The most comprehensive guide to short video distribution on Tik Tok, Kuaishou, etc.!

In the Internet age, short videos are king.

2018 was the year when short videos shined. Short videos have brought considerable traffic dividends and have also won the favor of many advertisers. As the marketing value of short videos becomes more prominent, advertisers’ intention to invest in short videos and their marketing budgets are gradually increasing.

According to statistics, the scale of short video marketing will reach 14.01 billion in 2018, and it is expected to exceed 55 billion in 2020.

However, the marketing value of short videos is not only reflected in the user traffic dividend. In terms of marketing value, short videos have excellent performance in all stages before, during and after their release.

▲ Before launch, the threshold is low and the adaptability is strong, which can flexibly meet various marketing needs;

▲ During the delivery, the information carrying capacity is rich and concentrated, which can deeply interact and communicate with users;

▲ After being launched, it has a strong fat-tail effect.

It can not only achieve the depth of brand/product information display and communication, but also maximize the breadth of brand/product information dissemination.

With the wild growth of short videos and the surge in traffic in the mobile era, short video marketing methods and models are constantly being explored and innovated.

1. Short video marketing

Currently, short video marketing forms can be mainly divided into : hard advertising, content implantation, content customization, Internet celebrity activities, account operation and cross-platform integration .

1. Hard advertising

That is, to achieve brand exposure through payment. All optimizers are familiar with this type of marketing method, so I won’t introduce it in detail here.

2. Content implantation

Content implantation is the earliest form of marketing and is currently one of the most commonly used short video marketing forms, such as program sponsorship, oral implantation, brand/product exposure, etc.

When Honor launched new products, it collaborated with Office Ono to implant content. By implanting mobile phone prop paintings into various situations, the high-quality performance in all aspects is demonstrated in an interesting way.

Short videos have a natural advantage in content implantation. Short videos are shorter in duration, have higher content concentration, pay more attention to users, and can convey content well.

3. Content customization

Content customization refers to triggering dissemination through shooting and other related product content.

For example, on JD.com’s flash sale day, it uses content customization techniques to convey the information of JD.com’s Super Flash Sale Day to users through customized short videos.

Compared with long videos, short video customized marketing content pays more attention to the story and plot of the content. It must first be a consumable content, and then an advertisement.

4. Internet celebrity activities

By selecting Internet celebrities and KOLs that match the products and leveraging their influence, we can reach the fan groups behind them on the one hand, and stimulate deep user participation on the other.

During Suning.com’s 618 event, it invited many internet celebrities to participate in the challenge event it planned to create buzz and attract consumer attention.

5. Account Operation

Account operation refers to establishing an official account, conducting continuous social communication, and maintaining long-term and effective communication between brands and users.

For example, Chimelong Resort has opened an official account on Douyin short video, and maintains an average of daily Douyin works to promote the resort's various attractions, game facilities, etc.

6. Integrated Marketing

Integrated marketing is to bring all the current emerging marketing methods into one depression. When building a marketing matrix, brands must fully address each link of attention, interest, search, purchase and sharing.

For example, Sunkist launched a new white peach lactic acid flavored peach juice soda, targeting young women. Live-streaming marketing was adopted to attract users’ attention with the creative “fresh meat grabbing a kiss” and live-streaming challenge format. At the same time, the live-streaming content was edited and processed for secondary dissemination as short videos, which further expanded the attention of the new product and made up for the insufficient communication power of live-streaming in marketing.

The benefits of short videos are currently unstoppable; with the future development of technology, such as facial recognition and AR technology, marketing methods will become more diversified.

2. How to create short video content?

With the popularity of short videos, what should optimizers do?

Short videos can be said to be another test for optimizers.

In the past, when we placed advertisements, it might have been the copywriter who was tested, but now it is more about the screenwriter. When the AI ​​era comes, what we can do is becoming increasingly limited. For example, the system will help us solve many things such as targeting, bidding, budgeting, creativity, ad space, etc., but short video delivery will never be eliminated. For optimizers, the most urgent problem to be solved may be "advertising creativity".

Advertising creativity mainly includes two categories: creative content and creative form. So, let’s first take a look at how to create creative content?

Understanding users is always the basis of content creation.

Users are the biggest asset we have when it comes to video content. They are not only related to the ultimate monetization of advertising, but also to the inspiration for content creation. Being close to users and understanding their social attributes, interests and hobbies makes it easier to create popular content that suits the fans' tastes.

1. Fans portrait analysis

Fan portrait is a relatively basic but very important user data. Understanding fan portraits can help optimizers create more accurately and targeted content.

For example, the picture above is a fan portrait of two young ladies on Douyin. They are both very good-looking and of similar age, but there are obvious differences in their fan portraits. The celebrity above the picture has many male fans, most of whom are in the age group of 18-30 years old. The gender ratio of fans of the celebrity in the picture is basically the same, most of them are under 24 years old, and the proportion of 6-17 and 18-24 years old is basically the same.

It can be seen from this that even celebrities with the same gender, similar age, and similar style can have obvious differences in the social attributes of their fans.

Therefore, understanding the real data of fan portraits and not blindly believing in experience and judgment are the keys to ensuring that content covers fan needs to the maximum extent possible and finding one's own differentiated advantages.

2. Fans interest analysis

After understanding the basic data of fan portrait, we need to further explore and understand the fan data, that is, fan interest analysis.

(1) Analyze the accounts that fans follow

Understanding which celebrities fans follow is an important way to study fans’ content preferences.

On the one hand, if the accounts followed by fans are celebrities in the same field, creators can enhance their own competitiveness by studying these competitors, learning from their advantages, and highlighting their own differentiation.

On the other hand, if the accounts followed by fans belong to celebrities in different fields, creators can take the initiative to break down barriers and engage in cross-border interactive cooperation with these celebrities to give fans a different sense of freshness and surprises, thus achieving a win-win effect.

(2) Analyze fans’ favorite videos

What kind of videos fans like most is an important reference for creators. The content themes, content styles, title features, and cover features of these videos are of great research significance.

(3) Analyze the videos with the most fan comments

The number of fan comments is an important dimension to measure the performance of content data. Studying the videos with the most fan comments can provide creators with some ideas on creation and operation.

For example, the following figure shows the top 3 videos with the most comments by a celebrity. Through analysis, it is found that the titles all use interrogative sentences to guide the audience to interact and comment in the form of questions. Then this way of naming titles can be used as a reference by creators.

Fans are the foundation. In-depth research on fan portraits and fan preferences is the key to accurately finding and verifying content positioning, as well as controlling the general direction of content.

Dive into the details through data and find out who your fans are following? What do you like to watch? What would you rather comment on? By planning the content direction in this way, it is easier to create good works that fans love.

With the development of short videos, users will become increasingly difficult to please, and their attention will become increasingly scarce. Burying one's head to come up with creative ideas is no longer suitable for the current industry environment. Short video creation is not something that relies entirely on inspiration and talent. Only by making full use of data, minimizing the impact of uncontrollable factors such as creative inspiration on content, and effectively playing the guiding role of data can we go further in the protracted battle for content.

Now that we understand the direction of creative content, let’s take a look at creative elements.

3. Creative Elements

A creative content video can be divided into two main parts: visual image and content writing . At the same time, these two items are also two factors that we must pay attention to.

1. Visual

When creating a landing page, we all know that color is also an essential factor. The same is true for short videos.

Maybe many people don’t pay too much attention to it, thinking that as long as my content is high-quality, it’s enough.

No, that's not the case at all.

We can also understand the visual effect of the picture as color scheme.

For example, in the picture below, the three pictures on the left, middle and right are respectively: warm colors, neutral colors, and cool colors. Which color advertising do you think has a high click-through rate?

This is an era where there is no shortage of high-quality content. If you like it, stop and read it. If you don’t like it, skip it. So when we design, we should try to choose colors that have a higher user click-through rate.

So which color has a higher click rate among warm, medium, and cool colors?

According to big data statistics, warm colors have a higher click-through rate, followed by cool colors; gold colors have the highest click-through rate in terms of background material, but in fact, red, brown, etc.

2. Copywriter

If color is attractive, then the only thing left to test is the content.

According to big data statistics, copywriters can be divided into four main categories: real-life storytelling, original content, graphic and text listing, and a combination of graphic and text.

We can choose video content according to our own product types.

For example, if I am doing English training, English is generally used more in daily communication, so we can use real people to shoot; like games, they pay more attention to a sense of reality, so we can use native content to shoot...

So what are the characteristics of an excellent creative video? Through big data, it can be divided into the following three points.

4. Creative Video Features

Before making a short video, we may all think about a question: "What do those video ideas that convert well and are more attractive have in common?"

In fact, many big data platforms have already given us the answer to this question.

I have observed many analysis reports on short videos from big data platforms. The characteristics of all creative videos can basically be divided into the following three points:

1. Novelty

Here, I think novel can also be understood as fun and interesting.

Take TikTok for example, why does it attract us to keep scrolling down? It’s just fun, with funny jokes, pop music... there are always new and interesting contents to entice us to scroll down.

For example, the picture below is an advertisement for the automotive industry. It uses pop music as an element and the most popular countdown music on the TikTok platform as the background to refresh the user's hearing and attract the user's attention.

2. Substitution

The most successful advertisement is the one that makes users feel empathy and they don’t even realize it is an advertisement.

I remember seeing a video advertisement that took the most common scenario of teenagers playing games as the entry point, and then led to the pain points in playing games, such as "the game always freezes or crashes", etc., making users feel " Oh, I always encounter this situation too ", and finally gave users the answer. Solving this problem is very simple, just use Cheetah Clean Master.

Do you think it's an advertisement? Yes and no. I am clearly helping you solve the problems you encounter in your daily life. Why do you say I am an advertisement?

So, this is the brilliance of an advertisement, making users feel pain!

3. Benefits

I think everyone understands this point. There is no such thing as no gain without hard work. This applies to all matters.

Why am I doing this? What benefits can you give me?

The most common practice is when a celebrity endorses a product or an internet celebrity promotes themselves. They will all choose this approach.

The above is the basic direction for creative videos, which you can refer to when publishing short videos.

As an optimizer, our approach to short videos may be based on two categories: paid advertising and independent operation.

Payment can control the display through money, but if it is operated independently, it is necessary to obtain the recommendation of the platform and be on the homepage, which is an important means to increase the exposure of the video.

So how can you get your video on the homepage? Taking Tik Tok as an example, several routines are summarized here.

5. How to increase video exposure?

Here are 4 tips to share with you.

1. Improve 4 indicators

Tik Tok evaluates your performance in the cold start phase mainly based on four indicators: the number of likes, comments, reposts, and completion rate .

Therefore, if you want to get recommendations, you must mobilize all resources to improve these four indicators before the video is released:

▲ In the video description, guide users to like, comment, forward or finish watching the video.

For example, in the official account of "Xiaomi Mobile Phone", they would occasionally write in the video description "Be sure to watch to the end" or "If you feel sorry for the little sister, please like it quickly" in order to improve the four indicators mentioned above.

▲ In the video description, set some interactive questions to guide users to leave comments.

▲ Reply to user comments, extract the core ideas of the video, and guide more users to participate in the topic discussion.

▲ Prepare great comments in advance. After the video is released, ask colleagues to write them in the comment section to guide users to interact more around this topic.

2. Adjust the release time

Statistics show that 62% of users watch Douyin before meals and before going to bed, while only 10.9% watch Douyin during fragmented time such as on the way to work or in the toilet.

Therefore, the best time to post videos is at 12 noon, 18:00 and 21:00-22:00 on weekdays, or on Friday nights and weekends.

3. Actively participate in challenges

There are many ways to become popular, but the simplest and most effective way is to use the platform’s “Popular Challenge” function.

Take TikTok as an example.

On Douyin, there are different challenges every day. You can judge the potential of a topic to become popular based on comprehensive comparisons, and then select the topic that you think is most likely to become popular and imitate it, which can increase your chances of being recommended.

4. Ongoing maintenance

Tik Tok’s recommendation algorithm sometimes “digs up old videos” and thus makes some high-quality old videos popular.

Therefore, for high-quality videos, you need to continue to like, comment, and forward them, and keep operating them. Maybe after a while, this video will be recommended.

After two years of rapid growth, short videos have gone from a blue ocean to a red ocean. For an optimizer, mastering video-related production skills has become a necessary means.

For short video advertising, please contact Qinggua Media official

Source: iResearch, KasData