Analysis of 4 aspects: How to operate?

How to operate it? Where is the output value of the operation and is it critical? Is there room for development?

1. Where is the operational output?

Chatting with a friend, he said that the space for product careers will become smaller and smaller. He is working on smart hardware, and the product work is undertaken by Interaction, so your future career space will be very limited. I think it makes sense. If you are starting a company, the first person to be hired should definitely be a technician, the second person to be hired should be an interaction (and product) person, and the third person to be hired should be a market development person. So where is the operation generally located?

In the second one, the product category, it is not too core. When it comes to specific positions, the division of labor is somewhat different.

• User operation : It is about growth, publicity -> reach -> promotion -> attracting new users -> activation -> retention. This type of operational work is more common in mature products.
• Platform operation: Create a rules system, such as VIP system, growth system, honor system, points system , and open platform system.
• Operation and promotion : Strictly speaking, it is more about marketing and development, so it includes new media channel building, content creation, copywriting creativity, event promotion, etc.

In reality, there is not such a clear division of labor, and everyone has to do everything that is related. What I just want to discuss is where the value of the operation output lies, whether it is very key (platform operations will be more key, such as: Taobao , video websites, open platforms), and whether there is room for development.

2. Segment, segment, segment

There is an inertial thinking in operations, that is, when facing a market and user needs, if there are no differentiated solutions, people will feel that there is room for optimization. How is it possible that everyone’s needs are the same?

For example, Super QQ (delisted) is an Internet value-added service similar to QQ membership. Users pay 10 yuan per month to enjoy special privileges on mobile QQ. The indicator for measuring user value is the length of payment period. The longer the payment period and the more the payment amount, the more privileges he will be given and the more favorable the price will be, thereby increasing retention . This is a very simple growth system or VIP system logic.

But users kept leaving, and luckily we discovered a core problem: users of different levels had different satisfaction levels with upgrade time. Level 2-3 users feel that it takes too long to upgrade to get good privileges, so they tend to churn away. Level 5-6 users are relatively satisfied with everything. In fact, it would be better to return to the core issue of those few pages of survey questionnaires - what is the value standard for measuring users? Is the classification reasonable?

So we reduced the upgrade time for level 2-3 users and extended the upgrade time for level 5-6 users. The overall upgrade time did not change much, and users responded well.

3. Basic Methodology

Remember during the channel interview, the boss kept asking, what is your basic methodology?

This problem has troubled me for 5 years! ! ! Sorry, my qualifications are mediocre. There is a simple way to acquire this skill, which is to find some technicians and go over the technical channel interview content with them. Yes, it is the technical channel. Since operations don’t understand the underlying technology, we can only ask about methodology.

• What is your work goal?
• What's the difficulty?
• What method was used to solve it?
• HOW DOES IT PERFORM?

3.1 What is the work goal?

This is a super important question. Many external companies have commented that Tencent lacks a sense of the overall situation and its work ability is weaker than Alibaba . It seems that it has too many resources and has little understanding of the boss's overall strategy, ideas and information. The key is that the screws are too lazy to think about this problem. I am deeply trapped in this pit and have been reflecting on it recently.

The work goal is to have an understanding of the market, including understanding of scale, user needs, competitors, and current solutions. Find a core point as the goal of the entire operation, and this goal should be easy to understand.

For example, I am responsible for WeChat's overseas emoticons. We found that Malaysian users are similar to Chinese users and like rough and violent emoticons. But WhatsApp doesn’t have emoticons, and Line emoticons are too cartoon-like and not funny enough.

How to provide local users with expressions they like is our work goal.

3.2 What are the difficulties?

The difficulties of a project may not necessarily appear at the beginning, because the market demand and solution are unclear and everything is in the exploratory stage. So at that time we often think about how to try to do it . The difficulties of leveraging this project often emerge in our experiments. Of course, it is not ruled out that the experts may have sharp insights and see the whole picture. I am just explaining it from the perspective of an ordinary person.

Here is another additional methodology: Agile!

When I first joined the company, the general office leaders kept promoting agile work methodology. At that time, I wondered what this had to do with my user research. I felt that this matter was more related to development, and a version was released every two weeks. This was proven to be wrong. When we face an unfamiliar market, we need to quickly test whether the direction of our work is correct. It is impossible to make a so-called three-year plan and then implement it step by step, because this industry is too new and changes too fast, and the waterfall working method is not suitable for operations.

For example, how to provide good emoticons to Malaysian users?

Move the emojis submitted to WeChat in China to Malaysia, and sort them using the local sending data. The emojis at the top will naturally be the ones that local users like. This operation is simple and fast, and the number of emojis sent has increased significantly, but the real disadvantages have emerged:

1. Without expressions of local culture, the Malaysian version of Mantis shrimp can only be created by local designers, which is impossible for foreign designers to do.
2. It is labor-intensive, requires a lot of human translation, and cannot be automated.

These two points are the difficulties of the project. Sometimes thinking clearly about the work goals and difficulties is almost half the success!

3.3 What methods are used to solve

Innovation is more important here. When faced with core problems, how to come up with better solutions, even solutions that are better than those of peers? This is the output value of operations. DAU growth is a data reflection of the operational solution, but the real output of the operation is the solution, such as: how to design the VIP system? How to design an open platform?

After all, DAU can change significantly in the short term due to the influence of various resources.

This brings us back to what I just mentioned. We still need to be agile because I am not sure whether my solution is really effective. So I just do the most reliable thing with the lowest cost and try to see if this solution works.

For example: We know that the domestic emoticon open platform can solve the problem of local cultural emoticon production, and there is no need for translation. Fan rewards also encourage designers to continue to submit, and the recommended positions are automatically sorted.

So can Malaysia create an open emoticon platform?

The obstacles we face are as follows:

1. The per capita income in Malaysia is very low and people are not interested in paid emoticons. And with a population of only 30 million, the amount of money given by fans as tips is probably not that much.
2. It is very costly to develop an overseas version of an open platform.
3. The local designer base is relatively weak, with no more than 20 animation companies and 3 TV stations. They all require money to work. Expression content in exchange for exposure resources? You're thinking too beautifully and you can't even support yourself.

what to do! Our innovative solutions are:

1. Use the expression contest as a prototype of the open platform;
2. Use competition bonuses as the simplest incentive mechanism;
3. The competition is promoted in 20 design schools in Kuala Lumpur, because design students are capable of making good expressions and the asking price is very low, the prize money and reputation alone are a great attraction. The FB post has 5000+ shares and 2000+ comments. How attractive is that?

4. What is the effect?

Of course, we will use the number of posts or DAU as effect evaluation data, but the purpose of Agile is to verify something. For example, the success of the Malaysian emoji competition verified that the local area needs an open environment for submitting emojis and that open platforms are feasible locally. This verification conclusion will become the assumption for the next agile iteration.

When evaluating the effectiveness of a product, the data you look at is often combined with the goals, such as number of messages, DAU, etc. It is not recommended to use other indicators to fool your boss. Because your boss knows very well the value of your work output and what the measurement indicators are. If the output data is not closely related to the overall goal, you need to rethink the point of doing this.

Source: Tencent Lecture Hall (ID: TX_DJT)