Editor's note: This article is from the public number "warm stone network" (ID: nuanshi100), the author Xiaofan.
When it comes to 'User Operations', it seems that just by looking at the name, you can tell what the position does.
Literally, user operation is definitely working around the user, need to contact and mingle with the user, so user operation in the eyes of many people, in fact, the most intimate relationship with the "community".
In this way, it seems that the establishment of large and small WeChat groups, QQ groups, to maintain a variety of community activity and so on a kind of work, that is, the center of gravity of the user operation.
This understanding of the work content of user operation is a bit narrow. In this article, let's start from the core work of user operation, combined with the actual job responsibilities, so that you have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of user operation.
01, with human words to explain, user operation in the end what is it?
First, let's start with a clear definition of 'user operations':
User operation refers to user-centered, follow the user's needs to set up operation activities and rules, formulate operation strategies and operation goals, and strictly control the implementation process and results in order to achieve the expected operation goals and tasks.
Source: Baidu Encyclopedia
emm...... seems to be another "a little bit of bull, not read too much" Baidu encyclopedia series.
Okay, let's get down to brass tacks:
If the website is compared to a restaurant, then obviously, the customer is the user. How many people come to the store every day to consume (pay), how often the same group of customers to eat a meal (activity), is not eaten once will not come (retention) and so on are restaurant operators need to pay attention to the place.
It's easy to understand when you put it that way. All websites or products need to have a steady stream of new users coming in and keeping those users active and retaining the old ones.
Restaurants need to keep letting more new customers know and want to spend money in the store, and also hope that the old customers become "regulars" - if there are no new customers coming into the store, and the old ones don't come in, the restaurant will have to close down sooner or later.
User-centered, through the user's needs survey, to develop the operation mechanism, to achieve the introduction of new users, to retain old users, to maintain user activity and the goal of paid conversion - this is the core of user operation.
02, you need to know: what do users look like?
As a user operation, the first thing to do is definitely to know what the users of the product or website look like - to understand the user structure.
The person who brushes Zhihu twenty times a day and the person who uses Meitu Xiu Xiu to take twenty selfies a day will definitely not be the same group of people, the former is the largest knowledge-sharing website in China, and the latter is a popular beauty software for women - the user profiles of the two are definitely different.
The basic information about the user, you have to know and master - whether the user is male or female, from which city, what is the age distribution, what are the more concentrated interests ...... These are the data profiles used to analyze the user.
For example, at the 2017 Zhihu Open Day event, Zhihu officials stated that their users are characterized by 'three highs':
Photos from the Zhihu open day event
Highly educated: the proportion of users with bachelor's degree and above is 73.93%, accounting for 60% of the total number of highly educated people on the whole network, of which the proportion of doctoral degree is 1.62%.
High income: the proportion of high-income groups among national Internet users is 8.4%, and the proportion of Zhihu users in this group is 19.73%.
High spending: the proportion of users with monthly expenditures of more than 2,000 yuan in Zhihu is 49.53%, and the proportion of users with monthly expenditures of more than 5,000 yuan is 17.24%
Of course, here we are just giving an example of what 'user structure' is all about, and the above data is not enough to give a complete picture of Zhihu's users.
When enough data (i.e., user information) is collected and analyzed from multiple dimensions, operators can use the results to adopt targeted operational strategies, select appropriate operational tools, and plan operational activities, etc., in order to achieve the previously mentioned objectives - i.e., attracting new users, retaining users, promoting activity, and (paid) conversion.
Understanding user profiling is just the most basic work. On top of that, understanding the growth or decline of users, and grading users (for example, Zhihu currently analyzes users by "salt value", and different levels of users are given different permissions) are also areas that a user operation needs to pay attention to.
03, you also need to know: what are users doing every day?
Another type of thing that user operations has to do is to understand the user's operational behavior.
Or take the example of running a restaurant:
Diners when to come, love to eat what dishes, generally eat how long, etc., store owners may not have specialized to record such data, but through daily observation and diners' consumption records will certainly find a certain pattern of consumption:
Around 7:30 p.m. is the peak time, you have to arrange two more employees to help the cook to play, otherwise the serving speed is definitely slow ......
Recently the weather has been hot, customers always love to order cuttlefish soup to clear the fire, tomorrow try to organize a cuttlefish soup dishes discount activities, see if you can attract more customers!
The cucumber doesn't seem to be a favorite, so take it off the menu and put a new gazpacho on it!
......
Going back to user operations, you must now understand why user behavior data on a website or product is important.
By analyzing this data information, you are able to know when users come and when they are likely to leave, under what circumstances they are active, and what can be done to increase user stickiness to a greater extent.
These user behaviors reflect many of their characteristics and can be used to refine user profiles, make user grading more accurate, and provide a basis for executing operational strategies and actions.
For example, for some sticky deep users, it can be used to test some newly developed features of the website, collect a wave of valuable feedback, and screen the new features for any bugs.
For example, for some users who love beauty and skin care, put some related beauty products on the homepage or message push to guide them to make consumption behavior (Taobao is not often do this thing?). The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on some of the most popular products.
The more user behavior data you collect, the higher the "pixel" of the user profile, the more accurate and effective the various operational strategies you can do, and then when the user is using the product, he or she may exclaim - "This app simply understands me better than my mom! ......"
04, What are the actual job responsibilities of user operations?
Let's take a brief look at user operations job responsibilities directly from the actual job posting:
After looking at user operations from three different types of companies from Lagoon, we realized that there actually seems to be a very wide range of things that this position does:
【Growth】Promote user growth, retention, activity
Build WeChat and QQ groups to maintain community activity.
【Events】Develop activity programs, analyze the final effect of activities and propose improvement and optimization plans
Build user growth system and activity system, and formulate various incentive policies.
Collect and analyze product data to iteratively optimize the product.
【Content】Output content based on users that matches the tone of the company.
......
Both to "maintain active community" and "integrate channel resources"; one side is responsible for "perfecting the teaching product", the other side "specify the activity program" ...... good guy, almost the community operation, activity operation, product operation, channel operation these positions have to do the things before and after the work... ...
But when you think about it, whether it's user growth, channels, activities, or making content or products, although each aspect of what you do is different, and the KPIs you need to achieve are different, they all center around the main body of the "user" to work.
The way different companies guide users and the results they want to achieve are different, so different types of user operations naturally correspond to different job responsibilities.
When picking a position, we should analyze the content of the 'Job Responsibilities' and 'Requirements', rather than getting hung up on what 'User Operations' should and shouldn't do.
