An incomplete review of the creation of Douyin from 0 to 1

It has been exactly one month from November 6th to today. I spend about two hours every day after work, half of which is used for data review, problem solving and optimization direction.

△TikTok data background

Because it is not a full-time commitment and does not involve any traffic generation or monetization, this is neither a regular operational review nor an account disassembly. It just records some of the more basic and transferable cognitions and thoughts during the operation for future reference. Therefore, it is also called an incomplete review (mainly on the Douyin side).

△B station fan background

The original purpose of opening an account was to maintain an understanding of the platform's rules and content sensitivity, so the form chosen was also less energy-consuming.

For non-original content, the production is relatively simple and can be updated multiple times a day, but in order to master the rhythm, choose to update 1-2 times a day. The content is distributed on both Tik Tok and Bilibili.

50 videos were synchronized, Douyin gained 120,000 followers (140,000 as of posting), and the cumulative number of views exceeded 40 million; Bilibili had 6,000 followers and the cumulative number of views exceeded 1.5 million. That’s point number one: platform differences.

1. Tik Tok cannot be slow, and Bilibili cannot be impatient

If you don’t see a steep growth curve on the data board 6-12 hours after a Douyin work is released (depending on the release time), it is likely that the work is “dead”.

It’s not that there is no data, but it’s difficult to have explosive growth, and as long as the account stops updating, all data will be paused immediately. Except for big hits, it often takes 1-2 days or even longer for small accounts (without fan base) on Bilibili to publish content to gain volume. But once the volume builds up, there will be continuous growth in data and fans even if there is a break for a few months, because the platform will keep pushing it, and the long-tail effect is obvious. This is determined by the different content distribution logic and product forms behind the two platforms.

• Douyin distribution relies on algorithmic recommendations based on popular logic
• Bilibili distribution emphasizes user-personalized content matching
• One is people-oriented, the other is content-oriented

Bilibili users have multiple channels for consuming content. In addition to the homepage, users tend to get content from updates from UP hosts they follow, content partitions, interest recommendations, keyword searches, etc.

The platform has a stronger community atmosphere, which binds related creators and interested users through community atmosphere and content aggregation, so Bilibili's user stickiness and loyalty lead the entire network.

The vast majority of user behavior on TikTok occurs on the [Recommendations] page. The platform closely grasps users' content consumption needs, determines content popularity through the funnel traffic pool, increases traffic with good data layer by layer, and immediately stops recommending traffic with poor data, continuously enhancing users' content experience.

Tik Tok always recommends the hottest, most popular and most interesting content to its users, while Bilibili makes customized recommendations based on fan relationships and user interests. This is also why the homepage and hot topics of Bilibili often display content from half a month or even a month ago, which does not exist on Douyin.

So don’t be in a hurry to run Bilibili, users are paying attention to you as a person. Be sure to think clearly about the track you have chosen and your own positioning, and spend more time polishing the video style, content format, and even details such as title, cover image, introduction, and labels.

You have to be quick when doing TikTok because users are interested in your content. It is necessary to produce quickly, trial and error quickly, and optimize quickly, and find the best content solution through continuous iteration to obtain the platform's recommended traffic.

2. Content is 1, operation is 0

My personal view has always been that when it comes to new media, the platform is the battlefield and content is the weapon. Attracting users through content and achieving long-term operational growth of the account is the kingly way to operate a new media matrix.

First there is content, then there is traffic (of course, projects with strong monetization such as live streaming and e-commerce are not included. For them, organizational capabilities such as channels and supply chains are more important than content). The same is true for making the account this time. Since there is not much time to invest, many operational actions are not actually done, but the data performance is still good, and we have been optimizing the content.

1. The volume depends on the hits. The volume depends on the hits. The volume depends on the hits.

The "hot items" here refer to the past data relative to one's own account, rather than the hot items on the entire network.

Of the account's current 140,000 followers, 90,000 were brought in by the five hit videos, and the increase in followers from the hit videos accounted for more than 60%.

Everyone wants to create a hit product, but it is difficult to prepare in advance, especially the first hit product of an account, because there are too many influencing factors.

Many of the small-scale hot-selling products we see are not sustainable and are mostly due to luck. The operator can only roughly judge whether a video has the potential to become a hit based on the topic selection, presentation format, etc., but cannot guarantee the final effect. But just like the previous fission activities, from planning to execution, from product selection to posters, from seed users to promotion channels...what we can do is to minimize the uncontrollable factors at each step. As for whether the key nodes can be touched during the dissemination process and whether the video can go viral after it is released, it is really just a matter of luck.

After working in operations for so many years, I have a deep feeling: some things really require an element of luck! Here are some commonplace hot-selling topic selection methodologies:

(1) Sense of resonance

I divide resonance into emotional resonance and cognitive resonance.

Humans are emotional animals. People of the same age, region, and era will have their own emotional connections. People with the same experience, background, and identity will have similar views of the world. Emotional resonance can cause people's emotional fluctuations, such as the most common emotional resonance factors:

• Nostalgia: The regret of first love and the friendship of classmates
• Childhood toys
• Youth that can never come back
• …….

There are too many things worth remembering in a person's life. Nostalgia is both an emotion and a philosophy. As long as relevant cultural symbols are used well, it can trigger people's collective memory.

Cognitive resonance is simpler.

Saying or expressing things that everyone has always agreed with but has not thought through or expressed is very suitable for the fields of education, psychology and emotions, such as various zodiac accounts.

(2) Topicality

Simply put, there is still room for discussion behind the content selection.

The first video of this account that received a lot of views on Bilibili was about how couples get along after marriage.

Of course, this is just an example. It does not mean that we should use this kind of topic as a password for traffic and deliberately create contradictions and confrontations. Not to mention the moral issues, it is not in line with the current ecology of various platforms.

However, when we are selecting topics and content, we should proactively look for or design the extensions behind the topics so that users’ discussions are not limited to video content. There is no absolute right or wrong in topics like this. Different people have different opinions and experiences, and everyone has something to say. If there is something to say, there will be communication; if there is communication, there will be discussion; if there is discussion, the interaction rate will naturally go up.

(3) Twists and turns

The best content is a good story, with twists and turns, interlocking links, and fascinating stories that keep users reading. Similarly, we use some techniques to design various foreshadowings, suspense, and plot twists in the video content to make the user's experience ups and downs and make them impulsively like it.

(4) Scarcity and novelty

The scarcity of content does not mean that there is a lack of relevant content, but that the content is valuable but the quantity is relatively small!

Basically, the focus is on two aspects: exclusivity and differentiation. I won’t give specific examples and we will discuss it later.

2. Follow the hot spots slowly

When talking about hot-selling products, many people's first instinct is hot spots.

That’s right. Using the right approach to catch the trend can significantly increase exposure, but whether it can bring growth and conversion depends on the quality of the content.

For a small account whose purpose is to increase followers, the ROI is too poor considering the time and energy spent on riding on the hot topics and the benefits of increasing followers.

Hot spots are certainly where traffic is, and precisely because of this, competition is very fierce.

The first wave of dividends from hot spots is timeliness. Most people do not have relevant channels and resources. By the time you see a hot spot, it is already second-hand or even multi-hand, and the early outbreak nodes have been missed.

The second wave of dividends from hot topics is content, but without a unique angle and creative form, it is basically difficult to make a splash. Even if you finally find a breakthrough point and work hard to produce and publish it, there is a high probability that users will lose interest in the hot topic because they are overwhelmed by repeated content in a short period of time...

More often than not, your taking advantage of a hot topic is just helping it spread! So my attitude towards jumping on the bandwagon is to not be in a hurry, but to study the hot spots carefully, break down the events, characters, backgrounds, etc. that appear in the hot spots in detail, and then jump on the bandwagon by finding an angle that matches your own positioning and form, or a more advanced way of playing is to derive a new hot spot through hot spot elements.

3. Sustainable content

The sustainability of content is something you need to think about clearly when positioning your account and choosing a vertical field.

How big is the range of topics? Is the coverage population wide? One determines the life cycle, and the other determines the upper limit of the track. In addition to the sustainability of topic selection, there is also sustainability of form, style, and resources. That's right.

Try not to create anything non-original, as it has poor sustainability and can easily be rejected by increasingly strict platform censorship. Among the 45 videos of this account, 18 were restricted and 3 were forcibly hidden...otherwise, the traffic would at least double! I will talk about this in detail later.

In short, the content should provide value to the target users:

• Practical value meets the real needs of users
• Emotional value provides users with an outlet for venting

3. Do a good job of data analysis

Operations is the process of identifying and solving problems through data analysis, thereby improving various data indicators. The core data of short video attention:

• Likes — related to content and user emotions
• Comments - about topic extension
• Retweet——It is related to the topic selection angle
• Finished - related to the rhythm of the video

Home page visits and fan acquisition rate are related to the accuracy of target users.

In addition to these commonly used data, analyzing the user bounce trends and bounce rates of high-play and low-play content can modularize the content and view the attractiveness of different modules to users, which is conducive to later content optimization.

One thing that is easy to overlook is building your own user portrait through data. Always remember who your content is for? Who is watching you? These are two questions.

Due to my limited energy, the user portrait of this account is not accurate enough and only has basic attributes.

By the way, I have one more small point to share: when I started, the direction was biased towards education, and I personally expected the male-to-female ratio to be 4:6.

△The male-female ratio of both platforms exceeds 8:2

But after a week of doing it, the data started to make sense and I discovered that the actual male-to-female ratio on both platforms was more than 8:2. I immediately adjusted the direction of my videos, and hot titles began to appear... I can only say that men understand men better!

4. Emphasis on content co-creation

Once a movie, a book or a video is released on a public platform and seen by more people, it is no longer the author's own work. People's interpretations, quotations, and even some distortions of it will become part of the work. With the plunder of such quotations, the influence and spread of the content will increase exponentially.

In the Internet environment, a video that no one discusses is dead! Whether it is Tik Tok or Bilibili, users’ feedback on content is quick and accurate through comments, barrage, co-shooting, secondary creation... Some videos even receive more likes in the comment section than the video itself.

Experienced operators can roughly predict user reactions and discussion directions before a video is released. By guiding topics in a targeted manner, they can encourage users to post high-quality interactive content, which can not only improve the data of a single video, but also gain higher user stickiness and IP influence.

5. Final Thoughts

Regardless of the platform or track, 0-1 is the most difficult. In addition to the problem of startup volume, there are also

Herd mentality: People assume that high-liked content is high-quality and high-follower bloggers are high-quality bloggers, and often look down on videos with low likes.

The core of this herd mentality is social identity: the one chosen by the most people must be correct! It is difficult to discuss the pros and cons of this, and no one can avoid it. We can only make use of it in operations.

Just like pushing a stone down a mountain, the greatest force is needed to pry the stone, but as long as the critical point is broken, the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy, which will form exponential growth until the next bottleneck.

Author: Wei Fanfan

Source: Wei Fanfan