In-depth | How to start new media operations without a budget?

What we are talking about now, new media operation , actually represents two meanings:

One is the hot start operation mode of brushing orders and traffic to create good-looking reports. The advantages are quick results and good-looking data, but the disadvantages are long-term consumption and low actual benefits.

The other is a cold-start operation model with zero budget, heavy content, and self-financing. Its disadvantages are slow results, the need for strong support from superiors and departments, and difficulties in the early stages. Its advantages are low consumption, real data growth, and a basically closed loop after sufficient self-financing.

I'm going to talk about the latter.

The cold start without any project, budget or plan is actually very interesting. Compared to spending money to buy traffic, the sense of accomplishment from operating a website with your own ideas and methods is incomparable. However, this also depends on your own ability + the support of your boss + colleagues/cross-departmental collaboration. Otherwise, you should just persuade your boss to buy the data.

Without a budget and plan, it means that you will not be able to open up a large number of channels and gain exposure in the initial stage. At this time, you can only start cold-start operations centered on one or two characteristics that can best exert your subjective initiative. And content cold start is one of the best ways.

Content launch is a launch method that focuses on original content. However, in the cold start phase, diving headfirst into content creation will only yield half the result with twice the effort. The first thing to do at this time is to "build the framework." Simply put, framework building can be broken down into three elements: finding where people in your industry gather; establishing a media matrix; and aggregating and collecting resources.

"Good wine needs no bush" may be suitable for individuals, but if you work for a company, you have to be responsible to the company. For the C-end, there are many options in this step. If you think about it from another perspective, everyone is actually a user. If you are into food, travel, or music, you should know what software and websites you like to use. If you look at your friends and colleagues, even a novice can figure out one or two.

For the B-side, the choices are much narrower, and there are often only a few websites where people can gather. However, having a few is better than having none. For example, the top technology companies I work for are concentrated on technology websites such as 36Kr and Huxiu.com. P2P has websites such as Wangdaizhijia. So what about those who deal in steel? What about the generator? What about medical and health care? You have to find a way to find where the most people gather in this industry, no matter how vertical it is or how narrow the audience is.

For the B-side, the deeper you immerse yourself in the industry and the more vertical you grasp it, it is particularly important to listen to the advice of senior people in the early stages when there is no data support. For the C-end, it is easy to be dazzled by too many choices. Your focus should be on finding breakthroughs in the industry leaders, regions, vertical trends, and general news and entertainment areas to meet the needs of the future period of quantitative change to qualitative change.

This is divided into two parts: establishing an all-media matrix; establishing a ladder matrix .

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• In addition, some traditional government agencies, public institutions, and newspaper groups have also joined the ranks of omni-media marketing . They are no longer just a platform or a voice channel, and have gradually let go of their condescending attitude.

For example: Jiangsu New Media Matrix, which is formed by more than a hundred accounts of all sizes, condenses the audiences of multiple dimensions under the segmented accounts into an overall audience within a large system.

To extend this, you just need to Baidu 'XX newspaper new media matrix', and the matrices of various large, medium and small cities will come to you. If you are a company engaged in the transformation from traditional to Internet , you can read more about how other highly homogeneous companies operate and set up the framework first.

The ladder matrix is ​​more suitable for situations where there is insufficient staff/scarce budget. Compared with the omni-media matrix's style of casting a wide net and accumulating resources, the ladder matrix allocates energy according to the amount of manpower and budget.

2.2.1 Sorting out accessible media fields

First, sort out the media areas that the company's products can reach. For C-end products, collection is relatively easy. Finding hundreds of companies is not something to brag about. What needs to be focused on is the division of key points and gradients.

For B-side products, the key is to find out all the accessible media areas and then divide them according to product needs. The following is a new media matrix diagram I made for a B-side IT company for your reference.

2.2.2 Gradient division

After sorting out the accessible media, it is time to divide them into different levels and find out the key points. Generally speaking, it is divided into the following parts for consideration, maximizing the combination of points and surfaces.

Old integrated media

We are talking about comprehensive news media headed by the Big Four ( Sina , Tencent, Sohu, and NetEase). Needless to say, no matter how narrow the vertical of the product is, your audience, in addition to upstream and downstream, and in addition to directly competing companies, potential paying users' reception of information and value judgment are still concentrated in news-related comprehensive media. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t care, users do.

It is worth mentioning that B-end companies should not think that their products are obscure. Compared with C-end products, the professionalism and craftsmanship of B-end products are more recognized. As long as the content is acceptable, the chances of being included in comprehensive media are still very high. In addition to the four major super A-class news comprehensive media, there is a long list of A-class, B-class and local media behind them. You can choose according to your budget and requirements.

Industry crowd concentration area

The gathering place of people in the industry ≈ KOL in the industry, which refers to all vertical websites recognized by the industry.

• The main goal and implementation of C-end companies is to screen out KOLs that truly meet the preferences of product users, and to achieve maximum brand exposure through investment/cooperation, thus forming a conversion funnel effect of 'reach-direction-purchase'.
• Because the decision-making chain of B-end company products is too long, it is more likely to reach and form a professional image. The market for overly vertical B-end companies is transparent, and the pie is limited in size, so shortening the distance with the decision-makers is the top priority.

For new media operation departments with small budgets and shortage of manpower, it is not wise to spend money in the C-end field. It is a more appropriate approach to establish a brand in their own industry and then radiate to the pan-media scope.

Everyone will say this about resource aggregation. When time is tight and tasks are numerous, this work cannot be omitted. Otherwise, in the current era of information explosion, the resource loss rate will be very scary.

Within the scope of this topic, the resources should be divided into the following parts: cooperated; contacted; hoped to contact; rejected (no reply). Statistical tables should not be complicated. They should be practical when there is a shortage of manpower. An overly complicated statistical table is just a flashy KPI table. The following is what needs to be recorded.

• Cooperation: How many times have we cooperated? What is the relationship like? Is it possible to cooperate long-term? Is there any offline contact?
• Already contacted: the other party’s needs, the other party’s reasons for not cooperating, and whether the other party cooperates with similar companies as ours.
• Desired contact: Our needs, the other party's advantages, offline/internal channels.
• Rejected (no reply): Reason for rejection, the other party’s needs, and whether the other party cooperates with similar companies as ours.
• Special circumstances are recorded in a separate column.

When a person is operating new media, he will thank himself for looking back at such records after three months, half a year or a year of operation.

The advantage of matrix operation is that once you have chosen the new media matrix structure and model that suits you, the operation will be twice as effective with half the effort. Excellent content output (quantitative change) will produce the dual effects of brand + channel after the matrix operation is formed (qualitative change).

Once the operational operations and resources are well recorded, you can consider the overall operation from a holistic perspective instead of getting bogged down in endless trivial tasks.