Can short video operations be both eye-catching and easy to monetize?

Wearing traditional ethnic costumes, seven native Dong girls transformed into the "Romantic Dong Seven Fairies" on the Internet. In their short videos, they recorded their daily lives in their hometown: picking fruits in the mountains, fishing in the fields, weaving and embroidering, while also showing the original natural scenery of their hometown.

In one year, they not only gained a large number of fans on platforms such as Kuaishou, but also brought hot sales of Dong embroidery, rice, turmeric and other products through short videos. While making profits, the team also helped their hometown achieve complete poverty alleviation.

The Seven Fairies are certainly not an isolated case. As early as 2017, "Qiaofu 9mei" became well-known and loved by the public for releasing short videos of food with hometown characteristics. She used this to start a prosperous video e-commerce business and became a leader in the short video industry.

In addition, a series of celebrities such as "Huanong Brothers", "Food Writer Wang Gang", "Country Xiao Qiao", "Country Girl", and "Northwest Xiaoqiang" have formed a certain influence among the audience. On the one hand, their unique video content is interesting and eye-catching, and on the other hand, they also have monetization capabilities that cannot be underestimated.

Looking at the short video content ecosystem, there are more and more short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers on major platforms, which are shot and created by grassroots creators, mainly farmers, in rural areas with original geographical features, local customs, and gourmet specialties as the main content. So why are they so popular with the audience, and what kind of monetization space do they have? Kas Data will analyze and discuss this category from multiple levels.

The combined effect of internal and external factors has cultivated the advantage of "attracting attention"

If you want to know why more and more people are starting to pay attention to or even become addicted to short videos about agriculture , rural areas and farmers, the first thing you need to understand is that the popularity of short videos about agriculture, rural areas and farmers is inseparable from the influence of external factors, namely, the response of multiple short video platforms to the government’s poverty alleviation policies and the support for positive grassroots users. This response and support also provides fertile creative soil for more "new farmers".

In March 2018, Huoshan Video put forward the slogan of "Join hands with Huoshan to revitalize charming villages", and then launched the Huoshan Rural Affairs Partner Plan in September; Douyin provided traffic support for rural affairs short videos through rural tourism check-ins, assistance to poor counties, and intangible cultural heritage partner plans; Kuaishou, which has always been down-to-earth, has also launched "Kuaishou Happy Rural Entrepreneurship College" and "Happy Rural Leader" and other plans since the second half of 2018, and Xigua Video has long supported rural creators. It can be said that the tilt of platform traffic and multi-platform dissemination conditions mean unlimited opportunities for rural creators.

In addition to external factors, short videos about agriculture, rural areas and farmers, which break the previous image of rural short videos as vulgar and bad-taste, have also built their own advantages in attracting audiences. Here, Kas summarizes it into two factors.

1. Awakening or reconstructing people’s collective memory

The rise of short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers is inseparable from the awakening and reconstruction of collective memory. The development and expansion of cities are constantly squeezing the living space in rural areas, and more and more people are living in high-rise buildings and reinforced concrete.

For those born in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them have had life experiences in rural fields. Even after integrating into the city, they still retain a sense of nostalgia for the countryside. The rural landscapes presented in these agricultural short videos can also make the audience feel more intimate and at the same time gain a sense of belonging to the rural group.

For the relatively young groups born in the 1990s and 2000s, the countryside may exist in the oral memories of their elders or may come from various literary and artistic works. The rural life and rural scenes that they have never experienced in person make them full of curiosity and novelty . With the spread of social networks, their curiosity and social needs can be satisfied by watching related videos.

Considering the current environment, the fast-paced and stressful urban life has also aroused many audiences' yearning for the simple and leisurely living landscape in the countryside . While collective memory is being awakened or constructed, the audience can also seek temporary rest and escape by watching videos and gain a primitive and authentic happiness.

2. The original ecological atmosphere enhances the audience experience

Compared with other short videos that pay more attention to the texture of the lens and the presentation of the picture, most of the short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers present simple or even "rough" visual images: there are neither sophisticated editing techniques nor sophisticated filters. When people are used to watching short videos with accelerated sound changes, interesting scenes and twists and turns in the plot, this kind of rural pastoral style, which is the most original scene created by stripping away the exquisite filters, is undoubtedly a subversion of the audience's conventional aesthetic.

For example, in the videos of the Huanong Brothers, the sounds of flowing water and insects in the mountains are directly transmitted to the audience's ears through the videos; for example, in the videos of the clever housewife 9mei making farm delicacies such as rice noodles, the entire process from grinding rice slurry with a stone mill to making rice noodles is realistically presented, and many rural-specific elements such as vegetable gardens, haystacks, fish ponds, orchards, ducks, fields, etc. are all visible in the works. The overall style of the video is simple and natural. It is neither deliberately bizarre nor sensational, giving users a close-up experience of real rural life.

Liu Suliang, one of the Huanong Brothers, once commented on his work in this way in an interview. "I am just a farmer. The biggest feature of our short videos is their authenticity and simplicity." Generally speaking, the main content of the works released by rural creators that are more popular with users is "rural environment + real-time living conditions of the characters". The normal state of rural life is presented through synchronous sound and pictures, and the details of life are recorded from the perspective of the protagonist. There is a natural and original atmosphere flowing through the entire video, which not only increases the audience's sense of immersion and subjective experience, but also touches the audience's emotions and memories of the countryside.

Monetization: The transformation from “local memory” to “local economy”

With the help of diversified displays of different rural scenes, rural creators place the audience in the scenes constructed by short videos, making it easier for them to establish emotional bonds with them and transform this emotion into support for the video content and creators, thereby achieving the ultimate goal of "monetization".

In addition to traditional traffic sharing, platform subsidies, fan rewards, and advertising sharing, e-commerce sales are a major monetization method relied upon by many rural creators who own products, that is, completing consumption behavior while the audience is watching the video. These creators use the visual impact and consumer stimulation of "watch and buy" to complete user purchases and conversions by showcasing hometown delicacies and specialty agricultural products in videos.

The Taobao store "Qiaofu 9mei Fresh Goods Store" opened by Qiaofu 9mei mainly sells local specialties from her hometown and her own delicacies, such as egg yolk pastry, dragon fruit, dried longan, passion fruit, dried lychees and other products. By attracting fans through short videos, the number of followers of the store is about to reach 60,000. According to official data, Qiaofu 9mei sold 765 tons of fruit last year with an annual transaction volume of 15 million, making her a super sales king in the rural areas.

Many rural creative talents who emerged from Volcano Video, such as An Xiaolu, Jiarong sister Ajuan, and the Dong sisters, have also achieved great success in promoting products from their hometowns through live broadcasts and short videos. For example, Sister Jiarong’s total sales of agricultural and sideline products in Huoshan exceeded 3 million yuan in 11 months last year; last year, An Xiaolu helped farmers in his hometown sell smoked quails, with sales exceeding 300,000 yuan in a single live broadcast in 2 hours, and sales reached 28,000 orders in 48 hours, with a turnover of 1.624 million yuan.

If you look through the works of rural creators on various platforms, you will find that many farmers sell corresponding products in the merchandise windows by directly displaying the production environment and growth environment of the products as a quality endorsement, directly linking the videos with the products to promote user purchases. Compared with other types of creators, rural creators who own their own products and are close to the products seem to have a natural advantage in monetization due to the dual boost of traffic support and user interest.

Further improve monetization capabilities

Although they are loved by many users due to their original ecological scenes and authentic and simple style, many short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers have received very little attention. At the same time, compared with other types of short videos, the more direct, prominent and obvious monetization orientation also puts forward higher requirements on their content construction in more dimensions.

1. Expansion in content direction

"Attracting fans" is the first step for creators to achieve economic benefits, and the content direction largely determines the video's playback volume and market size. The increasing number of short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers means that users’ aesthetic and personal needs are becoming increasingly diversified. As of now, short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers generally include categories such as daily rural life, rural scenery, local customs, planting and breeding, and rural cuisine. Except for some top IPs that have already established a firm foothold, the works released by many creators are becoming more and more superficial and homogenized, gradually causing aesthetic fatigue among the audience and no longer having a competitive advantage.

If we say that in the early days, short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers won by relying on grassroots nature and individuality, then if they want to gain more attention today, they require creators to combine local traditional culture and life reality to conduct broader and deeper exploration. For example, issues surrounding current rural development, such as elderly care, empty-nest elderly, left-behind children, rural education, rural environmental pollution, etc.; or exploring local traditional culture, looking for old objects and traditional customs that are rarely known to outsiders, etc., to showcase a region's rich historical cultural characteristics and social issues, and to arouse social attention and collective thinking.

2. Form distinct brand advantages

Rich video scenes and high-quality video content are prerequisites for rural accounts to attract fans, but on the road to realizing content monetization, forming a distinctive character image and personal brand is a more critical step.

In the works of Qiaofu 9mei, delicacies such as the orchards she grows and the local specialty salted duck eggs that she pickles by hand have been transformed into agricultural and sideline products with personal brand characteristics, constituting potential commercial value. For a long time, the audience has been "witnessing" the growth process of fruit trees from planting to fruiting through videos, as well as the real record of all food being sourced from local materials. This has prompted the audience to trust and identify with the 9mei brand. Coupled with the psychological perception that agricultural products are natural and pollution-free, they have finally completed the transformation from fans to consumers.

In addition, 9mei herself is also an irreplaceable brand symbol. In addition to possessing qualities such as hardworking, capable, and approachable, 9mei also pays great attention to "dialogue" interaction with the audience. The content selection of her short videos often comes from requests and suggestions in the comment section. This audience-centered approach, which satisfies the viewing preferences of everyone and builds scenario-based video content with user value, has also attracted a large number of loyal fans for her.

3. Create a “point” to break through the circle

If rural creators can break through the rural areas and attract more audiences from different fields to pay attention to their works, their space for monetization will be further expanded. In short, it is to create "points" in the video that are more spreadable and can break through circles.

Take the Huanong Brothers as an example. At the beginning, their main communication platform was Xigua Video, which is owned by Toutiao, and it was not very well-known. After that, they broke out of the limitations of a single platform and a single channel. They first joined Bilibili, which focuses on ghost videos and animation dramas, and later opened an account on the social media platform Sina Weibo.

Since the Huanong brothers have to find a reason every time they eat bamboo rats, after it has appeared and spread many times, it has become a unique "joke" for the Huanong brothers. B station fans compiled their video clips and named it "100 Reasons to Eat Bamboo Rats". The "stalker" meaning given to it led to wider dissemination.

Thanks to the popularity of the topic and the real and interesting video content, Huanong Brothers unexpectedly received unanimous praise on several platforms with low user overlap, enabling them to break through the "three rural" circles and gain higher commercial value.

The start of the battle to expand the short video content to rural areas may mean that rural creators will have more opportunities. Starting from the question of "how to get closer to monetization", there is still unlimited room for creators to play.

Author: Yue Yao

Source: CAAS Data (caasdata6)