Get started quickly! 7000 words to teach you how to master the underlying logic of operations!

1. What is Operation ?

What is operation? Because there are so many types of operations and with the popularity of the Internet, many types of jobs can be called operations, so operations are like Shakespeare's "Hamlet". I believe that every operations practitioner has his own understanding of operations.

Sometimes when friends or relatives ask you what you do, you answer: "Operations." Many times they will ask you in confusion what "operations" is? Because the daily operations work is also very complicated, and you don’t know how to explain it. Those who write articles, organize events, and even do sales. We often joke about ourselves and call ourselves handymen.

It doesn’t matter, this article will give you a new understanding of operations and its development path.

First of all, we need to know what operations are?

Common operations are divided into new media operations, user operations, content operations, event operations, community operations, data operations, e-commerce operations, product operations, market operations, etc. Do you feel your scalp tingling just by looking at these types? Of course, these are not all the types of operations, and the development path and work content of each type of operation are completely different.

The definition of operations in traditional industries is: the planning, organization, implementation and control of the operations process, which is a general term for all management tasks closely related to product production and service creation. It's very similar to the more common project management.

The concept of operation in a broad sense: From a broad perspective, all manual intervention around the product is called operation.

Concept of Internet operation: The concept of Internet operation is relatively narrow, and is divided into the above-mentioned operation types such as event operation, content operation, user operation, and community operation.

Today I will focus on introducing Internet operations to you. There is a common six-word formula for Internet operations that can simply explain the work and skills of operations.

Product (i.e. brand, product publicity, brand promotion and PR according to brand and product characteristics),

Strategy (i.e. planning and planning corresponding activities, event marketing activities, fission activities, etc.),

Internal (content, i.e. content production, soft articles, pictures, videos, etc.),

Push (promote and distribute in various channels and traffic gathering places),

Pull (attract new users, through the previous actions, guide users to the official account, APP, community),

Transfer (conversion, that is, conversion into transactions, allowing users to purchase products and generate profits).

2. New Media Operation

New media operation: It is a series of operation methods that use modern mobile Internet means to conduct product publicity, promotion, and product marketing by utilizing emerging media platform tools such as WeChat, Weibo, and Tieba. By planning high-quality, highly contagious content and online activities related to the brand, messages can be widely or accurately pushed to customers, thereby increasing participation and raising awareness, thereby making full use of the fan economy and achieving corresponding marketing goals. With the development of Internet products, emerging media platforms such as short videos and Xiaohongshu have emerged.

Daily work: As an earlier type of operation, new media operation is the first job for many operators and students who change careers. Their work is also relatively complicated among the types of operations.

Required skills:

1. You need to have the ability to write tweets, which is the most important;

2. Have a sense of the Internet, be good at chasing hot topics, and be sensitive to Internet and social hot topics;

3. Have some experience in public account operation.

Bonus Skills:

1. Have basic design skills. Some companies even require the ability to shoot, edit audio and video;

4. Finally, because it involves the maintenance and growth of user fans, you also need to have skills in marketing, data analysis, user operations, event planning, etc.

It is not difficult to find out from the above two recruitment JDs that the main daily work of new media operations is to write various soft articles and plan various marketing activities according to the needs of their own users, and to study the strategies of various platforms to carry out distribution maintenance and fan growth. The required design and audio and video editing are also to prepare the materials for articles and activities. Of course, these are generally for entrepreneurial teams or for the reason of wanting you to take on multiple roles and save costs. Many companies with mature team structures have dedicated design and post-production to take charge of these two tasks. Data analysis, marketing, and user operations are also designed to enable you to write and plan articles and activities that are more in line with user needs, rather than being a soulless writing machine. This is also a key watershed for advancement into more advanced operations and for promotion and salary increase.

Development path: New Media Operations Specialist → New Media Operations Supervisor (Senior New Media Operations) → New Media Operations Manager (Senior New Media Operations) → New Media Operations Director (Operations Director)

In terms of career development path, there are still the common two lines: professional line and management line. As long as you can write some original articles independently and plan some marketing activities, you can be considered a qualified new media operator. If you can combine the marketing, data analysis, user operation and other skills just mentioned, you can be promoted to senior new media operation. If you have certain communication, coordination and management skills, you will be qualified for the position of supervisor. As you accumulate operational experience (3-5 years), bring profits to the company, and achieve impressive results in your activities, the company will expand the team and make you a new media operations manager. As you manage more and more people and gain more experience (more than 5 years), the company finds that you are an indispensable and reliable talent. The job of operations director is destined for you. Of course, this road is long and arduous. Operations require communication and coordination with various departments, and you need to have strong interpersonal and management skills. Often, 90% of the difficulty in promoting an activity lies in the company's internal friction. Finally, you need to have the Internet's wild growth and learning capabilities to keep up with the trend of the times, make your subordinates obey you, and lead the team on the right track.

3. User Operation

User operation: User operation refers to setting operation activities and rules based on user needs, formulating operation strategies and operation goals, and strictly controlling the implementation process and results to achieve the expected operation goals and tasks.

Key points of user operation: 1. User operation is user-centric; 2. Formulate operation strategies and operation goals; 3. Plan, organize, implement and control the operation process; 4. Data analysis with guiding significance.

The core of user operation: open source (attract new customers), cost reduction (prevent user churn and recover churned users), maintenance (retain existing users), stimulation (promote user activity and even convert them into paying users).

Daily work: User operations, as a job in the Internet industry that formulates operational strategies for the user life cycle, often requires certain operational experience and a certain understanding of the industry and users to be engaged in. From the above picture and its concept, the daily work of user operations is to be responsible for key indicators of the product such as user growth, retention, and activity, to stratify users and conduct refined operations on them. As traffic costs are getting higher and higher, the user growth sector alone has spawned a very popular profession recently - user growth (growth hacker). First of all, in your daily work, you need to help the company sort out the user structure and even user portraits, stratify them, and develop marketing operation strategies to improve key indicators. Pinduoduo, for example, first determines its user positioning and structural stratification, focusing on second- and third-tier cities and user groups with average economic ability and income. It increases the product's daily active users (DAU), number of newly registered users, and even sales by formulating policies such as issuing red envelopes, coupons, and subsidies.

Required skills:

1. (1-3 years) Internet operation experience;

2. Master the user operation methodology;

3. Have copywriting and planning skills

4. Independently plan relevant user system operation plans;

5. Certain industry experience.

6. Good communication and coordination skills, strong learning ability.

Development path: User Operation Specialist → User Operation Supervisor (Senior User Operation) → User Operation Manager (Senior User Operation) → User Operation Director (Operation Director)

From the perspective of development path, it is similar to new media. In fact, no matter what kind of operation, the development path is these two paths, but the focus of daily work will be biased. The higher the promotion stage, the abilities required for operation have become people's comprehensive quality abilities, such as communication and coordination abilities, management abilities, learning abilities, professional abilities, etc. Therefore, no matter what kind of operation job you choose, while improving your professional abilities, don't forget to improve your abilities in other aspects. These are the most critical factors for you to widen the gap with others.

4. Product Operation

Product operation: In a broad sense, all work that can promote product optimization is called product operation. In a narrow sense, product operations refers to people who conduct long-term investigations and analysis of user needs and provide feedback to iterative products. Product operation is also a profession that manages product content and users from three levels: content construction, user maintenance, and event planning.

Daily work: The definition of product operation is relatively broad, so the daily work content will vary greatly depending on the definition of each company. It will also cover the department's user operations and user growth work. First of all, you need to be responsible for the daily promotion and publicity of the product, planning and organizing related activities and promotion plans; responsible for collecting user feedback, and optimizing and iterating user experience and product design.

The daily work will also be different depending on the product life cycle.

Product development stage: First of all, product operations must clarify the product's positioning and target users.

Product seed stage: At this stage, the main purpose of product operation is to collect user behavior data and related problem feedback, and analyze and discuss product optimization with product planners.

Product growth stage: If a product wants to explode, event planning is an essential part.

Product maturity stage: The iterative updates of small versions are of great significance to the product during the stable stage. Product operation should serve as a bridge between product planners and users.

Product decline stage: During this stage, user loss intensifies, user activity declines significantly, and revenue contribution also drops sharply. In terms of company strategy: technical support is reduced and new products are launched.

Required skills:

1. Have some experience in Internet work;

2. Certain product operation capabilities;

3. Solid copywriting skills and excellent planning ability;

4. Understand daily promotion methods and growth strategies.

5. Excellent communication and coordination skills, strong learning ability, and a certain understanding of marketing knowledge.

Development path: Product Operations Specialist → Product Operations Supervisor (Senior Product Operations) → Product Operations Manager (Senior Product Operations) → Product Operations Director (Operations Director)

The interconnectedness of operations means that product operations cover a wider range of work, so it is also possible to develop vertically to do work such as event operations and product operations. The abilities required for promotion have been mentioned above and will not be repeated here. Another very important bonus for promotion is the data of the activities you have carried out. If you can produce beautiful data for a product, it will be of great help to your job hopping and promotion.

5. Content Operation

Content operation refers to the complete operation process in which operators use new media channels (or their own platforms: websites, apps, etc.) to present corporate information to users in a friendly manner in the form of text, pictures, or videos, and stimulate user participation, sharing, and dissemination. The core issue to be solved is: to build a virtuous cycle around the production and consumption of content, and continuously improve various content-related data, such as the amount of content, content views, content interactions, content dissemination, etc.

In people’s eyes, content operation is often thought to be about creating content around articles, which is not much different from new media operation. In fact, this is not the case. New media operations tend to focus on soft articles that have a sense of the Internet, follow hot topics, and mobilize emotions, and most of them are marketing and event soft articles. The scope of content operation will be wider. Including the soft articles just mentioned, they are more inclined to the output of original content and the collection, organization and production of materials. The form is not limited to articles, but also involves audio, video, short video and other content. 

Daily work: The content direction you are responsible for will vary depending on the company's products and needs . Responsible for collecting, summarizing, and writing (producing) content (articles, audio, video) for own platforms (WeChat public accounts, apps). It is necessary to plan some small activities to increase content exposure and user interaction activity. Adjust and optimize content direction in a timely manner based on changes in content data.

Required skills:

1. Have relevant experience in content operation and have unique insights into articles, audios, and short videos. 2. Good planning ability, planning relevant hot events.

3. The ability to follow hot topics and rigorous logic.

4. And have certain data analysis capabilities to optimize content through data.

Development path: Content Operations Specialist → Content Operations Supervisor (Senior Content Operations) → Content Operations Manager (Senior Content Operations) → Content Operations Director (Operations Director)

There is also a way to start your own business and create your own media.

6. Community Operation

Community operation, as communities become more and more important, is a small circle that connects people very closely, and is now gradually becoming a strategic traffic area that companies focus on maintaining. As the name suggests, it is a position centered around the community, attracting new members, maintaining users within the community, and converting users within the community.

As people pay more and more attention to communities, they have become an indispensable traffic pool in many industries and companies. Like the original official accounts, almost every company has its own community. Therefore, the development potential of this position is huge, but opportunities and challenges coexist. Many companies are building communities, and user maintenance and conversion are becoming increasingly difficult, so the challenges of this position are also great.

Daily work: As mentioned at the beginning, most operations are inseparable from the three links of attracting new users → maintenance → conversion, and the same is true for community operations. Therefore, their daily work basically revolves around the community, with these three links being the main ones within the community. First, you need to formulate operational goals and plans for the community based on the positioning of the community and the product, and achieve the goal of attracting and maintaining new users in the community. Secondly, you need to collect and organize materials, plan activities, and increase the interactive activity of users in the group. Plan relevant conversion activities and complete conversion for users within the group. Form a closed loop of community operation sop, combine fission, cross-industry cooperation and other methods to increase the number of community users.

Required skills:

1. Have some experience in community operation and management.

2. Strong execution, high initiative and clear logic.

3. Good communication and coordination skills.

Development path: Community Operations Specialist → Community Operations Supervisor → Community Operations Manager → Community Operations Director (Operations Director)

Because to do a good job in community operation, you need to lead the team and operate the company's countless communities, so the development path of most community operations is to develop towards management level. The most important thing is to run the company's own community operation SOP, form a replicable community operation methodology, optimize, improve and expand the team, achieve exaggeration of company benefits and team size, and naturally, you will be promoted.

Characteristics of the community

(1) Like-minded people: the prerequisite for establishing a community

(2) Structure: Determines the community’s inventory

(3) Output: Determining the value of the community

(4) Operations: Determines the lifespan of a community

(5) Replication: Determines the size of the community

7. Event Operation

Event operation: refers to the operation of different activities and activities of different natures by event companies, including event planning, event implementation, and grafting related industries to create an industrial chain. After the event is over, review the event. It is an operational means to quickly improve product indicators within a certain period of time by planning and executing short-term activities based on established goals.

Daily work: First of all, you need to set the target KPI before the event starts, whether it is to complete the completion of new registered users of the product, new public account fans; or to increase the company's sales. Then, we break down the activity according to the set goals, including activity theme, activity resource arrangement, activity plan, activity personnel division of labor, etc. We monitor the activity after it goes online and deal with any problems in a timely manner based on the circumstances. After the event, review and summarize the event.

Required skills:

1. As a qualified event operator, you need to have strong teamwork ability, coordinate internal and external resources through good communication and coordination to ensure the smooth implementation and promotion of the event;

2. Combine the goals with the company's products, and independently complete the activity plan and copywriting;

3. Be sensitive to data and user needs. Monitor data indicators during the activity and make optimization adjustments at any time;

4. Ability to review and summarize: conduct a review and summary of the activity after it is over, and optimize and iterate the activity process.

Development path: Event Operations Specialist → Operations Supervisor (Senior Event Operations) → Operations Manager → (Operations Director)

The career development path for event operations is relatively narrow. The most fundamental reason is that positions that specifically require event operations are all operations teams and companies with clear division of labor and relatively mature development. Therefore, the market demand for this type of operation job is relatively small. Secondly, event operation has gradually developed into a skill that all operation jobs need to possess. Often, event operation is covered by other operation jobs. Just like the other operation jobs introduced above, many of them involve event operation work. These reasons have caused the market demand for event operation to gradually decrease, and it has gradually become a skill that all operations require. When it comes to event operations, traditional industries and advertising companies tend to have a greater demand. They have more daily marketing activities, and they also call this position: event planning.

8. Conclusion and FAQ

1. The underlying logic of operations: No matter how things change, the essence remains the same. Most operations, except for operations like data operations that require strong professional capabilities and operations that are more vertical to the e-commerce operations industry (this article will not introduce such operations positions), are inseparable from attracting new customers, maintenance, and conversion. The work is also carried out, refined, and promoted around these three links, which are also the core logic of the bottom layer of operations.

2. Operation conversion funnel: The AARRR product life cycle model is a conversion model that is basically involved and mentioned in operations. AARRR is the abbreviation of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Refer. These five words correspond to the five important links in the user life cycle.

3. Capabilities required for operation:

1) Learning ability (ability to grow wildly). The reason why I put this ability first is that I personally believe that operations require relatively comprehensive abilities, and the marketing model and product development are very fast. If you do not have strong enough learning ability, you may not be able to keep up with the pace of job development, just like everyone was doing public accounts in 2014 and everyone was making short videos in 2018.

(Brand copywriting of "Slow Adagio" B&B)

2) Copywriting skills. After reading this, you must think that operations require a lot of professional skills. So which one is the most important? That should be the copywriting ability. Daily writing of articles, planning proposals, and even writing of work reports all require certain copywriting skills. Otherwise, the articles and plans you write will be full of nonsense that people cannot understand, and your other abilities will definitely be denied.

3) Communication and coordination skills. Communication and coordination skills are actually an ability that is basically included in the evaluation criteria of the comprehensive ability and quality model in the workplace. Whether it is internal team work coordination, cross-departmental assistance, or business cooperation, you need to have good communication and coordination skills. The operational work is complicated and all of these tasks will involve the above-mentioned work.

4) User thinking. In operations, a large part of companies cannot do without exploring user needs, conducting user research, and thinking about what kind of articles to write and what kind of activities to organize to attract users and get them involved. Therefore, user thinking is very important. Only if you can look at your products and their needs from the user's perspective can you better advance your work and not blindly write articles and organize activities for your own pleasure.

5) Data analysis ability and review thinking are a big plus in operations. With certain data analysis ability and data-oriented approach, you can know the articles you write and the activities you do, and analyze the data to see where you can optimize and improve. The review thinking is to summarize which aspects of the activity were not done well after data analysis or after the activity ends, what can be optimized and modified, and what should be done next time. You should also review your own life more often.

4. As a newbie or someone who wants to change careers, how can you get started quickly?

This problem must be the most troubling issue for newbies or those who want to change careers and do operations. The most fundamental problem is: "I don't understand operations, I have no operations experience, my resume fell on deaf ears, and I can't answer the questions asked in the interview." So I give up on operations.

To prescribe the right medicine, first of all, you don’t understand operations. I believe that after reading this, you already have a general understanding of operations, and know what operations are and what they do. Secondly, there is no operational experience, which is also a very distressing thing. Companies don’t want you if you don’t have experience, and companies don’t want you if you can’t have experience, so you fall into a vicious circle. So how can you gain experience in operations even if you have never worked in operations before? There are many operations courses now. You can buy and watch some operations courses, and also do some practical operations, write some original articles, plan some small activities, so that you can have your own works as a stepping stone for an interview. If you are a newbie, you can combine your school experience and find some operations internship jobs. This is also a shortcut for you to get started than experienced practitioners. If you are a student who wants to change careers, you can combine your previous experience, put your previous work experience and industry experience into operations, and show some of your own works. Works are important, and they are the most important thing that can prove your operational capabilities.

5. What kind of operation should I choose?

The numerous and complex types of operations to choose from can be confusing, but many of them still need to be considered in conjunction with the company and job responsibilities, because the same operations position may require different things to be done in different companies. In fact, no matter what you do, the most important thing is to be interested in it. For example, if you are interested in hot topics and articles, then you are more suitable for new media operations. On the other hand, you need to combine your own development path, choose a more promising type of operation, and have a clear career plan. If you are engaged in this operation, what position you want to be in within 1-3 years, and what will it be like in 3-5 years. At least have a clear goal and understanding of your five-year development path. The underlying logic of operations is the same, so don’t worry too much about specific job titles. The last point is to see which operation you can get started with faster and is suitable for you.

Author: Vapor

Source: Vapor