Don’t have too high expectations for community operations! Correct some operational misunderstandings!

I've been a bit busy with work recently and haven't updated for a long time. Many fans have asked me about it, and I'm very sorry. Let me first report on my recent work situation. I have transferred to a new department. My overall work status and self-confidence have recovered a lot. I have also found my role positioning. The cooperation with other departments is harmonious. The core data of the work modules I am responsible for have repeatedly set new highs in the past few months. Several data have even set historical records. Seven years ago, I called myself a "data machine", and now I'm kind of finding that feeling again.

Let's get to the point. I have been discussing some Internet topics with many friends and colleagues, and I feel that everyone has some misunderstandings. Today I would like to share my views here. If you have any objections, you can communicate with me. I don't mind having opposing opinions.

1. Don’t have too high expectations for community operations

I don’t know who came up with the concept of “ community economy”, and I don’t want to know. It is undeniable that community is a very useful tool . We can use it to help with work and operations , but in my eyes, it has not risen to the level of "economy".

First of all, a community is not the same as a neighborhood. A community is a platform. A community only refers to a product form such as groups and groups. The operating difficulty and technical content of a community are far less than that of a neighborhood. I have been working in the community for 10 years. It is very difficult to operate a community, so I would never say that I am a community operator, as that would be degrading myself.

Secondly, community is essentially just a tool. In the early years, when Tencent was not as big as it is now, we also rejected QQ and regarded it as a potential competitor, thinking it would steal our users. But later we found that, firstly, the trend was unstoppable, and secondly, their products were really easy to use. Instead of sticking to the old ways, we should embrace change. So we simply regarded QQ and QQ groups as our operating tools , and tried to use them to the fullest extent to benefit our work to the greatest extent. I guess when we have this kind of ideological evolution and are getting very good at it, the person who came up with the concept of "community economy" is still nowhere to be found? Experts are experts. Operations work is about practicality. Being down-to-earth is better than anything else, rather than playing with concepts or packaging concepts. Operations workers should be conscientious. I only believe in one sentence: Practice makes perfect.

Third, the so-called various demands advocated by the community economy are simply pseudo-demands. Even if they exist, they are not universal demands. Why do users join the community? Their biggest need is to make friends and kill time. Why did WeChat develop the WeChat group function? For WeChat, its greatest role is to consolidate user relationships, because one-to-many and one-to-one are naturally the best coupling relationships. Do you really think that if you throw a link into a group, someone will click on it? Do you really think that if you invite me to join your group, I will become aware of your brand? You think too much!

Finally, and most importantly, if the community cannot be implemented, the conversion rate will definitely be very low. All operational work must be implemented. What does landing mean? For example. For example, if you have your own app and you are in charge of the operation and management of kols, no matter how lively the chats are in the group, it is meaningless if the final result cannot be reflected in the data generated by the kols in your app. Therefore, when I set KPIs , I will not consider how many people are chatting in the group in a day or how many messages there are. At most, I will use it as a potential basis for activity.

Ultimately, the community should be used well to maximize its value, such as playing with the community matrix, splitting and merging, using red envelopes, organizing activities, conducting user surveys, etc. These are all good and can increase conversion rates, but tools are tools after all, and we should have our own psychological expectations and do more things that are truly helpful to users and the platform.

I only look at the results!

2. Full stack operation , a correct and useless concept

An excellent operations staff member should have comprehensive abilities rather than a single ability. So you will find that many people who come out of large companies seem very strong, but in fact their ability model is very single and they have a screw-in mentality. They will encounter many bottlenecks when they start their own business . The operation work is really complicated, including product operation , user operation , content operation , new media operation , etc. The operation on the C-end is different from that on the B-end, so you will find that people who have dabbled in many operation modules and done well are obviously more capable and easy to use.

Therefore, the concept of full-stack operation is very correct and has no flaws. The reason why it is recognized by many people is that it is just a packaging of a concept. In fact, this is the direction that operators should strive for. It is natural and even a common-sense concept.

Here, there are a few points I need to emphasize:

1. Full stack operation is not about knowing, but about doing

As the saying goes, a jack of all trades, a master of none. Nowadays, there are too many people who know everything but cannot do it or are unable to do it. Operations cannot be learned by reading books, listening to training, or watching others do it. It is something that you develop through practice and training on your own. I will never show off what I haven't done, and I will never use other people's successful experiences to prove my point. First, there is no need to, and second, it is not my thing at all.

2. Full stack operation, the premise is to have your own expertise

What is expertise? It is a work module that you can do well and is supported by successful or outstanding cases. This is actually not easy, and it will be even more difficult if you can achieve results in multiple modules and make them your expertise.

For an excellent operation, it is most practical to be specialized first, and this should also be the direction of effort. The reason is simple. Once one module is specialized and achieved to the extreme and the best, the breakthrough methods of other modules will not be much different. Another point is that if you want to make a module to the extreme, it will force you to explore other modules that are most related to it. After a long time, you will naturally master it.

3. Full-stack operations does not mean miscellaneous work

For a long time, many operations personnel have had a misunderstanding: operations are just about doing miscellaneous tasks. This sentence is actually a joke, meaning that operations work is trivial, complicated, and difficult to achieve results. But you must never really turn yourself into a handyman, who just focuses on work every day, takes on all kinds of work, and tries to deal with everything, even enjoying doing work that is not within the scope of operations. As a result, you end up doing a lot of small things but accomplishing few big things.

Operations should have a backbone and a main line, what the goal is, how to split the goal, and whether the work is on the main trunk or on the details. It’s not that you can’t take the job, but you need to be clear about the purpose and significance of the job. This is the reason why many operations cost a lot of time and effort, only to be used as a tool by others.

4. There may not be anyone in China who can truly operate a full-stack business.

Full-stack operations should be a goal and a direction that we strive for. We should use this to constantly motivate ourselves to become more comprehensive and better. But there is no need to worry about whether you are a full-stack operator or not. Doing your job well, achieving goals, and making achievements are what operators should think about.

I have come into contact with quite a lot of operation modules, and I dare not say that I am a full-stack operator. Many excellent operation workers I have met are also very humble and have never said that. To put it bluntly, I feel that there are still too many areas that I don’t know about. The times are changing too fast and I need to learn and not fall behind. I think they have the same idea.

3. Moments are not a community

What is a community? "Community" refers to a group of people who are connected to each other and have certain common characteristics, and "district" refers to a certain geographical area. Therefore, "community" can be said to be a certain area where people who are connected to each other and have certain common characteristics live together.

To put it bluntly, the community is society, a complex platform that uses the Internet as a carrier to interweave human nature, human feelings, and human hearts. The core modules of community operation are user operation and content operation.

The Moments is not a community. To put it bluntly, it is just a list of friends’ updates. It does not even have the basic triangular relationship and cannot even form a basic user pyramid model. It is also difficult to start with the operating model.

But I have to say, this product is very cleverly made. If WeChat really wants to build a community, with its huge size, it can only split users into countless small communities in the form of products. But if the community operation model is adopted, it must be guided, which will consume enormous costs. And with the product operation model, it is impossible to expect users to be able to operate and drive themselves. WeChat is a social product, essentially a tool-type product. However, unlike community-type products, it is difficult to turn a community into a tool.

Like social networks, Moments is also a very effective tool from an operational perspective that can help us greatly improve our work efficiency. This is what we should study.

4. Should operations pursue high-endness?

I have been working for 12 years, and there is one thing that has always troubled me, and that is the highlights of my work. I want to extract the highlights in the weekly report, but it is always difficult to do so. Later, I had a new understanding of the highlights, which are:

1. There are improved work details on the data;
2. For the same work, how much better did you do the second time than the last time, and what did you really put in the effort to do?
3. The right direction, and you persist in working hard to achieve results, even if there is only a slight improvement;
4. Really put yourself in the user's shoes and the user gives you sufficient recognition for your work;
5. Innovative exploration and thinking, truly put into practice;
6. The work results achieved through cooperation with sister departments.

Are there so many high-end things to do in operations? The answer is: No. For an excellent operator, the most important thing is to hone basic skills. Another point is that a lot of operations work requires long-term accumulation before it can explode. Those who only pursue short-term interests are basically unlikely to accomplish anything awesome. To put it bluntly, operations are all about details, and making a little progress every day.

Being great is just a goal and a direction of effort. If one day you accomplish something earth-shattering, it is also based on your long-term accumulation. But if you spend all day thinking about doing lofty things, thinking that you can sweep the world without even cleaning your own house, then you are destined to achieve nothing!

Summarize

Operation is a long-term job. In this process, each of us is an apprentice, not a teacher.

An excellent operator should be down-to-earth. It's not that you can't create concepts, nor that people like me can't create them. I just mean that you should have a sense of social responsibility for the words you say and the concepts you create. They should be helpful to the entire operation industry and provide guidance to operators all over the world, rather than just creating them to attract attention, which would only make thunder without rain.

I admire people who do things in a down-to-earth manner!