Douyin content operation: Thoughts on going from an amateur to a millionaire blogger

The content of the event operation system has finally been completed and submitted. Today I will start sharing some broader Internet topics, involving my personal thoughts on all aspects of the new Internet era and my interpretation of my personal areas of expertise.

Let’s start with the content operation of Douyin and Bilibili, which is of great concern to everyone. I will share with you some thoughts on the good results I have achieved after investing in the content field:

• In three months, the "Civilian Dressing Guide" gained 800,000 followers on Douyin and 200,000 followers on Bilibili (ranked second on Bilibili in terms of the increase in followers in 2018 and ranked first among the top 500 in Bilibili's Rising Star Program).
• Tik Tok, Bilibili and a large number of MCNs are using my content for template analysis, and a large number of imitators and plagiarists have emerged.
• After creating a fashion account, I created a workplace account with no traffic at all. Within one month, it gained 60,000 followers and produced many hot-selling products.

All of the above small achievements have not been achieved by inflating the number of followers or the amount of resources, but have been achieved purely by relying on the dissemination and explosive power of the content itself.

The valuable point is that these content attempts are not a lucky story of getting rich overnight, but are achieved through methodological deduction within a plan, so I think these thoughts on content operations should be of great reference value.

Of course, there are many articles about the content operations of Douyin and Bilibili, but most of them only stay on the surface of how to publish content, how to write titles, and how to cooperate with promotion, and do not go deep into the essence of content production.

Based on practical experience, 95% of whether or not a content platform can obtain traffic is determined by the quality of the content itself, because content will ultimately be consumed by users and is a consumer product. Only 5% comes from some operational skills, which are icing on the cake. Spending a lot of energy to study these things is completely putting the cart before the horse, and focusing on these contents is also garbage knowledge.

The following are thoughts on content operations based on my personal practical experience and discussions with some senior content production experts (the content operations of an organization involve many cooperative promotion methods that are not within the scope of this discussion). There are several main points:

1. How to view platform algorithms and rules
2. Valuable content is the foundation of everything, and vertical content is the future trend of platform diversion
3. Valuable content needs some entertainment packaging to enhance exposure
4. It is realistic to reduce production costs and find an effective model. Persisting in production is the only way to break out.
5. Internet sense is the primary productive force in the content industry

1. How to view platform algorithms and rules

Why do so many content operation methodologies talk about operational skills like how to maintain data when posting videos? Because this is the knowledge that is easiest to summarize as experience. Of course, it is not completely useless. So how should we view these operational skills for a specific platform? Let us first understand how these skills came about.

There are two sources of these skills: one comes from the usage habits that users have accumulated on this platform over a long period of time. For example, high exposure brought by high user activity at certain times, leaving wonderful comments on popular videos in Douyin can bring you traffic, creating original soundtracks in Douyin can bring traffic from other follow-up works, and so on. This knowledge is not difficult to retrieve, but the actual effect it brings is relatively weak, so I will not expand on it here.

What needs to be paid attention to and understood is the second source, which is the response to a platform's traffic distribution rules and algorithms.

Students who have worked on the platform should know why the platform has algorithms and rules. The core purpose is to screen out high-quality content and recommend it to suitable users. In order to achieve this goal, algorithms and rules must be constantly optimized. There may be some loopholes in the phased algorithms that allow you to find some tricks to get around it, but they will not last long.

If you want to continue to gain traffic, you can only comply with the platform's guidance. Of course, some platforms will also have phased guidance to support a certain type of content. The only operational actions worth focusing on are to find the platform orientation and adjust the content to suit the platform orientation in order to enjoy the benefits of traffic inclination.

Therefore, the correct attitude is not to go against the platform (exploiting loopholes in the rules), but to follow the platform's guidance.

The direction of a platform is very easy to observe: topics recently recommended by the platform will receive traffic, using the platform's recently promoted live broadcast capabilities will receive traffic bonuses, and any actions that help the platform monetize (the biggest pain point for content platforms is monetization without exception, and which actions can allow the platform to get a share of the monetization) will also be supported. Understand these ever-changing platform orientations and reasonably match them with your basic content (don’t force it, which is meaningless) and you can truly get these bonuses.

Finally, popular content on a platform will definitely be subject to human intervention, whether it is positive intervention (increasing promotion) or negative intervention (limiting traffic). So don’t think that everything is controlled by machines and algorithms. As long as you do a good job of data, you will have traffic. If you want your popular content to successfully gain traffic, you must consider that this content will eventually be comprehensively evaluated by a real person.

2. Valuable content is the foundation of everything, and vertical content is the future trend of platform diversion

Why do so many people become famous overnight, with one video getting tens of millions of views, but then quickly become unpopular and have no fans following them anymore? It’s because they have deviated from the core essence of the content; content must have value.

A user may like a funny video you accidentally shot and spread it, but his action of following you must be based on a most basic need: following you is valuable to him (this blogger is stably and persistently producing content that is valuable to me, and following him will bring me more value in the future).

Content is a consumer product. What users pay in exchange for this consumer product is time, dissemination actions, or even money. Therefore, when creating content, you should start with the idea that you are creating a consumer product. First, think clearly about what the value of your content is, who your target audience is, and whether your content can provide complete value in a continuous manner. If you detach from these thoughts and explore content aimlessly, you may hit a point and experience an explosion, but it will definitely not last long.

Value can be explicit value or implicit value. The clearer the value is, the stronger the motivation for users to change from “like” to “follow”. Typical examples of explicit value are various hard knowledge accounts that teach makeup skills, dance skills, dressing skills and even investment knowledge. Users can clearly know the value you can bring when they see it, and will have a stronger motivation to pay attention.

Implicit value is the soft value of entertainment in the content itself. Users can relax and have fun while watching your content. Some funny accounts, music and short drama accounts are typical cases. Such accounts often require repeated exposure to allow users to perceive the implicit value and pay attention to them. The motivation for attention will be relatively weak. However, entertainment accounts are easier to gain exposure and can rely on a larger number of exposure and likes to gain the same level of attention.

So, no matter how much people say that there is institutional hype behind the Daigula K account, since this account has been successful and has become a benchmark, the core of its valuable content has not been lost. Why are there so many young ladies dancing? Daigula K is not the best-looking, not the most professional, not the first to do it, but she still became a benchmark. The core reason behind this is that a little girl with ordinary looks and not much better skills than ordinary people, dancing some simple and easy-to-learn but dynamic-looking dances is the real driving force for everyone's attention (of course some boys pay attention for her pure smile, such as me).

It is not difficult for anyone to create a valuable content account. Find an area that you are good at and understand, spend some time to study it thoroughly, and constantly improve your knowledge reserves in the process of continuous content production.

The opportunity provided by various short video platforms today is that you really don’t need to be too professional. There are too many people with no foundation who can be influenced by you. Moreover, many areas of knowledge are ambiguous (what is good-looking in dressing knowledge). As long as you have your own style, there will be people who identify with you and gradually become your fans.

It’s really not difficult, it’s just that you have all been misled by those rubbish methodologies.

In addition, there is a trend in the distribution of traffic on all content platforms, which is to be more directed towards vertical content. What is vertical content? It is content with clear category attributes such as beauty, fashion, and outdoor, because these contents have the greatest monetization potential and are also what content platforms need most (users are more willing to pay for the same item on a dancing account and an account that teaches fashion).

This trend will gradually expand to all content platforms, because any content platform will reach the stage of monetization, and the only way to monetize content is advertising. The best form of advertising is a strong connection between the content itself and the product. Therefore, in the process of thinking about the value of content, in order to gain support from future platform traffic trends and possible easier monetization, please try to take verticality into consideration.

3. Valuable content needs some entertainment packaging to enhance exposure

The value of content mainly plays a role in driving users to follow your content after they become interested in it. However, the advantage of simply valuable content in attracting users' attention and causing them to like and spread your content is not that obvious. Observe the content that is most pleasing and easy to get likes and spread, which can be divided into three categories:

• The first category is content that causes people’s emotions to change or resonate;
• The second category is content with entertainment and recreational attributes;
• The third category is some unconventional and bizarre content.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of operability and see what we can learn from each of the three types of content.

(1) Content that causes changes in users’ emotions or resonates with them. The content that is most likely to cause changes in users’ emotions is of course “hahahahaha” content. Its sustainability is much better than other types, and its production cost is relatively low and easier to grasp. If you don’t have the ability to create jokes, you can copy some ready-made jokes that are not so popular. This is the most recommended form of combination. My outfit content is a combination of using some original jokes to gain exposure, and then using outfit content to attract attention.

Some other emotions are relatively difficult to grasp, but not completely impossible. For example, some toxic workplace chicken soup accounts will cause people to feel depressed, and some emotional accounts will use various sad music and some celebrity quotes to arouse resonance such as sadness, positivity, and anger.

A more advanced application method is to create emotional changes by causing conflicts. For example, some current hot issues accounts use some novel and conflicting viewpoints to arouse people's positive or negative emotions and create discussions and dissemination. However, in the final analysis, people will not deliberately seek out negative energy, but they are willing to actively seek out positive energy, so creating positive emotions quickly from any angle is the most recommended form.

(2) Entertainment content itself has recreational value, so finding a sustainable entertainment content series can have the advantages of both exposure and attention. However, the production threshold for entertainment and leisure content is generally relatively high. You either need to have special talents (singing, dancing, B-boxing), or you can create completely original content (vertical screen drama - planning, performance, shooting, editing), or at least you have to be able to re-produce some existing content (some movie review content, which can highly refine the plot and add analysis). If you have the conditions to produce content with entertainment value, choosing this path is the most advantageous.

(3) Some curious content will often receive a lot of attention and spread within a period of time, for example: some earthy videos (Uncle Counting with a Fitness Ball), magical slogans (Here I come, brother), curious displays of wealth (Hands are a little dry, right?), etc. Otherwise, they will not be popular. If they are popular, they will generally be explosively popular among the whole nation.

The key point of curious content is that it is unprecedented and unconventional. However, the obvious disadvantage of this type of content is that it will quickly become unpopular. Users are only watching and spreading it with a temporary mentality, and it is impossible for them to like your content from the bottom of their hearts. In addition, the popularity of curious content is much less controllable than the above two types, and it is something that can only be encountered by chance.

Therefore, the recommendation of curious content is to cooperate with the existing content form (valuable), and make some attempts from time to time. Maybe you can quickly increase the user scale by hitting the right spot, but whether users stay and continue to pay attention to you is still based on the value of your content. Just try it as a phased promotion method.

4. Reducing production costs and finding an effective model is realistic, and insisting on production is the only way to break out.

"The most important thing when creating content is persistence." This is the most common experience shared by many content practitioners. Because content operation is often not a linear growth process, but rather one explosion point after another that helps you continuously reach another level (my 700,000 Douyin followers are actually mainly brought by three popular contents (the third issue increased by 300,000, the tenth issue increased by 100,000, and the 24th issue increased by 200,000)), and the arrival of the explosion point is composed of a variety of controllable and uncontrollable factors (you can control whether the content is good, but whether it will become popular or not really depends on luck).

Once you have content value and explosive power, you need to use continuous content production to reach this explosion point. Maybe this explosion point will be late, but as long as your content has value and explosive power, this explosion point will definitely come. Another value of persisting in production is to make your fans realize that they can continue to gain value from your content, which is also an important factor in a person's decision whether to follow you (think about it for yourself, which one would you rather follow, an account with neat and regular content and an account with scattered and random content).

When it comes to insisting on production, it involves another very current issue, the cost of content production. If you haven't actually started producing content yet, you may feel very excited about creating interesting content, getting likes from fans, and flipping fan badges. But once it’s actually up and running, content production and fan interaction become a regular task that must be completed, and the process becomes extremely boring. Especially in the process of content production, thinking about scripts, shooting and debugging, editing and other work will completely crush your enthusiasm.

Maybe you will spend a lot of energy on the production of early content, polishing it repeatedly, but after the content is launched, you find that the data is not as explosive as expected. Can you withstand this blow?

Unless you are operating in an institutionalized manner with a complete team division of labor and everyone just treats it as a job, you don't need to consider the cost of producing word content. But if you are not popular yet, or you are operating a single-soldier operation mechanism, you must consider the production cost of the content, which is controllable. You have to consider that one day in the future you will no longer have any passion, your content will not generate any revenue, and the data after going online will be mediocre. In these extreme situations, you will still be able to persist. Only then can you better get through the most boring period of content creation with no data, no output, and no passion.

As long as you persist, this period of time will definitely pass, and all your persistence and hard work will be concentrated at one point and explode. It feels really great when one day someone recognizes you on the street and asks you for a photo. As a content practitioner, you must experience this feeling once.

5. Internet sense is the primary productive force in the content industry

The above is a more rational way to analyze content creation, and a more executable methodology. But there are thousands of excellent bloggers, and not all of them use this methodology. If we block out all rational analysis, the core ability to create good content is called "net sense", which is whether you can get the point of interesting content and whether you can create such stimulating points. Net sense is the primary productive force in the content industry.

Finally, it should be said that most of the core Internet circles are ordinary product managers, operations managers, etc. who enter the company after graduating from college and then slowly grow up in their work. The growth environment of most of us is relatively ordinary, and our daily lives are mainly composed of overtime work and are quite detached from life and entertainment. Few people are really conscious or truly committed to cultivating their own online sense.

However, young people who have richer life experiences, can create interesting content, and understand life and entertainment better are often unable to enter the core Internet circle because their resumes are not "professional" enough. So I suggest that if a business needs to create content that can be truly liked and spread by users, please pay attention to these rare joke makers and content producers. The value they can bring cannot be brought by the product managers you spend a lot of money to recruit.

Source: SKY#沙璇皓（skyhahalife）