Practical tips | Teach you 7 proven and effective operational “home remedies”!

Operational work itself is a process of doing simple things repeatedly and doing repetitive things simply. Doing operations is like being a person, being pragmatic is the right way to go. Local remedies have their own advantages. They just need to be practical and effective. It's just rustic, say whatever you want!

Operations work has never been a high-end thing. Many so-called "experts" who have almost no practical experience often talk about various theories, techniques, and methods. In fact, after listening or watching, everyone will find that they are of no help to the work at all. I remember that once an expert talked about community economy and actually raised it to the level of humanities. If human nature is valid, then humanities is a bit nonsense. Theories are all self-consistent, but this may not be the case when it comes to practicality.

(one)

Many people ask questions like "How can I learn things the fastest?", "I want to do operations, what should I do?", etc. I always say the following three points:

First point: practice, practice, and practice

The Internet is developing so fast nowadays that some techniques from one year ago may not be useful today. Only through practice can you keep up with the pace of the times; only through practice can you test the truth of whether your ideas and thoughts are correct or not. What’s the point of having a lot of theories if they don’t work?

Second point: Keep doing it

The most important qualities of an excellent operator are patience and resilience. If you think this solution is OK, then keep doing it, even if the effect is not significant at first.

Why are some very smart people not good at operations? Lack of patience and only give up easily. If you are a person who is eager for quick success and instant benefits, you can do marketing, but there is no need to do operations. Truly good operations are the result of long-term efforts. It is impossible to become an expert by working for two or three years.

Third point: Be pragmatic. High-sounding words may not be useful.

Operations is a job that places great emphasis on basic skills. Many so-called high-sounding theories were packaged by some people later. If you don't have a solid foundation and try to do something advanced right away, you will most likely fall. 80% of the skills and methods used in daily work are very basic. Some methods are so rustic that you are embarrassed to mention them, but they are effective.

Everything is result-oriented. It's okay to be rustic, what's it to you? As long as the goal is achieved, it's fine.

(two)

Next, I will tell you about some techniques that I have used in my 11 years of work and which I think are very "rustic" but very effective, and have worked every time. The details are as follows:

1. Practice the ability to write titles (applicable to all modules of operational work)

I have mentioned this before, and I will give an example of the new media operations staff I led. Every day I asked him to show me the edited preview content. If it was not up to standard, it could not be published. Among them, what I criticized him most was the title (of course there were other aspects as well). I corrected it every day, and continued to revise it if it was not suitable, and revised it again until I was satisfied. After doing this for several months, the number of article readings increased from an average of 3,000 per day to more than 10,000, and reached a maximum of 60,000.

Another way to practice titles is to find a BBS, practice repeatedly, post a few every day, and calculate the average number of clicks. When this number can increase several times or even dozens of times, it proves that it is effective.

There is another way, which can not only practice titles, but also practice the ability to discern content, that is, to learn to find the articles with the highest possible click-through rate in the article list at a glance. If you have been an editor before, this skill will be easier to practice. If you haven't, it doesn't matter. You just need to study the commonalities of the article titles you have chosen.

If your comprehension is really not high, there is only one way to make up for it, which is to increase your reading volume. Reading 100 articles every day, I don’t believe there will be no effect if I persist for a year. I had a colleague before. She was so amazing that she could find the original post within five minutes even if I gave her a little clue. At that time, the amount of information she sent was over 100,000 per day (she was responsible for reviewing the number of main posts and replies).

2. Expand your network and user circle every day

It's sad that many operations staff only have a few good users after working for a year. The best users will never throw themselves into your arms proactively and consciously. There are only two ways to make them work for you: regular maintenance and pulling them in from outside.

I now have 9,000+ WeChat friends and countless groups, 4,000+ QQ friends and 100+ groups, 5,000+ Maimai friends, nearly 500 Alipay friends, and 5,000+ group users. Many people say that it is of no use, but I can clearly say that it is not of no use, it is very useful. Personal connections are always a resource and are always useful wherever you go. To cover such a large amount of information, you must have a lot of skills. Besides, the number of users I can reach is definitely more than the numbers I listed. The simplest one: for example, organizing an event, it’s so easy! Also, no matter which company I go to, I will come with seed users , and there is no need to start from 0 to 1. It is also very convenient to recruit people, I won’t say much else.

I have told everyone I have managed that if you don’t have more than 1,000 friends on WeChat, you are not worthy of being my subordinate, and don’t talk to me about your personal life (handle it yourself). This is work, and work should be a habit. To be honest, an operator with 100 friends is not on the same level as an operator with 3,000 friends. If you don’t believe it, just try it yourself.

Expanding your user circle should be implemented every day. I also set goals for myself now. I have only been in the new company for 3 months.

3. Learn to play in the community (applicable to all modules of operation work)

Many people are very averse to group activities. I don’t know whether it’s because they think it’s too noisy or because their phones consume too much battery. There are also many companies that have set up groups but don’t know how to maintain them, allowing users to chat nonsense and post advertisements every day. Official staff do not show up every day, always using being busy as an excuse.

In recent years, communities have been hyped up by many people as something magical, the so-called community economy. If you are really dedicated and one day maintain 50 high-quality groups, I think your experience and insights will be much deeper than those of the "experts". In fact, the community is just an operational tool and a skill that must be learned. Moreover, the group cannot exist in isolation. It needs to be implemented in specific operational work. If you don’t want to maintain it, don’t create so many. It is also irresponsible to the users.

To maintain the community, you only need to squeeze out more than 15 minutes a day. To put it bluntly, it is to establish your spiritual status in the group. Everything depends on the results. For example, when we are moderators, if the operations staff wants to create as many groups as they want, that is their business. I will not care at all. The quality of the moderators is the core assessment target.

The real purpose of the group is to provide users with a channel to establish relationships with each other. The most important part of building a good community is to establish user relationships. The conversion rate of a group will be low no matter what you do. The key is what you use it for.

4. A way to quickly get familiar with the business: do "customer service-like" work

The technical content of operations is much higher than that of customer service, but I have never denied that a lot of operations work is actually "customer service-like" work. For example, users will ask you various questions, and you have to answer them, whether in the group, on Weibo, WeChat, various private messages, or even by phone. It just means that we don’t necessarily have to give the same standard and professional answers as customer service. Generally, customer service will have a FAQ, which is very useful information. The operation only needs to be able to make the statement sound convincing, it is not exactly the same.

Don’t think that these “customer service-like” jobs are superficial and dismissive. Back then, the top executives of Xiaomi, including Lei Jun , would personally and seriously answer users’ questions, let alone us?

The more users you come into contact with, the more bizarre questions they ask. No matter how bizarre the questions are, there will always be people who can ask them. Slowly, you will find that all the things you imagined the user should not do actually happened. We cannot imagine the user's behavior. In fact, the results of many survey questionnaires are not reliable.

My personal experience over the years is that when a user asks you a question, you have to answer it whether you want to or not. If you reply immediately or wait two hours before replying, the user will have a very different impression of you. Operations staff are often able to quickly become familiar with the business, even if their foundation is not solid. How can they not be fast when they are being trained by users every day?

5. Learn to use social tools (also helpful for developing personality and understanding human nature)

One question I often ask during interviews is: Which communities do you usually hang out in? Many people would answer “several”. I asked again, "Is there a community where people often post and reply to messages and are very experienced?" Then many people would say, "I don't post, I just read." I said, "You are not playing the community, you are just watching the community, which is useless."

You will find that people who often play in the community and are very experienced in playing will have some very distinctive characteristics. One point I have always insisted on is that the best operators must come from the community. Why? The community is too complicated. It is a virtual society where good and bad people mix together. It is impossible to be good at playing and rank high without some skills. To put it more deeply, the community is about playing with human nature, human hearts and human relationships. It is impossible for a person who has no personality and does not know how to release his or her own personality to do a good job in operations.

Also, the community is a very useful tool. There is a company in Guangzhou called WIS Skin Care. The founders are a couple of young men born in the 1990s. When they first started out, the biggest beneficiary came from Weibo. The three most basic elements of a Weibo post are: forwarding, commenting, and likes. They have dedicated operations staff who will chat with every user who has forwarded, commented, or liked their posts to obtain some of their core information, one of which is skin type, and then develop new products that truly meet user needs. When Ma Xiangqun (one of the earliest founders of Durex Weibo) told me this story, I was really shocked. Is this a prestigious job? It’s not high-sounding at all, and anyone can do it, but has anyone actually done it? Who can achieve such an extreme? Anyway, I feel inferior to him!

6. Study the operating model, data, etc. of competing products (know yourself and know your enemy)

This is just talking about the operational level. Frankly speaking, I didn’t do this very well before. I usually think of ways to understand my competitors only when I need to.

There are some misunderstandings. For example, the materials on Baidu are often inaccurate. For example, the data published by Chinese Internet companies on the Internet themselves are at least half to deceive children. Therefore, you have to find out the real things about your competitors yourself. I won’t talk about some of the methods I have used here, as it would be embarrassing.

But in any case, knowing some secrets of your competitors will give you an excellent benchmark. For example, when we are doing event operations, what types of activities do our competitors like to do? What is the process? Which users are participating? What types of activities do users like? How much data is available? Which operations staff is responsible for this work? And so on. All these questions can get results. You just need to refine and sublimate them.

7. Don’t be stingy with small favors in daily life (such as red envelopes)

I recently counted the number of red envelopes I sent out in 2015 and 2016, and the total was 180,000, which surprised me. Of course the total amount is not 180,000. I’m not that extravagant.

Generally speaking, the cost of operational activities is much lower than that of marketing activities. I never think that the achievements of operations are so great as to rely on money, which goes against the principle of achieving great results with little effort.

Small favors will account for the vast majority of operating costs. The work of operation is actually to help users develop habits. Don’t be stingy with small favors, and users will appreciate your kindness. Many people send links in the group and then run away. Who will click on them? What is your relationship with everyone? You think it's a benefit, but everyone else thinks it's garbage!

Of course, it’s a different story if your company is very generous. But I need to remind you that users' appetite is unlimited. If you give them 100 each time, it won't be effective after a while. Every penny must be spent wisely, and operators must be aware of this.

(three)

To be honest, operations work is a process of accumulation. There are some high-end skills, but definitely not that many. A person who talks to you about something high-sounding all the time is most likely just brainwashing you.

Operational work itself is a process of doing simple things repeatedly and doing repetitive things simply. No matter what you do, as long as you persist and focus on it day after day for ten years, you will eventually achieve great success. Doing operations is like being a person. Being pragmatic is the right way to go. Local remedies have their own advantages. They just need to be practical and effective. It's just rustic, say whatever you want!