Why do Weibo, Douyin and even Kuaishou have to rely on Taobao to monetize?

On the first day of the plum rain season in Shanghai, the rain came as expected. Some spectators hurried into the Shanghai Tower with their cameras. The security guards in black suits had serious faces and would not let any spectators in until the appointed time.

Familiar internet celebrities will all attend the award ceremony that night, such as Xue Li, Lin Shanshan, Zhang Dayi, and Teng Yujia from the e-commerce circle , and Li Ziqi and Dalian Laoshi Wang Bowen from the short video circle. They are big traffic in their respective fields.

The security guard who always had a poker face would also quietly ask reporters when he met them: Is that XX coming today?

"Influencer culture" is Weibo's special gene. In addition to celebrities, they are another source of traffic for the platform, and some are even as good as celebrities.

Cao Zenghui, senior vice president of Weibo, said, " We believe that Internet celebrities with more than 10 million fans have already been managed and developed like artists, and have very strong commercial IP value. Internet celebrities with more than 5 million fans have initially achieved coverage of the general public, including starting to have some public influence. We believe that those with between 1 million and 5 million fans have made an impact in vertical fields."

According to the "2018 China Internet Celebrity Economic Development Insight Report" jointly released by iResearch and Weibo, as of May 2018, the total number of fans of Chinese Internet celebrities reached 588 million, a year-on-year increase of 25%. Among internet celebrity fans, 53.9% are under 25 years old.

The official Weibo gave a data: Currently, there are more than 20,000 celebrities on Weibo with more than one million fans.

Helping influencers to monetize is one of the ways that platforms like Weibo use to retain influencers. However, compared with foreign countries, traffic cannot be directly converted into money. Traffic only represents good-looking data.

Su Xin, co-founder of Erka Video, told the editor , "The population abroad is small, so the price of traffic will be relatively high. The population in China is large, and many content creators cannot survive by relying solely on traffic, so they need to find some other channels for support. So we saw a more direct traffic outlet - the combination of advertising and content."

The advertisements mentioned by Su Xin are just one of the means for influencers to monetize. E-commerce is the bulk of the monetization, and it is even the direction that many influencers who create content are trying to expand in the future.

The existence of Xue Li and Lin Shanshan makes many "Internet celebrities" envious. They themselves are representatives of consumer symbols, and their content is itself a product.

Weibo and e-commerce have a special connection. At the end of last year, Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei announced that in 2017, self-media earned more than 20.7 billion yuan through Weibo, of which 18.7 billion yuan was from e-commerce .

E-commerce won with an overwhelming advantage, and Weibo merely played the role of directing consumption.

This function has also been noticed by emerging platforms.

For example, Douyin has been testing it on a small scale at the beginning of the year. The video will be embedded with a shopping cart button that goes directly to Taobao .

The low-key Kuaishou actually also has corresponding tests. By turning on the "My Shop" function through Kuaishou Lab, you can embed product information in the video, and the link also points to Taobao.

Have you found the biggest common point? Through Taobao. Whether it is Weibo, Douyin or Kuaishou, the approach they choose is not to build a new mall by themselves, but still leave the most tedious tasks to Taobao.

The reason is simple. Do you remember the "Rest assured shopping" that Toutiao once tried to build on its platform? In addition to the supply chain, building a self-built shopping mall also requires solving problems in pre-sales, after-sales, payment and other aspects. The attempt to leverage Tmall and Taobao stores was not accomplished.

Weibo has found a fairly mature path in directing traffic to e-commerce.

Yu Shuang, general manager of Weibo's commercial product department, said in an interview, "We are very determined not to be a trading platform. We have two advantages. First, Weibo is a typical platform with personal IP. You may not come to this platform because it is called Weibo, but you may come because it has Zhang Dayi and Yu MOMO. This is the most typical feature. If some platforms do not have this kind of private domain traffic and only have public domain traffic, it is useless and unstable.

The second biggest advantage is that the way we do it now, the forms of media you can send it are diverse. The earliest celebrities were all engaged in text and pictures, but now they can make short videos, and our short videos are not that short. You can send a 10-second, 15-second or 1-minute message. Sometimes, talking about clothes cannot be completed in 15 seconds or 1 minute. It still takes 2-3 minutes or 3-5 minutes. The medium can be short or long, and we can even do live broadcast . Our overall format is quite diverse. ”

This passage is very interesting. If you want to do e-commerce, "it is useless and unstable if it only has public domain traffic."

The public domain traffic has also entered the representative of e-commerce - Douyin.

The secret of Tik Tok's addictiveness is to create an exclusive traffic pool for everyone. Gather all the good and popular content together and package them and push them to users.

The strong operation approach greatly reduces the time cost for users to find and consume content. Although the number of followers increases quickly, Douyin prioritizes "public domain traffic".

This practice will weaken the chances of the blogger being followed appearing on the fan homepage. In this way, even if a blogger quickly gains fans through certain videos, he may only gain some invalid attention.

If Douyin wants to delve deeper into e-commerce content, then the ratio of content recommendations needs to be adjusted. How to make the people being followed appear in the eyes of fans more frequently is the first problem that needs to be solved urgently.

Yu Shuang's understanding of private domain traffic is, "We build fan relationships from the beginning. First of all, you have to have fans to have the foundation of private domain. Is the first page when entering the APP private domain or public domain? The first page when entering Weibo is the follower flow, which means we are promoting private domain traffic. I have fans, and my traffic is guaranteed, because the first page that fans see when they come in is the people they follow, which is determined by the nature of our product."

Private domain traffic can actually be partly understood as social stickiness, and Kuaishou has an advantage over Douyin in social aspects. Many bloggers have said that when they publish the same content on different platforms, they will receive quite a lot of high-quality comments on Kuaishou.

Kuaishou, which is also involved in e-commerce, has better conditions. The so-called differential treatment of "public and private domain" traffic basically does not exist in Kuaishou. Friends who often use Kuaishou may notice a detail. Kuaishou does not display the recommendation page every time it is opened. If you stayed on the follow page when you left last time and reopen it, Kuaishou will give priority to showing the content you follow.

Long before Kuaishou launched "My Shop", there were already internet celebrities and bloggers who used content and shared WeChat accounts to direct their fans to the WeChat platform and sell goods in their Moments . The development of e-commerce can be said to be a spontaneous demand of the platform and bloggers.

In my opinion, Kuaishou and Douyin can both be regarded as Weibo-like products. It’s just that the main content provided by Kuaishou and Douyin is video, while Weibo still gives priority to text. This priority does not mean that text receives more traffic than pictures, but that, on Kuaishou and Douyin, users see the video first and then may consume the text provided by the blogger, while on Weibo, users see the text first and then start consuming videos or pictures.

When it comes to the ability to create influencers, there are many influencers who came out of Kuaishou and Douyin, such as Xian Yang, Wu Di, Fei Qiming, Daigula K, etc.

Wu Di in the upper picture, Dai Gula K in the lower picture

Pictures, texts, videos, and live broadcasts are the media forms that e-commerce is relatively dependent on. Both Kuaishou and Douyin can provide these features, which means that there are opportunities for both of them to get involved in e-commerce.

Many of Weibo’s practices can be used as references for other platforms. After all, Weibo is the origin of celebrities.

For example, the layout of vertical content and finding monetization channels for mid-level and lower-level anchors. The number and richness of celebrities are still higher than other platforms.

In addition, Liu Fei, the founder of Beike Video, once shared a statement with the editor that only when you become a big account, accumulate fans (to C), and then carry out brand packaging (to B), will you have the opportunity to realize commercialization.

Celebrities on Weibo have higher recognition and greater opportunities for commercial monetization. Douyin’s “private domain traffic” problem still needs to be improved. The opportunity for commercial monetization is more likely to fall on the platform based on large traffic, and the personal commercialization of bloggers will be affected to a certain extent.

The problem with Kuaishou is to B, that is, brand image. Some time ago, a blogger planned to promote his content on all platforms and put a copy of his content on Kuaishou. Unexpectedly, many fans sent him private messages to scold him, and they didn’t understand why "you" wanted to enter Kuaishou.

This brand image belongs not only to the platform, but also to the Kuaishou celebrities.

The e-commerce business is full of temptations, but Weibo is still the most accomplished one at present. Latecomers still need to solve many problems that Weibo has faced or has not faced before.

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

Source: Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe ）