What are the small details when running an event?

Before writing this article, I was particularly concerned about how to write it well. I have been thinking about it for 2 days but still can't write any more. On the one hand, I don’t want to rehash the old stuff and repeat what has already been written on the market about what to do before, during, and after an event. On the other hand, I was thinking, when most people are pursuing "skills", can I write some inspiring and useful ideas that can be used as reference during execution? Although I feel that what I write is not good enough, I still hope it can help you!

Event operations can be large or small. Later, I will write a series on the overall "event operation" for your reference. When we participate in community activities, there are some common methods that seem nothing special, but in fact they have certain purposes behind them. In addition to explaining the secrets behind these methods, this article also summarizes the six essential mindsets for event operations, and shares with you my views on community operations.

So what are the six key thinking points for successful event operations? They are as follows:

1. Sense of Purpose

First of all, people who don’t have a strong sense of purpose cannot do operations. Operations have a clear purpose in doing anything. If your boss asks you to organize an activity and you just start doing it without thinking, you will definitely suffer a loss. Be sure to interpret the purpose behind the leadership. Whether the activity is to increase sales, increase user activity, or improve user retention rate, these must be very clear.

2. Starting thinking

Before doing an event, the most important thing is to do a resource inventory analysis. You need to take stock of what resources you have and potential resources, including budget, prizes, communication support, and KOLs at all levels (including the recently popular KOCs). You need to make permutations and combinations for these. Some of them may not be available, but there are still ways to reach and use them. Why do I say so? Please continue reading.

3. Leverage Thinking

The picture above is a very historical picture. At that time, I graduated from junior college and interned in the first Internet startup cafe in Xiamen. We needed to invite a lot of heavyweight guests when we held the startup weekend event. What should I do if I didn’t have the resources? So I searched for a while and finally found the Weibo communication analysis tool.

First, we can see from the figure that when celebrities post updates, there are several central communication nodes. Big shots usually receive a lot of private messages and don’t have time to respond to you. However, the central transmission point around him is most likely the person closest to him, and it is easier to contact him, so this is a potential entry point. This method was used at that time to invite big names such as Yuan Yue, chairman of Zero Point, and Xu Xiaoping, a famous investor.

4. Process thinking (including rhythm)

Any activity must have a process and rhythm. You need to anticipate how users can enter your activity process in the most efficient way, and what reactions or concerns they may have. Only then can you make effective interventions based on these. This can be achieved by introducing a tool, which is the user journey map. I won’t go into detail about the user journey map here. Please use your hands to search it on Baidu.

5. Data Thinking

Usually before doing an event, in addition to taking inventory of resources and doing ROI calculations, I will do an effectiveness evaluation in advance. If it is a similar activity, I will take stock of the resources or channels used before and calculate the benchmark value.

For example, I have over 2,500 friends on my personal account. So when I launched my first promotion, 20% of the people participated, which is 500 people. Then next time when I promote this type of activity, I will use this as the data baseline when estimating conversions based on historical data. That is to say, when I hold a similar event again, I will count 500 people in advance. When the benchmark values ​​of each channel are clear, I can basically calculate the number of participants in this event and estimate the effect of the event. But it is not 100% accurate, and further adjustments need to be made considering changes in user psychology. Please continue reading.

6. User psychology

The picture above is what Sister Dao shared. The same principle applies when we organize activities. The effect of the activity is not a simple addition of estimates, but the careful design of each step. When you have made a plan that you feel very satisfied with, the execution is often not as smooth as before. The reason is that you don’t understand the users. It is easy for you to think of yourself as a user, which is why there is the concept of small-scale testing of activities.

The above thinking is necessary no matter it is event operation or other operations. In the community, everyone often sees these operations. What do these operations represent? I have sorted them out to provide you with a reference.

You may ask why there is no anti-loss section? Let me first state my point of view. A community needs to maintain a certain level of activity. When a community cannot remain active, there must be too many silent users. If dormant users cannot be activated within a period of time, they need to be replaced frequently. Just like hiring employees in a company, the personnel structure needs to be optimized regularly. It sounds cruel, but this is the reality.

There are usually the following situations when a community is inactive:

1. Changes in demand: One is the shift in user demand. The services provided by the current community can no longer meet the current user needs. Even if users are active, they cannot get the value they want, so users are likely to choose silence.

2. Unbalanced information load: Advertisements are everywhere in the community, and too many or too few messages will cause users to lose patience.

3. No clear user guidance: When a user is in a group and there is no phased guidance, a habit will not be formed. There will inevitably be service gaps and communication gaps between users and group owners, and between users. Over time, users will choose to give up communication.

So what inspiration can we get from these activities in the community?

1. Demand testing: Use the above methods to test the basic activity in the group and the matching of user needs. If there is no response at all, then this group will not be maintained, and the operation focus will be adjusted to the newly created user group.

2. Crowd screening: If this group regains a certain level of activity in a short period of time through optimization, be sure to screen out the active users. Don’t be too attached to the old group, but import the active users into the new group and finally disband the group. Of course, if you think this group still has advertising value, you can keep it.

3. Efficiency first: When it comes to community activities, the most important thing is to maintain active users and encourage them to be effectively and repeatedly active. What you should not care about is how many people are in the group. The reason why I say this is that I worked in the campus market in the early years. At that time, there were no less than a hundred university groups, and it was often only one of them that ultimately created value. If you spend time and energy maintaining an inactive old group, it will not only waste your energy, but also greatly reduce operational efficiency. For an operator, it is obviously not cost-effective.

Finally, let me summarize: community operation or all operations are a dynamic process. The community user portrait, content operation, and data analysis that I mentioned earlier are all dynamic processes. If you cannot understand them, you will most likely not be able to operate them well. A professional operation is to always keep yourself in a state of flux.

Many people have asked me, which book should I read first when entering the operations industry? In fact, all operations are wild. None of them grow up by reading or following a routine. So when you see a new platform, you have to drill into it, play with it, look at popular cases, disassemble it, summarize it, and review it!

Author: Zhizhong

Source: Shixian Operation (yyshixian)