What kind of operations does the Internet industry need in the next ten years?
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As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, I have a feeling that in the next 10 years starting from 2016, the value and role of operations will become increasingly important in the entire Internet industry. This trend has already been reflected - almost every week, I receive a large number of messages from friends asking me to recommend reliable operations to them. They all complain that they can't find good operations, and even first-tier giant companies like Didi are no exception. The logic is actually very simple - in the past decade, everyone has relied on product experience and technology to win, so operations within many companies often only require execution. Internet companies in the previous era either had no operations (for example, the earliest portals did not have the concept of "operations"), or had operations but their status was very low, and they basically mainly did manual work (such as posting, deleting posts, reviewing, promotion execution, etc.). Today, various new products are emerging one after another, and the gameplay of many products has begun to undergo earth-shaking changes. There are more and more homogeneous products. Product experience and technology are no longer so absolutely important. The importance of "operation" has suddenly begun to emerge. CEOs increasingly need an operation team to formulate different operation strategies and methods based on market dynamics, product attributes and competitors, so as to better interact with users and allow their products to grow and develop. At the same time, there are very few operations in the industry that are prepared for this change. Judging from the situation of the students we have met in the three classes, objectively speaking, more than 85% of the operations in the Internet industry are still at the "single point execution" stage and cannot meet the requirements. In this context, one thing that is foreseeable is that in the next 2-3 years, leaving aside the execution-oriented junior operations, the demand for mid- and senior-level operations positions will be greater, and their salaries will also increase significantly. Then, the next unavoidable topic must be: What kind of operations will the Internet need in the next 10 years? In other words, what should an operation that will be snapped up in the market look like? I think there are four points, one by one. 1. The Internet in the next decade will need operators who “understand the business” The Internet world before 2014 was more of a world of online tools , online communities, e-commerce and content information platforms. After entering the "Internet +" era in 2014, the Internet began to penetrate into traditional industries in large numbers, becoming an important link for various traditional industries to provide services to users. In the previous Internet world, operations mostly only needed to focus on a few established areas such as online promotion, content maintenance, and online activities. But since then, people have gradually discovered that in many traditional industry fields and in the process of combining with traditional industries, the Internet does not necessarily have to play a disruptive role, but rather it must improve the efficiency of the entire industry better and more efficiently based on the business logic of traditional industries. Typically, finance and education are the first. When I communicate with some friends, I find that the so-called "Internet finance" and "Internet education" are not the Internet in essence, but still finance and education. Taking education as an example, what the Internet needs to do at this time is to provide services in one or more aspects of teaching and research, academic management, enrollment, organization and presentation of learning materials, after-school social interaction , etc. to improve its efficiency, rather than suddenly subverting traditional education by creating something online. The Internet in the next ten years will be one that is more deeply and closely integrated with more fields such as "education". It is almost unimaginable to operate in such a field if you don’t understand the business. For example, it is basically impossible for a person who has no understanding of education, teaching research, and the operating logic of traditional educational institutions and schools to operate three classes well. A person who has no knowledge of the moving and decoration industry, does not know the specific profit margins of each segment and cannot clearly sort out the industrial chain behind it, will basically find it difficult to be responsible for the operation of products such as 58 Daojia. Only by understanding the industry and the business can you combine your product features and advantages to develop more effective strategies for your products, or optimize and adjust existing key business processes in a more targeted manner. 2. The Internet in the next decade will need more operators with a macro perspective who can be responsible for the growth of products. If you have never been independently responsible for the growth of a product, then basically in an operations position, your thinking and vision will naturally be limited. For example, you may still be more concerned about how to achieve your boss's KPI. An operator who can truly be "responsible for the product" should at least go through every link in the growth of a product as shown in the figure below, and continue to achieve good output through the optimization and adjustment of specific operational strategies and methods. Even if the product you are responsible for is actually just a QQ group or a Douban group. On this level, I suggest that everyone who aspires to become an excellent operator must find ways to create or find some practical opportunities to be "responsible for the product". This can be by running a group or a WeChat public account, by volunteering to help some communities with management and maintenance work, by looking for potential opportunities to be responsible for projects independently at work, by participating in other people's projects in their spare time, and so on. 3. The Internet in the next decade will need more operators who “understand products” Understanding the product here means "being able to provide reliable requirements for the product based on the actual needs of the operations side" and "being able to participate in product discussions and modify the product from an operational standpoint." In the process of designing and improving a product, some requirements are based on the product side, such as the design of the core functional modules of the product; while other requirements are based on the operation side, and the purpose is to better assist the growth of the product, such as standardizing and modularizing the production of some topics and content to improve the efficiency of the CMS system, such as user incentive systems and point systems, or some data points required by the operation side, etc. If you want to make a good product, these two types of needs are actually indispensable. But the problem is that many product managers may not have participated in or been responsible for operations, so they may not consider the needs of the operational side during product design and development. Even if they do think about it, it is not clear to them when these needs need to be considered and to what extent. At this time, if the operations staff can understand the product, communicate with product colleagues without obstacles, and correct some product requirements from the operations side, it will be very valuable to the development and growth of the product. Therefore, an excellent operator definitely does not just need to know how to write soft articles and organize activities. He also needs to understand some products. At least he needs to understand "users, needs, and scenarios". He needs to be able to discuss with product colleagues whether many needs are valid based on specific usage scenarios. He needs to understand the entire process from conception to launch of each product function. He needs to know roughly which functions and needs have a higher implementation cost and which needs are easier to implement, and so on. With these, your possibilities within an Internet company will become more open and you will be able to participate in more core decision-making. 4. The Internet in the next decade will need operations that can win the heartfelt love of C-end users. As I mentioned, in recent years, with the development of social media, the logic of information dissemination in the Internet world is changing. Figure 1: Traditional information dissemination and distribution model Figure 2: Information dissemination and distribution model in the social media environment . This change has a huge direct impact on operators. Around 1999 to 2010, the focus of Internet operations may have been more on channel construction and traffic distribution. If you create a website but cannot build enough friendly links, cannot find enough websites to exchange traffic with you, cannot get enough exposure on classified navigation websites or upstream websites, and the SEO is average, it is estimated that this website will have a hard time surviving. Since 2010, with the rise of social media, the vitality of a product has increasingly become whether it can win the users' heartfelt recognition and love, and whether it can make users willing to interact with it on social media. In other words, "spontaneous user" dissemination has increasingly replaced the role of "channels" and has become the source of a product's vitality. From now to the next ten years, the power of "people" and "users" in the online world will continue to return and be amplified, including the rise of " live streaming " and " Internet celebrities " in the past year, which are also corresponding products. Therefore, I expect this trend to continue. Therefore, in the next ten years of the Internet, a more valuable operation must be one that is better at interacting with users and winning their recognition. For example, you must be good at winning the favor of users through writing articles, you must be good at planning and creating interesting activities and events to make users willing to interact with you, you must be good at building your influence in social media, and so on. On the contrary, the value of "channel" may be weakened. So far, these are some of my thoughts on the future of operators. I hope it can spark some of your own thinking. To be honest, the above four points do not sound easy. If you ask me whether it is difficult to grow up to be such a person, the answer is undoubtedly: it is extremely difficult. This process is by no means achieved overnight. But it must be fun too. I believe you have already felt this kind of fun in my past series. This is an interesting and long road. I walked it without any direction for 8 years before I achieved some success. I believe that in the next ten years, there will be more people who can move faster and better than me. I hope that you and I, as fellow operators, can live up to the future, which may very well belong to the next 10 years of operations.
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