How to attract users through short video promotion?

On June 24, the "China Mobile Internet Development Report (2019)" compiled by the People's Daily Research Institute was officially released in Beijing. The report details the basic situation of mobile Internet in 2018 and predicts development trends. Among them, the article "Redistribution of User Attention in the Short Video Era" written by Weng Zhihao and Peng Lan from Tsinghua University focuses on the short video field that cannot be ignored in the mobile Internet.

When short videos first emerged, some people considered them to be “fast-moving consumer goods” in the field of content consumption due to their many advantages. They had obvious advantages in the “attention battle” with long videos and graphic reading. So, with the increasing number of short video users and the continuous enrichment of content in recent years, what trend has the user attention stratification shown for short videos themselves? What kind of inspiration can this trend bring to short video practitioners? In this issue , Caas Data (ID: caasdata6) will discuss this issue based on the two viewpoints extracted from the article.

Two trends in attention stratification

In the article "Redistribution of User Attention in the Short Video Era", Kas Data extracted two trends in attention stratification.

1. Value recognition has become an increasingly important stratification standard, and attention tends to accumulate on "upper-level" content with high recognition.

Behind the user's active attention behavior is the willingness to continue to follow up on the content, and it is also an important sign of conveying value recognition. The specific manifestation of value recognition lies in "lifestyle". In the author's opinion, short videos have greatly lowered the threshold for image expression. Images have begun to return to life, and rich life has given individuals unlimited reasons and materials for expression, making the life-like nature of short videos an important factor in user attention stratification for a certain period of time.

Currently, short videos are moving from private expressions to public narratives. Most popular short videos are based on life scenes, finding highlights in the texture of ordinary life, and users' attention will also turn to content that is consistent with their own values.

Take the example of the Douyin account “Xiao Lan” which went from being an unknown amateur to having 2.812 million followers.

Xiaolan is a full-time mother who came to Shenzhen to work with her husband. Her husband goes to work on the construction site every day, while Xiaolan takes care of the children at home, prepares meals for the family, and films the process of cooking and eating with her family every day for her own entertainment and uploads it to Douyin. The small but cozy rental house, the delicious meals, Xiaolan who always has a smile on her face, and her husband who goes out early and comes back late but always shares the housework... These real, simple and ordinary elements of life, when combined together, present an optimistic attitude towards life, and therefore have gained the value recognition of many users, which has been converted into user follow-up behavior accordingly.

▲Xiaolan public opinion analysis Source: Kas Business Edition

2. User attention shifts from “simple viewing” to “deep exploration”

At the beginning of the rise of short videos, many users' demand for them was still to kill fragmented leisure time. However, with the continuous influx of content creators and the increasingly perfect short video ecosystem, users' demands have also changed accordingly: many users use short videos more based on their own interests and future development needs. In addition to killing leisure time, attention allocation has shown an important level of supplementing knowledge and learning skills.

According to statistics in the article, as of December 8, 2018 alone, there were nearly 18,000 knowledge-based creators on Douyin with over 10,000 fans, who had released more than 3 million knowledge-based short videos with a total of more than 338.8 billion views. Half a year later, in addition to the continued increase in the number of knowledge creators, the knowledge categories covered and involved are also expanding horizontally.

For example, the TikTok account "Ethan Clear Thinking" focuses on "Improve cognitive levels and learn to think clearly". The video content starts from psychology and delivers various psychological knowledge to users in the form of "animation + music + explanation". The form is popular and easy to understand, and the content is magical and interesting, so it has firmly grasped the user's attention.

In the June Kasdata Newcomer List, Ethan Sober Thinking ranked at the top twice, and the number of fans has climbed all the way to 612.2w (as of the time of posting this article). Among them, four videos received more than 2 million likes, and the video "Teaching you how to see through a person in 15 seconds through psychology" received 2.538 million likes.

At the same time, after the hit video appeared, the data trend of Ethan Sober Thinking did not show any obvious signs of fatigue. In addition to the increasing number of fans, the Kasi Index has maintained a stable trend, which shows the degree of users' interest in the content he posted.

▲ Ethan is thinking clearly. Changes in the Kasi Index in the past six weeks. Source: Kasi Business Edition

On the one hand, short videos provide a broad stage for more people to participate in knowledge production, allowing the boundaries of knowledge to be expanded; on the other hand, the content form of short videos breaks down the barriers to knowledge dissemination and understanding, and at the same time shares knowledge through social links, allowing knowledge to reach more people.

Several ideas for grabbing user attention

Capturing user attention is the first step to attracting users and cultivating fan stickiness. In the current short video ecosystem, how can we grab users' attention through content? Kas Data believes that there are several points that need attention:

1. Appearance alone is no longer enough to attract users’ attention

In the early stage of the development of short videos, many young men and women with sweet or handsome looks created many popular videos with their good looks and gained a large number of fans, occupying an important position in the short video content ecosystem that cannot be ignored. However, judging from recent data, the advantages of such videos are gradually shrinking on the platform. Users have shown signs of aesthetic fatigue with similar content, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract users' attention solely by relying on appearance or superficial content that only scratches the surface. In addition to appearance, seeking more highlights that can be noticed for a long time may be a way to attract long-term attention.

2. “Excavate” beauty from reality

Xiaolan’s popularity on Douyin gives us a good inspiration. Sometimes content that is too deliberate or too formulaic is always prone to being followed by a series of copies. When there are too many copies, people will inevitably get bored. What can attract users and touch their hearts is often the beauty reflected in real life. Whether it is when creating different types of content or when building a celebrity persona, content that is authentic and can evoke users' emotional and value identification is bound to be more likely to "arrest" users' attention.

3. Focus on “usefulness” to meet user needs

When more and more users are not satisfied with just leisure and entertainment in short videos, outputting content with the orientation of "usefulness" becomes a simple and crude way to get users' attention. What kind of content can arouse users' interest and provide them with substantial help? How should we convey the content so that it can be quickly accepted by users? Once these two issues are clear, they will always attract the corresponding group of people.

There is no doubt that the competition in the second half of the short video industry is destined to be a war for "attention grabbing". How to fight this battle? It's worth pondering.

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Author: Yue Yao

Source: Kas Data