How do content-based products go global from Douyin, Toutiao, UC Headlines, etc.?

2018 marks a new stage for China’s Internet going global. We can see some new trends from the dynamics of three overseas products.

First, in the first quarter of this year, Tik Tok, the overseas version of Douyin, topped the App Store download list.

According to data released by Sensor Tower, Tik Tok was downloaded 45.8 million times worldwide in the first quarter of this year, surpassing Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and others to become the world's most downloaded iOS application.

Tik Tok ranks first in the iOS market in Vietnam and Japan

Second, SHAR Eit, which had over 1 billion users worldwide a few years ago, announced the acquisition of FastFilmz, the number one OTT platform in southern India, and announced a partnership with Times Music to acquire videos, songs and other content in multiple Indian dialects, quietly beginning the transformation and upgrading of its tool into a content platform.

Third, the overseas success of Qidian International (Webnovel) has boosted the overseas expansion of online literature. As of the end of May, Qidian International has launched 3,500 original English works of various themes and more than 150 English translated works, with a total of over 10 million users. Influenced by this, many domestic online literature platforms have gone overseas.

The dynamics of the above three overseas products seem unrelated, but they all reflect that China's content-based products are frequently going overseas. Mobile overseas products have entered a new stage dominated by content-based products. Some have achieved phased results, while others are still trying to explore a way out.

The difficulty in exporting content-based products is that it requires understanding the content consumption habits of local users and being familiar with local culture. This is a challenge for Chinese Internet companies that do not understand the foreign cultural environment.

Whether you are transforming a tool-based product into a content-based platform, or exporting content-based products such as online articles and short videos , you need to think about how to find a localization path that suits you.

1. What is a content product?

First of all, it is necessary to define what content products are and what types they are?

Internet content refers to text, images (comics), audio and video. Content-based products are products that provide content services such as text, comics, pictures, audio, and video.

According to the author's understanding, content products can be divided into four categories according to the content form:

The first is text content products, including text reading products and information products.

Text reading products are mainly novel products, such as Qidian International (Webnovel) of China Literature Group , and Hooked, a representative of conversational novels that is very popular among young overseas users. Information products include TopBuzz, the overseas version of Toutiao , and UC News, the overseas version of UC Toutiao .

The second category is picture and comic content products. For example, comic products like Kuaikan Comics in China and Tapas and other products abroad.

The third category is video and live broadcast products, including video products and live broadcast products. Among them, video products are divided into long videos and short videos. Long videos include domestic platforms such as Youku, iQiyi , and Tencent Video , while short videos include the popular Douyin and its overseas version Tik Tok.

The fourth category is music and audio products. Music products include domestic QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music , etc.; audio products include Himalaya , etc.

2. The underlying logic of content-based products

The author has experienced two content-based overseas products. I believe that the underlying logic of content-based products is content production - content distribution - content consumption (monetization). To create a successful overseas product, we need to think about these three aspects.

1. Content Production

Content production mainly solves the problem of content sources and how to continuously provide content to users to meet their needs. Content is the foundation of content-based products, and its importance cannot be overemphasized.

Depending on the content producer, it can be divided into user-generated content ( UGC ) and professionally produced content ( PGC ). Later, with the control of UGC content quality, UGC content under professional guidance (PUGC) was produced.

For content-based products, there will be different emphases on content production methods based on the positioning of their platforms. However, for most content platforms, the ideal content production model should be based on popular UGC as the bottom layer, UGC under professional guidance, namely PUGC as the middle layer, and PGC with high-quality content as the top layer.

Regarding these three content production methods, here we discuss how content-based products can continue to produce content overseas to meet user needs.

1) PGC content, how to access more content with better quality and faster speed?

2016 is known as the first year of " content entrepreneurship ". With the success of Toutiao in China, many Chinese companies going overseas have moved Toutiao's news aggregation model overseas.

Taking the Indian market as an example, there is fierce competition among UC News, News Dog, and News Republic, a news distribution platform acquired by Cheetah Mobile.

Similar to the problems they encountered in China, these news aggregation products also encountered copyright disputes in the Indian market. Many mainstream Indian media banned them from reprinting their articles, which became an obstacle to the development of the platform. Expanding overseas PGC content can not only obtain authorized content from news organizations, but also establish a brand image by promoting genuine content.

The author believes that there are several key points for PGC content acquisition:

First, analyze and understand the needs of CP (content providers) and acquire content through a win-win profit-sharing plan.

Taking news aggregation products as an example, the platform needs PGC content, and the CP needs traffic and revenue. Sharing advertising revenue with the CP becomes a way by formulating an appropriate profit-sharing ratio.

Secondly, recruit local business talents and access more CP content.

After the cooperation plan is determined, local business talents are needed to win over more CPs and reduce obstacles to cross-cultural communication. The content access process is standardized and continuously improved to increase the speed of content access.

Therefore, only by accessing more, better and faster content can we win in the competition for PGC content.

2) UGC content production

There are two issues that need to be considered. One is how to achieve a cold start in content, and the other is how to further encourage users to produce more high-quality content, that is, to transform from UGC to PUGC.

We can draw inspiration from Tik Tok's success in the Japanese market. Compared with India and Southeast Asia, which are the first choice for most Chinese companies going overseas, the Japanese market is more difficult for Chinese companies due to various factors. Therefore, Tik Tok's success is worth learning from.

Although Tik Tok has spent over hundreds of millions of dollars on its advertising budget, its popularity in Japan is more due to its success in introducing KOLs and influencers.

Winning artist Kinoshita Yukina, who has 4 million Twitter followers, was an important sign. Later, other artists such as E-Girls, a girl idol group that has been in the top three of Japan's Oricon chart for many years, began to become Tik Tok users. These celebrity users not only brought their own fans and a large number of young seed users , but also brought more celebrity users, promoting a virtuous circle of content production.

The author believes that achieving a cold start in content and driving content production through KOL resources such as overseas influencers and celebrities is a relatively fast and feasible method.

Because these KOLs are representatives of local culture and have fan bases and content channels . To some extent, being able to strive to gain recognition from local KOLs can provide preliminary evidence that the product has the potential to succeed.

Notice! What I mean here is that getting a product recognized by local KOLs is not simply a matter of money. Money is certainly necessary, but spending money cannot solve all problems.

In addition to money, foreign internet celebrities care more about whether the cooperation is in line with their personality and whether they agree with your product. They will not do anything to hurt their fans. Therefore, in cooperation, we must have patience, perseverance and empathy, let them understand the products, respect different cultures, and show sincerity in cooperation.

3) From UGC to PUGC, how to encourage original users to generate more high-quality content?

After achieving that content cold start, TikTok achieved this goal through a series of operational activities.

From February 16 to March 9 this year, TikTok's Japanese operations team held the "TikToker Challenge", encouraging users to post videos under the tags of "fashion", "dance", "funny", "talent" and "technology".

The reward is that the most popular short video under each tag will have the opportunity to appear on four large advertising screens at Shibuya’s busiest intersection between March 19th and 25th.

Four large advertising screens displaying Tik Tok ads at Shibuya's busiest intersection

Such exposure opportunities are extremely attractive to Japanese TikTok users, so many users actively participate. According to Japanese media reports , as of March 9, the number of short video submissions under the five tags has exceeded 60,000, and the number of views has exceeded 300 million.

Exposure rewards are actually a common means of operation. The following three goals can be achieved through the "TikToker Challenge":

The first is to guide the direction of content production.

TikTok is positioned as a short video platform for young users. The platform hopes that users will generate more content with labels such as "fashion", "dance", "funny", "talent" and "technical flow". Through this activity, it can stimulate the production of these contents and strengthen the attributes of the platform content.

The second is to stimulate more content production.

The reward of being featured on the largest local advertising screen is actually using human vanity to drive users to produce more content. In addition, Japanese society is a country with a clear "grouping" phenomenon, which is easily influenced by the herd mentality. This characteristic is used to encourage users to produce more content.

The third is to encourage users to produce high-quality content and stay on the platform.

Users come to a platform to produce content in the hope that their talents will be recognized by more people. In the era of information explosion, how can we make high-quality content get more exposure opportunities?

Generally speaking, it is displayed in the banner position of the APP. What? If the banner space is not enough, let’s move to the advertising screen with the highest exposure . In order to have the opportunity to be displayed on the advertising screen, users will produce more high-quality content and gain more fans and friends.

Next time, in order to attract more fans, users will produce more high-quality content. With more fans, the probability that users will stay and produce more high-quality content will be greater, forming a virtuous circle.

In addition to exposure rewards, there are also other means to improve the quality of UGC content, such as list incentives.

(Original recommendation vote list on Webnovel)

The common scenario faced by these methods is that after the product has achieved content launch and has a certain user base, it is necessary to solve the problem of how to continue to motivate users to produce more and better high-quality content after users have lost the novelty of content creation.

Because when users produce content on content platforms but do not receive attention, they will gradually lose their enthusiasm and motivation for creation. At this time, these methods need to be used to satisfy users' vanity and sense of honor, thereby motivating them to continue producing content.

Whether we can guide and improve content producers to continuously produce high-quality content is the key to determining the success or failure of a content product. Due to limited space, I will explain in detail in subsequent articles.

The goal of content production is to build an ideal content ecosystem. Achieving a cold start in content is the first step. This can be achieved by accumulating content through access to PGC content, or by achieving a cold start in content through KOL resources.

After that, it is necessary to use operational means to guide the transformation of the bottom-level UGC into the middle-level PUGC, thereby stimulating ordinary users to generate more content while improving the quality of the content.

However, the above methods are all spiritual incentives. When Chinese Internet companies are facing different markets in the process of going overseas, they should adopt different methods based on actual conditions and user needs.

For example, the entire Internet environment in the Indian market is still immature. In addition to spiritual motivation, it also needs real material and monetary rewards. This is why platforms such as UC News have launched self-media incentive plans.

UC News’s self-media incentive plan

2. Content Distribution

After the content platform has accumulated a large amount of localized content in content production, the next step is how to match the right content to the right users.

This problem will become more and more urgent as the platform content increases and the number of users grows , because at this time the platform content will generally have the problem of homogeneity and redundancy, and users will gradually lose patience and interest.

In addition, with the development of mobile Internet overseas, users have a wide variety of cultural and entertainment products to choose from, from news aggregation products to online literature, from live broadcasts to short videos, etc. Whether in developed regions such as Europe, the United States and Japan, or in emerging countries such as India and Southeast Asia, Chinese Internet companies not only face competition from other overseas products, but also have to compete with local or international giants for user time.

1) How can we quickly match the right users with the right content in an overseas environment with cultural differences?

We can still draw inspiration from the success of Tik Tok, the overseas version of Douyin. Like Douyin in China, Tik Tok also adopts an algorithm-recommended distribution model. A large part of its success in Japan is also attributed to its algorithm-recommended model.

Algorithmic recommendation is essentially about matching users and content through labels. This method can effectively solve the impact of cultural differences among overseas countries on content distribution.

2) Content distribution is the intermediate link between content and users. In addition to solving the problem of how the user side can present appropriate content to appropriate overseas users, it is also necessary to consider the impact of content distribution methods on content producers.

Both Tik Tok, the overseas version of Douyin, and TopBuzz, the overseas version of Toutiao, implement ByteDance's recommendation algorithm model. Can algorithm recommendation solve all problems of content distribution?

Next, we will look at this issue through an analysis of TopBuzz, the overseas version of Toutiao.

TopBuzz was launched in August 2015. It can be said to be ByteDance’s earliest overseas product and has been tested in the market for a longer period of time than Tik Tok.

Although in the 2017 Google Play Best Apps selection, TopBuzz and TopBuzz Video won the most popular apps of the year in Brazil and the United States respectively, it initially proved that the algorithm recommendation model is still popular overseas.

However, what is restricting TopBuzz's further development is precisely its intelligent algorithm recommendations . Many of the negative comments from users on Google Play criticize the rampant fake news on TopBuzz, and the American people are still very sensitive to fake news.

It is precisely because of this factor that TopBuzz has not yet been recognized by the mainstream media in the United States, limiting its further development.

The drawbacks of algorithmic recommendations not only affect the user side, but also have a negative impact on content producers. The author has participated in the self-media plans of many overseas news aggregation products, registered self-media accounts on multiple platforms and published the same content, including TopBuzz.

After verifying multiple content releases, I found that the same content is basically not read or commented on on TopBuzz. Because other platforms have a manual recommendation mechanism for high-quality content, novice users can also get the opportunity to be exposed.

However, TopBuzz relies too much on algorithm recommendations, which means that the high-quality content of some users, such as novice users, cannot be recommended by the algorithm, which is not conducive to motivating users to continue producing content on TopBuzz.

Therefore, I believe that in addition to relying on algorithm recommendations, content distribution also requires the intervention of manual recommendations. This can not only control content quality and reduce the proliferation of low-quality content such as fake news, but also provide more opportunities for novices and other content producers through the screening and manual recommendation of high-quality articles, thereby making up for the shortcomings of algorithm recommendations.

3. Content Monetization

For users, content consumption is the process of consuming content; for platforms, it is a question of how to monetize content. There are many ways to monetize content products, the most typical of which are advertising and paid reading .

Advertising is a relatively common way of monetization, suitable for content-based products that do not have high requirements for content quality. After accumulating a certain amount of traffic, profits can be made by selling advertising space . For example, the news aggregation platform UC News places advertisements on the content details page and shares profits with content providers.

For content-based products that rely on selling high-quality content, paid reading is the main way to make profits, such as online literature platforms such as Qidian International (Webnovel). From the perspective of content monetization of both, the former relies on "quantity" while the latter seeks "quality".

The monetization of content-based products should be based on the characteristics of the products themselves and in line with the market trends. However, we can see that many companies have misunderstandings such as blindly pursuing user growth and ignoring the actual needs of users.

A stone from another mountain can be used to polish a jade. Below, I will analyze and compare two niche overseas products to analyze the correct approach to monetization of content-based products.

Case: The Death of Great Jones Street and the Rise of Rocket Post Live

Great Jones Street is an American reading product that provides users with short stories, covering topics such as romance, thriller and adventure.

Founder Kelly Abbott founded the Great Jones Street brand in 2016. Abbott believes that there is no real "home for novel lovers" on the market, just like Spotify for music lovers and Netflix for fanatical drama fans.

Adhering to the belief of recommending the best novels and the best authors to readers, Abbott is determined to make Great Jones Street the Netflix of the novel world.

Since the founder has certain connections in the field of novels, he has an advantage in the accumulation of works and authors. Great Jones Street did not adopt the UGC approach because they did not want to sacrifice the quality of the work for the sake of quantity, and they were faster than their competitors in acquiring high-quality work;

Creators are the key to content production. In dealing with the relationship with authors, they not only connect authors and readers through their own platforms, but also actively involve authors in their careers, making authors feel fully respected and trusted, and continuously increasing the number of authors.

Therefore, Abbott is confident in declaring that Great Jones Street has the largest online library of high-quality fiction content. In addition, Great Jones Street has reached a partnership with Medium, a popular emerging content publishing platform overseas, to accelerate the distribution of content through this high-quality platform.

The founder wants to make Great Jones Street the Netflix of novels

Although Great Jones Street achieved success in content production and distribution, and the founder did a good job in raising funds, cultivating a team and attracting original creators, it did not do well in monetization and did not obtain enough subscribers. The income from user subscription fees could not even support the most basic operating expenses, resulting in the failure of the project. The founder announced that the APP would be removed from the shelves on December 31, 2017.

When we review this case, we can see that the direct cause of Great Jones Street’s demise was the failure to form a paying user base of sufficient size, resulting in expenditures exceeding income.

How to solve this problem? Let us first turn our attention to the Indian market. Perhaps we can get the answer from the Rocket Post Live.

With the popularization of smartphones in India, users' demand for news content has been stimulated, which is also the background for many Chinese news aggregation products to go overseas to India.

Unlike UC News or Newsdog, Chinese news aggregation products exported to India, the Rocket Post Live team did not develop its own app, but instead opened a channel through WhatsApp, similar to India's WeChat , to spread local news content.

The founder of Rocket Post Live is Shivendra Gaur, and the entire entrepreneurial team consists of 6 people including himself. They push a "news digest" through WhatsApp Broadcast every day, and at 8 o'clock every night, they will also push an 8-minute video that is a collection of important news of the day.

In terms of content monetization, as of mid-2017, they have successfully acquired more than 11,400 users, of which about 8,000 are paying subscribers, with a payment rate of over 70%. Paying users are required to pay a subscription fee of 100 rubles (about 1.5 US dollars) per year.

Rocket Post Live’s annual revenue in India exceeds $12,000, which is already at the per capita income level of developed countries. You know, the current payment rate and level in the Indian market are very poor, and it is not easy to achieve such results in content monetization.

Rocket Post Live provides local residents with a push content interface for high-quality local news. It is simple but meets user needs.

Content-based products are even more difficult for Chinese Internet companies due to their cultural barriers. However, through the comparison of the success and failure of the above local entrepreneurs , we can get some inspiration for content monetization.

1) Deeply cultivate the local market and grasp and meet user needs.

The death of Great Jones Street is somewhat surprising, but there are many people who ruin a good hand, and the fundamental reason is that they failed to grasp and meet user needs.

They do not have a deep enough understanding of the novel consumption needs of American users. Although they are aware of users' demand for mobile novel reading, they have not explored it further. In contrast, Rocket Post Live has been focused on serving the local people’s basic needs for news consumption since its inception, and has therefore achieved impressive results even in rural India where the payment rate is extremely poor.

For Chinese Internet companies that export content-based products overseas, cultivating and forming a paying user base of sufficient size is the key to survival and profitability.

Without determining the target region and target users at the beginning, we can quickly trial and error on a global scale, quickly identify and focus on the target market.

It is very important to deeply cultivate the local market, study the needs of local users, and formulate operational promotion strategies around cultivating a group of paying users, especially for overseas markets.

This is determined by the differences between overseas markets and domestic markets:

First, compared with domestic users, overseas users are often more willing to communicate with developers. They are willing to write down their feelings and questions about the product in emails and give them feedback to developers. Therefore, this user characteristic is more conducive to Chinese developers to tap into the local market, serve and cultivate their first batch of loyal fans, gain a foothold in the market and spread their influence.

Second, the application release channels in overseas markets are relatively single and the rules are more transparent than those in the domestic application market , which can provide a relatively healthy competitive environment for Chinese Internet companies going overseas, especially startups. Therefore, overseas companies can focus more on meeting the needs of local users, polishing their products and iterating quickly, so as to occupy the market from point to surface.

2) Combine your own advantages and concentrate resources on a single breakthrough.

Although Great Jones Street has good content production and distribution resources and is ambitious to cover all mainstream novel genres, it is precisely the "big and comprehensive" content strategy that distracts their attention and prevents them from forming a distinctive platform, which is a taboo in the competition among overseas novel products that focus on their main characteristics.

Great Jones Street novels are of many types, with no primary or secondary distinction

Rocket Post Live only has a small team of 6 people with very limited resources, but it is precisely based on its understanding of local user needs, leveraging its expertise in local news, and producing high-quality news that satisfies local people that it can succeed.

For many Chinese content products going overseas, technology and capital are advantages. After determining the content strategy, using capital to acquire more top content and using technology to better meet users' personalized content needs are the keys to success.

3) Explore content monetization based on local conditions.

The overseas Internet environment is very different from that in China, and many models cannot be applied mechanically. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt the content monetization model based on local conditions.

For example, Qidian International (Webnovel), based on the successful experience of the VIP paid reading system, has also tailored a paid reading model that suits local conditions for overseas readers.

In addition to the common pay-per-chapter model, in areas with poor payment rates, such as India, the paid reading chapter mode and the Wait or Pay mode (that is, you have to pay to watch the first time after the update) can be unlocked by watching advertisements. This not only meets user needs, but also allows the product to find a suitable disguised model.

It is a win-win situation for the platform and users, forming a virtuous development.

Overseas users can unlock the paid reading chapter mode by watching ads when reading online novels on Qidian International (Webnovel)

at last

Overseas users' demand for content is an opportunity for Chinese Internet companies to go overseas. The author believes that those going overseas should think from the underlying logic of content products, namely content production, content distribution, and content consumption (monetization), in light of the specific countries they are going to, and conduct rapid trial and error and iteration. I believe that in 2018, there will be more successful overseas content products.

Author: Curry , authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Overseas Operations