New media operation products and user positioning skills!

Before operating new media , we must first have an accurate positioning and roughly determine what to do? Who is it for? This way you will have a clear idea of ​​what to do when operating.

1. Positioning and Operation Positioning

Positioning refers to determining the position of a thing in a certain environment, and also refers to determining the direction, place and boundary. Positioning starts with a product. That product could be a good, a service, an organization or even a person, maybe yourself. Positioning is what you do with your prospective customers. In other words, you need to position your product in the minds of your potential customers and ensure that your product occupies a truly valuable position in their minds.

The concept of positioning was first applied in the business field. In 1972, Al Ries and Jack Trout proposed the positioning theory, which created a new marketing thinking and concept and was rated as "the most influential idea in American marketing ever." The theory states that a business must create a "positioning" in the minds of potential customers. This positioning not only takes into account the strengths and weaknesses of the company itself, but also the strengths and weaknesses of its competitors. In 1991, the Chinese version of "Positioning" was published and the positioning theory was introduced to China. The core of positioning theory is "one center and two basic points": "building a brand" as the center, and "competition orientation" and "consumer mind" as the basic points. Mr. Lu Jianhua also created a positioning theory system framework - Positioning House.

In fact, positioning theory is not only used in the field of marketing, it has wider applications in communication. The positioning of new media operations includes at least four aspects: product positioning, user positioning, content positioning, and brand positioning. The positioning of corporate new media should match the corporate positioning, and the positioning of government new media should match the government communication positioning. The positioning of self-media seems to be rather arbitrary, but in fact it is not. It also requires scientific and accurate positioning. There must be a basic positioning before and in the early stages of new media operations. The clearer the positioning, the more proactive and effective the operation will be, and blindness in operations can be avoided. Therefore, it is important to clarify the positioning of new media operations, then figure out who the users are and the corresponding solutions for the products, and finally to do it. The content or activities will achieve twice the result with half the effort.

The most important thing in positioning new media operations is value positioning, that is, the value orientation of your operation of this new media, which can be roughly divided into two aspects: social value and commercial value. Specifically, there are multiple value dimensions.

2. Product Positioning

The positioning of new media operations must first use product thinking to carry out product positioning, which is actually the externalization of operational concepts in product design. This design needs to solve two major problems: What kind of product are we making? What user needs does this product meet?

For example, the product design of a public account can be divided into four steps. The first step is name design. The message it conveys is what you want to do and what you can do. Today’s public accounts can be roughly divided into several categories: “personal brand”, “industry development”, “social tools” and “public media”. Most personal public accounts take the path of personal branding. When naming this type of public account, you can base it on your own personality, preferences, and characteristics, but it must be easy to remember and pronounce, and should not be too complicated. If you don't want to sell yourself, but you know a lot about movies, or have unique insights into painting, you can also try to delve deeper into the industry. Then the name must be related to the industry.

The second step is avatar design. The most common forms are "characters, graphics, and text". If you want to build a personal brand, you can choose a character image that is easy to create affinity; if you want to express your opinions in a certain field, or if you are a literary youth and want to follow the path of youth literature, you can use text to design your avatar; of course, if you are running a public account for a company, you can also use the company logo.

The third step is the typesetting style, such as font. For young people, you can choose size 5 font, and for older people, you can use size 4 font. The fourth step is picture aesthetics. Entertainment pictures can be more fancy, while professional pictures must be more serious. In short, it varies from person to person and from case to case, so I won’t introduce them one by one here.

3. User Positioning

The positioning of user groups is also the most important link in the positioning process, which directly depends on how to operate the official account later. Only when we first understand the user groups we are targeting can we provide them with the information they want, gain the trust of fans, the recognition of users and the transactions of customers. In this part, operators need to know who their target users are? And what are the characteristics of this type of users? If these two points can be very clear, it will lay a solid foundation for operational work.

However, in the early stages of new media operations, because there are not many users, the target users may not be well understood, and therefore the positioning may not be clear. An excellent WeChat public account operator must first analyze the characteristics of the target user group. We can usually start with attributes and behaviors. Attributes can be determined by the user's gender, age, city of residence, education level, etc., and behaviors can be determined by what websites the user likes and what they like to do. It is usually done in three steps:

• Step 1: We first need to collect information about the target users. We can collect information through the background data of the official account, or we can use the voting function to conduct a questionnaire survey.
• Step 2: Classify and organize the data based on the collected user information. First, divide it by attributes. After division, note the real labels according to the actual situation of the users, such as who are old customers, who are new customers, who are loyal fans, who are ordinary fans, etc.
• Step 3: After integrating this information, you can create a comprehensive portrait of these users, such as their specific gender, age, interests, and hobbies.

According to the above three steps, you can draw the basic portrait of the target user you want.

4. Content Positioning

Once we have identified the important user groups, the next step is to determine what services to provide to them. Every industry in the 360 ​​industry has its own characteristics. We must design reasonable content based on the characteristics of our own industry. Of course, before designing the content, we must first have a 200% understanding of our own industry and our own products. At least the characteristics of the product and the characteristics of the industry must be understood very clearly. Of course, if after saying so much you are still not sure how to design the service content, then the best way is to analyze your competitors. The principle is nothing more than "I have what others don't, and I am better at it." From their self-media platforms, you will definitely be able to see something that is beneficial to you. Of course, I ask you to analyze, not copy and paste. Imitation is not original.

The positioning of content is very important, so the era of content being king will never be out of date. There are only three forms in which we can present content to the outside world on all self-media platforms: text, video and pictures. Before we start positioning, we must first determine the form in which the content will be presented, whether it is text, voice, picture or video. Only when the form is determined can we position the content. In fact, the most important thing for content positioning is the form of presentation. Text and pictures are very common, but cool videos and audio with useful content are still less used than text and pictures. You might as well use them reasonably according to the characteristics of your own official account.

5. Brand Positioning

An excellent new media operator must build its own brand to enhance the recognition and influence of the new media. Four steps to brand positioning: Step 1: Analyze the industry environment; Step 2: Find differentiation concepts; Step 3: Find support points; Step 4: Dissemination and application. Positioning is to differentiate the brand. The brand positioning should also be based on market research. Through market analysis, we can find the breakthrough point of positioning:

• The first step is to find the general direction you want to go in and your advantages. For example, if you want to do clothing matching, you are good at PPT production, etc.
• The second step is to conduct a user attribute survey based on the general direction you have found, including investigating the user’s age, gender, city, etc.
• The third step is to find similar public accounts in the direction you are focusing on, research what they write, what the differences are, and where else you can start.
• Step 4: Build a building block model based on the survey results.

This building block model is just the result of your research. To do it yourself, you need to find a breakthrough point from this building block model.

The first step is to subdivide the content direction. For example, everyone writes about clothing matching. Others write about celebrity outfit reviews and dressing techniques. Can I write about personal outfit sharing or fashion item recommendations? Others create content through pictures and texts. Is it feasible for me to create content through comics and videos?

The second step is to segment user attributes. The dressing direction cannot be started from the content. I start from the user attributes. You write about women's dressing, and I write about men's dressing. You write about people aged 20-29 in first-tier cities, and I write about people aged 30-39 in third- and fourth-tier cities.

The third step is to draw your own building block model based on your own segmented content direction and user attributes.

Admittedly, the positioning of new media operations is not static. It can be repositioned according to market changes and adjusted according to user needs. But once the positioning is determined, we must unswervingly execute and operate in accordance with the positioning.

Author: Tan Tian Lun Dao

Source: Tan Tian Lun Dao