After nearly 10 years of operations experience, here are my 3 basic working methods!

In the previous series, we have talked about the relationship between products and operations , which should be close to: products are responsible for defining and providing long-term user value, and operations are responsible for creating short-term user value + assisting products in improving long-term value.

A product is only viable if its long-term value is clear and stable.

For example, the quality of the content and learning experience of Sanjieke’s current online courses are actually the core value of our product. If we can’t even guarantee this value, it can almost be concluded that this product must be lifeless.

But looking at it from the other side, do you think users can quickly perceive things like "course quality" and "learning experience" in a short period of time?

Therefore, in order to allow users to experience our long-term value, we need to operate and create more short-term, timely and stimulating user value to leverage users' willingness to participate. The simplest and most straightforward words are like if you come and listen to my class, I will give you an XX prize or something like that.

In the previous series, we have already said that operations is actually a very layered thing. Many times, you need to do some small things first, and then use this as leverage to leverage more big things to happen.

In fact, by creating enough short-term value, you can better leverage users to experience your long-term value, and even help them promote and share your value around the world after the experience. This is also a kind of "leverage principle."

Therefore, an excellent operator should be able to master many "leverage points" in order to better create short-term value for users, thereby leveraging more long-term value. Some of these leverage points are external methods and techniques. We will discuss these methods and techniques in the third part of this series, "Several Core Skills of Operations."

Others are closely related to the inner cultivation of an operations practitioner. Today, we will focus on these internal leverage points. These internal leverage points can also be called the "underlying working methods" of operations because they all start completely from within and do not rely on external resources.

Therefore, if you can do these things well, you will naturally become an operator with a stronger "presence", both within the team and in front of users.

Below, we will discuss them one by one.

Lever 1

Make yourself highly sensitive to new things

Let’s look at an example first. I have a friend who just did an activity a few weeks ago to attract new customers. The activity was very simple, and it went something like this:

However, after the event was launched, for a period of 3-4 days, only a few people participated.

Then, a few days later, the movie "Zootopia" was released, so they acted quickly and changed the event slightly to this:

As a result, within just 3 hours after the revised activity was launched, it immediately attracted tens of thousands of people to participate without any promotion.

The logic here seems simple: follow hot spots and take advantage of the trend.

But can you imagine that an operator who has never even seen "Zootopia" could create such a case?

I have a habit. Whenever I see more than three people in my circle of friends, WeChat groups , etc. mentioning a concept that I have never heard of before, I will definitely take out at least 30-50 minutes to thoroughly understand this thing that I have never heard of.

You have to know that something that is generally recognized by people is often likely to become a "leverage point" for you at some point in the future, just like what we saw with my friend's promotion. Therefore, in order to win the opportunity to use it in the future and use it to better interact with users, you must first take the time to fully contact it and understand it.

Taking March 2016 as an example, if you are an operator facing the general public and need to interact with them frequently, if you are not familiar with the various backgrounds, origins and ins and outs of events such as the Chinese national football team's qualification, Zootopia, AlphaGo man-machine battle, Song Joong-ki flirting with girls, A4 waist , etc., I think there may be some problems if you are not familiar with more than half of them - that means that your operational ammunition depot may be low.

If we interpret this part a little more, it seems that we can also say that we must equip ourselves with "fast and comprehensive learning ability." I once answered a question on Zhihu called "What is the most important core capability of operations?" Under that question, my answer was this -

If I can only say one, I think the most important core ability, whether for products or operations, is "learning ability."

The Internet is changing too fast, and "operation" is too broad. You will find that the operational means and methods required for each product form and each business type will be different. At the same time, operations are also user-oriented. You will also find that for each type of user, such as losers and literary youths, young college students and middle-aged aunts, your operation strategies, operation methods and even copywriting styles will vary greatly, and it is difficult to find a universally applicable operation method.

Therefore, if you really want to become a high-level operator, you must continue to learn, accept and understand new things, and continue to get close to and become familiar with more types of users.

Therefore, if you want to become an excellent operation practitioner who can connect products and users well, one habit you may need to develop is to stay sensitive to popular events, topics and new things. You certainly don’t need to follow every hot topic crazily, but at least you have to be fully familiar with and understand the hot topics that most of your users will pay close attention to.

Lever Two

Gain insights into your users

Let me tell you a true story about myself.

Four years ago, a few friends and I started a business and created a learning website. We provided a variety of learning courses for a group of "learning-obsessed" users - from how to go to bed early and get up early to how to learn to play Texas Hold'em in 2 hours.

At the beginning of our business, we were confused about how to operate the website and which categories of courses would be better to include on the platform.

Until one day, we finally decided to return to the users to find the answer.

So, in order to get closer to users, I spent almost two months turning myself into a typical "learning addict". To do all this, I traveled back and forth in 2 months, attended about 50 offline learning courses and salons with different themes, communicated and talked with our users a lot, and tried to do the things that our target users do most often: taking notes, drawing mind maps, writing diaries, getting up early, etc., until I could really make myself enjoy it all.

Then, something wonderful happened. After that, I found that for any course we launched on our website that I really liked, the sales and enrollment volumes after going online were basically not bad. As for the other courses that I don’t like very much, the endings are often very miserable.

Even if there are two courses with the same topic but different instructors, sometimes I can roughly judge which one will be more popular with users after just one glance.

Since then, many of the decisions I have made based entirely on my own feelings and intuition have been successful.

If that example seems a little thin, let me tell you another true story.

I also have a friend who is starting a business. She is making an "anti -social social product" that is targeted at a group of users who "are afraid and resist the heavy burden of social interaction in the real world, but still yearn for beautiful things. Although they have a lot to express, they don't want to be seen by those 'aliens' who don't understand them."

Yes, it is such an abstract product and user group, but she is able to take it very well. In her team, she is the one who makes the final decisions on whether what is displayed on each interface is good or not, whether users will like each piece of content to be pushed and published, and how the core logic of each product should be set. They rarely look at data for analysis, and most of the time, she is the one who makes the final decisions. The amazing thing is that she rarely makes mistakes in her decisions. Almost 90% of the things she decides on a whim are later proven to be very popular with users.

The secret to it all is simple. You know, she is a person who "is afraid and resists the heavy burden of social interaction in the real world, but still yearns for beautiful things. Although she has many things to express, she does not want to be seen by those 'aliens' who do not understand her." Because of this, in a sense, she is actually making a product for herself. Therefore, there is no need for data or complex logical judgment. Many times, you just need to make sure that what you make can make her approve and like it.

She knew that as long as she could do this, it would probably be something that users would like.

So, this is the second internal lever I want to share with you: try to turn yourself into a real typical user as much as possible, and put yourself in real experience scenarios of real users as much as possible. In this way, over time, you will naturally gain an "insight" into your users. Such insight will often become the irreplaceable core value of an excellent operator.

Lever Three

Learn to express yourself more persuasively and convincingly

As an operator, you will always encounter a lot of scenarios where you need to communicate with users and convince them to accept your position or opinion.

However, even for something that seems so simple, there are really not many people who can do it well.

People like to express themselves, so many of us like to constantly emphasize our own points in communication scenarios. But little do people know that, in many cases, if the other party has no idea about your point of view at all, "expressing your point of view" may be the least efficient way.

Imagine this scenario:

One day, someone you don’t know very well comes to you and recommends a movie that has just been released.

He said: This movie is very good, super good, I recommend you to go and see it.

Let me ask you, how would you answer him at this time?

I guess you would say: Oh.

But, what if he told you this?

I just watched a movie yesterday, and I was moved to tears four times during the whole process of the movie - this is the first time in 5 years that I have been moved to tears by a movie. In addition, at the end of the movie, more than half of the people in our packed theater stood up and applauded the film completely spontaneously.

Think about it, will your interest in this movie increase significantly when faced with the latter statement?

Let’s look at another example -

A friend comes to you to chat one day and says: The day before yesterday I attended a meeting. There were so many people at that meeting, including the bosses of XX company, XX company, XX company, etc.

Then, a partner of a famous fund gave a speech at the conference. In this speech, he combined his observations of the education industry for more than ten years, starting from the development of the education industry in the 1990s, and specifically talked about the growth paths of famous companies such as Xueersi and New Oriental, as well as some new trends in this wave of online education since 2010. He also interpreted many changes in the development of learning formats, etc.

How about it? Are you feeling a little sleepy and annoyed listening to all these long and somewhat incoherent paragraphs?

Well, what if he said it another way?

The day before yesterday, I attended a meeting where a partner from a famous fund talked about a particularly interesting and subversive idea, which is: education will die, but learning is eternal.

This time, do you feel that your desire to listen is instantly aroused, and you especially want to hear what this person will say next?

In fact, the two examples above follow two universal principles in our communication:

If you need to get the other person's attention in a short period of time, you may need to first throw out a point of view and conclusion that can surprise, dumbfounded or very curious to instantly hit the other person, and then prove one by one whether your point of view is valid.

However, if the problem you are facing is to convince the other party to accept your point of view, then you may need to start with a large amount of facts and some details, trigger the other party's perception, resonance and identification through facts and details, and then gradually derive your conclusion.

The well-known copywriter and marketer Li Jiaoshou once wrote an article titled “The Difference Between X-Type Copywriting and Y-Type Copywriting”. If you take a closer look, you will find that it is actually the same thing as what we are talking about here.

Therefore, as a good operator, the third internal lever you should have is to make your persuasion and expression in front of users more compelling and convincing.

The above is what I want to talk about today. These so-called internal levers may not be "skills" that can be mastered quickly, but believe me, once you can establish such awareness and thinking habits in yourself, they will bring you more long-term benefits than "skills".

PS, I originally wanted to finish the second part of the series with this article, but after writing this, I found that there are still some things I want to say, so we will stay in the second part of the series for a while. The next article will really be the last article of the second part of the series - what are the "operational thinking" in my eyes?