The most comprehensive inventory of online traffic promotion tools

Nowadays, marketing is basically online marketing, and the basic model is promotion on various platforms + private domain operation. Nowadays, whether it is the brand promotion of a large enterprise or the IP output of a small individual, traffic generation is the most difficult and most critical link in entrepreneurship, business, and project development. Online traffic generation is the key among the keys.

Although for most small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, it is enough to fully develop one or two channels without running all the traffic channels, but choosing which traffic channel to use is another problem. After all, there are still differences between channels.

So no matter what industry you are in, whether you are running a company or an individual, you must master the knowledge of online traffic generation. Therefore, today we will introduce the characteristics and differences of each drainage tool to help everyone avoid pitfalls and take detours.

1. New Media

1. Tik Tok and Kuaishou – short video platforms

You can create any content on the short video platform, but it must be interesting! Only fun can bring traffic.

Furthermore, as long as you include some "traffic codes" such as entrepreneurship, workplace, showing off wealth, PUA, failure of pretending to be cool, bride price, beauty, feminism, patriotism, conspiracy theories, urging marriage, anxiety, curiosity, superior patriotism, etc., and then add some slots and reversals, you will get traffic. If you don’t have all these, then the short video is equivalent to your circle of friends, with no one liking it and no one commenting on it.

The last thing to note is that you must be low! Must be down-to-earth! The average education level of Douyin users is roughly that of junior high school or high school, while that of Kuaishou users is that of elementary school.

Those success gurus, the tone of voice used by lecturers in training courses, and those professional and high-sounding words will basically not generate any traffic. One is the problem of not being able to understand, but the more important thing is that the emergence of short videos is to solve people’s need to kill fragmented time. Everyone's original intention of playing Tik Tok is to relax their brain after a hard day at work. Who has the mind to study in class? So it is destined that to make short videos, you don’t need to be professional, but you need to be interesting.

So basically, as long as your video can make people feel "happy, interesting, resonant, and want to keep watching", you are successful.

As for the monetization of short videos, whether it is selling goods through the shared bikes or live streaming, most of the products are priced under 300 yuan, and even more are priced under 99 yuan. Most of the ones that exceed 300 will not be sold directly, but will be promoted. Because the prices are no more than three digits, people will easily make impulse purchases and be too lazy to return the products. Therefore, there are more and more products that collect IQ tax.

Another point worth noting is that the traffic detection of Douyin and Kuaishou is very strict. If you don’t have 100,000 followers, your traffic will be severely limited as soon as you mention your WeChat account in your page profile, name, or even in private messages. Therefore, many merchants who want to sell high-priced products can only sell low-priced virtual products (such as course materials) of less than 99 yuan first, and then provide WeChat accounts to receive the products as the next step of traffic diversion, and finally sell high-priced products in private domains.

2. Xiaohongshu and Dedao – vertical community platforms

This type of platform has text information, pictures, short videos, medium videos, and even live broadcasts. The biggest feature is that the traffic is accurate enough, but at the same time it also has huge requirements for the professional depth of the content. Because people who come to this vertical platform are fans of this vertical channel, and they come here to get more useful information and find more like-minded elites.

For example, if you are a deep learning enthusiast, it will be much more difficult to create an account on Getui than on Douyin. Douyin emphasizes pan-entertainment, and a one or two minute video can provide enough traffic as long as you are interesting enough, even if you just sit and talk the whole time. But on "Get", you need to produce professional, useful and well-thought-out knowledge articles. What Tik Tok wants is down-to-earth content that people can understand at first glance, even if it's useless nonsense, as long as it can resonate with people. And get the desired professionalism, high-end, sufficient value, and proven usefulness.

For example, if you want to promote a certain eye shadow, on TikTok, you need to shoot a Vlog that has nothing to do with eye shadow, and then at the end mention that this eye shadow was used throughout the Vlog. Only interested viewers took the initiative to ask for details about this eye shadow. On Xiaohongshu, more people focus on the eye shadow category and do eye shadow reviews of several brands to highlight the superiority of the eye shadow they want to sell. Then Xiaohongshu also needs to make the content a little fresher, more beautiful, rich and pretty, and also edit the pictures to make them look much better. Douyin wants authenticity, while Xiaohongshu wants quality.

In these two examples, it is obvious that there is a clear difference between the content on the pan-entertainment platform and the vertical platform. This means you need to spend several times more time. Of course, while the difficulty of increasing followers has increased N times, the monetization conversion rate has also increased N times.

Moreover, the detection intensity of traffic diversion is not that high. At least you can mention the words "public account" in your personal introduction and divert traffic to the public account. There is no high requirement for the number of fans.

3. Zhihu - a knowledge question and answer platform with pictures and texts

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, short videos have occupied more than half of the user share, and fewer and fewer people are paying attention to Zhihu. Zhihu and Baidu have always been deeply integrated. As long as you search for a question on Baidu, there will definitely be links to related questions on Zhihu on the first page. But now with the promotion of TikTok, most people will search for answers to small questions on TikTok instead of going to Baidu or Zhihu.

But Zhihu still has a market, because the nature of short videos is general entertainment, so as long as the issue is deep enough, or the content is very broad, or even a discussion about hot topics, Zhihu will become the main battlefield.

For example, regarding the recent “Li Yundi PC” incident, you would have known about it from Weibo and TikTok, but if you wanted to know the full story, Weibo and TikTok don’t have it because of the mechanism, but Zhihu does! This is the difference.

For example, as an office worker, you want to choose a laptop that suits you and want to know the differences in parameters in detail. A few minutes of videos on TikTok cannot satisfy you. TikTok will only recommend you to buy the most popular ones. But on Zhihu, you can find answers with tens of thousands of words, pictures, links, and reviews.

So, Zhihu can actually be used in professional fields. As for those with other minor problems, they are really not as competitive as Douyin.

The biggest feature of working on Zhihu is that you have to have the expert attitude of "I'm in the United States and just got off the plane." You can plagiarize, plagiarize from others, plagiarize from articles on other platforms, it’s okay, the detection will pass. But you have to copy it completely to have enough traffic for the viral article, otherwise it will be a waste of effort. In addition to copying, you also have to learn how to tell stories. If you want to promote a product that is not well-known and has no competitiveness, then you need to make up a very long story and then force-implement it in order to have enough traffic. Therefore, Zhihu can also be regarded as a miscellaneous storytelling session.

Also, let me tell you a secret. Unlike the “decentralized” mechanism of short videos, likes on Zhihu can be brushed. In other words, as long as you have enough funds, you can buy likes to make your article a hit. Even now, bloggers who specialize in Zhihu have joined special mutual aid and likes groups to keep each other warm.

Furthermore, even though Zhihu has started to make short videos, its essential function is to provide questions and answers. Therefore, there is no need to consider making short videos or live broadcasts on Zhihu to get high traffic.

Then, regarding monetization, Zhihu's direction is knowledge payment. Although Zhihu has a product recommendation function, the effect is not great. Therefore, Zhihu itself does not have much monetization function. It mostly uses articles to attract traffic to public accounts, which are then transferred to personal WeChat accounts, and then start selling high-priced courses and training camps.

Of course, Zhihu’s traffic threshold is also very high. Before the number of followers reaches 10,000, it is not allowed to include public account links and personal WeChat or public account words in the answer articles.

4. BILIBILI——Mid-length video platform for Generation Z

Bilibili is also a video platform, but it is very different from Tik Tok. Although many short video bloggers now upload their videos to Bilibili, in reality they can only play a supporting role. The core of Bilibili is medium-length videos of about 10 to 30 minutes. The biggest difference between medium videos and short videos is the quality of the content. Because the time has increased several times, if you want to retain users, you must have sufficiently meaningful content. Therefore, the core of medium-length videos is not fun, but fun + useful! It can even be understood as how to turn the tens of thousands of words of content on Zhihu, Duoduo, and Xiaohongshu into videos with enough pictures to keep people watching.

The core elements of Bilibili's content are the two-dimensional world, knowledge, games, and Vlogs. After all, Bilibili's users are mainly young people of Generation Z, that is, people between the ages of 12 and 30. People of this age are either students or office workers, and there are also a small number of entrepreneurs and "slash youth". It’s not like Tik Tok, which has mothers, aunts, migrant workers, middle-aged uncles, etc.

Therefore, on Bilibili, you can actually create any content, but in order to cater to the needs of young people, you need to play with memes in an interesting way, you need to have a young person's image, you need to use emoticons, and you need practical content that is cost-effective enough. You need to be part of the young people, not a teacher of the young people.

In other words, as long as the user group of your product is suitable for young people, you can go to Bilibili.

However, Bilibili’s monetization capabilities are rather worrying. It is suitable for promoting content and directing traffic to e-commerce platforms and personal WeChat accounts and WeChat groups, but it cannot directly bring in goods. So you can often see that some versatile UP hosts insert soft and hard advertisements in the middle of videos to make money, and there will be Taobao activity links in the dynamics from time to time. In fact, Bilibili users can understand and accept this type of commercial advertising, but the prerequisite is that the content quality is very high.

5. Official Accounts, Video Accounts — WeChat Ecosystem

It has to be said that when short videos were not yet popular, official accounts and Zhihu were the most powerful tools for attracting traffic. But after so many years of development, the official account has basically lost its function of attracting traffic. What’s more, when traffic is diverted to WeChat from other platforms, it plays a role of carrying and maintaining.

Think about it, in your circle of friends, apart from corporate information articles posted by corporate employees, how long has it been since you saw tweets forwarded by your friends? Even those tweets that are retweeted and liked are few and far between. In the WeChat group, only companies post activity articles for private domain traffic. Even micro-businesses don’t tweet anymore! Although WeChat has launched the “Guess What You Like” feature, who is willing to spend time looking at pictures and texts nowadays? Everyone went to watch short videos!

Now, one of the biggest functions of public accounts is to direct traffic to personal WeChat to form private traffic, and then post in Moments to promote products and services based on this private traffic. Another one is to build the corporate brand image and play a protective role, such as a public account for corporate recruitment.

Therefore, when running a public account, the focus is not quality but quantity. In the past, I would spend a day to write a 90-point hit article, but now I spend a day to write three 60-point ordinary articles.

As for the video account, it is also a major innovation of the WeChat system. After all, it can have a certain proportion of public domain traffic, but this proportion is really too low. In general, it is always a private domain component, and not many people watch the video account. You can only open a video account to upload videos while operating Douyin, and open it together with the live broadcast. The biggest role of the WeChat ecosystem has always been maintenance.

2. E-commerce Platform

The current domestic e-commerce platforms are mainly Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo, forming a three-way competition. In general, e-commerce has developed for so many years and has passed the project form of "as long as you have products and rank them up, you can make money." Before Douyin's interest e-commerce came out, everyone's way of purchasing was to search for the name of the item, look at the ranking, purchase volume, and reviews, and occasionally browse around to guess what you might like.

Therefore, as the supply chain improves and prices tend to stabilize, ranking becomes very important, and the technology of through-train becomes a decisive factor.

But after the emergence of Douyin Interest E-commerce, everyone's purchasing habits have changed. When Douyin Shop was first launched, Douyin had links that directly jumped to the product page without the need for search. After the launch of Douyin stores, even if the items on Douyin are expensive, people will no longer search for the name of the item when searching on Taobao, but will directly search for the brand name, which is a targeted brand search.

In this case, brushing the ranking within the site has lost its original meaning. All that can be done is to promote it through other channels outside the site and then direct traffic to the e-commerce platform.

Of course, due to the mechanism settings of the e-commerce platform, it is difficult to direct traffic from the e-commerce platform to the WeChat end, so only one-way traffic can be formed. This is why WeChat mini programs and Douyin stores are so popular, because they are easier to divert traffic in both directions.

Now, if you want to open a domestic e-commerce store, you must either create a hit product in a new category or set prices extremely low to form a barrier. Only in this way can you reap considerable profits. Otherwise, the e-commerce platform can only be used as one of the product sales channels.

3. Life Service Platform

The most widely used local service platforms now are Dianping, Meituan, and 58.com. The biggest feature is the combination of online and offline. By using offline traffic to buy online and post positive reviews, online traffic is increased, thereby increasing the exposure of physical stores. Even online and offline traffic is diverted to WeChat to form private domain traffic.

Of course, if you want to increase online exposure unilaterally, you need to consider purchasing traffic. When traffic is so expensive, what stores can do is to constantly use special offers to guide offline customers to pay online and give good reviews to improve their rankings, thereby gaining more traffic exposure. Under the premise of also spending money, this method of offering special prices to increase traffic and get positive reviews is definitely much more cost-effective than directly buying traffic.

Therefore, if it is not a chain brand store, don’t buy traffic! Just treat it as a publicity channel, focus on your products and services, and build word of mouth to achieve the best value for money.

IV. Conclusion

I hope that all entrepreneurs choose to start a business in order to solve a problem that exists in society, rather than to take shortcuts in life or out of some obsession.

Now, no matter what industry you are in, with the improvement of network quality, it will eventually develop into the era of short videos. Whether it is Taobao, Zhihu, or official accounts, they have all been subverted by the emergence of short videos, and are even gradually being replaced. What will defeat you will never be the competitor you are guarding against day and night, but the new cross-border technologies and new enterprises that suddenly emerge, which is a dimensionality reduction attack.

When you don’t know which channel to choose, you will definitely not lose money by using Douyin. Even though it is becoming increasingly difficult, it has become the mainstream of this era. The official account is just a transit station, and short videos are where the battle takes place.

Author: Why Xiao Ming

Source: Why Xiao Ming