When it comes to new media , everyone will think of social traffic platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Tik Tok. These have become the main source of customer acquisition for most companies. These platforms require specialized operations to achieve traffic acquisition and brand exposure, so a new position was born - new media operation.

The main responsibility of new media operations is to operate these platforms. How to operate them specifically involves a lot of content, such as writing articles, shooting videos, advertising implantation, fission and attracting new users, user maintenance, poster production, etc., a lot of detailed work.

However, it is precisely because of these details that many people engaged in new media operations feel confused and feel that there is no room for growth. As for why they feel this way, it is mainly because they do not have a concrete understanding of new media.

If you want to do anything well, you must have a thorough understanding of it. The same is true for new media operations. If you don’t know how new media came about, what the operating principles behind it are, what operating methods are available, and what skills and abilities are necessary, it will be of no avail even if you have a fighting heart.

The author recently read a book called "Advanced Operations", which provides relatively good answers to the problems that most new media operators will encounter. This article will tell you the principles, methods, techniques and tools of new media operations in the form of reading notes.

1. New Media Operations

The principles of new media operation are reflected in two aspects: one is understanding the essence of communication, and the other is the paradigm shift of operation.

1. The nature of communication

The essence of communication is the process of "content production-dissemination-audience consumption", which focuses on three aspects: content, social relationship chain, and scenario.

Content has three characteristics, namely, blurring (the boundaries between experts and users producing content are blurred), fragmentation (information becomes shorter and time is dispersed), and sensoryization (the need to continuously create attention). This determines that it is difficult to break through in communication and needs to be accomplished through IPization and personalization.

Content dissemination requires the maintenance of social relationship chains. One-to-one maintenance can be assisted by product mechanism design, one-to-many maintenance relies on social currency and KOLs, and many-to-many maintenance relies on finding the KOLs in the social circle to achieve breakthrough dissemination.

Among them, social currency is mainly triggered by finding topics to talk about, expressing ideas, helping others, displaying image, and social comparison. KOLs need to find people who meet the three attributes of insiders, connectors, and salesmen.

In addition to content and social relationship chains, in new media communication scenarios characterized by fragmentation and multi-dimensional migration, the probability of user dissemination can be increased by matching the correct time points, increasing the trigger frequency, creating immersion and increasing the length of stay.

2. Paradigm shift in operations

The changes in new media operations are gradually changing with the development of the Internet. Each change is an all-round change in thinking, purpose, ability, skills, etc.

In the Web 1.0 era, operations were actually very simple. You could just post an article on a forum. As long as the content was good enough, it would have the potential to go viral. So you only had to focus on the content. Therefore, the paradigm was one of simplicity.

In the Web 2.0 era, operations have become more complicated because of the gradual formation of user relationship chains. Information is no longer transmitted in one direction but interacts in multiple directions, so more attention will be paid to traffic, which is far more complicated than content.

At this stage, operations must not only focus on content and traffic, but also on users themselves. They are also facing more specific and personalized problems. Moreover, communication is no longer the only purpose. Marketing and sales are also involved. Creating value for users has become a new operational capability requirement.

2. New Media Operation Methods

New media operation rules are mainly divided into enterprise new media operation rules and personal new media growth rules.

1. Enterprise new media operation rules

The first rule for operating corporate new media is to know the positioning of new media, which mainly focuses on three directions: products, publicity, and e-commerce. After determining one of them, you should pay attention to matching user needs, clarifying core values, and adjusting the focus.

In particular, the focus of positioning is different from the start-up period, growth period to maturity period and bottleneck period, and the time is getting longer and longer. In the early stage, focus on seed users, and in the later stage, focus on growth and revenue.

The second is to know how to build a new media matrix, which is mainly divided into six steps: sorting stage - segmenting the population and needs - selecting platforms - personalized construction - team building - setting goals.

In this process, I personally think that platform selection is the core task, which is divided into three steps. The first is the preliminary selection, which lists and classifies most general content platforms. The second is the re-screening, which evaluates and selects based on the three levels of platform, enterprise, and operation. The last step is to determine the final platform through trial operation and establish a matrix.

Of course, just knowing the steps to build a matrix is ​​not enough. Three core capabilities are also required, namely platform understanding, platform integration and platform data-driven capabilities. These are not only related to corporate new media, but also to new media people themselves. They are the key to standing out!

2. Personal New Media Growth Rules

The premise of corporate new media operation rules is the need for suitable new media talents, which brings up the growth rules of personal new media.

The first thing to do is to find a reliable company, the second is to understand the three levels of new media people, and the last is to develop good work habits. Let’s focus on the three levels of new media people.

The first level is professional breakthrough, which requires basic operational capabilities in three aspects: content, users, and activities. It usually takes 1-3 years to achieve this.

The second layer is goal management, among which project goal management can draw on the PDCA and SMART principles; user expectation management can utilize the left and right brain theory and the addiction model; internal goal management includes upward management, downward management and parallel management, and upward management requires the use of 5W2H and what-why-how models to establish projects and further explore.

The third level is business insight, which is to grasp the five model dividends, namely product model dividends, user model dividends, profit model dividends, promotion model dividends and platform model dividends.

Each operator can check which level he or she belongs to according to the relevant standards of the three realms listed above. This will provide guidance for future growth.

3. New Media Operation Techniques

The specific operation of new media includes many aspects. Due to space limitations, we will mainly introduce content operation, user operation, user growth, event operation, and data operation.

1. Content Operation

The focus of content operation is on four aspects: positioning, topic selection, title, and creation.

Positioning is the engine of the official account and needs to be sorted out according to user positioning, value positioning, personalized positioning, scenario positioning, and initialization positioning.

The choice of topic determines half of the success rate of an article, which can be seen from the formula of the rule of hot-selling articles: Communication = (topic + decoration + general copywriting) ✖️channel ✖️timeliness.

As for how to select topics, you must first understand the industry, users and products, then establish different types of topic libraries, and finally choose the appropriate topic selection method.

Once the topic is determined, you need to come up with a title, which is roughly divided into four steps. The first step is to build an external title library by imitating the topic library and use tools to analyze it. The second step is to formally propose a title based on the principle of "awakening + need". The third step is A/B testing or "voting with your feet". The last step is to build your own title library.

After the title is determined, you can start creating the content. The first thing to do is to collect and organize information, and the second is to choose a specific form of creation, with articles being the main one.

The core of article writing is expression, which includes three parts: rhetoric, thought and structure. Rhetoric refers to various language techniques. Thoughts can deepen thinking according to the golden thinking circle. As for the structure, you can choose the general-specific-general type, cause-and-effect type, and story type.

As long as you grasp the four aspects listed above, you can have a clear understanding of content operations.

2. User Operation

User operation of new media is the design of operation strategies and actions centered on user experience , namely UCD, which includes five elements: strategy layer, scope layer, structure layer, framework layer and presentation layer.

The strategic level is the positioning of new media, which has been touched upon in the content operation section and will not be elaborated in this section.

The scope layer refers to the layered, graded, and phased operations of users.

First, we need to survey the users from aspects such as overall attributes, user behaviors, and monetization analysis. Then, we need to conduct stratified operations, which can stratify users according to attributes, sources, and behaviors. The second is hierarchical operations, which is to build a user growth system and give rewards based on behaviors. The last is phased operations, which is to set different operational actions for each period, such as the introduction period, growth period, maturity period, and churn period.

The structural layer is to create a private traffic pool, including user link design, community design and personal account operation.

The design of the user link should take three points into consideration: covering the entire user process, considering the situation of each platform, and considering the business conversion funnel; the design of the community should have eight elements, namely, thresholds, strict group rules, fixed topics, core members, upgrade systems, conversion cycles, offline activities, and random surprises; as for the operation of personal accounts, there are seven methods, namely personalization, fixed columns, multiple interactions, cooperation with private messages, data records, main content, and auxiliary activities.

The framework layer designs the user experience process. Taking the official account as an example, first draw a user experience map, and then polish the details such as the welcome message, menu bar, and official account introduction.

The presentation layer is the visual design, such as logo presentation, article layout, page design, etc., which will not be introduced in detail here.

3. User growth

User growth is actually very easy to understand. It is to promote the actual growth of user scale through operations, that is, to increase the number of users. For new media, the realization of this goal requires clear understanding of the three stages of growth.

Start-up period - product/market fit - product drive - epiphany moment - retention rate and number of interactions;

Growth stage - channel/conversion rate fit - effect drive - growth efficiency - growth quality and quantity;

Mature stage - product/efficiency model fit - product-effect drive - monetization - revenue.

The focus of the startup phase is to find seed users, while the growth phase relies on the following three engines to achieve growth:

Adhesive type: Relying on content to achieve growth, the underlying logic is to rely on word-of-mouth communication or brand-driven customer acquisition;

Viral: exponential fission growth, including testing activities, task treasure, distribution, community fission, punch-in sharing;

Paid: Relying on investment, cooperation, offline and other means to grow, it is necessary to pay attention to CAC and ROI.

The above three methods can be combined, but they must comply with the "721 principle". In addition, the growth path needs to be optimized, with the focus on optimizing user experience and enhancing user incentives.

4. Event Operation

Event operation is a reasonable combination of a series of operation methods. To carry out an event, we must first clearly understand three core issues:

Purpose of the activity: To attract new users? User activation? User retention? User purchase? User sharing?

Target users of the activity: attract users by making the push (interesting, beneficial, useful) greater than the resistance (image, money, energy);

Activity steps: There are generally seven, namely purpose and theme, creativity, effect risk assessment, resource matching, activity planning, activity execution, and activity review.

For new media, promotion is a common activity purpose. There are four methods that can be tried, namely sign-in, template messages, community, and lectures. By using these four methods and matching the above activity steps, operating an effective activity will not be a problem.

5. Data Operations

Data operation is data analysis , and its purpose is to study the past, analyze the present, and predict the future. It is roughly divided into six steps.

The first step is to clarify the purpose and ideas. Commonly used thinking frameworks include 5W2H, SWOT, and PEST.

The second step is data collection, which is generally divided into structured data, unstructured data, and semi-structured data.

The third step is data processing, which requires four sub-steps: extraction, cleaning, transformation, and calculation.

The fourth step is data analysis, which can be done using cluster analysis and funnel analysis.

The fifth step is data presentation, usually Excel is chosen, and the last step is data reporting, usually presented in PPT.

In addition to the five operational contents introduced above, there are also Weibo operations, external delivery, mini program operations, Douyin operations , etc. Each one has a systematic methodology, but they are inseparable from the basic logic of operations. Readers can think about it for themselves.

4. New Media Operation Tools

The so-called new media operation tools are the tools commonly used by new media people. There are actually many of them, and only some are listed. Readers can choose by themselves.

Content operations: Qiantu, Zcool, Huaban, Yiban, PS, Chuangketie, iJianjian, Shimo Document, Mubu;

User operations: XiaoU Butler, Weiyou Assistant, Knowledge Planet, Shangxianle, Qianliao, Lizhi Microclass, Xiaoetong, we-tool;

Event operations: iH5, Renrenxiu, and Jindata;

Delivery and operation: Xinbang, Xigua Data, BDP, Wentu, and Houst;

Efficiency tools: Evernote, Xmind, Waterdrop List, Forest.

Source: Dugu Operation