Thinking about B-side new media operation

In recent days, my friends' circles have been flooded with comments like "2019 is so terrible!". Some people lamented that the market winter is getting more severe, some complained that the major Internet companies are unfair in laying off employees at the end of the year, and some even threatened to change careers and stop doing operations next year.

In the process of summarizing, I recalled the work of B-side new media operations that I have taken over for more than a year, and had some thoughts, which I recorded down in a scattered manner.

Now I have organized it into a text and shared it with everyone, hoping that it can provide some thinking directions for B-side new media operators.

If a horse doesn't think, it will easily become a mule. Then "whether it's a mule or a horse, just pull it out for a walk" will be a joke.

Of course, if you have any thoughts or opinions, you are welcome to share them so that we can encourage each other.

Keyword 1: Value

Why talk about value first?

It’s really difficult to be a B-side new media operator! Although it is already 2020, there are still many B-side companies that do not have clear job responsibilities and task indicators for this position. Many people do miscellaneous tasks every day, and sometimes they want to do something big on a whim, but they have no resources and no feedback, and they have no way to express their suffering.

If you feel that you are becoming less and less motivated at work and have no sense of accomplishment, then you must think about "value".

The value I am talking about here can be divided into two categories: your value to the company and your value to the users.

01

There is too much content to explain in detail “your value to users” - how do you analyze the true and false needs of users? How do you position each new media account you are responsible for? How can they actually help users? etc.

Since there are too many articles introducing this kind of value, I will not elaborate on it. If you are still unclear, you can read books such as "The Light of Operations" and "Positioning".

"Your value to the company" is the focus of this discussion, but before thinking about this kind of value, you might as well ask yourself two questions:

1. Do I understand the company's requirements or expectations for this position?
2. Do I really know what indicators I am responsible for in the company?

You may not be able to give an answer the first time, but that’s okay, we use this as a time to think.

First of all, we should understand and confirm the company's requirements or expectations for a position when we go for an interview. It will tell you the company's views and positioning on new media operations at the first time.

In the eyes of some B-side companies, the positioning of new media operations is the copywriting planner in the company. If you don’t ask clearly during the interview, and find that it is different from what you imagined after joining the company, don’t complain or blame others, it is your own fault.

You have to know that for these B-side companies, your value is writing copy and doing planning. No matter how powerful your public account fission is, it is useless to them.

If you are still unclear about the company's requirements and expectations of you, don't wait, ask now!

02

After the first problem is solved, you may encounter this situation: the company has a little understanding of new media operations, and can give reasonable job responsibilities or expectations when asked, but in actual work, you find that this is not the case at all, and your KPI or key work is not quite the same as what was discussed in the interview.

This is very common in B-side companies. If you don't want to give up this job, what you need is not to argue, but to discover and understand which indicators you are responsible for in actual work.

If you find that the company just wants you to help increase GMV, then what you need to do is to assist or lead the conversion, and the key work should also be planned and carried out around GMV conversion.

Similarly, if the company needs you to increase the number of followers of the official account, then your work focus will be more inclined towards fission growth.

No matter which industry you are in or which B-side company you enter, you must always think about "value". This will bring you more positive feedback and enhance your sense of accomplishment in your work, rather than just burying your head in hard work and doing whatever others tell you to do. Over time, you will either become a "veteran" in the workplace or a ctrl+CV engineer.

Keyword 2: Benchmark

Recently, when I was browsing the official WeChat account, I saw an article by Han Xu titled "Secrets that must be mastered in operations: setting benchmarks and using them to lead the whole", which used many cases to demonstrate the application of benchmarks in daily life and operations work.

As a B-side new media operator, it is also worth thinking about how to use benchmarks to achieve goals.

After all, compared with C-end users, B-end users are more focused and calmer. They always pay attention to changes in the industry, desire more communication, and hope to get more professional guidance and help.

For these users, if B-side new media operations want to leverage them to help you achieve your goals, you must make good use of these characteristics.

Setting benchmarks is undoubtedly a good method.

Here is a real example:

When I was doing B-side new media operations, the industry I was in was very niche and vertical. The groups within it were relatively traditional and had no interest in some trendy events and content. However, companies wanted to get more attention from the industry, and the core indicator for new media operations was also traffic.

This caused me to be very confused when I first took over the job. Most of the operational actions I took received mediocre responses, and I couldn't find a good breakthrough point for a while.

At that time, Tik Tok and Kuaishou were very popular. One day, when I was chatting with a friend who worked in MCN, I found that what he talked about most was how to create KOLs. This made me think: Can we also create a group of KOLs? Use these users to attract the attention of other users in the industry, thereby increasing the account's traffic?

I just did it as I thought about it, and after discussing with other team members, I came up with a preliminary implementation procedure.

User classification must be the first step. In the known industry groups, there must be some "highly respected" and recognized KOLs. For such users, find them first and talk about cooperation-related matters.

If there are not many KOLs or cooperation is not possible, then you must create KOLs yourself; there are also restrictions on the KOLs to be created. Generally, you will choose those who have achieved good results by using the product. If the industry reputation is good, it will be even better.

After finding and confirming these KOLs, you can then find ways to obtain valuable information from them and spread it.

There is no need to create the main body KOL, we just need to find a way to obtain valuable content from it. At that time, we adopted the method of special interviews, and the content was mainly professional knowledge explanation and experience sharing. These contents are extremely valuable in industries with strong professionalism and lack of communication. As long as these main body KOLs can forward them a little, they can spread within the industry in a short time.

As for the group of KOLs that have been created, they can learn more from the MCN agencies on the C-end, whether it is event marketing or topic creation.

The main purpose is to help them establish influence in a certain field of the industry. As for how to use them to help companies gain more attention and increase traffic in the future, it requires dedicated people and dedicated plans.

After we completed this series of work, we found that the results were indeed obvious. Not only did the content produced during the benchmarking process bring a significant increase in traffic, but industry attention also increased, and the number of small and medium-sized enterprise users seeking cooperation with the company also increased significantly, which far exceeded the companies' expectations of us.

Let me share a sentence from Han Xu: KOL’s driving effect on a group only needs to focus on one point to obtain the overall benefits. So how to choose this benchmark and how to leverage the overall situation are what we need to think about.

The above is my thinking on this. It may not be perfect, but it is an option for B-side new media operators who are in trouble.

Keyword 3: Content

Whether it is the B-end or the C-end, content output is something that new media operations cannot avoid.

In C-end content, you can often see a lot of light-hearted and entertaining parts - singing a little song, telling a joke, making you laugh. These contents can activate users and increase user stickiness to their accounts.

But on the B-side, I suggest that new media operators output as little of this content as possible.

Those who follow the official account on the B-side are decision makers in the enterprise. Their time cost is relatively high. For them, if the content you provide is unhelpful, common, and worthless, then they are likely to lose interest in you, and in serious cases, may even be associated with your enterprise.

Strive for quality rather than quantity; this is what B-side new media operators must keep in mind when creating content.

As for what content to provide, the operations staff needs to come up with the idea based on user research and trial and error analysis of different content. Although different industries have different content standards, there are four content standards that apply to all: scarcity, professionalism, breadth, and depth.

For B-side new media operations, if you really want to make good content, then it can never be said that it is written, but produced.

When setting the benchmark, I said that the industry I was in at the time was niche, vertical and traditional, which resulted in no new content output for a long time. Most of the content was old wine in new packaging, which did not bring any effective help to my work.

There was really no other way but to start from scratch, so I conducted user research to first understand the content direction that users wanted to see at this stage, then screened and analyzed, selected content topics that could be achieved at present, and finally started production.

After many trials and errors, we finally came up with three types of general and valuable content selection directions, which most B-side new media operators can try to produce:

1. Industry reports. This content is highly sought after in most B-side industries, and B-side users are also happy to share it, which not only makes them appear professional enough, but also keeps up with the times. However, the production disadvantages are also obvious. It is difficult, requires high professionalism, and is time-consuming. But as long as it can be produced, the content can be recycled for a long time.
2. Benchmark sharing. This part has been mentioned in the previous article. The advantages are obvious. The difficulty lies mainly in communication and docking. As long as this part is done well, it is actually not too difficult to do.
3. Product information. The frequency of output of this content must be well controlled, and try to ensure that the information provided each time is valuable and relevant to the user. The copywriter should pay attention to describing the product information from the user's perspective. Do not brag or talk to yourself. Be simple and sincere, which will be easier for everyone to accept.

In fact, when it comes to content, the needs and directions are different, but as long as you think hard, you will eventually find a topic that suits your industry.

Finally, I would like to share a favorite quote:

Not adding spam to others is the greatest virtue in the Internet age.

IV. Conclusion

B-side new media operations are often jokingly referred to as a rotation job, with a new batch of people replaced every year. Young people come in with passion and leave in frustration. It is really not easy.

In fact, in the year-end summary of 2019, there is another key word I want to talk about, and that is "persistence."

I still remember when I first went to the B-side to do new media operations, a senior told me: When you decide to take this job, you must be able to endure loneliness and accept some things. You may lack a sense of accomplishment, or even users may not pay attention to you no matter what you do. But since you have the courage to choose this difficult path, you must stick to it and believe that you are not leveraging one person, but one company after another, and even the entire industry.

Finally, I hope that in 2020, you will still be that kid who loves operations and new media. This is for myself and for you who are reading this article.

Author: Sanshui Yidiangen

Source: Sanshui Yidiangen