Short video operation: How to break through the monetization of short videos

The popularity of short videos has already made people excited and crazy, and platforms, brands and MCNs are still coming up with various tricks to add fuel to the fire.

Students who come from the online content industry should remain vigilant to iteration and strive to gain a foothold in the ever-changing market. Even students from all walks of life who were watching the fun outside joined in, trying to seize this last chance to start from scratch before the second half of the Internet is fully launched.

Players flocked in from all directions to join this short video game. Therefore, anxiety is inevitable. Against the backdrop of all parties scrambling to grab land, the track has already become complicated and overcrowded.

"Bringing goods is very popular, should I do it?" "He spends so much money on promotion every year, should I follow him?"

Who has raised funds, which category has newly issued subsidies, which company has a new celebrity, who has sold out the products, who has signed a year-round contract at a high price...

Too much information hits the fragile nerves of content creators. But most of the time, this information doesn't mean anything and just distracts from the vision. Traffic VS stickiness, content template VS accelerated content iteration, payment scale VS customer unit price, matrix VS adding a single IP...

Standing at each fork in the road, how should you make the right choice? The author believes that although the MCNs on the market have developed into various business formats, such as artist brokerage, e-commerce, marketing, IP copyright business, etc. But their differentiation is almost inseparable from four core advantages: traffic, resources, supply chain, and content creation. This article will sort out the various business formats that extend from the four advantages, and smooth the way for creators who are faced with complex choices.

Core advantage 1 - traffic

• Representative MCN: Star Station, Onion Group
• Monetization cycle: short

Adjust the main content direction in real time according to platform preferences and industry trends, incubate top influencers in the categories with the highest attention in a short period of time, and establish a matrix based on them to form scale, maintain the initiative of MCN on the platform, and thereby grasp the hard-core advantage of "traffic".

The MCN agency Star Station is a leading player in this type of strategy. As one of the largest MCNs on Douyin and Kuaishou, Star Station attaches great importance to the guiding role of data and directly links it with the efficiency of increasing fans. According to San Sheng, Star Station currently has 500 accounts, covering a total of 80 million fans. Its incubation model is different from that of ordinary MCNs, which starts from discovering the highlights of celebrities, but directly starts from researching the platform algorithms. Specifically, it includes: studying the algorithm rules of Tik Tok and Kuaishou → accumulating the rules of popular content → further strengthening the rules through content racing to form templates → using templates to guide content production and improve the efficiency of account fan growth.

The first step is to adopt efficient traffic strategies to quickly gather platform users. After consolidating this step, the MCN organization can realize the monetization cycle of advertising marketing and Taobao e-commerce on a large scale. Overall, this strategy has the shortest monetization cycle, but the speed of celebrity iteration is also fast, which is suitable for players with data research capabilities.

Core advantage 2 - resources

• Representative MCNs: Huayi Chunfeng, Qingteng Culture, Orange Entertainment, Onion Group
• Monetization cycle: Long

For any content IP, media resources, brand customer resources, and upstream and downstream industrial chain resources can exponentially amplify its social communication efficiency and chances of going viral. Resources in specific categories can even help it build a solid moat.

Here are two representative MCNs and celebrities:

1. Orange Entertainment, which is positioned as "the first self-media in entertainment", controls the traffic of celebrity entertainment content through celebrity entertainment/pan-entertainment content, and has accumulated more than 30 million fans on all platforms.

2. Lamu Yangzi. Relying on Chunfeng Pictures and its parent company Huayi Brothers, Yoko successfully entered the entertainment industry in a relatively short period of time. After starring in the theater movie "A River of Sorrow", she even got the leading female role in "Fatty Action Team". The vertical screen drama series "Let's Do It" co-produced with iQiyi helped it gain exposure in the online video field. Previously, when talking to the author about "short video celebrities going viral", Lamu Yangzi's agent Wen Bo revealed that Yangzi has always been an artist that the parent company Haohan Entertainment and Huayi Brothers are particularly optimistic about. Yangzi is positioned as a top domestic comedian, so the company has provided extremely high-level resource support in film and television, variety shows and fashion.

In addition, there is Qingteng Culture, which sent Lu Xiaocao into the "trainee" track by relying on its relationship with Tencent, and Onion Group, which has directly established cooperation with many brands and platforms. The configuration of resources + high-quality content IP means that this type of model requires large investment, has rich returns, and a relatively long cycle. During the period of content IP shaping, you must be able to endure loneliness. It is not recommended to use Taobao or engage in advertising too early, which are behaviors that damage the value of celebrities.

Marketing and artist management are high-frequency monetization methods for MCNs, which have absolute advantages in resources. In terms of marketing, based on the artist's image, the brand story is strengthened through the use of endorsements, promotion ambassadors, etc., and collaboration with other celebrities under the MCN can complete full-case marketing, event hype, etc.; in terms of artist brokerage, announcements, performances, endorsements, etc., are also a win-win model with great room for imagination. Initiatives such as optimizing marketing effectiveness based on tool-based construction are a later matter.

Core advantage 3 - supply chain

• Representative MCN: Miwei Media, Shidian Reading, Lu Qi, traditional industry brands, etc.
• Monetization cycle: Medium

Choosing a vertical category to enter, having the ability to continuously output corresponding products (entities, services), and constantly improving the product line is a monetization idea for vertical industries to enter short videos, and it will also be one of the key points for the vertical content market size to exceed that of general entertainment content.

Miwei Media, which created the popular online variety show "The Debaters", and its subsidiary Miguo Media, after successfully exporting the media image of "good at speaking", have successively launched monetization models such as paid courses, offline teaching, image endorsements, and artist announcements.

▲ “米未mewe” Himalaya album page (part)

The strategy of seizing a niche category and deeply cultivating the industrial chain is very suitable for players of vertical content. Shidian Reading has set up offline bookstores and created Shidian Classroom, and Lu Qi launched the "Love Study Club" for content payment. After the short video platforms fully opened their e-commerce functions, small and medium-sized businesses of physical products that continued to enter the market have focused their attention on the supply chain.

Content products with supply chain as their core advantage come partly from merchants in traditional industries and partly depend on the absorption of the traditional industries behind them by vertical content producers. Ultimately, this type of content will become a comprehensive commercial company with content at the front end, and complete a new retail business model based on Internet distribution.

Among these, the monetization cycle for establishing vertical IP and self-supply product lines is longer, while the cycle for merchants in traditional industries to complete new retail transformation is relatively short. What needs to be noted here is that small and medium-sized vertical businesses in the content industry can first focus on "building trust". This is different from the usual output of advantages. It is very important to create a "real" and "purposeless" content viewing experience for fans.

Core advantage 4 —— IP creation

• Representative MCN: Tianna, Dayu, Twelve Buildings
• Monetization cycle: long

When a team has a very high sensitivity to content and is particularly good at producing content, we believe that temporary factors such as trends and bonuses will not have a particularly big impact on it. It can basically be regarded as desensitized because its irreplaceability is very high and user consumption habits tend to be stable.

For example, Tianna, which produces high-quality film and drama review content "Xi Yi Ah Kan", this commentary program that deconstructs and reconstructs movies has established a very high "industrial barrier" in the copywriting and editing links, effectively avoiding the phenomenon of content homogeneity.

Those with high cost investment include "Yichan Little Monk" and "Changcao De Yantuanzi" from Twelve Buildings; those with medium and low cost include Kuaishou celebrities "Shougong Geng" and "3 Guo", etc. These celebrities have very strong personality traits, and even if they are maliciously copied, their essence cannot be understood.

Content products whose main advantage is IP creation capability, that is, content creation capability, need time to accumulate their advantages. Such content has a very good long-tail effect. Once the content has completed its advantage output and the IP is established, you only need to choose one of advertising marketing, derivative/IP management, self-built e-commerce brands, and knowledge payment/community to maintain a good profit situation. MCN also has a higher bargaining power and is more proactive. Of course, the monetization cycle of this type is also longer.

Overall, the first data-based traffic strategy is suitable for MCNs that are eager to monetize, entering the supply chain is most suitable for vertical content players, and the final IP creation is a content model with a long cycle and the longest life cycle. It is the best option for those who are called "enthusiastic content creators."

The monetization model starts with the advantages of content products, and the advantages of content products come from the core advantages of the creators behind them. The first step to relieve the pressure of monetization may be for MCN to have a comprehensive and profound understanding of itself. When it comes to short video monetization, slow is fast.

Related reading:

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6. Short video promotion and operation: Who has better ability to bring goods?

Author: Langge

Source: Marketing Planning Officer