After studying 100 peers, I summarized the new media bible from 0 to 5 years

– I –

This is a guide to new media advancement from 0 to 5 years. Its value lies in:

"We studied 100 new media peers, including those from Alibaba , Tencent, Baidu and other party A companies, as well as middle and senior management from B companies such as Global Times and Ogilvy. In addition, some new media people and entrepreneur friends from traditional industries and Internet celebrity industries gave us many real cases and feedback."

I hope this article, written with 100% sincerity, will inspire your new media career development.

It is often said that in life, one must go through the three realms of “seeing mountains as mountains, seeing mountains as not mountains, and seeing mountains as mountains again.”

Regarding the career advancement of new media professionals, we divide it into "five levels" from the perspective of time, namely 0 experience, 0-1 year experience, 1-3 years experience, 3-5 years and more than 5 years of experience.

You can find your own position according to your actual situation and career development path, sort out your ideas, and think about your positioning and future as a new media person.

No matter you are just starting out and are confused and anxious about your new media work, or you have been on the new media road for a long time.

When reading this "treasure book", please focus on thinking before action, and do not swallow it whole.

– II –

If you already have some experience in new media operations , please skip this paragraph and read on.

But if you are still a college student or are a little curious about this industry, then before joining the new media, I hope you will seriously examine yourself to see if you have the following five key points:

Feel, speak, write, think, act

1. “Having a sense of the Internet”

Internet sense is what we often call "sense".

Are you sensitive to various phenomena and events happening on the Internet ? For example, are your living habits, food, clothing, housing and transportation already influenced by the Internet? When you see a hot topic, can you react immediately? Can I be the first to see hot topics in my circle of friends ?

If none of the above applies to your current situation, you should choose and think carefully. Perhaps your genes were wrong from the beginning.

2. “I have something to say”

Others may find it baffling when a joke suddenly becomes popular. As a potential new media person, you can get this point and fail to come up with the same idea.

Know what young people of your generation or younger than you like and dislike, and have a strong desire to express it.

3. “Be able to write (write)”

You need to have basic writing skills. No matter whether you are working on content, planning, or events in the future, any new media position requires certain language organization skills.

Writing may very likely become an important bottleneck in your future career advancement. You can read on patiently on this point.

4. “Have ideas (think)”

Do you have a strong liking for myths like Mimi Meng and Papi Jiang, who are hotly discussed in the industry? If you don’t like it, can you respond quickly to refute it?

Have a strong perception of the big Vs and KOLs in the industry. This perception does not necessarily mean liking them, but it must exist.

If you like it, you should make it your goal. If the emotion is negative, you should have a strong desire to express it and hope that your expression can be seen or heard by more people.

5. “Full of action (action)”

Have you ever considered whether you can tolerate staying up late for a long time, working overtime at irregular intervals, and repeatedly revising manuscripts?

To put it simply, are you ready to endure working 996 while others are on vacation, working overtime on others' weekends, and getting up to follow the hot topics while others are partying in the middle of the night?

And if you are unfortunately on the B side, then you must always be prepared to be repeatedly slapped in the face and asked to revise your manuscript by the A side.

For example, my friend Vivian works in Weibo operations for an e-commerce company, and working six days a week and having one day off is her normal job.

Sometimes I have to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to check the day's Weibo content and posts, and then go to work as usual at 9 o'clock.

Not only did I have to be repeatedly slapped in the face by the client and asked to revise the manuscript, but I also often received messages from my boss when I was on a date with my boyfriend and watching a movie : This is a hot topic that has just come out and is going viral. Can we see if we can get a share of it on Weibo?

If you don’t think the above points are a big deal, congratulations! You have the basic skills of a new media person.

Those who have worked in new media know that the threshold for new media is actually very high, and it is even more difficult to do well.

Of course, if you think that the above conditions are sufficient to do well in new media, then I still suggest you turn left. If you agree that you still need to continue practicing, then let’s continue reading.

– III –

0-1 years: Explore interests and determine direction

For new media people with 0-1 year of experience, the initial stage of their career is a great opportunity to explore themselves.

During this year, it is recommended that you confirm your preferences and future direction from three aspects (industry, company, and position).

1. Industry

New media operations actually exist in various industries, just like sales. You can do sales in the medical industry or in educational institutions. Different industries attach different importance to the new media industry and have different room for future development.

For example, the new media of cultural and entertainment companies and the new media of financial companies have completely different feelings.

For example, if you open the WeChat official account of Keep (a fitness app), you will find that although most of the content is related to fitness and body management, the language style is lively and relaxed, and the content often spreads its brand concept through following hot topics and cooperating with celebrities.

Compared with other industries, the financial industry is more professional and standardized. As they are both new media, their content presentation is more professional and the threshold for creation is generally high. Of course, it is also necessary to use the intersection of finance and life to create content, but compared with the former Keep, it is very different in style, form and space for development.

Please prioritize choosing an industry based on your personal likes, interests, and life preferences, because the industry you choose determines what kind of people you will come into contact with and which direction you will go in the future.

2. “Company”

When entering the new media industry, what kind of company should I choose?

Companies recruiting new media operations positions can be roughly divided into the following categories:

The first category is print media and information companies , such as People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, and Readers. During the transformation process, these companies have created a huge gap in new media operation talents.

Corresponding to this are information-related media such as Huxiu and 36Kr , which are defined by the industry as cutting-edge technology media in the TMT field.

The second category is Internet companies , including giant companies like Alibaba , Tencent, and Baidu, as well as popular lifestyle, e-commerce, and social companies like Didi , ofo, Ele.me , Zhihu, and Meituan .

The third category is the self-media companies with the currently popular IP halo , typical of which include Papi Jiang, Mimi Meng, and Tongdao Dashu .

The fourth category is the second-party advertising company . New media communication has become a very important link in the whole case and social, and some companies’ new media business is also operated by professional second-party advertising companies. For example, the famous " Durex " in the Weibo world is operated by Huanshidai. Moreover, many of the big Vs and joke tellers you see on Weibo may be operated by the same marketing company.

In 2014 and 2015, many social apps emerged in the market, advocating to build user scale first and then consider monetization. However, by the time the capital winter hit in 2016, the user base had not yet grown, many products had already been eliminated by capital, and the company went bankrupt.

At this time, many people in charge of new media operations in the company were forced to find other jobs.

Here is a friendly reminder that when choosing a company, you can also refer to the company’s products. Are they profitable or not? Otherwise, you will easily put yourself in a passive situation.

At this stage, you have more opportunity costs. When choosing a company, you can give priority to giant companies or companies in popular industries. If you prefer to challenge the 0-1 stage of a product or startup company, then it is particularly important to choose a company that can give you such an opportunity.

In short, when you are in an industry, you should join a great company and be with outstanding people. The environment will play a positive role in your growth.

3. Position

New media positions can be very diverse, but basically, there are some key areas. For example, a typical new media department usually has the following directions:

• Content-oriented , typically new media editor or content operator , usually responsible for writing content for the company or product on Weibo, WeChat, short videos , and article editing;
• Marketing-oriented , for example, responsible for promoting marketing events and market influence, which also includes channel promotion , business cooperation, etc.
• Those in charge of the direction of the activity are responsible for creativity and implementation, such as writing plans and executing specific activities;
• Community -oriented , such as maintaining WeChat groups , QQ groups, and active interactions within the groups;

Depending on the nature of each company, one person may have to take on multiple roles.

In general, the more startups there are, the more diverse the work they do. It is not a bad thing to do more diverse work in the early stages. Mature companies tend to be relatively vertically focused, and vertical focus is not necessarily a good thing.

In any case, at this stage, remember to choose your industry and company based on your strengths and interests.

We encourage you to choose several new media directions and companies in your first year of work.

Be brave to try and take challenges, to discover your strongest points or the direction you want to go the most, and then continue to delve deeper, hone and develop your key skills in the next 1-3 years.

– IV –

1-3 years: Build systematic thinking and do more effective practices

If new media people in the first year are in the exploration stage of their career direction, then new media people in the first 1-3 years should be in the deep cultivation stage of their work. And now is the most important stage in building the foundation.

During the foundation-laying stage, there are two things that must be done and must be kept in mind: establishing a work system mindset and effective practice cases.

1. “You must establish your own work system thinking”

New media needs people who can think independently, have active minds, and are smart and pragmatic. Because most of the work of new media revolves around creativity, content, marketing, and communication. This is a comprehensive approach and cannot be successful by operating on a single point.

No matter what area of ​​work you do, you first need to establish your own work system thinking.

What is work systems thinking?

Working system thinking = thinking mode + effective action

Let’s take a look at these two points separately.

First, here is an example of a mindset:

If your boss asks you to work on an online communication project for Christmas , with a budget of 1,000 yuan to increase the number of followers of the WeChat public account by 2,000, how would you go about doing this project?

Most newcomers to the workplace who don't have a mindset will throw up their hands and say, "Alas, I can't do this."

But if you have a basic system thinking mode, you will know how to use the thinking model in the pyramid principle to decompose tasks, and then allocate the decomposed branch goals according to channels and budgets.

Of course, the thinking model teaches you a methodology, but if there is no effective action, it is equal to zero.

Second, what is effective action? He Jia’s answer on Zhihu is very interesting.

If you were tasked with writing a competitive analysis report for a product at work, would you first play King of Glory for three hours and then spend another two hours writing a 20-page PPT?

NB professionals may spend 2 days, 10 hours a day, doing analysis and comparing the details of each product design and the thinking behind it. Finally, a 10-page refined PPT is produced with a 100-page detailed product analysis attached. Based on this information and thinking, suggestions for the next version iteration of the product are given.

You: Write 20 pages in 2 hours.

The cheating professional: 10 pages of refined opinions, 100 pages of detailed analysis, and detailed product iteration suggestions.

Your boss is noncommittal about your plan. The boss was impressed with the newcomer and got him a chance to work on a new project.

If you list out the differences in thinking and actions between you and those cheating professionals like this, do you still think they are just cheating?

Your boss is noncommittal about your plan. The boss was impressed with the newcomer and got him a chance to work on a new project.

If you list out the differences in thinking and actions between you and those cheating professionals like this, do you still think they are just cheating?

2. “Do more effective practices”

In the initial stages, you must put your ideas into practice as much as possible, and the more the better, otherwise it will just be empty talk.

And what is effective practical experience?

Suppose you want to do an H5 activity to spread in the circle of friends, the plan has been approved by Leadertong, you have also carried out it, and after the activity ends, the data basically meets expectations. Do you think your work is over at this point?

Of course not.

Effective practice is: plan + practice + data + review

This formula is not difficult to understand, but the difficulty lies in that many people stop at the first three steps, thinking that once the plan is executed and the data is achieved, everything is fine, and they ignore the review. After completing an event, if you don’t know how to make effective analysis from the data, you will also not know how to achieve better dissemination in the next event.

The result is that it is impossible to form an effective practical methodology because everything comes from your "sensory experience".

With the experience of reviewing, you can carry out the next actual combat and continue to accumulate. Only actual combat can produce skills, and skills are the result of ten thousand explorations and adventures that are shaped into formulas.

Continuously and bravely trying is what distinguishes people from talents. These attempts not only yielded brilliant successes, but more importantly, lessons learned, which are the nutrients that we have condensed into this article.

– V –

3-5 years: Build a personal brand and learn public expression

At this time, new media people should have mature working mindsets, have accumulated a lot of practical experience and a certain amount of personal connections.

So the key behaviors at this stage are: personal branding and public expression.

1. “Learn to output and build a personal brand”

In this era of increasingly fierce competition, no matter what kind of organization you are in, if you want people to know and accept you, you must first fully demonstrate your abilities.

If you work hard without being recognized, your outstanding performance will be drowned out by the overwhelming amount of information.

Therefore, it is more important than anything else for an individual’s value to be recognized. If you want to promote personal success, you need to establish your own distinctive “personal brand” so that everyone can truly understand and fully recognize it. Only in this way can you have a sustainable career.

Managing your personal brand is actually managing your professional life. Here, I would like to share with you some key points about running a personal brand:

1) The 1% Rule

I don’t know if you have heard of the 1% rule. This rule was first analyzed from statistical data on Youtube.

What it means is that if there are 100 people online, only 1 will create content, 10 will interact with it (comment or offer suggestions for improvement) and the other 89 will just browse.

For example, 50% of the content on Wikipedia is provided by 0.7% of users, while more than 70% of the articles are shared by 1.8% of users. In other words, as long as you start learning to share, you are actually one of the 1%. And this 1% has the final say.

2) “Sharing Economy”

You can share what you are good at or have experience in, or you can share what you have learned in the workplace and professional fields over the years.

Of course, in addition to these, most people have their own hobbies or focuses, such as food, entertainment, makeup, reading, games , photography, travel, etc. Usually a lot of time and energy is spent on this aspect, and one must have one's own ideas and experiences. As long as one summarizes them carefully, it is very easy to write several original articles of good quality.

If you look closely at the celebrities on the Internet, you will find that most of the famous people are focusing on a specific direction. Be sure to focus your energy and time on what you are best at and don't be distracted.

3) “Circle Culture”

If we share the same ideals and ideas, we can form a circle.

As long as you continuously share your experiences through certain specific communication channels, you can build popularity and have a certain influence in a small circle within a short period of time.

For example, WeChat public accounts, Zhihu, Jianshu , etc. are all good platforms.

4) “Maintain output for three years”

Start from scratch, write the first article, get the first like, and get the first follower. Constantly adjust your content and user communication channels, lay a solid foundation, do 1 well first, then do 000000, and make 1 stronger and bigger.

There are many such examples around me.

I have a friend who has been incubating internet celebrities for 90 years. In his spare time, he also likes to study makeup and skin care products. I first opened an account on Xiaohongshu and wrote more than ten articles about skin care and makeup. As my followers increased, I decided to create my own WeChat public account.

She now has about 30,000 to 40,000 fans on her official account. Although not many, they are all accurate and loyal fans. The extra income she earns every month from this public account far exceeds her salary. I am currently considering whether to quit my job and focus on my own media and brand.

Everyone may be envious of such a result.

However, what everyone doesn’t know is that she is almost always busy with work. I have been updating my articles weekly for more than two years in a row, and each article is high-quality content that I have written through a lot of trial and experience. There was a time when she complained to me that she wanted to give up because it was too hard, but every article she published would slowly gain her a little bit of fans and love. Finally, with her persistence, she achieved the results she has today.

Starting something is easy, but sticking to it is the key. Many people often question the meaning behind persistence, but they forget that for many things, only by persisting can we see the meaning.

2. “Use public expression to fulfill the mission of releasing talents”

If writing is a continuous external output and the first step in building a personal brand, then public expression actually amplifies this effect exponentially.

Spenser, a well-known self-media person, once said that public expression seems to be a word far away from us, but in fact, public expression exists in every aspect of our lives.

When you explain an idea to your boss and convince your boss to use your plan, you are actually practicing public expression.

Of course, here, our announcement expression is not only reflected in regular job interviews, meetings, and training, but also to train ourselves to have the ability to express ourselves publicly in occasions with strangers.

Every speech by Luo Yonghao, the founder of Smartisan smartphone , about the launch of a new product can be hotly discussed and forwarded in the circle of friends.

Although as a mobile phone company, the product experience itself is the most core label, it has to be said that relying on Luo Yonghao's personal external voice, Hammer attracted a group of loyal fans in the early cold start stage. Every subsequent new product launch is like a free large-scale product promotion advertisement, radiating the influence even further.

If we know its importance, how can we practice it?

1) Find a reference

Find more reference objects for comparison. Ted is a well-known content sharing platform where you can see speeches by elites from all walks of life around the world. More and more online programs such as " U Can U Bibi " and "Super Speaker" are good choices as templates. Find one that you feel like using as a reference for practicing expression.

Of course, you can look for some books on speech training, or look for some speech training experts and courses in the industry, which are all options for reference.

2) Practice more

Watching other people's speeches is just watching. If you don't practice yourself, you will never know how to do it.

Choose a topic, write, practice, record, and listen again, comparing and revising repeatedly in the process. And in this process, record your own practice to see the expressive language, body movements, etc. in simulated scenarios.

3) Get feedback

In addition to giving yourself feedback, find a relatively experienced partner or teacher who can give you feedback on your practice, so that you can quickly identify the problems in your actual expression and correct them quickly.

Repeated practice at this time will help you to be more targeted and achieve twice the result with half the effort.

When we make public statements, we should not only pay attention to what we have expressed, but also whether the other party has understood what we want to express and whether the other party can accept our expression. Only in this way can the effectiveness of our public expression be reflected.

Use the 3rd to 5th year of work to build your personal brand through continuous and effective output, so as to achieve a higher position, higher salary, and the top company.

– V –

5 years or more - Entrepreneur or freelancer

When any career reaches its peak, there are only two things: great business and great knowledge, that is, fame and fortune.

At this time, new media people will not stoop to become directors or the like.

They may make a lot of money and achieve financial freedom by selling knowledge services, goods, etc.

They may have created popular products through capital financing and achieved profitable business outcomes.

According to statistics from Media Insider, from 2014 to 2017, more than 194 self-media raised funds, of which more than 80 raised more than one million yuan in a single round, more than 92 raised more than ten million yuan in a single round, and 16 raised more than one hundred million yuan in a single round. Five of them were listed on the New Third Board.

Most of them have succeeded because they either built their own IP through personal branding and became well-known insiders, or they saw potential opportunities in the market and started their entrepreneurial career.

However, no matter whether these people are small and beautiful or big and comprehensive, they basically have the ability to freely manage their time.

Li Xiaolai once used a sentence to describe what financial freedom is. He said that the so-called personal wealth freedom means that a person no longer has to sell his time to meet the necessities of life.

For new media people over the age of 30, what they should consider no longer is how to increase their hourly, monthly and annual salary.

What should be more considered is the method of increasing the unit price of time, that is, finding ways to sell more units of the original time.

For example, being a famous self-media, writing a best-selling book, creating an influential brand, etc., all of these are selling more of your own time, or you don’t need to sell your own time at all, others can benefit from the products or platforms you have built.

And you just need to quietly watch the commission, and at this time, a monthly salary of 1 million is no longer a legend...

– VI –

end

99% of people are teaching you how to conduct new media content, activities, operations, and promotion courses, how to create popular activities, how to attract fans, how to write good copy , make good posters, and screen-sweeping H5, and so on. What we hope to give you is a methodology that will be beneficial to you.

What is a helpful methodology?

We came up with the methodology through communicating and even debating with 100 new media colleagues, and drawing on the paths that this group of people have taken and the paths that few have taken.

But this methodology is only relatively effective and absolutely useful to you.

In summary, a new media career path for your reference would be the following stages:

Stage 0: Before entering the industry, please refer to the previous self-examination checklist and ask yourself whether you have basic internet sense? Do you have certain communication and comprehension skills? Able to write, think and endure hardships.

0-1 year stage: Choose and try directions based on the differences and characteristics of the industry, company, and position, and complete the exploration.

It doesn’t matter if you “bang your head against the wall”, the key is to complete the exploration and find the right position.

1-3 years stage: Cultivate systematic work thinking and do more effective practices. Effective practice = plan + actual operation + data + review, which is the key to the advancement of new media.

3-5 years stage: Consciously build a personal brand, learn to establish industry influence through long-term writing output, and learn to express publicly to amplify influence.

And use public expression to build momentum and influence for themselves, thereby achieving the "peak" of their career and "freedom" in terms of salary.

Stage of more than 5 years: You no longer have to sell your time easily, and you can have the right to choose and say no. If you still want to make a living, start a business

Seeing this, some people must be asking, I have been working for several years and have missed a lot of awareness and actions that I should have had, is it still too late now?

I remember there is a very classic answer on Zhihu. Quote

“The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago. The second best time is now.”

Finally, thank you to those lovely colleagues.

The author of this article @正经裸奔新青年 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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