing sessions regularly every week and invites veterinarians to share related topics, so I will work with some veterinarians.

Of course, some friends may not have this need, so it still depends on their own activities.

2) Funding

In order to prevent the cost from being too high, it is recommended that you make a budget at the beginning. We divide the budget into fixed costs and floating costs:

Fixed costs mainly include three aspects: mobile phone expenses + administrator salary + activity funds.

① Mobile phone charges:

Since an administrator has many accounts, in order to work efficiently, it is necessary to have a mobile phone, a Xiaomi phone worth a few hundred yuan will do;

② Administrator salary:

In order to enable employees to complete their work efficiently, they can be given appropriate rewards when they achieve their KPIs;

Of course part-timers cannot work for us for free, and we have to pay them wages in addition to their regular benefits;

Floating costs include: operating funds + other operating funds

③ Activity Funds:

There are prizes for invitations (a red packet of 5 to 10 yuan will be given for inviting 5 people), prizes for photo sharing (small gifts such as peripheral products and coupons will be given for posting pet photos in the group for 7 consecutive days); and prizes for inviting experts to share.

④ Other activity funds: The cost varies in different periods.

With this set of calculations, we can probably control the monthly expenditure within 5,000 yuan in the early stage (everyone is about the same in the early stage); the budget in the later stage will depend on the actual situation (including the number of events held, the types of events, etc.).

Note: Fixed cost expenditures are essential. If you encounter a situation where the budget is insufficient, first meet the fixed costs to allow the group to operate normally, and then consider organizing activities to activate the group.

Later, when we were doing the actual operation, we found that we spent less than 5,000 yuan a month, and almost half was left over. After reviewing the situation, I found that one of the items mentioned above has almost zero cost.

When negotiating wages with part-time workers, we tried using "pet food" instead of wages, and many part-time workers agreed.

We don't need to spend money on this part of food. When we look for suppliers to cooperate with, the other party will provide us with some products for brand promotion, and these products naturally become "wages."

If you have your own products (such as books) and you have established a book club, you may also be able to use this method to reduce costs~

Today, I shared with you a successful case I had done before. There are four main steps:

1) In the early stage, choose to establish a certain type of community based on the product attributes ; in the later stage, adjust the strategy in time according to the development scale of the group and the specific situation during operation, and establish local groups, category groups, member groups, advertising groups, etc.

2) Establish three major mechanisms: group rules system, group leader system, and group activity mechanism to create an orderly and active community.

3) After the first two steps have laid the foundation, the goals will be broken down into multiple stages during operation . In the early stage, the company will mainly use its own platforms and other channels (which require evaluation of website data and business-related data) to attract new users; in the later stage, the company will mainly focus on user retention and conversion to build a VIP community.

4) In order to reduce costs, it is recommended to list the necessary resources: personnel (management personnel + event personnel) + costs (fixed costs + floating costs). When funds are limited, first meet the necessary resources, and at the same time explore solutions to reduce costs during operations. For example, paying part-time wages can be replaced by products.

Maybe many friends are still worried that their products are not good enough and the community will not play much of a role. Don’t worry, we have also been through this stage. Give it a try, it actually doesn’t cost much. Perhaps you can also use this method to build your own popular community.

Source: Operation Research Society (ID: U_quan)