How to create popular content on Douyin?

Suddenly, the brainwashing songs everyone listened to were from Douyin , the ingredients for hot pot were adjusted according to Douyin, and fun little items were bought by watching Douyin. The discussion about TikTok among the media has been going on for more than half a year and has remained hot.

So, I spent some time thinking about the content and accounts on Douyin and what the real operation and marketing logic is. I hope to try to sort out these issues through summary:

Why are we addicted to TikTok?

How is the content on Douyin exposed?

What kind of content on TikTok can become popular?

How to accumulate fans on Tik Tok?

How to create content on TikTok?

Due to limited space, I have divided my thoughts into "cognition" and "practical" parts, hoping to analyze TikTok from two directions and provide truly valuable cognitive and practical guides.

Today we will start with cognition and understand the rational logic behind the lively Douyin content.

An ordinary video clip is only 15 seconds long, but it can often take up several hours of our time. In the article I wrote before on my official account, I actually made fun of the usage scenarios of Douyin:

"I'm done washing up. I'll watch some Tik Tok before going to bed."

···Watch TikTok···

"It's dawn"

The scary thing is that this is not a joke I made up, but a personal experience I had one day. If you think about it carefully, simply saying that the content on TikTok is "good-looking" is not enough to explain this phenomenon. I think the main reasons can be seen from the following three points:

First addicted to short videos , then addicted to TikTok

The past one or two years of Douyin’s development are the golden period for the rapid development of the short video environment.

With time becoming more and more fragmented, users spend less and less time reading pure text. Most of the graphic and text content are being replaced by more intuitive and vivid short videos.

The transformation process of users’ content consumption habits

On the production side, from mobile phone shooting to short video apps, the threshold for content production has been further lowered, achieving a huge explosion in productivity.

The transformation of video content production methods

The short-videoization of users' content habits and the great liberation of video productivity are the prerequisites for people to become addicted to Douyin. The product characteristics of Douyin itself are the direct reason why users are addicted.

Brushing through Tik Tok is like eating melon seeds. This is not my exclusive opinion, but it is a view that I very much agree with.

Not only Douyin, but many mobile Internet products use the melon seed theory to make us addicted, but Douyin does it better than most products:

Cracking melon seeds cannot fill our stomachs, but once you pick up a melon seed and put it in your mouth, the second and third ones will follow and become an inertial action that makes us unable to stop. Tik Tok doesn’t make us feel as immersed as movies , but it has the same magic of short feedback.

The smooth and simple operation and the short feedback that give users a clear sense of accomplishment are Douyin's killer features that make users addicted to the product experience.

Tik Tok’s algorithm mechanism

The most unavoidable feature of Tik Tok is its algorithm mechanism.

I summarize the algorithm mechanism of Tik Tok as follows:

"The most familiar stranger"

Different from the sad emotions in the lyrics, in reality people really like to meet "familiar strangers".

In TikTok, the platform can continuously and accurately push new and unfamiliar things in your favorite genres based on hundreds of tag portraits of users.

You are a user who is obsessed with the dancing of the young lady.

We will present you with more beautiful young ladies with familiar smiles.

You are a user who likes all kinds of cats and dogs.

We will present you with more equally healing kittens and puppies.

Platforms based on centralized distribution allow all users to view a variety of content selected by unfamiliar editors.

Platforms based on the follow-up mechanism focus on people the user is familiar with and the content recommended by familiar people.

Douyin’s unique algorithm mechanism of “familiar strangers favor your preferences” makes you feel novel and unable to stop.

Therefore, users are addicted to TikTok because their content consumption habits have irreversibly shifted to short videos, and technological equality has brought about an explosion in content productivity. This is due to the product setting of Douyin's "melon seed effect" and the algorithm of "familiar strangers cater to your preferences".

How was the content exposed?

Understanding why we are addicted to TikTok is the basic logic behind the popularity of the TikTok platform. But for content creators and influencers, what they care most about is whether their content can get good exposure and whether more people can see it.

One of our own celebrities who creates Tik Tok content said that she is a little confused by the exposure on Tik Tok. She already has hundreds of thousands of fans, but while her previous post received one million likes, the next one may still only receive ten thousand.

This is the fact. In TikTok, the content that users see is a comprehensive recommendation based on algorithm attributes + real-time popularity + user relationships . Following an account currently only means that users have a higher probability of seeing your content.

I will summarize the content presentation mechanism of Douyin as follows:

“ Traffic Pool Elimination Competition”

Every piece of content generated by a user is like putting a fish into a pond. At the beginning, everyone will enter the basic traffic pool at the current time relatively fairly. Every piece of content must outperform other competitors in terms of data in this traffic pool before it can enter the next larger traffic pool. And this process is continuously evolving. Only when the data is superior in each pool can it continue to gain exposure.

In the same traffic pool, fishes compete for data

In different traffic pools, a certain number of exposure opportunities will be given. The most basic traffic pool has about one or two hundred views, and the next ones have one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million... The later the traffic pool, the less content can enter and the higher the number of views.

Tik Tok’s progressive traffic pool track

Based on my own experience, I speculate that there should be a "King's Pool" in Douyin that can allow for long-term exposure. The content in this pool can achieve user-side exposure over a longer time span. This ensures that high-quality content can be delivered in scenarios that require stable, high-quality content, such as "new user downloads" or "special time nodes."

So, how do you outperform other fish in the traffic pool?

The most important thing is the data in these four dimensions:

Among the above four points, the forwarding and sharing dimension is currently unable to detect data and has been weakened due to various reasons. Therefore, if you want to gain continuous exposure, you must make your content outstanding in terms of playback completion, likes, and comments.

If we look at these three points, we will find that: likes come from users' recognition, reward, and collection of content; comments come from the interactive points set in the content; and playback completion comes from capturing continuous attention and putting the essence at the end;

Specific methodologies can be summarized for data improvement in these three dimensions.

I will also discuss in detail in the next article of Marketing Ape Man, "How to create popular content on Douyin? (Practical Edition)" what methods can be used to better improve these values ​​and thus obtain higher exposure.

After understanding the content mechanism of Douyin, let’s take a look at:

What are users watching on TikTok?

Which Tik Tok contents will become popular?

In TikTok, the most important indicator is the number of likes.

The number of likes is not only a core data that is highlighted in the foreground, but also largely determines the exposure of the content. Therefore, the number of likes can be used as an important indicator to evaluate whether the content is popular.

After browsing thousands of Douyin videos on three different phones, I divided the content that users like to watch on Douyin into seven categories based on the number of popular videos and the number of likes per video:

The first one is love at first sight.

The most important reason for liking posts on Tik Tok is physical attractiveness.

To put it in a joke: "Oh no, it's a heart-pounding feeling."

This is because within a 15-second duration, physical attractiveness is more likely to gain users' favor in the first second than other content. However, falling in love at first sight does not simply refer to appearance and body shape, but the comprehensive feeling that the expert brings out through the camera with his or her own dress and movements.

Appearance + figure + expressiveness + affinity create a feeling of love at first sight

It is also easy to understand from the data that users are often willing to like content that is attractive in appearance at the first time, are more willing to watch it repeatedly, and have a stronger motivation to comment and interact. This is also why many young men and women have received millions of likes simply by reshooting a move or dancing a dance.

In fact, if the opposite-sex celebrities who have become popular on Tik Tok with their attractive appearance appear within 10 meters of you in real life, you will definitely not be able to help but take a few more glances at them. This is what is called a gift from God.

The second type is really laughing.

Funny content is a type of pan-entertainment suitable for everyone. Specifically includes telling jokes, being silly, hilarious melodramas, blunders, breaking popular memes, etc.

The power of script + performance + expression really makes users laugh

The main usage scenario of Tik Tok is to kill fragmented time, and funny content is the main force to achieve this purpose. When users really laugh, the act of liking becomes a natural expression of reward.

Everyone pays for the fun of the video by clicking their likes.

The third type was cured.

Similar to the physical attraction that makes people fall in love at first sight, cuteness attraction is also a major category that relies on appearance to gain likes.

Whether it is a cute baby or a cute pet, the adorable content with strong healing power is very easy to make people like and watch it repeatedly. Pet influencers have never developed as rapidly and explosively as they do now with the help of short videos.

Cuteness + serendipity + sound heals users’ hearts

For users who have pets and babies, this type of content establishes a strong sense of value for them.

For users who have no pets or babies, they are provided with the opportunity to raise cats and babies online.

After all, no one can resist something that can bring a sense of healing.

The fourth type is sincere admiration.

This type refers to content that showcases talent and skills on Tik Tok.

But talents are not limited to singing and dancing. We have seen that more and more unpopular skills in daily life can also attract a lot of likes and views from users. There is also a large group of film and television special effects practitioners who have found a new breakthrough and have gained a lot of attention by continuously creating various video special effects and synthetic content on Douyin.

Skill scarcity + skill expertise + comprehensive performance bring sincere admiration

This type of content allows users to see others accomplish things that they themselves cannot do or have never even seen. Therefore, when you click the like button, your mentality should be more of admiration and encouragement, and you should kneel down to express your gratitude with the like button.

The fifth type is images that cannot be described in words.

What are indescribable images? They are those video contents that cannot be truly expressed even if you use pictures or words to describe them. Whether it is magnificent natural scenery or visual records of key moments. The video itself gives users a deep feeling through its experience and sense of presence.

The viewing experience + the rarity + the sound coordination, I love it indescribably

This type of consumption has increased at the user level almost only after Tik Tok became popular. Because on some platforms in the past, content with no substantial plot of more than ten seconds would hardly get a high exposure. Users are willing to express their feelings of amazement that cannot be expressed in words by clicking likes.

The world is so big, use TikTok to see it.

The sixth type hits the nail on the head.

This type of content has only recently started to be seen frequently, and it is also the type that has an upward trend and is particularly efficient in attracting fans.

What is meant by touching the heart is that the content and expression resonate with users and even achieve identification with their values.

Value identification + sharp copywriting + expressive power, speaks to the heart

All victories are victories of values. In TikTok, where appearance is king, value-oriented content actually has great potential.

Resonance can earn you support and praise, and identification with values ​​can bring you followers.

The seventh one, collected.

The last type of content actually existed as early as the early days of Weibo.

Practical tips, resource collections, and must-have checklists all fall into this category. This type of content actually makes good use of the user's collection psychology. People always think "like and collect it first, maybe it will be useful in the future"

The topic is attractive + the content is good + the presentation is good. I quickly collected it.

Can 15 seconds of content really provide knowledge value?

Maybe, maybe not. However, the most important thing is that in addition to being liked and collected, such content also provides users with great psychological comfort. Let users who have been browsing entertainment content for a long time say to themselves, "Look, I have learned a lot of knowledge here."

The above seven types basically summarize the main content directions that can become popular on Douyin, and are also the main reasons why users like videos when using Douyin.

However, while likes are important, attention is even more important. At the end of this article, let’s talk about how to gain fans and get attention.

How to get people to follow my TikTok account

On other content platforms, users may follow a content because they have seen it many times and are familiar with it; or they may follow it because their friends and relatives shared it and they thought the content was good.

However, based on Tik Tok’s algorithmic distribution mechanism, users’ reasons for paying attention seem to be different.

Users are constantly seeing new Douyin content, but if they don’t do anything after watching a piece of content, they may never see it again. It’s as if some people pass by each other, disappear in the crowd, and are never seen again.

The core reason why Douyin users pay attention to it is actually:

'Fear of Losing'

If we understand it in terms of the traffic pool concept, users see hundreds or thousands of content pieces of content in the traffic pool, and some small fish pass by. But it is your content that inspires users to want to catch the small fish and hope to continue seeing them in the future.

So what kind of content is likely to arouse users' fear of losing?

In order to analyze the reasons and trends of users' attention, I found that I could divide the number of followers of the user's overall account by the number of likes to get the "fan-to-like ratio" .

Take the above picture as an example. This is the account of one of our celebrities.

Fan praise value is 104/358 = about 0.3.

The larger the "Fan Like Value" value is, the stronger the corresponding content account's ability to attract fans is.

On the whole, 0.1 is a common reference value, and reaching 0.2 or 0.3 means that the account has a strong ability to attract fans. The highest account has reached around 1, but it is very rare. Currently, only well-known celebrities have more than one million fans and a fan-to-like ratio close to 1.

Celebrities have high recognition and high weight, and are more likely to attract fans and convert them into fans.

Combining this numerical reference, let’s look at the seven content types mentioned earlier, and suddenly we have a different feeling.

For example, although "images beyond words" can easily get a lot of likes, it is almost impossible to convert them into attention.

Taking this account as an example, the blogger traveled around the world and took a lot of photos of beautiful scenery. There are many hot-selling products with hundreds of thousands of likes, but their fan-to-like ratio is 0.06, which is less than the average of 0.1.

In fact, the reason is easy to understand. When faced with such single content, users believe that the spectacular content is a coincidence, and they just need to like it and do not need to follow this account.

Content that is "love at first sight" not only easily gets high likes, but is also more efficient in converting fans, usually reaching a fan-to-like ratio of 0.3 or even 0.5.

Taking this account as an example, most of the blogger's content is smiling and performing in front of the camera combined with music or dubbing.

However, her fan-to-like ratio is 0.31, which is five times that of bloggers of beautiful scenery and wonders.

This is also easy to understand, because once a user likes a "person" because of his or her attractive appearance, he or she will not want to pass by him or her in the crowd and never see him or her again. Therefore, it is easier to arouse users' fear of losing.

In addition, we can also see that content that reflects value identification and knowledge-oriented content currently have the highest number of likes and fans on Douyin.

If we rank the seven types of content roughly from largest to smallest in terms of "fan-like ratio", I think the order would be:

·Love at first sight·

·Speaking from the heart·

·Collected·

·Healed·

·Really laughed·

·Sincerely admire·

·Images beyond words·

Therefore, when creating content on Douyin, you should not just pursue the number of likes, but arrange it in accordance with your own goals.

If you want to create some single content that can go viral, you can plan the content in the order of likes and views; but if you really want to create an account, you have to consider the fan-to-like ratio to think about operational efficiency.

Although from Douyin’s previous product settings, the weight of content based on attention was not high, what users saw on the homepage was new content based on algorithm + operation matching.

But it just so happens that in the past week, I have clearly felt in my usage experience that Tik Tok has tilted the weight of content related to attention relationships. Among the first ten pieces of content that users see after opening TikTok, content from several accounts they follow will already appear. And in the future, it is possible to continue to increase the weight of the accounts being followed.

After all, in the long run, no matter what platform, it is very important to develop a content ecosystem based on user relationships.

In conclusion:

Since 2018, the development speed of the TikTok platform has been astonishing.

Not only are the figures of 150 million DAU and 300 million MAU shocking, but also a series of hit contents and marketing events have attracted everyone's attention.

Many brands and individuals are anxious to catch this train.

Everyone’s anxiety is not about not being able to do well, but about not being able to catch up.

Whether it is operations or marketing, it is useful to find some quick-fix techniques, but if you don’t understand the rules behind them, it is often easy to copy others and fail to get the point.

Therefore, we understand the characteristics of the platform, figure out the algorithm mechanism, summarize the content trends, and gain insight into key figures. Try to organize the scattered ideas bit by bit and summarize them into a logically self-consistent methodology.

I hope my thoughts are helpful and can also play a role in your understanding of other platforms.

Author: Yuan Hai, authorized to publish by Qinggua Media.

Source: Marketing Ape (ID: MarketingApe)