In the AI ​​era, will APP operations be eliminated?

As early as August 8, the official account of China Earthquake Networks Center published an article titled "A Magnitude 7.0 Earthquake Occurred in Jiuzhaigou County, Abei Prefecture, Sichuan Province." It is worth noting that the article was automatically written by a machine in just 25 seconds. An editor of NetEase portal said in an interview that in the past few years, the industry generally competed in speed, exclusivity, and depth, but in the end it was difficult to compete with Toutiao 's technical algorithms. Internet products seem to be driven by technology, so where should APP operators go from here?

1. Current status of APP market

From the subsidy war among Didi , Uber and other taxi apps in 2014, to the subsidy war among Baidu Takeout, Ele.me , Meituan Takeout and other O2O companies in 2014, to the shared bike war in 2017. In order to compete for the market, these apps are willing to spend money on subsidies. A careful analysis of these apps shows that they are almost the same in form, the only difference is their respective operating methods . The same is true for the entire APP market. Products are becoming increasingly homogenized, and only different operating methods can differentiate products. This shows that operations still occupy an important position in the Internet industry.

2. Operational work

Operations can be divided into content operations , user operations and activity operations . In these three major operation directions, in addition to conventional operation methods, operations must also understand how to attract users.

1. Content Operation

For an APP to attract users, it must have content. When the APP is first launched, content operators must fill the APP with the required content, make plans for long-term content filling, and ensure daily content updates. And these are just the most basic content operation tasks. As a qualified content operation personnel, you must think about the work of content operation.

(1) Whether users like the content you provide.

The content mentioned here is relatively basic daily content. Different types of apps provide different content. For example, the Jianshu app provides other people's high-quality articles, the Meipai app provides videos recorded by others, and e-commerce apps, such as the Taobao app and the JD app, provide product prices and detail pages.

When operators select content for their platforms, they need to provide users with better content based on the characteristics of their platforms and user preferences.

(2) Whether the content can be more diverse in form.

In addition to basic daily content, content operations can also plan special content for the APP.

When Sina Weibo was first put into operation, the operators edited 10 topics every day for users to discuss, in order to stimulate users to produce new content. Later on, tens of millions of topics were discussed on Weibo every day, and these topics were initiated spontaneously by users. The operators only formulate the content form for users, while the specific content is produced by users.

During the graduation season, NetEase Cloud Music launched a special feature called "Graduation Screening Room", presenting the three themes of dormitory, farewell dinner, and couples experienced during student days in the form of playlists. Users can enter these playlists and listen to music on related themes. NetEase Cloud Music was originally a music playback platform, but content operators enriched the content formats that users can consume by planning festival-related content. Moreover, everyone has experienced graduation season, so there is no reason why users would not like such touching content.

Technology can certainly recommend content that users are interested in, but being interested does not mean that users will like it. Interesting special topics can often capture the hearts of users.

2. User Operation

Once the content of the APP is prepared, users can be introduced appropriately. User operations can be divided into revenue generation, cost reduction, retention and conversion . Each step has its corresponding method. Take open source as an example. App store promotion and pre-installation on new phones are both open source methods. The role of user operation is indispensable in operation. This is because, although fixed methods can bring users to the APP, their loyalty is not high and they are often prone to loss. I have said before that when doing user operations, you can stratify users, clarify the user structure of each level, and perform targeted operations on the top users of each level to maximize the effect of user operations. Regarding user stratification, you can check out the article "APP User Operation: How to Do a Good Job of User Classification and Use the Right Operation Methods" written by I have.

Another issue that user operations personnel need to consider is how to improve user loyalty. The easiest way to do this is to provide users with unexpected services. Hezijun had previously purchased a product on an e-commerce APP, but had not received it for a long time, even though the page indicated that it had been signed for. After leaving a message to the e-commerce APP, Hezijun tried to contact the courier, but to no avail. Just as he was getting worried, he received a message from the user operation of the e-commerce APP, informing him that they had started to solve the problem for him. In the end, although he could not find the product, the user operation of the e-commerce APP platform quickly responded to the problem, which made Hezijun have a better impression of them.

User operations personnel need to communicate with users and convey the warmth of the product through emotional exchanges between people. This cannot be replaced by technology, so user operations personnel are an indispensable role.

3. Event Operation

Event operations can be divided into daily activities and theme activities.

Daily activities are generally based on raffles, roulette wheels, and H5 games . Users can get points or coupon rewards by participating in the activities. Daily activities are common in various apps, and some users have become numb to them. If you want to increase the participation rate in daily activities, you can trigger corresponding activities based on user behavior . For example, when a user opens the app for the first time, he or she can see a novice registration gift package. The user only needs to register an account to get this novice gift package. The participation rate in daily activities can actually be improved through technological means.

The Activity Box , an APP activity operation tool , can trigger corresponding activities based on user behavior, thereby increasing the participation rate of the activity.

Theme activities can quickly improve a certain indicator in a short period of time. The most basic work content of event operation is event content writing, event process design, event rule formulation, event cost estimation, event expected benefits, event effect statistics and event improvement measures.

The process of each theme activity is similar, but the content is very different. A good event idea can often bring unexpected communication effects to the event. Ele.me and NetEase once cooperated to open a pop-up store called Sangcha , which attracted a group of young people because of its interesting name. Activities require creativity, but technology cannot provide creativity for activities, which is why technology cannot replace operations. It is not enough for an event to have creativity alone. Event operators also need to know how to exert their strength in the event and let users follow your operation rhythm. For details, you can read the article "APP Operation: How to Design an Activity that Users Can't Stop" written by Box Jun before.

Event operators play more of a supervisory role in event operations. From the birth of event ideas, to the completion of planning, to the launch of the event, unexpected things may happen at every step. When an accident occurs, operators must rely on their own experience to remedy the accident and ensure the smooth progress of the event. Therefore, events need the presence of operators.

Summary: The work of operations is more about communicating with users, sensing their emotions, and finding out what users really like. No matter which aspect of operations, technology cannot replace it.