Experience in operating knowledge accounts with millions of followers on Douyin

2021 is already half over. Where are the opportunities for Douyin? Basically, they are knowledge accounts, corporate Blue V self-broadcasts, local city accounts and live broadcasts. This article mainly shares the operating ideas of knowledge accounts.

1. Start from the end and work backwards from the business to determine account positioning

Some people have 1 million Douyin fans but have suffered huge losses, while others only have 10,000 or 20,000 fans but have already made millions. The huge gap lies in whether the monetization idea is determined from the beginning.

To me, Tik Tok is just a traffic channel. We have always had this understanding when it comes to traffic: 1,000 general fans are generally not as valuable as one precise fan. What is pan powder? If you sell perfume and you create a funny account, you will only attract general fans, but these fans have nothing to do with our business. Therefore, when we are making Douyin, we must remember this sentence: promote what you are selling.

Douyin’s fans don’t belong to us, but to the platform, so we shouldn’t think about gaining fans first and then monetizing them. The path to creating an account that conforms to business logic is: determine the product, find users, and create content.

The first thing is to determine the product. Account positioning must be based on your product and business. Don’t try to do something that is easy to become popular and increase the number of followers. Users attracted in this way will be difficult to convert as long as they have no connection with our product or business, and the efficiency is very low.

First, analyze the profile of your audience through your own business content, then find content that can attract this group of people and make it into a video.

For example, if I am doing English training, then my audience will definitely be people who want to learn English. If the purchasing decision is made by parents, then my content will tend to focus on how I can help children get higher scores in English and how to stimulate children's interest in learning English. If the purchasing decision is made by adults, then my content will tend to focus on how to gain more development space through English and how to use free time to improve English scores.

Of course, as an account develops, it will cover a wider range of people, and the topics will naturally diversify. What kind of topic is the best and most attractive to our audience requires us to continuously iterate in the process.

2. Peers are the best teachers

During our positioning stage, we should also pay more attention to excellent competitor accounts. We should understand that in most industries, there are many pioneers. Therefore, the fastest way for us is to start with imitation. We only need to find the benchmark account and imitate it at the pixel level (very detailed). Starting to execute immediately is a very important step in acquiring customers through short videos.

A lot of people have spent a lot of effort to help us set an example. What we need to do is to find such people, see what they have done, analyze how they did it, and then use this analysis on our own account, which would be very good.

1. Take an example

Let me give you an example of how we created the “Forrest Gump Reading Club” account.

At that time, we saw an account called "One Person's Shakespeare". The overall presentation was a black background, and then a person spoke some golden sentences, chicken soup, jokes and other things in front of the camera. We studied it and found that his account performed well in all aspects. For example, the number of likes was relatively large at the time, the number of fans increased rapidly, and the shooting cost was relatively low and the reproducibility was strong. So we started to create our own account according to his style.

Not long after, our first account, Forrest Gump Reading Club, was established. Later, we continued to replicate and create new accounts in this way. For example, Forrest Gump Emotion, Xiong Wei Reading, and Zheng Ying Reading were all established using the same model.

When making TikTok, we not only look at the output, but also the cost. For example, if a company wants to build a Douyin team now, the basic operating costs are already quite heavy, including labor costs (editors, talents, shooting, post-production), shooting hardware costs, a lot of time and energy costs, and other miscellaneous costs, so cost awareness must be maintained throughout our operation of Douyin.

How do we control costs when operating the Forrest Gump account matrix? Firstly, all our scenes are consistent in format, which reduces our shooting and editing costs. Secondly, our talents do not receive a basic salary, they are all signed from other agencies, and we only need to give them commissions.

The difference between each video is the topic, and the factor that affects the hit is only a single variable, so the difficulty is greatly reduced. Secondly, the highly standardized process has significantly improved our efficiency in number creation and enabled us to produce popular videos in a stable manner, so we are able to achieve overall cost leadership.

Let’s review: How did we do it? First, we found an account that was performing well and analyzed how it did it. Why are you doing so well? Are there any areas that can be learned from, and then the summarized ideas can be applied to one's own field?

2. How to mine peer accounts

If you don’t know how to find your benchmark account, I have summarized 6 methods to share with you. You can put them into practice immediately after learning.

First, search directly

We directly search for keywords in the field we want to work in, for example, parenting. When we search for the keyword parenting in Douyin, after we search, the system will recommend videos containing the keyword to us. Behind every video is an account. Through this direct method, we can discover a large number of accounts.

Second, expand keywords

If we only search based on the word "parenting", we may get the same results over and over again. So we might as well change the keywords, such as parents, children, guardians, etc. On the [KuaiTuYi] platform, you can directly expand many new keywords through one keyword.

Third, relevant experts

When following accounts with specific tags, the system will actively recommend accounts that may be of interest to us.

Fourth, the system actively recommends

After we browse videos in the same field, we will find the recommendation page, which is the first page we click on Douyin, where some videos we want to match will appear.

Fifth, indirectly search through the fans of influencers

The fan pages of some influencers are not hidden, so we can click on them to see whether his fans are following other accounts of the same type, or have liked works of the same type.

Sixth, short video data platform

In some short video data platforms, such as the Duanyuer account that everyone has just received, it can be used directly to help us quickly search for benchmark accounts, and it can be sorted by time and likes. The efficiency will be faster.

Through the above methods, we can quickly find many objects worth learning and referring to. Then when we are doing it, it is best to record it, for example, the accounts that have gained followers quickly recently, which are very worthy of our learning.

By the way, a warm reminder for everyone is that when we are looking for benchmarks, we must have a clear goal, because we are here to study our peers. Let's say I want to find ten or 20 today. We will watch the accounts or videos of our peers, and then stop, because TikTok is really attractive. It will continuously recommend things we like, and we can easily forget our own business and waste a lot of time.

3. How to analyze peer accounts

As mentioned earlier, before we create an account, we must first find benchmarks. So how do we find these excellent peers? How should we analyze it? Analysis is a meticulous job. I have made a list for you on how to do it.

Analysis checklist:

1. Account Packaging

1. Nickname

2. Avatar

3. Signature

4. Cover image

5. Account ID

2. Account Positioning

1. Business content

2. Monetization method

3. Video format analysis

4. Account data

Likes

Number of fans

Number of works

3. Video Analysis

1. Average number of likes for all videos, percentage of hit videos (above the average)

2. Average number of likes for the last five videos

3. Template for breaking down popular videos

Video Link

Duration

Like

Comment

Forward

theme

Description Title

Add a topic

Subtitle style (Chinese and English, position, color, size)

Cover design (with or without title)

Soundtrack

Video copy

Scene composition

Total number of shots

Fans' public opinion

Video Logic

stem

…

4. Low-quality video analysis, basically the same as 3

4. Off-site platform analysis

Brand building/traffic channels: WeChat, Weibo, Toutiao, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu…

Company/Organization Search: Qichacha/Tianyancha

Because we are aiming for monetization, in addition to looking at the external videos and account data, we also need to understand the live broadcast data, sales data, and display data of our peers. If the other party is in the private domain, we also need to add their WeChat and experience their conversion process. After experiencing this, we can directly imitate it, right? This can greatly reduce our pressure on innovation.

3. All problems are content problems

In the experience of coaching students, I often encounter the following problems:

1. If I use a certain software to edit my videos, will my chances of getting recommended be higher?

2. Is it true that after I create an account, the probability of my becoming popular will be higher?

3. The videos I post have never been popular. Is it because I am connected to WIFI and not using data to post videos?

…

There are so many questions. Whether a video can become a hit is determined by many factors, including account factor 5%, release time 5%, X factor 10%, and video content 80%.

Let me briefly introduce the mechanism of Douyin. After our Douyin video is released, Douyin will distribute basic playback to us, usually 500vv, and then based on the interaction indicators, that is, the completion rate, like rate, comment rate, and forwarding rate (of course, in reality there are also attention rates, the probability of watching other videos after entering the homepage, etc., we mainly look at the interaction indicators). If the interaction index is relatively high, the system will allocate a new wave of traffic to us, for example 5000vv, until our interaction index fails to meet the system's recommended standards, then our video will stop being recommended.

Account factor: 5%. In many accounts we have posted before, it often happens that 5 accounts post 5 similar videos (for example, the same teacher, in the same scene, under the same lighting, talking about the same problem, posted at the same time). In the end, the number of views for each account is different. Some only get the basic 500 views, some can get over a thousand, and some can get millions of views.

Since the TikTok algorithm is a black box, we can only make this guess: each account corresponds to a certain group of people, so the same video content will receive different user feedback (completion rate, like rate, comment rate, forwarding rate, hereinafter referred to as interaction indicators) from different groups of people. For example, there are two accounts. The user portrait of the former is middle-aged, while that of the latter is young and beautiful women. Then when we release a beauty video, the latter will definitely get better user feedback. Of course, Tik Tok’s algorithm is extremely complex, and each account corresponds to a very complex group of people. This is just a simplified model to help with understanding.

If we have many accounts, we can increase the probability of obtaining a hit by creating accounts in batches at the same time. After an account is created, the subsequent playback volume will be relatively high.

You may ask, what if there is only one account? It doesn’t matter. If you keep posting vertical videos on this account, it will become a hit sooner or later. For example, our account [Mr. Bai, who is good at math] had less than 300 followers after posting 300 videos at the beginning. Later, we adjusted the video content in a targeted manner and started to increase the number of followers in a short period of time.

Release time: 5%. The same video will have different effects when sent at different time periods. That’s why people often joke that “it will become popular the second time it’s released”. The reason is the same as above. Content sent at different time periods will receive different user feedback, so naturally the number of views will be different.

X-factor: TikTok is a black box, which is influenced by many factors, collectively referred to as X-factors. For example, you have no idea which videos are in the recommended candidate pool at the same time as your video. If all the videos at the same time are better than yours (their interaction indicators are higher than yours), then your video will easily fail. On the contrary, if your video is much better than other videos, then it is entirely possible for you to stand out.

Video content: 80%. This is the most important point. Next, we will optimize our videos based on the interaction indicators.

4. Increase the probability of a hit product through interactive indicators

After determining the video format, we can start preparing for the topic. There are generally two ways to find a topic. ① Refer to the figure below to list all the knowledge points in your field. This will also avoid the embarrassment of not knowing what to shoot after a period of time. ② First look at which videos have the highest number of likes in the same field, and give priority to topics with the highest number of likes.

After determining the positioning, finding a good topic, and deciding on the format, we should start creating content immediately. Don’t worry about not doing it well at the beginning. As long as we continue to optimize the video, we may be able to create our own hit.

Tip 1: Increase the comment rate

When we create videos, we need to predict in advance what emotions users will have and what opinions they will express. Because the more comments there are, the more popular the video will be. Most Douyin users like to read great comments, and the comments are even more exciting than the video itself, becoming an important part of the video content.

Therefore, before we create, we leave a seed that can arouse topics in advance and plan the direction of users' comments in advance, so that users can follow our rhythm. Here we call it [pre-buried stalks] (or easter eggs). This will not only increase the comment rate, but also the completion rate, because users spend time leaving and reading comments, and the video stays longer.

Tip: The above comments mainly refer to users' comments, not our replies to users' comments.

1. The usual practice is to pre-embed it in the video or video title.

1) Intentionally placing typos in the video, deliberately saying some irrelevant content incorrectly, or leaving logical loopholes. This is likely to inspire users' sense of superiority and cause them to leave comments. Of course, we shouldn’t do this too often, otherwise users will think our video quality is poor.

2) Ask questions in the video and guide users to post and find answers in the comment section, such as suspense videos.

3) Use the title or video ending to guide users to comment, like or forward.

4) Expand the user scope. For example, if we comment on the acting skills of five stars in a video, then the fans of these five stars may come to comment.

2. Include interesting or useful comments in the comment section.

After the video is released, we use our own Douyin account to post 2-4 comments, such as questioning the video's point of view, making fun of small details in the video, asking sharp questions, etc., to attract users to pay attention to the comment area and even directly participate in the topic discussion.

3. Choose topics that are likely to cause controversy

There are a thousand Hamlets for a thousand people. Each user has different cognition, so he will have different opinions on each video. When he agrees with our opinion, he may just click "like" to express his agreement and move on. But if he opposes our opinion, the user may refute us and directly put forward the opposite opinion in the comment area.

So we can arouse discussion among users by creating videos that are likely to cause controversy. For example, this method is often used in our account [Lao Zheng Talks about Workplace]. For example, academic qualifications are a topic that is extremely prone to controversy, so we specially made an issue about improving academic qualifications, and we also arranged for small accounts to publish long comments with opposite views in advance. Sure enough, users had a heated discussion in the comment area about whether academic qualifications are useful.

4. How to maintain the comment area?

When a user comments on our video, it is best to reply to him as soon as possible. But if our video becomes popular and there are hundreds or thousands of comments, how should we maintain it?

1) If you have time, reply to all the messages as much as possible. This is also a way to cultivate fan loyalty.

2) Reply to popular comments and great comments, in other words, reply to comments with a high number of likes.

4) Reply to comments that are highly relevant to the content, such as when a user extracts the essence of a video and posts it in the comment section.

5) If you are an influencer with a large number of fans and someone famous comments on your video, be sure to reply to them and interact with them more.

6) Use more question sentences when commenting, which can stimulate users to start a new round of interaction.

5. Interact with big accounts and comment to attract traffic

When we see a popular video, we should take the time to leave a comment as much as possible. If our comment gets a lot of likes, it can have a certain effect in directing traffic to the account or video.

Tip 2: Improve completion rate

Gaining attention is like gaining wealth. The most basic point is to ensure our completion rate, which can also be understood as the time users stay on the video.

The completion rate is the most important indicator in Douyin. We can recall how we use Douyin. Do we stop to watch when we see an interesting video, and swipe away immediately when we see a video we don’t like? Therefore, the machine will also have such judgment rules. If many users are particularly uninterested in a certain video and swipe away without watching it, then the video is likely to have poor content, so it will not be given more recommendations and will not be allowed to enter the next larger traffic pool.

1) Pre-climax

Move the most exciting part forward, don't beat around the bush. There is even a rumor that playback of less than three seconds is not considered effective playback.

2) Shorten the video length

When creating, make sure that every frame of content is useful and necessary, and shorten the length of the video as much as possible, as short as one second as possible. The shorter the video, the higher the completion rate and the higher the number of views. There was once a trick circulating in the market for breaking playback, which was actually a 7-second video + popular music + a golden sentence or a short story. But there is a misunderstanding here. The completion rate of Douyin is compared among videos of the same length. For example, a 1-minute video with a 30% completion rate is definitely more valuable than a 7-second video with an 80% completion rate.

Of course, we have to shorten the length while ensuring the completeness of the story or content. We can't shorten it just for the sake of being short. Otherwise, it will be inferior. A video that is too short cannot carry too much content. Shortening the length of the video recklessly is not conducive to us building an account that attracts fans.

3) Increase user viewing time

By setting up exciting videos, inserting magical music, setting up difficult-to-understand plots, etc., we can increase the time users stay on our videos, and even have them watch them repeatedly. If our videos contain a lot of text, information, and details, it may encourage users to watch them repeatedly or even pause to study them carefully.

4) Make valuable long videos

It is said that the conditions for evaluating the completion rate of videos longer than one minute are different, but when we shift from only considering the completion rate to [value-driven], we have the opportunity to create a Douyin account with stronger stickiness.

Whether a user will finish watching the video depends on whether the video can bring him value. The value of a video is not determined by its length. In fact, a video that is too short cannot bring higher value to users. Long videos are more likely to explain the knowledge points thoroughly. For example, the videos of this account (Teacher He Talks about Economics) are quite long, but the number of views is not low.

Since you occupy the user's time, the value you provide to the user must be higher than the value of the user's time. Because your content is not good, you are afraid that users will not stay, so you have to make extremely short videos to achieve a high completion rate.

Of course, making long videos does not conflict with not talking nonsense.

Tip 3: Increase the like rate (strong sense of gain)

Liking the button is the simplest operation in Tik Tok. Just double-click the screen or click the heart icon to like the button. In a sense, liking the button also has a collection function, because users can store their favorite videos in their like column.

If we want users to like our videos, we must make them clearly aware of the value of the videos, such as being able to make people laugh, think deeply, resonate with others, generate positive energy, see impressive skills, unexpected twists, learn knowledge, and gain more information.

Valuable content should be entertaining. Too dry content may be as bland as this article and hard to swallow. Breaking up the knowledge points and appropriately adding fun and entertainment to the video will make our videos easier to be accepted and spread by users. For example, when we talk about opportunity cost, if you choose a virtuous and dignified girl over a sexy and lively girl, the other one you give up is the opportunity cost. Knowledge-based videos are easy to get high likes and reposts because they give people a strong sense of achievement.

In addition to ensuring the value of the content, you can also set some details to guide users to like it, such as adding guiding actions or voice at the end of the video. In order to shoot this video, I contributed 5 weeks of rest time. Can you give me a little heart so that I can be more motivated to continue creating? Or like and follow us, and we will bring you more exciting videos in the next issue.

When we actively ask users to like our videos, in fact, users will not reject us. Instead, they are very willing to like our videos because the cost of liking is very low, just double-click, but it can help our videos get better user feedback.

Tip 4: Increase forwarding rate

The techniques for increasing the forwarding rate and the like rate are the same.

In real life, we use currency to purchase goods, but as a social media, TikTok allows people to share short videos, which is an interactive social behavior. Just as people can use currency to buy goods, social currency can allow you to gain more comments and positive images from friends.

For example, if we share interesting and funny jokes, others may think that we are people who are willing to share happiness. If we share technology videos, people may think that we are technology fans. In other words, we can use the action of sharing short videos to let our friends know what kind of people we are.

In TikTok, whether you want users to like, follow, or buy, you have to appeal to their emotions without exception. Retweeting is an action with a high psychological cost, and only strong emotions can inspire users to share. Jonah said the five strong emotions most likely to trigger a retweet are surprise, excitement, humor, anger and anxiety.

When users think that the video in front of them is important and can benefit others, they will share it. For example, the information provided in our videos is practical, helps others get healthy, helps users save money and time, and brings more happiness to users...

Tip 5: Increase attention rate

Knowledge accounts can easily make users perceive the [long-term certain value] we can bring to them. In other words, users know very clearly what we will bring them next, such as fitness knowledge, writing tips, short video operation skills, etc., which are exactly what they may need now or in the future. When the demand is stimulated, attention will come naturally.

Because we need to continue to provide users with long-term and certain value, we need to create vertical content. There are some tips to increase your attention rate:

1) I mentioned in the previous video that this sentence actually hides a little trick, which is to tell users that there are some similar videos before.

2) Give a preview of the next content to let users know that related content will be provided in the future.

3) Use a uniform and neat cover with keywords, for example, the cover should say "Video No. 29".

Tip 6: Increase the proportion of local fans

If we are dealing with local numbers, what details should we pay attention to? I saw this account from my friends, they do commercial vehicle modification in Chengdu.

This account has been around for a short time and doesn't have many followers, but by directing traffic to the private domain, it can make a profit of more than 300,000 yuan in two months. Let's break it down briefly. His account will post plans for modifying cars, what kind of car can be modified with a certain budget, and what problems will be encountered during the modification. Basically, he has made videos of all the questions that customers will ask. This can be combined with our knowledge marketing. Basically, customers in every industry will have many questions. If we collect these questions, then these will be the topics for our future videos.

There is a video structure like this: pain point + solution + introduction. This formula has been proven to be effective. We also have some tips when working with local accounts, and we would like to share them with you.

1. Local keywords should be dense: title, subtitle, account location, publishing city location, comment area

2. Use local dialect

3. Dou+ boost: Target cities and fans of similar influencers

Basically, we enter our local keywords wherever we can type, such as titles, subtitles, locations, comment areas, etc.

Then when we invest in pods, we can target local experts and target cities. Finally, we can use local dialects, for example, Chengdu commercial vehicle modification uses the local dialect.

Let me share a little story. We previously created an account for a textile store. An old Chaoshan grandmother appeared in the video. After she spoke a sentence in Chaoshan dialect, the comment section was basically filled with Chaoshan people. Because the way Tik Tok works, when the system finds that a video is recommended to a certain user, and he interacts with the video a lot, such as watching the video to the end, liking it, commenting on it, etc., then the system will continue to recommend the video to similar users. Therefore, as long as we make the content accurate and well-made, Douyin will be a very accurate customer acquisition channel.

Here’s a little gift for everyone today. If you want to create a live broadcast account, here’s a simple checklist you can follow.

5. Psychological construction is an essential quality for Douyin operation

In the process of making TikTok, because it is full of uncertainties, a good attitude is very important. When the epidemic just started last year, Teacher Bai found me. Before finding me, they had already made 300 videos, but they only had 300 fans, which meant that they gained one fan for each video they posted.

They really wanted to do well, but they had not found the right method. After I helped them adjust their thinking and positioning, and explained some details, they gained 10,000 followers in about 10 days. After that, I basically helped them sort out the current problems about a month, and now they have more than one million followers.

6. Continue to provide value to users

The algorithm changes every day, can we keep up? If we follow the latest algorithm changes every day and see what new features have appeared in TikTok, it will be very tiring to be honest.

Therefore, the eternal point of our work on TikTok is to provide value. We need to think about what value this account can provide to users continuously.

At the beginning, we shared with everyone the algorithm of Tik Tok. If your video is valuable, these four indicators will not be too bad. After watching it, they will find it useful and will like it.

Then they will comment on some points that they think are good, some points that they agree with, or some points that they have doubts about, and the comment rate will also go up. Then they will share it with their friends, or people who also need to watch this video, and your forwarding rate will also increase. But there are also people who have never studied what algorithms are when they were making TikTok. They just work hard to share their thoughts and ideas with users, and then they become popular.

When we are working on TikTok or any other content channel, the most important thing is to continue to provide value to users. I think this original intention is what we must maintain from beginning to end. Users will follow where there is value.

No matter what the previous video data is like, as long as we persist in polishing the next video, a hit will appear. I hope to help everyone go further in knowledge-based short videos. Come on together!

Author: Zheng Han

Source: Han Ge's Operation Notes