The practical method of increasing 3 million followers on Douyin in 3 months

I have been working on TikTok for more than a year without realizing it. The hot topics of TikTok have been changing, but some things remain unchanged.

The idea of ​​writing this article came from the fact that at the beginning of the year, my friends urged me to write an article on how to make Tik Tok. As a result, I still hadn’t finished it by the end of the year. Thinking that I didn’t want to leave any regrets in 2019, I gritted my teeth and started writing.

Before November 2018, I was still a newbie who knew nothing about TikTok. But in February 2019, my team and I had gained more than 3 million TikTok fans. The accounts above are some of the accounts we operated at that time.

This is the Douyin fan trend chart of our team at that time. It really soared in the later period. From the sleepless nights when my followers increased by 1,000 at the beginning to the peace of mind when my followers increased by 400,000 overnight, those few months were so interesting.

During that period of time, I summed up some methods of making Tik Tok and shared them with some friends. It helped them get started. I gained a lot of fans and made some small profits. Without further ado, let’s get into the main content.

In this article, I have distilled four key words: positioning, algorithm, benchmarking, and compound interest .

1. Positioning

Before using TikTok, you must first design a monetization path based on your own business or existing resources. If you just do it without thinking anything through, you may still be able to monetize successfully, but the probability is relatively small.

The core of Douyin is content , and Douyin is an entertainment-oriented platform, so what we need to do is to make valuable content entertaining . Entertainment does not mean being funny, but making it easy for people to accept in a short, flat and fast way.

• Funny jokes bring joy to people, such as Chen Xiang Six-thirty;
• A meaningful life allows people to broaden their horizons, such as Teacher Xiao Xiaosha;
• Emotional stories resonate with people, such as Happy Sweet Shop;

…these are all values.

Positioning helps your account sort out three issues:

1. who I am?
2. What do I do?
3. What problems can I help others solve?

For example, if I run a weight loss training camp, then I can be the weight loss instructor Zheng Pangpang. I teach everyone how to lose weight scientifically. I can help you lose weight healthily and without rebounding for a long time.

Then, based on the content we position and plan to output, we can output the weight loss journey of students in our own training camps, before-and-after comparison videos, and we can also share theories, practical information, slimming exercises, and so on for healthy weight loss.

Position your own personality according to the business direction, and then demonstrate your value in different ways, and an account is basically planned. The next step is to continue to delve deeper into a vertical field and continuously iterate and upgrade the content .

Why do we need to create a vertical account? If we want to attract users, we must provide them with long-term certainty.

For example, if I am in the weight loss business, then I will provide users with weight loss tips over a long period of time. Then users will know that I can always provide them with this type of content, so they will follow me.

Similarly, we can find that some accounts have millions of likes, but only a few thousand or hundreds of followers, and the fan-to-like ratio is surprisingly low. This is because users only think that his video is worth a like, but don’t know what value it can provide to themselves in the future, so naturally they will not pay attention to it.

2. Algorithm

The algorithm of Tik Tok is not actually the point, but many students want to know, so let me briefly explain it to you:

• 2 types of audits: machine audits and manual audits
• 4 indicators: completion rate > like rate > comment rate > forwarding rate (weighted sorting)
• 2 algorithms: label algorithm and traffic pool algorithm

After we publish a Douyin video, the system will start to review our video, add labels to the video by sampling frames, identifying keywords, etc., and determine whether the video violates the regulations.

After checking and finding no problems, it will start pushing them out. When a video becomes popular or is reported, human intervention will be carried out to conduct a second wave of review.

When releasing a video, there are four crucial indicators. Although most people cannot see the completion rate, it basically determines whether a video can become popular in the beginning. why is that? Think about it, if you come across a video you don’t like, do you just swipe past it without giving it any sympathy?

Therefore, the first three seconds of the video are crucial , and most videos fail to become popular because they cannot survive the first three seconds. In order to ensure the completion rate of the video, it is necessary to continuously streamline the video while ensuring the completeness of the video content. The shorter the better !

Liking is the simplest, just double-click the screen or click on the heart to like. Commenting requires entering text, and forwarding even requires jumping out of the platform. So in addition to the completion rate having the highest weight, the next highest weights are forwarding rate, comment rate and like rate. This adds points to the video according to the difficulty of operation. The higher the score, the more recommendations the video will get.

After Zheng Pangpang watches a video of a kitten, the system may label him as someone who likes to watch kittens. When you post a kitten video, the system will identify the video content, title text, TikTok account name and other factors for your account and also tag it with a kitten. Therefore, with the matching of the tag algorithm, Zheng Pangpang may be able to see the Tik Tok video you posted.

After going through numerous difficulties, a high-quality video can be seen by tens of thousands of people. This is the result of the traffic pool algorithm.

The traffic pool algorithm is a bit like horse racing. For example, at around 8 pm, there are 100,000 videos tagged as kittens. These 100,000 videos enter the initial traffic pool and are allocated 500 views. Then the video you posted will compete with these 100,000 videos in terms of four indicators (completion rate, like rate, comment rate, and forwarding rate).

If your video data is poor and cannot compare with others, then the recommendation will stop. If your video data is great, then it will enter the next 5,000 traffic pool, and the fittest will continue to survive. Good videos will enter one larger traffic pool after another until they become popular all over Douyin.

Some people often say that the second one will become popular because when you release it for the first time, the people in the initial traffic pool assigned to you do not like your video, while the opposite is true when you release it for the second time. At the beginning, the feedback from all four indicators is good, so there is a chance to enter the next larger traffic pool.

I would like to add a very important point. After operating so many accounts, we found that Douyin accounts do not need to be maintained . A normal Douyin account that has just been registered can at least get about 500 views, and it is not uncommon for the first video of a new account to go viral.

The algorithm here is explained very simply, and we don’t need to understand the specific rules in detail. I tell you all this to say that you don’t need to spend so much time on the algorithm, and the key is to focus on creating good content.

III. Benchmarking

When we were working on TikTok, we used the “benchmarking” method. We looked for accounts that were doing well and analyzed how they did it.

For example, Zheng Pangpang insists on creating a weight loss Douyin account, so we have to look at how other people’s weight loss accounts are doing:

• Positioning: Check the positioning of the other party’s account and what kind of personality they are creating.
• Content: Which topics were chosen, and whether they are more theoretical or practical.
• Format: The video released will be in the form of PPT graphics, real-person explanation, or a small theater.
• Comments: Take a look at what fans are commenting on the video. Are there more questions or disses?
• BGM: Is the background music dubbed by yourself, or using someone else's dubbing, or directly using popular music.
• …

There are many dimensions of analysis. Carefully break down what you see and hear. The finer the granularity of the analysis, the more likely we are to imitate successfully.

4. Compound Interest

Once we have determined the direction, understood the platform rules, and know how our competitors do it, we will get started. If you don’t have a camera, you can just use your mobile phone to shoot. If you don’t know how to edit, you can search on Bilibili/TikTok and you can find many tutorials on mobile phone editing. As long as you put in some effort, it’s not difficult to get started.

1.01 ^ 365 ≈ 37.8

The 28 rule is followed everywhere, including in TikTok. Maybe we won’t get any hits even if we post dozens of videos, but one hit can bring a large number of fans, so if we increase the frequency of posting, we can increase the chances of encountering a hit.

After each release, I review my Douyin video based on the data and comments, taking small steps and iterating quickly. Then calm yourself down, produce high-quality content steadily, and wait for the arrival of a hit .

Author: Zheng Han

Public account ID: Han Ge Operation Notes