A must-read guide for beginners in operations!

I often receive various operational inquiries from readers, but what worries me is that most of the questions are actually not to the point (you know, you can judge a person's understanding of a certain field by looking at the questions he asks).

It’s like a person learning to swim who doesn’t understand “breathing” but asks the coach how to move his arms and legs in the water - he will never learn to swim, and the same goes for operations.

Among the many questions, three questions were raised by most inquirers:

• Not understanding the essence of operations and being confused by appearances; (for example, content traffic generation means forwarding articles and posting nonsense in various groups, and user operations means chatting with users about life)
• Lack of ideas for independently carrying out operational work; (e.g. not knowing what to do if the leader does not assign tasks, not knowing how to select topics for planning tweets, and not knowing how to use operational data)
• Confused about how to choose the direction of further study in operations;

Therefore, the above three categories of questions have made this article successful.

Since the theme of this article is "Getting Started", it is necessary to tell you in advance the operational level that can be achieved through this article.

This is also the original intention of writing this article, so that you can get four skills:

1. Understanding the Internet business model is the basis for understanding the essence of operation
2. Understand the operating logic of operations
3. Have the ability to independently carry out operations
4. The direction of subsequent self-improvement operations

Not more, not less. As an "entry", we believe that achieving these four goals is enough. Later, we will continue to study operations. With the foundation of this article, we can at least judge for ourselves: which dry goods in the industry are fake dry goods, which bosses are giving blind orders, and which directions of effort are not appropriate .

1. Brief Introduction to Internet Business Model

The birth of Internet operation positions relies on a very special business model called "Internet business": attracting users with free services, and then making profits through advertising, membership, value-added services, e-commerce , and virtual game props.

In other words, the "products + users" of an Internet company together constitute the basis of its business value. Without users, an Internet company is worthless, no matter how excellent its products are. Conversely, the more users there are, the higher the quality, and the greater the influence (charm) of the product on users, the greater the commercial value will usually be.

Users, quality, and influence, the three major elements together constitute the value foundation of Internet companies . It is worth mentioning that its commercial value usually depends on the shortcomings of the following three aspects :

For example, some information platforms with vulgar content, although claiming to have hundreds of millions of users, their commercial value is even far less than that of Luoji Siwei, which has only a few million fans. The fundamental reason behind this is that the quality of users and their influence on the platform are far lower than the latter.

Unfortunately, many Internet companies do not seem to realize this.

Therefore, statements such as: “The more users a company has and the closer it is to its users, the greater its value…” are one-sided and inaccurate.

In short, from the composition of the Internet business model, it can be seen that the core task of product and operation positions is to build up the three pillars in the above picture impartially: number of users, quality of users, and influence on them .

II. General knowledge of operations: essence, operation, basic concepts

Once we understand the business model of the Internet, it will be much easier for us to understand the essence of operations.

Of course, you say, isn’t operation just about attracting new customers and promoting activity? Yes, “attracting new customers and promoting activation” does summarize the superficial aspects of operations work , but if you only understand this level, operations are still vague and it is easy to lose direction when performing actual work.

Therefore, we believe that the definition of operations should at least be able to guide our work:

Operations are based on specific products and are guided by the company's phased development requirements. Through the configuration, implementation and optimization of operation resources (people, finance, channels), the correlation between the product's target population and the product is continuously improved .

Well, does the above sentence sound abstract to you? It doesn't matter. Let's take a look at a typical operation work scenario first, and we'll understand (it's a little long, so friends with actual operation experience can take a quick look):

When sports apps first became popular, Xiaomei was responsible for the operation of a sports app.

This APP is a product that provides users with sports records (trajectory, mileage, pace). As a pure tool- type product, its usage frequency is not high and the competition threshold is low. Therefore, when the second version of the product was released, the focus was on launching the "sports social " (similar to the circle of friends) function, and the focus of Xiaomei's operations was to encourage users to use the social module .

After the new feature was released for some time, very few users used the "Social Circle of Friends". Xiaomei was puzzled because she had seen many users prefer to take screenshots of their running records and post them on WeChat Moments , but were unwilling to post them on the APP.

Xiaomei found some seed users to communicate with, and the feedback she received was: someone in the circle of friends liked it. So Xiaomei communicated with the product manager and planned to enable "users to automatically upload their running records to their own sports circle after exercise" in the next improved version. Then Xiaomei controlled hundreds of fake accounts every day to constantly like and comment on users. After a few days of this, according to the background data, users still did not develop the habit of posting to their sports circle, and a community atmosphere was not formed at all.

After learning from the painful experience, Xiaomei believes that there is no social foundation between users of sports apps at all, and content should not be driven by the way of Moments. Users who love sports and bodybuilding actually have a strong desire to "show off". So after a deep collision with the product, she decided to try to enter the market in the form of content, through the "Daily Topic" column, and apply for a small budget as prizes. Selections will be made in each topic, such as "the most beautiful runner, the best abdominal muscles, the fastest night run", etc. Prizes will be awarded to the top few, thereby stimulating users' comparative psychology to produce content.

However, after the improvements, the proportion of participants in the daily topic is still very low. Could it be that the dual stimulation of "material plus comparison" is ineffective? Xiaomei carefully checked the background data and found that although the number of people participating in the topic was small, the number of readers of the topic was not high either. After calculating the ratio of the number of participants to the number of readers, she found that the participation rate of "people who know about this event" is actually very high! So Xiaomei suggested that the product should make a minor adjustment in the next version. Whenever the user's exercise track pops up after exercise, the user will be immediately asked whether he or she wants to participate in the day's prize-winning topic...

Through this adjustment, the entire topic column finally became active, and the community content gradually became richer...

With the arrival of a new round of financing, the product is gradually maturing and the company plans to accelerate the pace of product advancement. Considering that users who love sports have a relatively high coverage rate in colleges and universities and sporting goods stores. So Xiaomei was put in charge of conducting a pilot program in colleges and universities, and a business operations colleague was hired to be responsible for negotiating business cooperation with the sporting goods store.

Xiaomei took into account the characteristics of college students, who are "active, like to spread information, and are keen on love topics", and combined with the characteristics of sports products, she came up with an idea and planned a "Chasing Goddesses" campaign. Of course, this time she used prizes and the competitive mentality of the "goddesses" to solicit votes on Weibo and WeChat Moments to get more boys to participate in the "Chasing" her activity. Of course, during this process Xiaomei needs to recruit university interns, coordinate technology, design support, handle university public relations and many other matters.

A week after the event, Xiaomei took stock of the total expenditure and overall labor costs of the event, and calculated the retention rate of new users . She found that the university promotion strategy was a very cost-effective promotion strategy . She summarized and improved the shortcomings in the process and hired two new people, one to help replicate similar activities in other universities, and the other to continue to create community topics to let new users settle down...

(The case ends here. Of course, the case is fictional and the details are simplified. There will be more trivialities in real operations)

From the above operation scenarios, we review the previous definition of the essence of operation and match the operation scenarios one by one, which is easy to understand:

• Targeting specific products : Sports APP
• Guided by the phased development of the enterprise (this is usually what the leader thinks about, and we can know it better): before obtaining financing and the product advantages are not obvious, the focus is on improving product maturity; after obtaining financing, use event operations and business operations to quickly attract new users and seize the market.
• Allocation of operational resources (Leader’s thinking): Xiaomei’s planning and creative abilities are suitable for event operations, and necessary event funds will be allocated for them; business operations will involve hiring dedicated personnel; event operations have the mission of both attracting new members and activating the community, while business operations focus more on attracting new members.
• Operation implementation : Xiaomei requested the company's technical and design resources to assist in the event based on operational requirements, and participated in the event site throughout the entire process.
• Operation optimization : Any of Xiaomei’s operation strategies are analyzed, summarized, and improved through data feedback to find problems.
• Improve the association between users and products : Increase user activity through community topics, make tool-type products have social attributes, and strengthen the influence on users.

Similarly, no matter what product, public account , individual, brand, or even a product that has not yet been formed, you can apply the above essential definition of operation.

Another example is the Internet recruitment service I mentioned in my previous article. Before their product APP was developed, the carrier was just a lot of WeChat groups to connect with corporate recruiters. Then, it can also apply the definition of the essence of operations:

• Specific products: Providing recruitment services through WeChat groups, pushing resumes every day, and connecting with corporate recruiters (the APP is still under development)
• Phased development orientation: The company's funds and technology are not yet in place, so it will first operate to test the needs and reactions of the recruitment market.
• Configuration and implementation of operational resources: Operational staff manually collect and organize resume messages, push them to WeChat groups every day, and connect with companies in need.
• Operational optimization: formulate group rules and docking procedures to minimize information harassment in WeChat groups and improve docking efficiency.
• Improve the stickiness between users and products: Continue to select candidate resumes that better meet market demand based on applicants' feedback, thereby improving the reputation and influence of the recruitment server.

From the above typical operation scenarios, we can summarize the overall operation process of operation work (the gray in the figure represents the responsibilities of the product manager, and the responsibilities marked with BOSS are the responsibilities of the operation or product director):

At this point, I believe that you have a certain degree of understanding of the connotation and ins and outs of operations work, and you will at least have a clearer goal in mind when you receive operations matters in the future:

For example, in event operation, you will consider whether the operating resources can support the entire event, whether the budget is sufficient, whether the key links can be applied for, whether the new users obtained through the entire event are cost-effective, whether it is worth copying and solidifying, etc.

For example, in content operation, you will consider whether the purpose of producing content is to attract new users, active users, or to enhance the influence of the product on users, etc. With different goals, your content results will be completely different.

If the purpose is to attract new users, your content should focus on stimulating users' various sharing psychology (such as speaking for users, creating a good image for users, etc.). At the same time, when measuring data indicators, your focus points are also different. For example, the former focuses on sharing conversion rate ; the latter focuses on user login frequency, reading time, etc.

3. Knowledge system required for independent operation

Through the previous explanation of actual operational scenarios and operation processes, we have already had a perceptual understanding of operational practices.

Next, I will formally introduce how to "build an operations knowledge system" so that you can carry out operations work independently . This is also what many children's shoes are concerned about:

Many friends may have noticed that this issue has been discussed in many articles in the industry. Based on the principle of " no discussion without value ", we would like to explain that currently most articles only stay at the "business level" of operations, which is precisely the simplest and most superficial.

For example, what modules are there in operation, what each module does, what traffic, channels, tools are available, etc. These are all skills that can be learned in a short time.

However, there is little discussion on how to approach and think when encountering different operational problems, the issue of "operational thinking level", and what solid "academic theoretical support" is needed at the underlying level .

However, the core competitiveness of operations lies precisely in the latter two - the part of the iceberg that sinks underwater .

Let’s take a look at the overview of the knowledge and skills of operations :

In reality, no matter whether you are engaged in public account operation, event operation, user operation or channel promotion , if you pay a little attention, you will find that the thinking, analysis, judgment and decision-making in the operation process are all inseparable from the support of the following two layers in the figure: "thinking layer" and "underlying knowledge", which will be applied consciously or unconsciously.

For example, Xiaomei in the previous example, when she initially analyzed whether the "topic column" was popular, if she did not have basic statistical thinking, she might have rejected the operation strategy based solely on the low reading volume, and would not have recognized that the problem was "users are interested but not aware of it."

For example, did Xiaomei come up with the idea of ​​"chasing the goddess" activity on campus out of thin air? This activity is based on the common results of college students' "psychological analysis", "communication characteristics", "creative thinking" and "structured thinking" in the planning, organization and implementation process.

Some companies think that running a recruitment event is all about recruiting lively, outgoing, and good-looking candidates, but this is a complete misunderstanding of the direction.

"Thinking ability and knowledge accumulation" are the core competitiveness of operations , bosses.

The industry’s information on the “tool layer” and “business layer” in the above figure is already overwhelming, so this article will not add to the over-explosive information.

For new operators, it doesn’t matter if we have no experience. The most frightening thing is that when we encounter a problem, we don’t even know how to think.

Below, we will focus on explaining the 9 knowledge points of the operations "thinking layer" , aiming to help us gain " ideas for independently conducting operations work ", which is the "entry".

1. Product value insights

No matter what product we operators are operating, we must first have a deep understanding of it:

• What is the product value proposition?
• Which problems of which types of users are solved?
• What are the competing products in the industry, what is their market share, what are their strengths and weaknesses… ?

Operators must be fully aware of these issues. This is the first step in operational thinking.

For example:

If you operate a public account for early childhood education (note that the content of the public account itself is the "product" at this time). You need to think about the value proposition: to provide young parents with scientific early childhood education knowledge to solve their confusion about their children's education.

You continue to search for competitor public accounts in the industry and find that there are already several large accounts. After further analysis, you find that although the content of these large accounts is good, most of them are lengthy, with many tweets every day and serious content homogeneity. Your advantage lies in the strong professional ability of your editors, who can process the essential information in depth and make it more readable.

2. User positioning, research and analysis

As mentioned earlier, any operational strategy is targeted at a specific user segment, so before we implement an operational strategy, we must first determine: who are our own users? And do a certain level of research beforehand . User research is a professional field in itself and is not discussed in detail in this article.

Through user positioning and analysis, we can preliminarily determine which channel the target users are more concentrated in, what method is more appropriate and efficient to contact them , etc.

Continuing with the example of the early childhood education public account, who are the target fans of your early stages? Is it the hot mom, the father, or the elder of the next level? Different user groups have huge differences in content preferences, reading habits, and strategies for stimulating dissemination.

If we target the hot mom group, then if we mix some "considerate mothers" or "praising mothers" content in the early childhood education content, it is more likely to resonate with them and lead them to forward it.

3. Goal-oriented awareness

Goal orientation can be said to be one of the most important awarenesses for operators, but from the questions I received backstage, many operators have no concept of " current stage goals ".

For operations specialists, the interim goals usually include: maintaining or increasing the reading rate and forwarding rate of a certain type of content; maintaining or increasing the number of visits and conversion rates of e-commerce; maintaining or increasing the number of new users (fans) in a certain period; increasing the user activity rate of a certain function; attempting to attract new users through a new channel and evaluating the cost-effectiveness; attempting a new method to activate user activity and evaluating the cost-effectiveness, etc.

For example, in the case of a preschool education public account, when we start the operation, we must first set a phased goal, such as how many followers we need to gain in the first month and how much activity budget we are prepared to invest? Only with clear goals can operators take clear actions, and it can also "force" us to continuously adjust and optimize operational strategies.

4. Channel sorting and evaluation ( attracting new users )

For independent operations specialists, when we receive a phased goal (here it means attracting new users), we usually have to evaluate various user contact channels, their cost-effectiveness and contact methods , and try to conduct contact in order of merit .

For example, for early childhood education public accounts, we can conduct an exhaustive investigation and find that the online channels for reaching hot moms include: maternal and child communities, social groups , other maternal and child public accounts, etc.; the offline channels include: kindergartens, maternal and child milk powder, toy supermarkets, maternal and child hospitals, parks and playgrounds, etc.

We need to do our best to collect user density, contact methods, contact costs, etc. of various channels. For example, in supermarkets, you can consider cooperating with merchants to place roll-up banners; while in hospitals and amusement parks where there are many people coming and going, you can adopt the method of door-to-door sales . For online traffic channels, it is necessary to evaluate the rules of the community and how to make the best use of content to attract traffic.

5. Overall planning

Whether we are planning to attract new users through a certain channel, activate users through a certain strategy, or achieve a certain transaction rate for a certain type of product, we need to make a plan in advance, including: which participants are involved in the whole process , what is their respective division of labor , when will it be completed, what quality needs to be achieved, whether the whole user participation process has been tested , whether it is smooth , etc.

Take making a QR code for a roll-up banner to be placed in the store as an example. You need to think carefully about: what kind of content is more attractive to users, how to write a short copy , where is the best place to put the brochure in the store, how long does it take to make the roll-up banner, are there any other precautions, etc.

6. Data target identification and tracking

When we set the goal for each implementation of our operational strategy, it means that the data target for this time is also determined, and what we operators need to think about is: in response to the data target, can the existing resources and conditions capture the corresponding feedback data ? If not, at which links do we need to collect data and do we need R&D assistance?

For example, when scanning QR codes, you need to consider adding different recognition parameters to QR codes from different channels, so that you can count the number of new users acquired from different channels.

7. Data collection and analysis

During each operation, remember to collect, screen, clean, and analyze the data according to business needs for decision-making.

Regarding the process of data collection and analysis, Li Shaojia particularly emphasized statistical analysis problems that are very easy to make, such as "base probability", "survivor bias", and "availability bias".

Remember: data always serves the business, and insight into the meaning of the business is the prerequisite, otherwise no matter how awesome the data analysis is, it will be useless.

For example, here is a typical statistical case:

According to statistics, the vast majority of car accidents occur within 25 kilometers of home. So do we need to come to the fallacy that for safety reasons it is best to drive 25 kilometers away from home and then take a taxi home?

In fact, if we think about it carefully, we will find that most people drive within 25 kilometers from home, so the probability of a car accident will naturally be higher. This is a typical basic probability problem.

This is why I emphasize the importance of having solid knowledge of statistical decision making.

8. Input-output ratio evaluation

Although this is something that people at the operations manager level and above need to particularly consider, Li Shaojia believes that as an excellent operations specialist, one can also cultivate the work habit of conducting self-assessment through input-output ratio and thus "operation iteration."

In addition, it is best for us operators to develop the habit of keeping an operations diary every day, summarizing the daily operational gains and losses and recording key data.

9. User demand insights

As the position that has the most frequent and in-depth contact with users on the front line, operations naturally shoulders the important task of detecting changes in user needs at any time or exploring users' deep needs , while also feeding back the needs to product managers as completely as possible. (Of course, the management of Internet companies must formulate corresponding incentive measures for this)

For example, in the example of the sports app at the beginning, when Xiaomei noticed that users often made appointments with other users in the WeChat group to run together, should she consider launching a "running appointment" function in the app? Or maybe you often see users like to show each other their running speed and mileage, so can you consider launching a "competition" function?

These are all worthy of further research.

10. Add one more thing not shown in the above figure: Dynamic analysis of internal and external environment

This actually goes far beyond the "entry-level" requirements. We will briefly discuss this here and will discuss it as a special tweet later depending on the situation.

The so-called internal and external environment is similar to the "Porter Five Forces Model". Of course, for us operators, the factors that we care more about should include: the emergence of competitors, new alternatives (such as public accounts replacing early blogs), the withdrawal of old users (such as the natural withdrawal of children of users of early childhood education products as they grow up), the upgrading of tool platforms (such as the transition from the Internet to mobile Internet , time fragmentation)... Any change in these factors will have a major impact on the planning of operations, and we operators must always maintain a keen sense of smell.

Every time you carry out operations, you can almost subconsciously think about the above 10 questions. Then congratulations, you have already acquired the basic qualities of an operator . From the above "knowledge panorama", it can be seen that no matter what operations position you are in, the above "thinking points" are "universal" .

Of course, any of the above knowledge points can become a research field if expanded in depth. This article only discusses the overall macro situation to help readers have a comprehensive understanding of the overall operation.

As for the most basic theoretical knowledge, it will ultimately determine how far you can go on the road of operations. They are almost equivalent to the amount of knowledge in several professional courses in college.

However, in the final analysis, operations is a practical job, and the academic thinking of "learning for the sake of learning" is very inefficient. It is recommended that we learn in a targeted manner when we encounter problems and look for corresponding solutions. Only in this way can we activate the brain's curiosity to the maximum extent, apply what we have learned, and feed back into practice. As shown in the following figure:

Finally, it must be emphasized that operators need unique creative thinking, critical thinking, and system holistic thinking, and they also need broad knowledge, vision, and imagination to be successful. This cannot be achieved by simply focusing on "utilitarian" learning.

In other words, we need to find some balance between "pragmatism" and "romanticism": whether it is history, literature, music, painting, or even tea art, drama... these diverse "pan-knowledge" can effectively awaken the integration of our brain's "talent":

Only in the alternation of tension and relaxation, and in the collision of reality and fantasy, can the light deep in wisdom be awakened .

4. Brief description of operation entry positions (optional: those with experience can skip this)

Of course, for those of us who want to engage in operations, even if we have the basic skills mentioned above, we still need a specific operations position as the "entry point" to our operations career. So, which "entry point" is best for you?

Let’s take a quick look at four common types of operations positions:

Content Operation ( New Media Operation )

Content operation and new media operation are usually two types of positions, but the job attributes of the two are very similar, so I will talk about them together.

The carrier of content operation is usually APP products, while the carrier of new media operation is mostly public accounts (PS: the scope of new media is much larger than public accounts, but many companies insist on equating the two...). Both have two working goals: one is to provide content information for users within the product (public account fans), or to organize and maintain a good content ecology (UGC), that is, to improve user experience and activity rate; the other is to use its own content to distribute it on various external content information platforms, so as to acquire new users for the product.

Therefore, if you are sensitive to content and copywriting, are more active online than in real life, have a special appreciation and ability to judge trends in the content area you are responsible for , and it would be even better if you have original ability, then content operation is a very suitable position for you. (Note: The X operational thinking skills mentioned above are the basis. Not repeating them here does not mean that they are not needed. The same applies below)

Event Operations

Event operation also has the dual purpose of attracting new customers and promoting activation, that is, planning various online or offline activities according to the characteristics of products and users, and solidifying cost-effective activities into regular event mechanisms when conditions are right.

Therefore, if you can sensitively grasp what kind of activities users are keen on, are good at planning and interpreting the entire process of the activity, have rigorous organizational skills, and project promotion capabilities , then event operation is very suitable for you. For companies that do not hold events very frequently, people in event operations positions usually also have to take on the responsibilities of content operations, so having copywriting skills is a strong plus.

User Operation

Responsible for building a user operation system and conducting refined management of users. To put it simply, it means screening different users, such as new, inactive, active, VIP users, etc., and formulating different management and operation measures for them to improve user retention rate , activity rate, and loyalty. The ultimate result of the efforts is to enhance the platform's influence on users.

If you are meticulous, sensitive to data, and have a strong sense of service , you can get started with user operations.

Product Operations

Product operations are usually responsible for all aspects of the operation of independent functional modules, including introducing users, obtaining user feedback, analyzing user data, and proposing optimization measures for product functions based on demand. It is very close to the responsibilities of a product manager and has a certain overlap with the work of user operations.

Product operation requires high comprehensive abilities. If you are confident, have a broad knowledge base, and enjoy studying and interpreting human nature , then product operation welcomes you.

V. Conclusion

Finally, let’s think carefully about what it means to be “getting started” in any field.

We believe that understanding “ doing things scientifically ” is the beginning.

It's like knowing when to breathe first when swimming, instead of jumping right into the water and waving your hands and feet;

Another example is that computer programming requires understanding data structures, algorithms, logic, and design patterns first, rather than just typing code on the keyboard.

So for Internet operations, the so-called "entry-level" level should understand:

Internet business model : users, user quality, and influence on users, these three together constitute the value foundation of Internet companies.

You should also understand the core considerations for operating your business :

1. Understand product value
2. User positioning and analysis
3. Goal-oriented awareness
4. Channel sorting and evaluation
5. Overall planning
6. Data target identification
7. Data collection, analysis
8. Input-output ratio evaluation (operation iteration)
9. User demand insights
10. Dynamic analysis of internal and external environment (advanced skills)

This can be called getting started.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @李少加 is compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!