Five years of practical operation experience, revealing seven golden rules of user operation!

Preface: User operation is the most important part of the entire operation process, and it is also the part that has the most frequent contact with users in the entire operation work. How to deal with users and how to make users happy is the core of user operation and the main content of this article.

Article 1: Understand the user's pain points and meet their needs

The original intention of the creation of each product is to meet the needs of a certain group of people, so that these people can continue to use the company's products, promote them and pay for them. However, in the development process of many companies, it is easy to go astray, ignore the essence, and focus on other things. Of course, too many competitors and poor service are also reasons why users don’t want to use your product. At this time, you need user operators to firmly grasp the user’s pain points, start from the source of user needs, and win over the users.

For example, a friend's company wanted to recruit 200 fresh graduates for sales, but no matter how he posted the information, he couldn't receive any resumes. He was very depressed, and finally asked me to think of a solution. I thought, now is the graduation season for college students, the market is still good, it is impossible not to recruit. But after I saw the recruitment information sent by my friend, my heart sank instantly. The full text of the recruitment information is about 500 words. The first 300 words introduce the company, the next 100 words introduce the job content, and the next 100 words introduce the employment standards. There is no mention of welfare benefits at all, but benefits are the issue that job seekers care about most. I did an analysis for a friend and found out what issues fresh graduates are most concerned about when looking for jobs: development space, salary and benefits, promotion system and company size. These are their pain points, and we must grasp these pain points and solve their needs fundamentally.

Now every product on the market has many competitors, and if you want to stand out, you need to grasp the needs of users and meet their needs. In other words, "If you want me to buy and use something, at least you should understand what I need to buy, right?"

Article 2: Seize the 10-minute "new user heat period"

A lot of user churn for a product happens within ten minutes of starting to use the product, which I call the “ten-minute heat period.” When a user comes to use your product, he or she must come with a need. Whether you can retain the user sometimes does not depend on how well you meet the needs, but on the impression of the user's first experience. For this first experience, the user will not give you too much time to demonstrate, that is, only 5-10 minutes.

The travel industry has always been hot, and has recently been receiving high amounts of financing. Today we will not talk about their popularity and market, but will only describe a scenario in which I once recommended a colleague to use a taxi app. I said, "It's cheap and the car is okay." These five words plus a punctuation mark completely met my colleague's needs. At that time, the company's management was relatively strict and mobile phones were not allowed during work. So a colleague secretly hid in the bathroom and downloaded a software. Then there was a series of procedures such as registration. Yes, registration and first use. My colleague studied it for a long time but couldn't figure it out. I will never forget what my colleague said to me after coming out of the bathroom, "Damn it, either I'm too stupid or I'm a moron when it comes to software development."

If you fail to seize the golden ten minutes when a new user uses the product for the first time, then the subsequent series of activities will be useless. Some people will say that this is a product problem, but in fact, product and operation are like twins. You cannot just say how the product is and then follow the operation. After all, operations are at the level that contacts users, and only operations know user behavior best. After that, no matter how much I recommended it, my friend insisted on not using this taxi app.

Article 3: Establish a core user group and cultivate seed users

A friend’s company has launched a new product. In order to avoid suspicion of advertising, I named the product A. Before the product was launched, my friend first posted a promotional article titled "Looking for first-time experiencers for a fee". Through the promotion of this article, he formed a WeChat group of 100 people, allowing group members to experience Product A for a fee, collect their feedback and suggestions, and then modify the product in a targeted manner to improve user experience. After the whole process, until the product was updated to the second version, my friend spent a total of 2,000 yuan, but got 200 core users in return.

I would like to add one more step here. When selecting core users, you can rely on paid experience stimulation in the early stage to gather a group of people. In the later stage, you must screen this group of people to find users who are passionate about the product. This group of people are your product's fans, or your core users. They will support you when your product goes wrong, help you find bugs, post comments for you, and promote your product through word-of-mouth, helping you quickly gain the first batch of users.

As for how to maintain this part of users, it is actually very simple. Give them product priority experience, activity privileges, frequently send small incentives in the group, and then assign them a caring administrator. Everything is enough, but the value they create for you far exceeds your efforts.

Article 4: Treat users like friends

After talking about the core user group in the third point, it is natural to achieve the fourth point. Whether you are maintaining core users or ordinary users, operators need to treat users as friends rather than just users. You have to understand that this is not just a matter of name, but also an attitude. When I was working at an Internet medical company, I had two interns, both of whom were from prestigious universities. They were able to get internship opportunities at Internet companies before they even graduated. This was a much higher starting point than for someone like me who graduated from a third-rate university. I gave each of them a WeChat group of 100 people to keep active and maintain. The goal is to get users in the group to recommend our products to their friends and develop ordinary users into core users.

The first intern would post a short joke in the group every day. At first, users would chat for a few words after seeing it, but he soon changed the rhythm to discussing the company's products and asked users to use them. Later, when users saw him posting jokes, they no longer replied, and at most they would just reply with a smiley face. After a month, the group was silent.

The second intern was very different. When users in the group were chatting, he would always interject a few words, asking whether Brother Li in the group had gotten rid of being single, talking about which city his student girl Xiaohong was going to work in after graduation, and talking to everyone about the happy things they had encountered that day, as if he was not our staff member but just an ordinary person. When our product needs testing, he would post a message in the group, "Brothers and sisters, this is an emergency. If you have time, please help me fill out a questionnaire, otherwise my boss will scold me," and then send a crying emoticon. Because the chats in the group were usually good, everyone didn't mind helping him. Some users even asked him if his salary would be deducted, and whether he needed help to write a letter of praise. Just like that, the mission was easily accomplished.

Article 5: Targeted push notifications and activities to get users excited

When we have the first group of users, how do we make them active? At this time, we need to use push and activities, and the first thing we need to do in these two points is to be accurate and targeted. The more accurate, the better the effect.

It is well known that users in the recruitment industry have strong periodicity, so in order to complete the user activity task, we must push. Before pushing messages, we need to accurately classify users, such as white-collar users and student users. White-collar users can be further divided according to their positions and years of work experience. At the same time, we can also select more active and silent users based on the user's last login time, and carry out targeted push and copywriting based on the different attributes of the users. With targeting, there will be accuracy, and the effect will be better than ordinary push effects.

When it comes to event planning, targeting is particularly important. Usually your user groups will have different psychological needs and behavioral habits at each stage. Just like student users will take civil service exams, CET-4 and CET-6, graduate, etc. at fixed times. We need to grasp this activity pattern of users and carry out targeted activities. This kind of activity will go straight to the heart of the character and hit the task requirements. It will be much better than some activities that only give out money and rewards, and it will not give users the impression that the activity is low-quality.

Article 6: Offer some exciting care to move users to tears

When I was working in an Internet medical company, I met a very good leader. Under her leadership, I was exposed to almost all of the company's operations. At that time, I managed a forum-type product where doctors could post and comment, and I only needed to guide the direction of the content.

I have analyzed the comments and likes of all the posts published by doctors. There are two categories with the highest data. One is the sharing of medical knowledge, and the other is the news of medical disputes. I used to think that this was all the reading habits of doctors. But one day, the number of comments and likes of a message instantly exceeded these two categories and jumped to the first place. Then I found this fish that slipped through the net. The content of the message was "Today is my birthday, and I received a point reward from Xunyi. Thank you, I am grateful, and I hope Xunyi will get better and better!"

The points are not many, but the thought is enough. It brings full surprise and unexpectedness to users, and enhances the user's stickiness to the product, especially for users who are new to the product. The effect is better. This is similar to the practice of some companies holding birthday parties for employees on their birthdays, or issuing anniversary cards and other rewards. Users may not care about your prize, but they care about your attention. Let me ask you, if you always go to your Moments to like posts every day, or just post a status to relax, besides proving that you are a likes fanatic, is it also to get more attention from people and gain a sense of security? The principle is the same.

Article 7: Establish connections between users so that no user is alone

I often play online games , including Dungeon Fighter, Crossfire, League of Legends, Tianxia and other games , so I have made a lot of gaming friends around me (Note: Let me talk for a while first, I am talking about operations, not gaming experience, because I am very bad at playing games). Why are games so addictive to us internet-addicted teenagers? There is a very important factor, which I call "user connection". Simply put, it is because you can fight with your friends and play with many partners. When you are ready to say goodbye to this game, your friends ask you to play together, will you go? When you haven't spent money on the game yet, suddenly a girl in the game says, let's get married in the game. I have prepared a dowry, and you can buy a diamond ring. After marriage, both of you will have improved abilities, and you can even travel together. Do you think you will spend money?

The game ends and the operation begins!

The same is true in operations. "User contact" can be used to give users psychological hints that each user is not fighting alone and is not using the product alone. There are many people who are connected to him who are using this product. Through this "user contact" driving model, we can activate and attract new users and enhance user stickiness. Just like many medical products have "patient communication forums", although patients cannot cure diseases, they can encourage each other and increase each other's stickiness to the product through encouragement, thereby completing user operation indicators.

Finally, all operational methods and experiences can only be used as references. More considerations need to be made in combination with the product itself, and appropriate methods should be selected to try and improve. This is why it is easy to operate but difficult to do well in operation. Operation requires not only simple execution, but also a kind of thinking, a deep thinking about both products and users.