How to operate a Douyin corporate account without experience and manpower?

With the rise of short video platforms, more and more companies and organizations have opened official accounts on Douyin , which further illustrates the importance of Douyin as a new short video content platform. As an inexperienced newbie, how can I operate a Douyin corporate account?

New media has long become an important battlefield for enterprises and institutions to build brands , promote brands, display products and acquire traffic online. When choosing new media platforms, "two Weibo and one Douyin" have become the three main platforms currently recognized for the new media strategic layout.

Weibo, as a platform representative of "public domain traffic" , and WeChat , as a platform representative of "private domain traffic" , have certain differences in traffic acquisition and content production and distribution logic. In fact, these differences are worthy of careful study by enterprises and institutions. With the rise of short video platforms, more and more companies and organizations have opened official accounts on Douyin, which further illustrates the importance of Douyin as a new short video content platform.

The purpose of enterprises deploying Douyin

1. New online traffic depression

The so-called "traffic" can actually be understood more simply as "the flow of people." The "traffic depression" is like a landmark or a square in the city center, which always attracts many people to stop here, presenting a wave-like flow pattern.

The latest official data released by Douyin shows:

Douyin short video has more than 150 million daily active users and more than 300 million monthly active users.

Currently, there are 802 million Internet users in my country, and Douyin’s daily active users account for almost 20% of the total number of Internet users, which is already a very high proportion.

If an enterprise or organization wants to discover and reach its target users more quickly, it must go to a place with the most concentrated traffic and make its voice heard first. At the same time, when doing online new media delivery, quickly discovering the latest traffic pools is also a crucial part of the delivery strategy. It can save more manpower and time costs and achieve better delivery effects.

2. Rapidly expand online user base

Because of the basic traffic pool, the user base of the Douyin platform is much larger than other new media channels and platforms. Therefore, the numerical effect of the "denominator" is greater in terms of user acquisition and traffic diversion. The user subscription mechanism of the Douyin platform itself determines that its subscribed users can obtain the subscribed content more quickly and frequently, and the account owners can therefore obtain the attention and focus of a certain number of users through the Douyin platform.

If the content is clever and interactive enough, it will achieve a good effect of interaction between the institutional brand and users, thereby deepening users' understanding and cognition of brand positioning and products, and ultimately occupying the minds of users.

In addition, in terms of user diversion effects, there is a certain traffic correlation between the two platforms, Douyin and Weibo. Many TikTok celebrities will open a Weibo account after or at the same time as becoming famous, and many TikTok subscribers will also follow them on Weibo. If a company or organization hopes to increase the number of followers on its Weibo account, it must pay attention to the content construction and user operations of the Douyin platform.

3. Efficient online brand building and personalized IP incubation

If there is anything that can make someone "famous overnight", besides traditional news gossip and popular TV dramas, it may be Tik Tok. If you have time, you can make a detailed count of which celebrities and products have become popular on Douyin.

Tik Tok’s main feature is music short videos , and the main content format is 15-second selfie short videos, accompanied by exaggerated movements and brainwashing background music. Users who are sensitive to images, videos and music will be brainwashed and addicted to Tik Tok's short videos within 1 minute. Tik Tok plays a very effective role in the rapid creation of new online brands and the incubation of personalized IPs.

At present, the ecosystem of WeChat and Weibo has become relatively stable, and the traffic dividend has gradually weakened, while Douyin is still in a state of continuous upward development and rapid iteration . If you are launching a new product or you want to quickly become an internet celebrity , you must try Tik Tok.

Tik Tok platform situation

1. Algorithm mechanism

In its earliest stages, Tik Tok basically distributed content through machine algorithms, so you could often see a lot of popular content. But the problem is also obvious. Without human intervention, more content distribution will be handed over to machines that lack social concepts and moral awareness, which will make the content closer to the primitive needs of human nature. Then many problematic content will very likely become popular.

Relevant national departments have also made great efforts to rectify the situation. Therefore, the current content distribution of Douyin is mainly carried out through a combination of manual and algorithm methods, but it is still basically a three-level distribution model .

• First, after the content is uploaded, it is labeled manually and machine-wise, and pushed to a small group of people corresponding to the label, ranging from dozens to hundreds.
• Secondly, the evaluation is based on the main factors such as the number of clicks , completion rate, number of likes, number of comments, and number of reposts. Among them, the completion rate is a very important value, because the content itself is only a dozen seconds. If even this value is not well reflected, it basically cannot be considered a good content.
• After that, it will be "shelved" and wait for the next recommendation opportunity.

Therefore, the content on Douyin (as well as the content on Toutiao) also has a certain long-tail effect, and it is very likely that the latest hit is not the latest uploaded content. If this content receives good feedback, it will enter the second level of exposure and recommendation, which may range from one thousand to several thousand. If all goes well, it will enter the third level of recommendation and has a high chance of becoming a hit.

2. Logic of hot selling

What kind of content can go viral on TikTok?

In terms of playback volume, a single piece of content with over a million views can basically be considered a “hit,” those with over 100,000 fans can be called Internet celebrities, and those with over 1 million fans are considered big Vs. From the perspective of content positioning, positive energy, personalized operational ideas, funny dramas, life skills, travel experiences and other content with a stronger sense of life will be more popular among Douyin users.

Similar to Kuaishou , Douyin is actually a platform that mainly focuses on UGC content , and amateur influencers account for almost half of the top influencers on the platform. On Tik Tok, even celebrities have to live like ordinary people in order to attract more attention.

In addition, the content of Douyin is mostly light-hearted and funny general entertainment content, which conveys more of a positive attitude of loving life and loving living. This is completely different from many new media platforms that currently sell anxiety and uneasiness. If your content is about making a sad face to gain sympathy, or simply venting your inner dissatisfaction, it is possible that no one will see it on Douyin.

Therefore, the celebrities on Tik Tok are all versatile people who like to communicate their insights into a better life with users. If you want to create a hit product, you must first find the right content positioning.

3. User needs and usage scenarios

Douyin users can basically be divided into three categories:

• The first category is the publisher of primary content , that is, the producer of the first-released content.
• The second category is secondary content publishers, i.e. followers and imitators after the primary content is released, which can be understood as "fan works".
• The third category is bystanders, commonly known as "melon-eating crowd".

According to statistics: Nearly 1/4 of Douyin users only watch but do not comment or like. The top celebrities and accounts are basically first-level content publishers. Secondary content publishers will have popular content and will increase their followers as a result. However, from the perspective of long-term and stable acquisition of traffic and users, the content of first-level publishers can basically account for more than 90% of the traffic of Douyin's popular content.

The usage scenarios of Douyin are the fragmented moments when various users want to relax and take a break. Users' perception of the Douyin platform is basically that it is a fun, interesting, trendy, and relaxing platform. This in itself is a very good brand recognition, and it also makes it easier for Douyin users to actively forward and share Douyin content to other platforms.

Ideas for building a Douyin corporate account

1. Good looks

According to statistics: the users who like to post content on Douyin the most are basically young people, aged between 21 and 25 years old. From the perspective of the gender ratio of users, the ratio of girls to boys is roughly 6:4. Women are naturally visual animals and pay attention to aesthetics. Therefore, when planning content, if you can find a good-looking KOL , you can basically save a lot of effort.

In addition, women also like cute, interesting and adorable things, so many big Vs in the cute pet category will also appear on the Douyin platform.

Another important reason for the focus on good looks is the scene size . The content of Douyin is vertical screen video content. From the concept of camera framing, the framing range of the characters in Douyin is basically medium or close-up or even close-up. More details of facial expressions, movements and emotions will be displayed completely and meticulously, and for users, when looking at a person at such a close distance, good-looking people will definitely have an advantage.

2. First Person

Also because of the scene, the distance between the content publisher and the user will be very close. So if you want to get more interaction and love from users, it is best to communicate with users in a first-person narrative way . Express your thoughts and opinions directly into your phone as who you are. Let users automatically become your communication partners. If the content is too much about the perspective of a bystander, users will become "spectators" and will not actively form an interactive effect.

3. Sense of life

Or because of the scene scale, if you want a more realistic interactive scene, you need to make the environment and KOLs in the content as ordinary people as possible, just like the users. The more ordinary the recording venue is, the better, as it may produce many creative contrast effects. For example: dancing awkwardly at outdoor tourist attractions.

This is also one of the reasons why many PGC teams cannot produce better Douyin content than celebrities. They are too focused on the environment of professional studios, which destroys their sense of life.

4. Operational skills

(1) Update frequency

If allowed, daily updates are ideal, as they have absolute advantages over irregular updates in terms of IP incubation speed and the machine's greater memory of your content.

One solution is to treat it as a personal account and fully delegate authority to the operator (of course, this must be someone who has in-depth research and knowledge of corporate and institutional brands). At the same time, you should also be a person who loves life and is interesting to publish UGC content. The more lifelike the better. For example: some scenarios are based on the industry in which the company or organization is located, and some are personal life scenarios of operators.

Another solution is to adopt the PGC format, prepare a lot of recordings in advance, and then update them daily. Currently, more content is produced in the form of UGC, but excellent operations personnel are not easy to find, so it is not a bad idea to find a professional content team and operation team to make a short-term attempt to ensure the stability of the quality and quantity of brand content output.

(2) Interaction Index

As mentioned above, if you want to obtain popular content, you must pay attention to various data on interaction with users. Completion rate, number of likes, number of comments, number of reposts, and number of views are all very important data.

During the cold start , it can be sent directly to relevant staff of enterprises and institutions to mobilize everyone to collect basic data, especially the completion rate, so that the content can smoothly enter the second-level recommendation pool. Attaching importance to the management of the comment area is basically the same as other new media content platforms. Because the content of the comment area has been integrated with the main content, it has become an important source of content to attract users.

(3) Traffic diversion ideas

Currently, we can see that Douyin allows the retention of geographic information location. For example, when some food accounts post a dining content, they can directly click on the merchant address in the lower left corner of the video to jump to the map search page, making it convenient for users to go to the physical store for consumption.

In addition, Douyin and e-commerce platforms such as Weibo and Taobao have also been connected on the user's consumption psychology map. On Taobao, you can often see many stores promoting the "same product as Douyin" as well. Therefore, we can see that cleverly exploring the functional features of the product and presenting them in the form of video can achieve a good content e-commerce diversion effect. The incubation of lifestyle and entertainment influencers can also leverage the traffic of Douyin to increase their number of fans on platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu .

Douyin Blue V certification and case analysis

1. Douyin’s Blue V certification

Since June 1, 2018, Douyin has officially announced the implementation of Blue V certification for enterprises and institutions. As long as they go through the official website, they can obtain the certification logo and exclusive rights of the three major platforms: Toutiao App, Douyin Short Video App, and Huoshan Short Video .

In addition, users who have opened Toutiao's "Enterprise Certification" can also quickly obtain Douyin certification by linking their accounts. Enterprises and institutions with Blue V accounts can activate and enjoy ten major marketing privileges, including: Blue V certification mark, top search ranking, shopping cart function (under internal testing), personal homepage customization, 60-second long video activation, video pinning rights, homepage link jump, POI claiming, DOU+ function, private message customization and refined fan management rights.

The main purpose of opening a Blue V is not only to obtain Douyin’s official backend rights and traffic purchasing channels, but also to “fight counterfeiting ”. From the perspective of the platform's certification and protection of brands, it is very necessary to open the Blue V certification. There is only one Douyin account with Blue V certification, and other users cannot steal it.

Certified Blue V will also appear first on the search page when users search for the names of companies and organizations, serving as the top of Douyin search content.

2. Case Analysis

(1) Government institutions: CCTV, public security, military, local customs, museums, science education, etc.

On August 31 this year, the official Douyin short video company held the first Douyin account conference for government media in Beijing, and jointly launched the government media Douyin account growth plan with 11 government and media organizations including the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the National Health Commission, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, China Railway Corporation, Xinhuanet, CCTV International Channel, and China International Online.

According to Qingbo Big Data Statistics:

As of August this year, nearly 2,240 government agencies have opened government Douyin accounts.

China Chang'an Net is the first government account to be established on Douyin. Currently, the government accounts on Douyin have covered major types of institutions such as tourism, public security, the Communist Youth League, courts, local publications, and culture. CCTV-1 entered Douyin on April 24 this year, becoming the first official media account to enter Douyin. As of now, nearly 600 Douyin media accounts have been opened.

The Douyin accounts of these companies and institutions with government backgrounds mostly position the Douyin platform as a major voice platform for short video new media, and are also the main new media channel that influences young people's attention.

1. The Douyin version of CCTV News is short and concise, and is mostly a simplified version of daily news information, highlighting the title , topicality and information.
2. As for the public security and border defense forces, they mostly reflect the daily training and life scenes of officers and soldiers. The popular content is concentrated in some unique training scenes. For example, training videos that highlight the excellent professional capabilities of special forces are very popular among users.
3. Most of the popular customs-related works cater to the popular challenges on TikTok, using daily work scenes as the background and arranging interesting dances and life scenes.
4. Museums and science education are basically presented in the form of PGC content. For example, several major museums that were all over the WeChat Moments at the time jointly launched the H5 short video version with Douyin. The video combined classic cultural relics and characters with character dubbing and danced awkwardly, which was very creative. Popular science organizations have launched process records of scientific experiments such as chemistry and physics .

(2) Catering: Haidilao , Heytea , DaDaTea, gourmet desserts

Douyin's catering content belongs to the category of food and life, which is very popular among Douyin users. If it is cleverly combined with Douyin's popular activities, it will have a good interactive effect. For example: Haidilao and Daancha were the earliest popular on Douyin. Haidilao’s initial content basically relied on the direct release of end consumers to create popularity, and then it was well continued.

The popularity of Answer Tea on Douyin has completely brought a new street snack brand into the spotlight. Recently, the background music with a 10-second countdown has made many dessert shop brands popular again. It is simply a small scene of cutting a cake, accompanied by popular music. It takes only a few dozen seconds to fully introduce the store’s signature products and is enough to attract users’ attention.

(3) Sports and health: yoga, fitness

Many offline sports and fitness brands and organizations have also opened Douyin accounts, and the results are very good. For example, celebrities in the yoga field will use popular challenges to demonstrate many difficult yoga moves, thereby successfully attracting users' attention. Fitness and weight loss organizations, on the other hand, will quickly demonstrate training results by sharing the success stories of their students and previous users, making before-and-after comparisons.

(4) Education and training: spoken English, adult education

Knowledge-based influencers are also quite popular on the Douyin platform. Many English speaking training institutions and adult education institutions will invite their own lecturers to be brand spokespersons and create their own online Douyin classrooms in the form of Douyin. For example: there are small oral courses that are very relevant to daily life, where good-looking boys and girls teach directly by pronouncing the words, and the effect is very good.

Adult education institutions will use the method of KOL + large subtitle prompt boards to teach functional and practical knowledge points such as inspirational stories, workplace psychology, and key points of course knowledge . They can quickly incubate a group of industry knowledge influencers and build momentum for their own institutional brands.

(5) Fast Moving Consumer Goods: Weilong , Watsons

The content of fast-moving consumer goods can also become popular on Douyin because it fits the life scenes of young people. It mainly depends on how the brand designs the content better and more cleverly. For example, Weilong’s Douyin content basically does not look like official behavior. Weilong spicy strips have been implanted into the daily lives of KOLs as a particularly lifelike prop. For example: the scene of being caught by the teacher while eating spicy strips in class, and the excitement of seeing spicy strips while shopping in the supermarket.

(6) Internet : Alibaba Cloud Design Center

Internet organizations and brands have also begun to quickly enter Douyin to maintain their online exposure and popularity. For example: 360 and Alibaba Cloud Design Center, much of the content is shot directly in the company's office area, with the main purpose of attracting user attention, while also highlighting the brand and the organization's professionalism in employing people.

For example, in a Douyin post by Alibaba Cloud Design Center, the KOL started with the sentence “Who says designers don’t have enough education?” and then kept throwing a lot of academic certificates on the table, asking “Are they too few?” every time he threw one, and eventually received nearly 300,000 views.

(7) E-commerce: pearls, beauty products and clothing, daily necessities

If e-commerce products and brands want to become popular on Douyin, they need to find the unique positioning and special functional points of the products and brands, and display them in combination with Douyin's hot spots. For example, there is an e-commerce brand for pearls, and its content is all pictures of farmers opening shells to take pearls directly at the breeding site. It has a lot of attention and likes.

This kind of life scene experience, which is based on life and is completely fresh, is what Douyin users like to watch the most. As for content related to beauty and clothing, it is necessary to combine the communication effect of KOLs to highlight the functionality . At the same time, some daily necessities with special functions can quickly arouse users' interest and generate an instant desire to buy. That’s why so many “same-style” products as Douyin were born on Taobao.

The emergence of the TikTok platform shows that the arrival of UGC-based online video content in the future is unstoppable. However, how companies and institutions can quickly occupy new online traffic troughs while combining the characteristics of the platform and users to build their own corporate and institutional brands online in a more cost-effective manner are all issues that deserve serious consideration by every B-side founder, brand, and even marketing manager.

Nowadays, brand owners who don’t understand content and social networking can hardly make any progress online. You can study Douyin more, cultivate and build your own "online sense", and at the same time clarify the overall TOB operation strategy of the platform. I believe it will bring good results to the company's online brand building and marketing acquisition.

Source: Kas Data