How to quickly build a highly active community of 5,000 people in 20 days?

He has served as strategic director of LinkeBess, senior lecturer of network communication at Huicong.com, etc. He is currently the network marketing director of U-Bella International Children's Education Group. With more than 10 years of practical experience in online communication and promotion, he personally guided the implementation of the red can competition between Jiaduobao and Wanglaoji.

What preparations are needed before launching a WeChat community ?

First we need to make a plan, and our plan is divided into these categories.

Audience, function, method, product, profit, responsibility.

We are engaged in early childhood education. The biggest problem with early childhood education institutions is that they produce very little content on the Internet. So after I entered as an Internet person, I was responsible for almost all the Internet ideas and planning, including operations, at the Ubel Early Childhood Education Institution.

Audience: Our audience is mothers, because the offline campuses are for children aged 0 to 8. If we want parents to pay, we must first make them recognize our brand and concept, and then they will bring their children there.

Some parents will come to the campus to attend trial classes, get to know us and have a certain degree of recognition of us. However, there are still a large number of parents who actually don’t know or are not interested in going to the campus, so we set up this community to help them with some conceptual and thinking guidance, so that they can recognize our brand and hope that they can bring their children to participate in trial classes . In fact, we are using online communities to divert offline traffic. Our target audience is mainly mothers who are willing to contribute to their children's growth. In fact, it also includes 10% of men. However, men's ability to educate and purchase children is actually worse than that of mothers. In addition, mothers prefer to learn and try more, and let their children experience more courses. So our audience is basically targeted at mothers, but we do not exclude men. Men account for about 10% in our community.

Function: The function we define is to provide these mothers with some courses to learn, to help them grow, and also to help children experience some new and different courses.

Method: Actually, it is the method of WeChat community. The users of QQ groups are generally those born in the 1990s or 1995s, and most parents use WeChat groups , so we will temporarily do it in the form of WeChat communities.

Product: The product we define in the WeChat community is courses (courses to help parents improve themselves). These courses are important, but some parents are unaware of their importance. For example, when we are giving lectures, we will raise some questions, such as what problems will arise if you force a child to eat when he doesn’t want to eat. Another question is why children cannot concentrate in class or when doing things. Many parents think that these are the children’s problems, but in fact these problems are caused by some reasons of the parents. We tell parents that first you have to change yourself, so that you can lead your children to change as well.

As a product, our courses are free in the early stages and all parents can take them. Our courses have a pyramid structure with different stages. We have popular lectures, which are free. We will also have 199 multiplication classes. For example, next week we will have an expert talking specifically about the relationship between diet and parents, including why a child’s personality development is affected by diet (4 lessons), and our price is 199. These are our two main products.

Profit: Because our school has campuses and some WeChat groups, we have formulated a profit-sharing ratio for the campuses, so that the campuses are more willing to cooperate with us in sales.

Responsibility: We stipulate what the campuses do, what the headquarters does, and what the headquarters helps the campuses train.

This is our entire plan. Let me share some details with you below.

Establishing a project team

After we made a plan, we started to form a project team. When we formed the project team, we called on various departments of the company, including operations , marketing, and sales authorization. Each department sent one person to form our project department, and then we proceeded according to the project process. All those who participate in the project team work according to the project process.

Internal housekeeper group

Next, we set up an internal housekeeper group. The person in charge of this project at our headquarters is called Youbel Assistant, and the administrators in all other campus and non-campus groups are called housekeepers (Youbel Housekeepers). That is to say, the housekeeper's level is lower than that of the assistant, but the assistant does not publish or make public directly. Instead, he patrols various groups and helps some campuses solve their real problems. He will tell these housekeepers privately rather than in public.

We asked the campuses to establish these housekeeper groups first. After establishing a group of 200 people, we will assign assistants from our headquarters to join their group, and then see if the number of people in their group has reached 200. If it has reached 200, the group's housekeeper will be pulled into our housekeeper group, and we will make unified arrangements and allocations. At the beginning, some campuses were reluctant to join because they felt that their own groups were doing better. However, only some campuses have set up some groups locally, and most of them have not.

The campus that was doing better at the beginning had a group of 100 people, but 100 people was a very small number for us. So we force them to grow to 200 people before they can join our butler group. We have positioned the housekeeper group so that only three campuses can be allowed in every day, which means that there is competition among these campuses. If there were no competition, many campuses would not be willing to come. However, once a competition mechanism is established, the effect is relatively good.

Experts and courses

After we opened up free courses from experts, some groups hoped to get guidance from experts or participate in live broadcasts, because we also have some free live lectures. Live broadcasting requires a broadcasting robot to operate. We will require all campuses that want to join the housekeeper group to do so in accordance with our requirements, so that we will have the power to manage the entire campus.

Design group building rules

In addition to creating groups, some rules must also be set for these users. For example, if you want to change your name, you cannot post advertisements, etc. We also formulate some rules in normal times and send them to the housekeeper group. In fact, this is how we execute them later, but we still need to create the preliminary rules.

Training campus housekeeper

This is a rather complicated matter. We found that some campuses could send one person to be responsible for this project, but some campuses could not. We will base it on the actual situation. If there is a dedicated person to take charge, we will keep things simple and let them try more content. If there is no one specifically responsible for this, or if it is targeted at new campuses, we will tell their principals in advance exactly when and what to send out. In fact, the initial training consumes a lot of manpower and energy.

Quickly create multiple communities using branches and media platforms

Leverage campus and partner resources

What I have said before is all about advance preparation. We prepared a lot of documents and materials, and reviewed the processes ourselves several times. Our team also conducted some tests and found that there were no problems, so we started distributing them to various campuses and channels. The first step in our rapid creation of multiple communities was to leverage campus resources and partner resources. We have nearly 60 campuses, and also have some franchisees for teaching aids and other courses. Because some people in the early childhood education industry may not necessarily work with your brand, but they will buy your brand's courses. In addition to the campus, there are dozens of such units.

For these campus groups and some franchisees, such as companies or schools that purchase our individual courses and teaching aids, we will ask them to attend our promotional lectures and then tell them what support and help we can provide them. In this way, by first utilizing the resources of the campus and company platform, we have dozens of potential groups. Because some companies are unwilling to do it, or no one is willing to do it.

For these potential groups, our dozens of campuses will require these people to do things in accordance with our way, but there must be a limit on the number of people who can enter our housekeeper group. For example, if I set the limit at three today, then at most three people can enter today, and more than that will not be allowed in. In fact, the effect is quite good after setting a threshold for them.

Determine the start time and stick to it

Once we have talked to these campuses and partners, we can determine the launch time. After the launch time is determined, we will set up several groups ourselves for a period of time. These groups are used to cover provinces or cities that are not covered by the campus. For example, I don’t cover Tibet, but there are some Tibetan friends who want to come and listen to our classes and our parenting ideas. Then they can join the group set up by our headquarters, and we will launch our project at the same time.

Formulate group rules and import users in batches

We used several methods. One was to let the campus implement it itself, and another was to import it in our own group through official accounts and other collaborations.

Make users feel present

I think this is very important, because when every new user comes, he will feel very unfamiliar and have no idea what this group does or what benefits it provides. We usually invite people in batches, because for groups with more than 100 people, someone must invite them. Our group has an assistant who specifically invites people, but we don't invite them one by one, we do it in batches. For example, between 10 and 11 o'clock in the evening, there may be 20 people who apply to be added as friends. I will ignore these 20 people for the time being. The next day, I will accumulate another 50 people and then invite all of them at the same time. Generally, when we invite them, about 80% of them can join the group. However, due to time differences or other reasons, 20% of people may enter slowly or may not enter at all. But the probability of 80% is quite high. When this group of people comes in, we will say something like, welcome new parents to the group, etc. This period of time is relatively short, maybe about 10 to 20 minutes, but it will let these parents know what we do and what our rules are.

Making users feel present can have a great impact on their future activity and stickiness, so I suggest that if you are running a community, you must let new people know what it is about when they come and let them know that someone welcomes them. This is actually very important.

Maintaining community, daily activity and stickiness

Threshold for creating a group

I think there needs to be a threshold when creating a group so that users cannot come in so easily. We will ask them to send out some keywords. For example, we have some personality management classes, so we will ask them to send out their personality. With the threshold in place, they will feel that this is a group with standards and there is no sense of disorganization. Therefore, we must set a keyword, or ask users to write the word "register", or something else. In essence, it is to set a threshold. I think this is very useful.

Formulate group rules

The group rules let everyone know what they are doing, including how to do it and how to solve problems when they arise, making it clear at a glance. At the same time, as managers, we must operate in accordance with the group rules. For example, with advertising, when we kick someone out, we don’t have to worry that kicking that person will hurt others or that others will lose interest. We are doing this in accordance with the rules for the sake of fairness and justice for everyone. In this way, more people will recognize you and your group. These people are your die-hard fans and loyal users.

FAQ

We have set up a question-and-answer session, including answers to questions about children's growth, illness, and some psychological issues. At the same time, we also set the number of questions and answers, that is, a group can only answer one question at a certain time every day, so parents will come during this time period, which can increase the activity of the entire group.

Daily Activities

Every day I bring parents together to make some changes. If a person has 21 days of tracking and changes, then he will have a big change. In fact, as someone from a foreign country said, it is difficult to change a habit, but if you spend time changing it every day, you will eventually change the habit.

Audio/Video

This is a project we did on the official account. We will direct the content of the official account to the community to let everyone know that we not only have Q&A and courses, but we also have some daily things. If they think it’s good, they can also follow the official account.

Live Courses

Mainly WeChat live courses. We have set up four classes per month, basically one class per week. We will give advance notice and parents will attend on time, which will have better results.

Offline Activities

We will first gather within the group and guide users to our campuses to experience and visit, but because each campus is different, the entire activity is differentiated for different groups. Unless it is some big event, for example, we will soon hold a national creative thinking competition, which is based on all campuses, and there are some partner companies of other brands, they also have some campuses and will participate together. We provide corresponding products and competition support.

This is equivalent to calling the entire group together, because many parents have never been to our campuses, and we have also conducted some recruitment for their various campuses through this activity.

User sharing

User sharing is also important. Because when a user says hello, he will encourage people around him to say hello. Through user sharing, we have expanded the group and allowed many people who don’t know our brand to get to know us. This method is equivalent to users attracting users. In this way, we can quickly form a large group without having to put in too much effort. We usually start with large-scale user sharing after the number of people reaches 200.

Some problems encountered in practice and their solutions 

We encountered a problem with training. When we were training the housekeepers, some of them had no idea about this aspect at all. There was a young manager in one campus who didn’t understand much, so I spent three hours telling him step by step how to create a group, how to add people, and how to share. He did as I said, and the effect was very good. Within three hours, we recruited more than 130 people, and three of them have already made appointments to experience the course.

Training is something that requires a lot of effort. If there are too many groups, it is not easy to find the housekeeper you are looking for. In some groups, it is difficult for one housekeeper to manage the entire group. Then he can ask some other colleagues to join the group to assist in management, or find some enthusiastic parents to help liven up the group atmosphere, and then give these enthusiastic parents some rewards from time to time, such as inviting them to listen to course sharing, or giving children some small toys (low-cost items). Parents like this very much, and at the same time they are also happy to share with users. Through these things, we found that it is much more convenient to have these enthusiastic parent groups do these things for us than for us to solve the problems of each group one by one.

In the early stages, the growth rate of each group is not high, so some methods need to be used to help these housekeepers. After helping them grow, you must post these fast-growing groups in the housekeeper group or other places where other chain franchise merchants can see them. In this way, their enthusiasm can be mobilized . If they can't see these things and don't know what you're doing, they won't be very interested in your stuff.

Let’s talk about answers. We have set a time for answering questions, but we found that many parents gave information in different time periods. When we find inconsistencies, we set a range. For example, for files uploaded before 8 o'clock, we will count them as today, and for files uploaded after 8 o'clock, we will count them as tomorrow. After we set a period, many parents uploaded their content faster instead of waiting until late. When you consider your parents, they will also consider you. It is a mutual relationship. Because you have fixed a time, if the child does not raise the question at this time, his question will not be answered in time. Therefore, we also want to let parents know how to solve their children's problems in a more timely manner.

Another problem is that there are too many problems. This is the most common problem we encounter now. Although we stipulate that each group can only have one, we have 20 groups, so there are 20 problems. We will let full-time experts answer the questions, but there are not too many full-time experts. They have to complete their daily work and answer these questions. When they give answers, they are usually more than 100 words. I have been asking the experts to reduce the amount of words, but they still wrote so many words. Maybe they think that more is better, but we think simple and clear is best. Finally, we adjusted our strategy. We ranked the groups that were growing fast or changing quickly, and then provided them with two or three expert questions and answers. This approach had a relatively good effect. In fact, the more people there are in a group, the more problems there are, and the more problems there are, the higher the similarities are. We prefer to solve problems with a large number of people, so there are relatively fewer problems in the group. This is a decreasing process.

The third point is advertising. When the group was first established, there were a lot of advertisements, and many of them were people pulled in by leaders. These people might be involved in business and cooperation matters. Because of this incident, I have talked to my leader many times and discussed it with each other. Finally, the leader agreed that we should strictly follow the rules of the group and remove all those who posted advertisements. Because this affects our entire operation and maintenance, our main goal is to make parents more satisfied and to divert traffic to the campus, so the campus also supports us. In fact, we encountered many other problems, but encountering problems is not terrible. What is important is how to think of solutions.

Finally, let me report our achievements to you. We now have 20 stable and relatively good communities. There are 5,000 parents in the community, and they are all a very precise group of mothers. These groups are relatively active.