100 live broadcasts in one year, what have we gained?

Based on his experience of 100 live broadcasts, the author of this article shared his gains and insights, and put forward his own views on how to develop in the long term. I hope it will be helpful to you.

It was pure coincidence that it took exactly one year to complete the 100 live broadcasts.

When working in a large company, you always have to discuss the meaning and value of things, so I will apply this disgusting routine again and talk about the value and gains.

The greatest value is that we have completed the transformation from professionals to consulting consultants.

In the past ten years, I have been engaged in content output and also worked in large companies. The impression I gave to everyone was that of an operations tycoon, a director of a large company, an operations KOL, and so on.

My live broadcast was started under this kind of "personality".

I keep trying various topics, optimizing scripts, etc. I will also think carefully after the live broadcast to figure out what I got excited about, what I didn’t explain clearly, and whether I am happy.

During this process, I found that I had no interest in "talking about operations", which might be more suitable for myself five years ago. What I am studying now is more about business strategy, team management and organizational design.

If I can use this experience and knowledge system to help more companies or bosses, it will make me feel more meaningful. This is what I want to do and what suits me.

Soon, I began to transform.

From the selection of live broadcast topics and the guest invitations, we can see the change in direction. We no longer talk about operations and the workplace, but more about business growth. In fact, we put in more effort offline. We consulted experts in different fields and started to design toB products and services.

The process was very difficult because we didn’t know what was right, and the feedback cycle for each attempt was relatively long, which led to us always being confused and lost, which was not a good feeling.

Fortunately, after a year of exploration, we have stumbled through the first grade and are growing rapidly. Even more fortunately, many old fans are willing to trust us and ask us to provide consulting services.

The current clients have taken up two-thirds of my working time, involving industries including education, fast-moving consumer goods, community, health, culture, etc. This year's goal is simple, to study hard in the second grade and work steadily until I am 60 years old.

You may ask, isn't it about live broadcast? It seems to have nothing to do with it.

It is precisely because we are working hard to do every live broadcast well that we can discover what our strengths are, what we like, and what we are disgusted by. Only by doing it can you experience the feelings, which cannot be achieved by imagining.

I have been working for 18 years and never made a career plan before. I always can't think clearly about what I will be like in a year, so I just make sure that the current choice is better than the previous one and that I am satisfied with it. I may not be able to feel what will happen in a year in 10 months.

Although our ambition is to go far, what is more important is the road ahead.

After talking about the value that live streaming brings to us, let’s talk about what we have gained.

In the process of live streaming, I had many real feelings, which gradually became my principles for doing things. These feelings can only be experienced through long-term, high-frequency and repeated work. We have only a short year, so I would like to share some superficial views here.

1. Be brave to break through, don’t define yourself casually

I particularly like reading and writing articles. I have been writing on WeChat public accounts for 8 years and have published a book. For a long time, I considered myself a "writer".

Even though the short video and live streaming craze has been around for six or seven years, I still work for a leading short video platform.

There were a few opportunities to face the camera that reinforced this self-awareness for me. When I accepted an interview with a TV station on behalf of the company, I was at a loss as to how to speak a few sentences without any technical content after seeing the camera, and I had to repeat it several times before I could finish it.

At that time, I secretly told myself in my heart: Others make short videos and live broadcasts, but I only write, which is also a differentiated personality.

In fact, this is just defining yourself arbitrarily and making excuses for your cowardice and fear.

Media person Pan Luan told me several times: It’s too late, why are you still writing on WeChat public accounts? Who would read it now? The ROI is too low!

It would be better to say that I was forced to do so rather than to say that I broke through myself.

The logic is very simple. Creating personal IP is basically equivalent to creating content. Currently, content is in the following forms: text, video, live broadcast, and audio. If I only create text, I will be giving up at least half of my opportunities, which is really limited.

Looking back, it was precisely because of the breakthrough in live streaming that we made a series of subsequent attempts and found the direction of consulting.

This point is like a door, and when you push it open, you will see a bright future!

2. What you think is professional is what users don’t want

Usually, people look at things from their own perspective, and even think that things they cannot see do not exist.

The inability to think from other people’s perspective is a weakness of human nature.

A few years ago, I often saw people questioning the number of Kuaishou users in the media: How many hundreds of millions of people use it every day? Is it fake? Why doesn’t anyone around me use it?

The phrase "No one around me uses it" has appeared too many times, and I always want to retort: ​​Who do you think you are!

I won’t go into details. What I want to say is that people are limited by their own perspectives, positions, interests, and knowledge reserves. They see the world differently and make very different decisions.

The same goes for my live broadcasts.

At first I came up with a few topics and shared them with you, thinking they would be very popular, but the data showed that they were the worst.

For example, there was an episode about the value of operations. After the broadcast, the assistant looked at the data and said: "You can't even find a job now, and we're still talking about value."

This is the topic that my previous bosses were most concerned about. I have studied it for a long time and have some opinions. But if you change the demand scenario, the results will be completely different. Data gives you the most realistic feedback.

Another case is about Keep selling medals.

My Weibo post went viral and was forwarded in many ways, with many interpretations. My original intention was that as an industry insider, it was a bit ironic that we did a lot of things that we thought were right from a professional perspective, but in the end, it turned out to be a very popular product with very good results.

Professional vs. mass is the key point here.

The science, effects and experience of fitness are not as good as the high appearance and high cost performance of the medals. This point hurt many colleagues and they forwarded it crazily.

3. Do the right thing, not the good numbers

Numbers make me feel good and climax. From the number of forum registrations and postings 18 years ago to the number of subscriptions and readers now, this is an instinctive reaction.

If you don't think deeply about it, you will probably pursue the growth of these numbers to get a sense of satisfaction.

Is there anything wrong with pursuing digital growth?

Numbers are misleading. If the numbers you are looking at match your business direction, then there is no problem. Otherwise, the numbers may backfire.

There were a few weeks when I would choose workplace-related live broadcast topics to talk about communication skills, career development, upward management, etc., and I mixed in a lot of viewpoints that could gain empathy. The data results were particularly good, and I was very happy.

But I found that this had nothing to do with my business model.

The audiences of live broadcast and monetization are completely two different groups. Those who scold me during the live broadcast are likely to be the ones who will spend money on me. And those who listen to me from beginning to end and ask me questions in the live broadcast room are not even willing to give me a fan light board worth 0.1 yuan.

I quickly realized the problem and adjusted my direction.

There was a live broadcast, and the data was quite bad, but the content and guests were what we wanted, it’s just that some links were not handled well. I said to my friends: This direction is right, there is no need to care too much about the audience and the number of online people, we just need to solve those problems and stick to it.

The business world is so interesting that some data can be easily improved, but such data is often cheap or even meaningless. We need to judge what is the right thing to do and be able to accept seemingly ugly data results.

4. Long-termism: not everything depends on conversion rate

Conversion rate should be the most important process indicator, which can be applied to various business scenarios, content, transactions, activities, retention, etc. Improving conversion rate is even the primary indicator of many teams.

However, for some businesses or scenarios, conversion rate should not be the goal.

We have also analyzed and targeted conversion rates to see which live broadcast had better or worse conversions, and then studied the reasons behind it, hoping to promote or avoid it in the future.

Later I found out that this was not the right thing to do, at least in terms of converting consulting clients.

I have communicated with several current customers and potential customers, but none of them could tell me which live broadcast they were converted from. They have been watching my live broadcasts for several months, or even the public account content for several years. Only when there is trust and demand arises can we have subsequent cooperation.

So, they were not converted by a certain live broadcast, but my continued live broadcast promoted the cooperation.

Thinking of this healed me instantly.

Because after many, many live broadcasts, I felt very depressed. Not only was the data not good, but there was no conversion, and I felt that this live broadcast was meaningless. Looking back, each of these live broadcasts is an accumulation of bricks and tiles, and is indispensable.

Eventually, we will find that business scenarios like toB need to be viewed from a long-term perspective. It is unscientific to measure the conversion of a single behavior, but we need to extend the cycle and look at the value of this combination of behaviors.

Moreover, the benefits brought by long-termism are based on continuous hard work. Only with a certain accumulation can good results be triggered.

Author: Han Xu

Source: WeChat public account "Operation Dog Work Diary (ID: yunyingriji)"