Operation in the Internet environment

Starting from today, we will enter the first section of the course. In this section, I will take you to unveil the mysterious veil of operation and understand the basic knowledge of Internet operation. The topic I want to talk to you about in today's first lecture is what is meant by "operating in a broad sense" and "operating in an Internet environment" respectively.

First, the operation in a broad sense and the operation in the Internet environment

(a) broad operation

First of all, let's take a look at the broad sense of operation. If we do not add the attributive of The Times such as "Internet" or "mobile Internet" before operation, this is the broad sense of operation as I understand it, not just one position. I understand the meaning of the word "operation" as follows

Any means of human intervention used to achieve an end.

I could even say run love, run life. For example, I am a person who is easy to bring the operational literacy in work to life. Friends around me will think that I do things in a process-oriented manner, pay attention to details and do not make mistakes easily. Always thinking about how to maximize the input output ratio, how to spend less time, energy and money to achieve the results; I often think about the reason behind a phenomenon when I see it. For example, when my friends get together in an online celebrity shop and everyone is busy taking pictures and praising "beautiful, so beautiful", I will think about what lifts the mood of the public. What makes me spend? What makes it an Internet sensation? It may be tiring to think in this way at the beginning, but later you will get used to it. You will feel that there are always cases in life to train your operation thinking, and operation skills can be used at any time in things big and small around you, which is a very interesting thing. Programmers are far happier. They risk losing their hair by writing code that is only useful in the world of the Internet, and there are few tricks from their work that can be distilled into everyday life. We will find that a good code farmer is not so comfortable in the real world, and a good operation must be skilled in the real world, mix well. When you think about it this way, it makes sense that programmers generally get paid more than operators.

Put the "operation" into the business environment, you will find that a lot of traditional companies in the internal position is also called XX operation, yes, they do participate in the operation work, but unfortunately, with now the big hot "Internet operation" far from. They do more "running" work, ensuring that things go on without mistakes, and less "camp" part, breaking the existing stable state, through more artificial means to plan and seek a better result.

(2) Operation in the Internet environment

The Internet, especially in the context of mobile Internet, has given new significance to the operation of The Times. "Internet operation" has changed from an internal, back-end, and stable job to a job that takes into account both inside and outside, can get results, can fight performance, can go to the front line, and even replaced the role of sales post in many companies.

Internet operations are divided into product types, Will have information content class (now the headline, sina, sohu), social class, such as WeChat, Momo), electric business class (such as taobao, Tmall, jingdong, netease yan), O2O type (e.g., 58 home, hungry, Meituan), game class (such as a king's glory, warcraft, westward journey) and tools (such as the cheetah browser, 360 security guards, baidu map). The focus of each type of operation will be somewhat different. But e-commerce operation must be the largest proportion of personnel, and many products need to be realized through e-commerce, whether you are selling advertising, selling members, selling services, selling goods, essentially what is needed here is the experience of e-commerce operation. Therefore, I strongly agree with Yuan Ye, a former Ali operator, who wrote in his book "Proper Operation and Laws for E-commerce" that "the thinking of e-commerce operation is the underlying logic of Internet realization".

E-commerce operation: In order to improve the transaction volume, in the flow rate, conversion rate, customer unit price and other indicators to do all the strategic behavior.

This understanding is good enough in the PC Internet era, but in the context of the mobile Internet, I've found that focusing on this formula doesn't work for many startups. It is very difficult for startups to obtain traffic, and there is a long process between traffic and transformation, which is not as simple and rough as Taobao, and the path is short. Later, I was introduced to the AARRR model, which came out of Silicon Valley.

AARRR, the Pirate metric, was famously shared by Dave McClure, who proposed five stages for startups to win customers: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Refer.

I think this is a fairly appropriate generic definition for all Internet product operations. Internet product operation is to attract new, promote life, retention, payment, dissemination of this chain of key nodes to do all efforts.

This chain seems to be very complex and extensive, which may scare the newcomer to the operation. Do you have to do so much for a small operation? ! Of course not. First of all, the key points of the model will vary from company to company at different stages. For example, if you go to a startup, you will focus on acquiring users, and that may be your focus for a long time. In addition, this is the operation goal of the whole company, there will be other departments to cooperate with you, or you cooperate with others. For example, in a mature company, the Marketing Department plays the main role in user acquisition and communication, and the operation is coordinated. For example, activation and retention, operations and products are closely aligned.

In terms of the subdivision of operation posts, the industry is not divided into five types of operations according to AARRR model, but into three types according to the most prominent skills required by an operator, namely, content operation, activity operation and user operation. For example, in the node of "user acquisition", the three types of operations need to come up with their own killer cards and work together to achieve the goal, rather than the responsibility of one operation.

Because of the inclusiveness and extensibility of operation, as the saying goes, "Operation is like a basket, everything goes into it", there will be new XX operation positions every year, such as community operation and new media operation, which are hot in recent years. To tangle in the name, the new estimate will be muddle, its own operation is not a special standard of the post, it is recommended that beginners content operation, activity operation, user operation, data operation, can take 90% of the operation of the post.

It is important to remind everyone that operations are born to solve problems and accomplish tasks, and to be accountable to KPIs, not to a term. Do not be obsessed with the title of X operation, but need to improve themselves comprehensively. For example, in Ali, after becoming the operation management, there is no specific position, and all kinds of operations need to be understood, and now a word "full stack operation" has become popular. The following concepts refer to Qin Lu colleague's article "Full stack operation" is the future of operation ":

The concept of Full Stack originated from the Full Stack engineer. It refers to having multiple skills and being able to use those skills to build a product independently. When we say we need a programmer, we need a full stack engineer.

A full-stack operation should be such that it must have two or three operational areas of proficiency, can do other operational work, and has the ability to build operational systems. It will not be a universal operation. Although the name with a whole, this whole more inclined to grasp the whole process, the whole business familiar. He knows what he's responsible for, he knows what he's responsible for, he knows what he's responsible for in the previous step, and he knows what he's responsible for in the next step; Look forward to a step, a step back to think, this is called the whole process. Familiar with the whole business is to know how to drive and promote it in the whole process.

Anyway, operations are a long way, and you don't have to worry about career paths and short lifespans. As long as the real result-oriented, mobilize various capabilities and resources to complete the task, will be a popular market, enduring operators.

Second, summary and promotion

All right, that's it for today. To summarize:

In this lesson, I've explained to you what it means to operate in a broad sense and what it means to operate in an Internet environment. Operations, broadly defined, is more than just a job, and refers to any means of human intervention used to achieve an end.

Operation in the Internet environment refers to all efforts made for the key nodes in the chain of attracting new, promoting, retaining, paying and spreading. According to the most prominent skills required by an operator, it can be roughly divided into the main content operation, activity operation, user operation and data operation.

In addition, I would like to remind everyone that the operation is inherently responsible for KPI, not a noun. Instead of focusing on the title of X operations, you need to fully upgrade yourself and become a "full stack operation."