Get rid of the 80% of miscellaneous jobs and move into the 20% of senior operations
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Internet jobs are usually divided into three categories: technology, products, and operations . Front-end, back-end and data constitute technical engineers. B-end products and C-end products are considered the two major directions of products. All other roles are packaged together and called operations. Due to the low entry threshold, low initial salary, and often vague job roles, operations seem to have become the role at the bottom of the Internet contempt chain. When students who have just entered the industry introduce their work content, they can only describe it as filling in gaps or doing miscellaneous tasks. I have been working for a year now. Looking back at the major problems I encountered when I first started, I would like to sort them out: How to define the role of operations? What types of operations can be divided into? How do the operational requirements for different products differ? What qualities and abilities are needed to get out of the pit? 1. How to define operations There is a view that the Internet has evolved from being concept-driven in the early days to being product-driven in recent years, and will definitely enter the operation-driven stage next. Firstly, as the industry has developed to date, product homogeneity has become increasingly serious, and the part that can reflect product value has shifted from functional innovation to comprehensive operations; secondly, after a large number of Internet developments claimed to "subvert everything", they finally realized that respecting, penetrating and serving the existing business models of traditional industries are their own value points. This view is certainly not entirely correct. At least in the field of toB products and high-tech innovative companies, the winning point still lies in their products. But for most Internet companies, instead of exploring users' more profound needs, it is better to serve users well based on existing needs. After all, capital has gradually cooled down. It is no longer the era where one can build an empire with just a product plan. The persuasiveness of “having a good result” is far greater than “having a good idea”. Operations and Product are both non-technical roles that often appear in packages. "Products give birth to children, operations raise them" and "All manual interventions around the product cycle are operations." These two are the definitions of operations that I agreed with in the early days. But now it seems that both views are based on the product, and operations play a more passive role. If we look at the Internet's essence of "connecting everything", the role of operations is to "establish the best way of connection", which can be any combination of products, users and businesses when connected. Mr. Huang once said, "The ultimate goal of operations is to maximize product value and user value," which is very true. With this said, operations seems to be a framework with a larger theme. Why do people say that operations are miscellaneous tasks? This starts with the broad classification of operations. 2. How to classify operations In a relatively mature business environment, common operational roles may include the following: Content operations, responsible for the quantity and quality of content produced, requires considerable content productivity (text, pictures, videos, etc.); New media operations are the company's external facade, responsible for the popularity of topics or external backflow, and require the ability to plan topics, incite public opinion, and hook up with big accounts; User operations are generally divided into new customer operations and old customer operations, responsible for overall user growth, retention, and activity; Activity operation is responsible for the company's operational goals within a specific period of time (such as sales promotion, attracting new customers, and building momentum), which requires certain planning, coordination, execution, and evaluation capabilities; Market channel operations are responsible for attracting a steady stream of new customers for the company by placing advertisements on various platforms. This concludes the introduction to basic pure operations positions. You may find, "Hey, why is PR not in it?", "Hey, isn't business analysis also an operation?", "Hey, isn't cross-industry cooperation also an operation?", "Hey, aren't BD management, SKU quality control, logistics planning, and product category management also operations?"... Yes, these are also operations, but these are positions that only appear in specific businesses at specific stages of development. If divided by service objects, operations can be roughly divided into four categories: B-end, C-end, business analysis, and sales support. B-end operations are oriented towards merchants and product categories, and the core goal is to ensure the supply side; C-end operations are oriented towards users (i.e. traffic), and in addition to user management and event operations, they also involve traffic conversion; business analysis can be divided into three types: long-term strategic analysis focuses on industry trends, thinking about what the company will do in 3-5 years; mid-term operational analysis focuses on the market structure, thinking about what the company will do in 1 year; short-term operational analysis focuses on the current competitive situation, commonly known as the fire brigade, doing shorter-term things; sales-end operations tend to be supportive, one is BD goal setting and performance appraisal, and the other is solving the analysis needs of the front line, which usually does not involve the coordination and scheduling of specific resources. This classification is more common in O2O companies. After the entrepreneurial journey, they have certain development ideas but the departments are not yet solidified. They have the shadow of traditional company positions and the business logic of Internet companies. But for individuals looking for career positioning, I recommend using Mr. Huang’s classification method: (1) Content production and maintenance operations For this type of position, the main work content may be the maintenance of a certain content section or the production of specific content. Basically, a large number of new media operations can be classified into this category. The core competency of this type of position is to be sensitive to content, to have a fairly accurate judgment of what kind of content is likely to attract clicks and what kind of content is likely to spread, to be familiar with various content publishing and content dissemination channels, and to have the ability to produce at least 70 points of content. Working backwards, if I were to recruit a good content operator, I think ideally he or she should have the following characteristics: like reading, like hanging out in various content communities, like posting opinions and content in various communities and being able to trigger strong interactions with other users through content, have solid writing skills, like to think about various things, and must think deeply. It would be best if he or she has thought about issues such as life and human nature, and it would be best if he or she can express his or her thoughts clearly after thinking about them. (2) Creative planning and creative marketing operations The main work content of this type of position may be the planning and execution of some activities, events, small games or H5, but while planning, one must not only consider the need to make users like to play, but also often need to be able to drive the growth of actual operational indicators. The core ability of this type of position is basically creative planning ability. At the same time, you must understand communication and be familiar with the communication logic and communication paths of traditional media, as well as the communication logic and communication paths in social media. You must also be familiar with various common online and offline activity forms and carriers (for example, the same activity may have very different presentation forms when implemented on a PC and on an H5 terminal). Working backwards, if I want to recruit a good creative marketing operator, I hope he/she has the following characteristics: love to play, have a big imagination, be sensitive to new things, be familiar with various hot events, often be the kind of person who will not miss anything new, hang out in various online communities, have strong organizational skills, have organized at least one or two interesting activities, have at least one or two enthusiastic hobbies that can make a name for themselves, and will subconsciously observe and learn from various classic copywriting and marketing cases . (3) Channel promotion operations The main work content of this type of position is promotion, which may or may not cost money, but in any case, the final result is the only evaluation criterion. The core competencies of this type of position are familiarity and closeness with various promotion channels and methods, as well as strong execution capabilities. For example, when doing app store promotion, others only have 30% of the app store channels, but you have full control over more than 80% of the channels, and you clearly know what promotional resources are available in each channel, how much it costs, what types of users come, etc. This is the difference. Speaking of characteristics, a good channel promotion operator is often highly result-oriented, has strong execution capabilities, and can handle many trivial matters calmly. He should also have some understanding and familiarity with various channel promotion methods. Even if he is not familiar with a promotion method, he should be able to fully understand its logic within 2-3 hours. In addition, this type of operation often requires being good at dealing with people and being able to blend into the promotion circle of a certain channel in a short period of time. When one lacks resources, one can find matching resources through various means such as active searching and asking for introductions and recommendations. (4) User interaction and retention operations This type of position often involves maintenance for a certain type or several types of users. What we often focus on is the activity of users of the corresponding type. (I personally started out as this type of operator) The basic ability for this type of position is relatively good communication skills, being good at explaining things clearly online, being able to convince others and win their trust. The core ability may be the ability to "quickly make others like you online", plus some relatively strong organizational skills. An excellent user interaction and maintenance operator often spends a long time online, is familiar with various online communities and the latest hot events, and has a strong presence in various groups, communities, and forums. He or she has the qualities to become the central figure of a small circle. In addition, this type of operation should not be too rigid and should be very good at teasing and being teased. (5) Sales-oriented operations This type of operation often involves the expansion of certain specific users and partners (such as the offline merchant expansion of various O2O companies). Therefore, the core competency of this position may be sales ability. Excellent sales operations are undoubtedly highly result-oriented, good at quickly establishing relationships and gaining trust, and familiar with various business cooperation negotiation points and processes. In the later stage, this core capability may further evolve and develop into the ability of resource integration (commonly known as "setting up a game"), that is, whether it is possible to involve more high-quality cooperative resources through a series of designs to complete an event or project together, and ultimately benefit everyone. (6) Strong execution and project-driven operations This type of operation often involves routine and execution-related work (such as reviewing and labeling content on the site, batch updating of course texts on the site, and promoting the launch of a product module such as Q&A). This type of operation often involves more complex work, so its core capabilities are likely to be execution, affairs management, and project management capabilities. Excellent executive operations personnel must be people with strong execution capabilities and very organized work methods. They are often decisive and efficient in action, and are also good at using various forms and tools to assist in managing their own affairs. You may often see various sophisticated and awesome work forms on their machines. (7) Strategic Operations The main work of strategic operations is often to formulate certain strategies in a targeted manner based on the current stage of the product and the problems it faces (such as Didi Chuxing’s order dispatching strategy in a certain geographical area), and to promote continuous data monitoring after implementation to maximize user value. The core capabilities of this type of operation are basically data analysis and mining capabilities, as well as strong logical thinking and overall perspective. Excellent strategic operators must have clear and powerful logic, and their speech and expression are very clear and organized. They are also often very sensitive to data. You may often see various data analyses and comparisons on their computers. 3. Focus of different product operations In companies with different industry backgrounds and different stages of development, the so-called operational focus is also different. There is also a point of view here that when choosing a job, you must give priority to the company's main battlefield. The main battlefield means more professional business perspective, development speed and advancement opportunities. So what are the key points of operations for different products? Tool products: promotion channels and promotion event planning; Content, community and social products: content production, channel promotion, traction and maintenance, user segmentation, interactive mechanism, and system-accurate recommendation; Platform products: growth in the early stage depends on human + seed user operations, and in the middle and late stages depends on strategy + business matching efficiency; E-commerce products: traffic channels, user retention, brand building, etc. Find the right battlefield to fight according to your own role. 4. How to get out of the pit Operations is a job where the growth path is not so clear. For example, when you are working on a product, you may know how the functions/modules you are responsible for change at each stage, but this is not the case with operations. Even with the most advanced operations, it is inevitable to get involved in the actual business work. Especially in some less mature companies, the current situation is inevitable: "no one teaches business logic, no one takes care of product issues, no one looks at analysis and evaluation, and no one determines the direction of development." In the past year, I have often been stuck in such a situation. Sometimes I complained that my leader did not give me a clear direction, sometimes I complained that I received too little support, and sometimes I complained that the company did not pay attention to repeat business and accumulation. Now that my mindset has changed, looking back at these problems, some of them may have solutions: Core principles: At all times, be responsible for your own growth. The company is just a platform and the boss is just a tool. The company doesn’t pay attention to replication and accumulation? It doesn’t matter. Maybe what you are doing is not the company’s current focus, but accumulating experience into methodology is a personal experience. In other words, if your development direction is not in the direction of the company's development, just focus on what you are doing. In a changing environment, being able to grasp every change and go with the trend is indeed an opportunity, but for most newcomers who have just entered the industry and are still confused, focusing on one direction will be more helpful to their future. After all, when you are too inexperienced, getting involved in changes will only drag you into it and make it difficult to control. Basic qualities: goal-oriented + data-oriented For example, if your goal is to become an excellent new media operator, then even if you are just browsing Weibo on a daily basis, you will want to look at information such as hot topics, interactions, and sources of materials. With long-term accumulation, you will develop your own judgment on the popularity of each type of topic after it is released, and which channels will have higher interactions. This is different from people who come to post on Weibo every day and then ignore it on weekdays. Regarding the importance of data, there is a saying that "if it cannot be quantified, it cannot be optimized." If you are unable to quantify the results of all operations work with data, then even if your boss sees the results of your work, it will probably be a waste of time for you. Solidify the methodology through repeated projects, otherwise doing it for a month and repeating it for a year will have similar effects on personal growth. As for the specific goal setting principles, goal splitting logic, project management methods, data indicator establishment and so on, they are all nonsense if you elaborate on them. The operation work system may be different for everyone. Listening and watching more are secondary. Only by thinking more and doing more can you gain results. Frankly speaking, the most effective way to get rid of the current 80% of miscellaneous work and move into the 20% of advanced operations is to cultivate one's own inner strength. Let's encourage each other. Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising This article was compiled and published by @单利强 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! |
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