Tik Tok Operation: The content code behind Tik Tok’s popularity!

What’s the secret behind Tik Tok’s popularity?

TikTok is constantly in turmoil.

In the past week, Douyin was first exposed to have caused the company to lose US$1.2 billion due to TikTok, and then briefly blocked the keyword search results of Tencent games. One incident directly pointed to the financial losses caused by Douyin's strong investment, and the other incident directly pointed to the commercial competition between Tencent and Toutiao.

Amid the storm, Tik Tok continues to take action.

Even after two years, Douyin continues to make moves in many directions as it continues to create popular internet celebrities like Maomao Sister and Li Jiaqi in terms of content, launches new Duoshan in the social dimension, and works hard to incubate internet celebrities to sell products in the e-commerce dimension.

Once upon a time, capital's quick attack method made Douyin the altar of glory, but many years later, Douyin is still the number one player in the short video field. What is the secret behind its popularity?

A replicable miracle

With over 500 million monthly active users in China and over 250 million daily active users, Douyin has created a traffic miracle in less than three years since its establishment, and its data is catching up with Tencent, the country's No. 1 traffic giant.

Douyin's expansion in the short video field naturally alarmed the giants. BAT entered the market one after another, music short videos emerged in an endless stream, and Tencent even launched more than ten products to hunt Douyin. But from the current perspective, Douyin will still have the last laugh.

This kind of strength is exactly the same as the rise of Toutiao back then.

In terms of technology, Toutiao uses social data as a preliminary portrait, and continuously updates and improves the user portrait based on usage behavior, thereby pushing content that you are interested in. Beneath the surface of the information is the powerful technical logic of the Toutiao team.

"What you care about is the headlines", this former slogan is the best summary of Toutiao's strong technical attributes.

Not only in the underlying logic of technology, but also in its actions at the capital level, Toutiao is ruthless. In addition to various channels, Toutiao's creator incentive plan, Wukong Q&A poaching Zhihu big Vs, and Huoshan Video signing Tianyou for 20 million, Toutiao products never spare capital ammunition in terms of operation and delivery.

On this basis, Toutiao has created a traffic miracle in the information dimension. As of 2016, Toutiao has more than 700 million registered users and over 78 million daily active users.

Focusing on technology and spending a lot of money is the secret behind Toutiao's traffic miracle.

The logic behind this set of secrets is that technology is the basic capability, traffic data is the tactical goal, and capital ammunition and sufficient cash flow are the solid backing. On top of that, the team only needs to fine-tune the content style according to the specific users of each product, and one popular product after another will be born.

As the product matrix expands, Toutiao has transformed into ByteDance, but this set of replicable product tactics has never wavered, which ensures that the product itself can accelerate iteration.

Under this, ByteDance has created one traffic myth after another. Toutiao has emerged in the information field, and Douyin has emerged in the short video field.

The popularity of Douyin in China started with Yue Yunpeng’s repost on Weibo in March 2017, and it experienced a rapid development during the Spring Festival of 2018, with celebrities appearing in the red envelope war, conquering online and offline channels, and users being “surrounded” by Douyin’s advertisements.

Behind this, algorithms and capital are the core driving forces, which ultimately allowed Douyin to surpass veteran players such as Kuaishou and Meipai and wear the crown of the domestic short video field.

As the replicable strategy became popular in China, Zhang Yiming took the opportunity to promote TikTok overseas.

In March last year, Zhang Yiming said in an academic dialogue that Toutiao’s overseas expansion strategy is not “one product per country” but “globalized products, localized operations.”

Globalized products mean that the core of technology and capital cannot be shaken. Whether in China, India or the United States, users can experience the underlying technical logic of algorithm recommendation.

In terms of delivery, the overseas version of Douyin is also very aggressive. It is reported that ByteDance spent $300 million on advertising on Google alone last year, mainly used to promote TikTok. In addition, TikTok will use capital ammunition to take over major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter where young users get information.

Not only are the underlying logics interconnected, but hot-selling products can also be linked globally. Jin Yang, head of the Tik Tok Japan team, once revealed that all popular content around the world is shared. At the same time, he will design the shooting to be simpler and more suitable for the participation of multiple people, targeting the shyness and "group warmth" mentality of the Japanese people.

Vigorous promotion has also reaped great rewards. According to Sensor Tower data, in the App Store download rankings in Q1 2018, TikTok surpassed FaceBook with 45.8 million downloads, ranking first in the world.

At the same time, looking at the country segments, the Indian market performed impressively. According to foreign media reports, TikTok's DAU in India reached 23 million in January this year, with a growth rate of more than 20 times. The 30-day retention rate is nearly 30%, and the cost of attracting new users is extremely low, with no more than 150 million single users.

Despite such a global attack, Douyin still adheres to the logic of focusing on technology and spending a lot of money

Under this product system, technology, operations and investment are organically combined like parts on a production line. One product after another rolls out of the assembly line and takes up one commanding point in terms of traffic volume after another.

However, the growth of every traffic giant must follow an unrepeatable path to success. Moreover, the short video dimension is also full of masters. What is the real way for Douyin to break through the siege?

Behind the Popularity

Wherever Douyin “passes”, it has become a check-in spot for internet celebrities.

Open your phone, point the camera at the night view of Hongyadong, select the appropriate BGM and filter after shooting, add some special effects, and a short video about Hongyadong will be ready. You have also joined the army of popular creations.

From the earliest popular C哩C哩 dance and seaweed dance, to the famous Answer Tea, Turkish ice cream and Chongqing Hongyadong, to today's "Hao Hi Oh" and "OMG". As a short video product, Douyin’s ability to create hits is enviable. What path is it taking?

If you want to see this path clearly, you must first return to the product itself.

When looking closely at Toutiao products, technology is an unavoidable core factor. In addition to interest recommendations, Douyin also has a video recommendation mechanism. Once each video is released, it will reach one to two hundred users at the same time. As the interactive data such as likes and comments increases, a video will reach 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or even one million users, and the traffic exposure rate increases layer by layer.

Therefore, some netizens have reported to the author that once Douyin produces a hit, they will see similar content every day when watching videos. This is a reflection of Douyin’s recommendation mechanism.

Not only technology, Douyin's positioning of "music short videos" is also leading a new trend in domestic short videos.

According to the early operation team of Douyin, after comparing several short video products in China at the time, they found that there were few short video products targeting post-90s users in first- and second-tier cities. This is the user group that Douyin needs to target.

After finding the core users, the product’s functional development must keep up. Compared with live streaming, the threshold for Douyin content is lower. In the earliest Douyin content, lip syncing and gesture dancing dominated the mainstream. This does not require the photographer to have strong talent, but instead reduces the creative pressure on users.

At the same time, the fun of Douyin short videos is more trendy, and the music and dance have unique temperament. Coupled with the creative style supplemented by special effects, the content is cooler and the desire to express is more prominent, which fits the content preferences of content users in first- and second-tier cities.

The product functions are complete and in line with user needs. This is the basic strength of Douyin and every product. However, if Douyin wants to become a hit, it must have more powerful product tactics.

This powerful strategy is inseparable from Douyin's product operations.

With short videos as the main content, how does Douyin “activate” its own product pool? Take Li Xueqin, a new internet celebrity on Douyin, as an example. She created a hit video with her message to Kris Wu. Behind the 2.7 million likes on a single video, the changes in the data reflect Douyin’s product operation ideas.

From the above data, we can see the changes in the number of likes for the five short videos before and after the "Shouting Out to Kris Wu" video. Calculated by the average, the number of likes for the five videos after the peak is actually lower than before.

At the same time, looking at the 18 short videos released by Li Xueqin, the highest number of likes for a single video was 555,000, and the average number of likes was around 100,000, which is far from the peak level of hits. In addition, the total number of likes for 138 works on Li Xueqin's account is 27 million, and a video "calling out to Kris Wu" accounts for as much as 1/10.

After the hit, things returned to normal. Behind the "Li Xueqin phenomenon" lies the general logic of Douyin: "operating content rather than people."

It is not difficult to find out by frequently watching Douyin that once a certain type of content gains a high level of attention, a large number of processed contents such as imitations and discussions will emerge on Douyin, and the dissemination of the content will be expanded through topic discussions on social media such as Weibo and WeChat.

In the era of traffic differentiation, users can learn about hot topics from social media, but the operational idea built by Douyin is to let users return to Douyin to find the source of content from various topic discussions.

"Operate content, not people" is in line with ByteDance's decentralized logic.

In the era of information explosion, the time cost of finding high-quality content remains high. Users are more concerned about whether they can see good content and care less about the people behind the content.

Therefore, Douyin should use the influence of content and topics to divert traffic, allowing users to know and use Douyin in frequent social scenarios, rather than just using one or two Internet celebrities to maintain the activity of the platform.

The popularity of topics such as "How exciting" and "OMG" are all reflections of this logic.

Driven by this rule, Douyin will promote wave after wave of topic discussions, use high-exposure content to consolidate the traffic pool, strengthen Douyin's brand attributes, and thus promote the commercialization of the platform.

It can be seen that in addition to the product functions themselves, Douyin is also strong in content operation, which is the core element of its product construction and the first code for Douyin's popularity.

However, the foundation of operations and functions is still built on content. Without high-quality short videos, how can we talk about hits and spread? So where does Douyin’s good content come from?

Content is people

Internet celebrities are the source of content production for Tik Tok.

In the early days of the product, young men and women such as Daigula K, Wu Jiayu and Fei Qiming often dominated the screen; recently, internet celebrities with different content such as Maomao Sister, Li Xueqin and Li Jiaqi have often become the focus.

However, if judged by the number of fans, it would be difficult for the above-mentioned people to be shortlisted among the “Top Ten Douyin Internet Celebrities”.

Excluding entertainment stars such as Chen He and Di Lieba, the internet celebrities with the largest number of fans on Douyin have already become famous. Except for Modern Brothers, Maomao Sister and Liu Erdou, other internet celebrities are mostly independent MCNs and live broadcast platform anchors.

On the Kuaishou platform, which is Douyin's "old friend", the once popular Li Tianyou and Paipai Qi, as well as the still very active Gao Di and Sanda Ge and other internet celebrities with tens of millions of fans, were all early followers of Kuaishou.

The number of high-fan internet celebrities who are native to Douyin is small, and time is an important factor. If you enter the market late, signing mature internet celebrities to quickly accumulate content is the right choice.

The deeper reason is that top internet celebrities have more distinctive styles and more stable fan bases.

From the above classification of internet celebrities, it can be seen that funny/drama content is the first choice for top internet celebrities to create. On the contrary, the proportion of content showing singing and dancing talents is not high, and appearance is no longer the primary productive force.

According to data from the Penguin Research Platform in September last year, among the content attributes favored by Kuaishou and Douyin users, funny content ranked first, accounting for 69.6% on Kuaishou and 82.3% on Douyin.

This trend not only meets users' entertainment needs for short videos, but also makes it easier for influencers to create their own personalities by creating funny plot-oriented content.

Take a look at Qijiu Naoye, who has nearly 30 million fans. His short videos tend to feature love quotes and little routines. This type of short video is not uncommon, but the image and plot he conveys are more fascinating.

In the short video, Qijiu Naoye is a boy who has a lot of love talk and complicated psychological activities but is obedient to his girlfriend in words. His story is rich and has twists and turns, which makes Qijiu Naoye win the hearts of many female fans.

Qijiu Naoye uses short videos to implant his self-image into his fans. He has transformed from a distant internet celebrity into a flesh-and-blood character. Users are not obsessed with his content itself, but have expectations for his personality.

Interesting souls are one in a million, and top internet celebrities compete with each other to create differentiated personalities.

After watching the singing and dancing of young men and women for a long time, users naturally get tired of the old and love the new. Few internet celebrities can catch up in the same competition. Wu Jiayu, who was once famous for his looks and talent, now has an average of about 100,000 likes on his videos, while Maomao Jie, who speaks in Guizhou dialect and shows the daily life of her family, has an average of nearly 1 million likes on her videos.

In the world of internet celebrities, content is style and style is character.

Whether it is Douyin or Kuaishou, the top short video influencers must establish differentiated personalities and find segmented vertical positions under the basics such as humor and talent to achieve the content status of "funny+" and "talent+".

It is these top internet celebrities with distinctive personalities who are the source of Douyin’s content wealth.

However, the long-term presence of top internet celebrities in high positions will also affect the user ecology of Douyin. According to Haima Cloud's data from 2018, TikTok accounts for 2.7% of the top videos, which have captured more than 80% of users' attention and participation. This makes it difficult for many users' videos to get more than 100 likes, and the lack of incentives for creators will also cause users to flee.

With technology as the foundation and capital as the logistics, Douyin implements user needs in the product and strengthens the content itself. Behind the popularity of Douyin is a powerful traffic operation path. This is also the inheritance of ByteDance's product thinking. Especially when 5G comes and the video industry is making waves again, Douyin will continue to climb along this path.

Source: IT Friends ( itlaoyou-com )