The "traffic secret" behind Zhang's sudden popularity

The fact that "Teacher Zhang"'s content can become popular on Douyin in a short period of time is the result of the Douyin platform's content ecology driven by "brushing" as the core, which includes factors such as content production attributes, traffic distribution logic, and operational strategies.

Through "swiping", the platform has effectively driven content production and consumption, avoiding the solidification of the top account camp and continuously attracting new content producers to join, while also achieving constant updating of content categories and maintaining attraction and stickiness to content consumers.

This article analyzes this phenomenon of rapidly iterating content blockbuster consumption from the perspectives of platform ecological characteristics, sustainable development needs and user content consumption characteristics, hoping to restore the underlying "truth" of the development of content formats on streaming media platforms represented by TikTok for reference by colleagues in the content industry.

Since October 2021, a content account named "Teacher Zhang" has rapidly risen on Douyin in a short period of time, posting more than 40 video updates, attracting more than 10 million fans, and the number of clicks on a single video exceeded 100 million, becoming the focus of attention of the entire society for a time.

But if we look at the development of TikTok since its birth, there have been many content accounts with tens of millions of fans on the platform. These content accounts have exploded the entire network and caused screen-sweeping, but most of them have now become forgotten by the crowd.

Some people say that the popularity of "Teacher Zhang" is inseparable from the support of the Douyin platform. In the development history of Douyin, there have been many accounts with tens of millions of fans and millions of likes, such as Wenwan, Duoyuhe Maomaojie, Daigula K, etc.

The rise of these accounts is mostly accompanied by the emergence and popularity of specific categories of content, and the addiction of these accounts is also related to the decline of these categories of content.

1. The core feature of Douyin content consumption and production: “Brushing”

Anyone who has used TikTok knows that “swiping” is the main behavioral feature of TikTok usage, and users update content by swiping down on content on the TikTok platform.

By "swiping", users can see different types of content and spend time without realizing it, which increases user viewing time and stickiness for the platform.

"Swiping" is not only a feature of the demand and consumption sides of Douyin content, but also a feature of the supply and production sides of Douyin content. How do you understand this? The TikTok platform itself does not directly produce content for content consumers. It provides a match between content production and consumption, and manages and drives content producers by providing this matching service. In order to ensure that there is a massive amount of content available on the demand side and the consumer end, a large number of content producers are needed. In order to ensure that there are a large number of fresh content categories, it is necessary to attract a large number of new content producers to join.

Behind the rise of "Teacher Zhang" is the emphasis that the Douyin platform places on rural life content, which will have a clear demonstration effect, attracting a large number of imitative accounts and content to follow up, and then producing a clear driving effect on the production and supply of content in this category.

If the top accounts and certain specific content on Douyin dominate the screen for a long time, it will weaken the speed and frequency of content category updates on the Douyin platform, thereby reducing the freshness of the content on the consumer side and reducing the expectations of new content producers to break through with new categories, ultimately causing stagnation in Douyin's content consumption and production.

The implementation of "brushing" in content consumption has enabled users to develop a habit of constantly pursuing new content categories. Any top account that sticks to old categories will soon be ruthlessly abandoned by consumers; the implementation of "brushing" in content production has made it possible for new content producers to challenge and subvert existing top accounts by relying on new content categories, and has also made it a pipe dream for top accounts to dominate the world forever by relying on specific content categories.

2. Content production attributes: high-frequency iteration of categories due to the rapid decay of content

The content on TikTok has the obvious characteristic of being perishable, which means that the content loses its consumption value and appeal to users in a very short period of time. Although the amount of content produced on Douyin is huge, most of it is just time-killing for users.

The main purpose of most content on TikTok is to help users kill time together, but this type of content often has a shortcoming, which is that the content will quickly lose its freshness and appeal to users. Since a single piece of content has limited appeal to users, in order to increase the attractiveness of the platform's overall content to users, it is necessary to increase the richness of content categories. Tik Tok’s answer to the richness of content categories is to increase the frequency and speed of content category iterations.

By increasing the iteration frequency and speed of content categories, Douyin can achieve the freshness of the platform content categories, thereby achieving long-term attraction and stickiness to users. The high-frequency iteration of this content category will inevitably lead to the iteration of anchors who rise by relying on a single category of content. With the rise of "Mr. Zhang", a large number of imitation accounts and content have emerged rapidly on Douyin, which will cause numbness in the user experience in a relatively short period of time, and form an environment and conditions for the rapid decay of content. As the content of this category gradually cools down, the popularity of the "Mr. Zhang" account will also decline accordingly.

Looking at the development of Douyin, the rise of "Mr. Zhang" is not an isolated case. In different stages of Douyin's development, there have been accounts with tens of millions of fans. The rise of these accounts is often accompanied by the rise of specific content categories in Douyin in a certain period. However, as these content categories quickly decay, the top accounts that rely on content in this category also fade out of the public's view.

3. Traffic distribution: public domain traffic dominated by platforms

Douyin traffic has very distinct public domain traffic characteristics. Those who have Douyin accounts know that compared with the number of fans of the account itself, the adaptation of the account content to the platform's recommendation algorithm is the key to creating a hit. If the content production of a Douyin account does not adapt to the adjustments and changes in the platform's algorithm recommendation rules, then even if the account has tens of millions of followers and the content was once very popular, its new content will still not receive enough recommendations and exposure.

In order to create a hit, content accounts on the Douyin platform need to understand Douyin's algorithm recommendation rules. These rules include not only completion rate, click-through rate, etc., but also content type labels. By adjusting the algorithm recommendation rules, Douyin uses specific types of content tags as key evaluation indicators for account content traffic and exposure, and uses this as a baton to influence account content producers in their selection and trade-offs in content type production.

Under the platform-dominated public domain traffic distribution system, any top account has become an output channel for specific content categories that the platform is biased towards, and the popularity of any top account is destined to be just a firework in Douyin's feast of specific content category consumption.

4. Operational Strategy: Personalized Drive for the Production of New Content Categories

The core of Douyin's content ecosystem game is to use the number of new content producers to ensure the supply of new content categories, and to use the supply of new content categories to drive and satisfy the consumption of new content categories.

In this game, the key is how to quickly attract a large number of new content producers. The most effective and low-cost way to drive new content producers is to foster the emergence of a head account that can represent the new content category, personalize the content category, and form a communication and memory label with distinct identity. On the one hand, it sends clear directional signals to the platform's content producers; on the other hand, it demonstrates strong commercial monetization capabilities and attractive returns by supporting top accounts, driving more content producers to join and imitate, thereby achieving concentrated supply of new content categories in a short period of time.

5. Top Accounts: Endorsing Content Categories Rather Than Platforms

Behind the rise of a top account on the Douyin platform is a new content category promoted by the platform. The top account can be regarded as the spokesperson for the new content category rather than the spokesperson for the entire platform. The rise of "Teacher Zhang" stems from Douyin's current platform will to attach importance to agricultural-related life content.

Due to the rapid iteration and update of content categories on the Douyin platform, the life cycle of top accounts is relatively short. The specific content categories that the top accounts rely on have obvious stage-specific characteristics. As the popularity of this content category decreases, the influence and vitality of the top accounts also decrease accordingly. It is difficult for top accounts to maintain long-term dominance on Douyin. Instead, they will face competitive pressure from waves of content category iterations and will most likely be eliminated during the iterations.

Conclusion: The emergence of top accounts such as "Classmate Zhang" is the inevitable result of the platform's inclination towards specific content categories. Even if there is no "Classmate Zhang", there will be "Classmate Li" and "Classmate Wang". The emergence and commercial monetization of top accounts are tools that platforms use to manage content production and consumption through rules and other management means. They are inevitable measures taken by platforms to ensure the realization of their own strategic goals and commercial interests. Although Douyin has achieved effective control over top accounts, it has also made it difficult for the Douyin platform to produce accounts and anchors with lasting influence across the entire network.

For users, top accounts are not a necessity; the fresh content represented by these accounts is a necessity; for top accounts, there is no forever, only the present; for platforms, everything is a tool; only the platform’s interests and goals are the most eternal.

Author: Liu Xiang

Public account: Xiangzhixiangshi