After Douyin defeats Kuaishou, how long will it remain popular among users?

Some time ago, a strange wind suddenly blew up in the circle of friends . Various weird short videos on Douyin suddenly exploded in number one night. A single friend around me was no longer lonely after work. According to her, I can play until dawn. It is simply another entertainment artifact after Meitu XiuXiu !

In fact, if we think back, entertainment apps always achieve exponential growth after a certain period of accumulation of marketing and operation . More users see the sudden appearance of this app and think that everyone is playing it, so they should try it too, and then they get hooked and it spreads quickly. Including the previous Kuaishou , Changba , Meipai , etc., they have accurately grasped the user's psychological needs in life: entertainment and sharing.

What kind of products are most likely to spread? Good content or awesome technology? Neither. The products that spread the fastest are often those that can quickly satisfy users' psychological needs and make them extremely willing to share.

Data from APP Annie's historical rankings show that in the iOS popular app rankings, the top 10 free rankings in the photography and video categories include three short video software: Kuaishou, Douyin, and Meipai; in the shooting and beautification category of Android phones (taking Huawei as an example), the top 10 popular short video applications are: Kuaishou, Meipai, Volcano Video , and Douyin.

So what kind of magic does Douyin have that has launched version 1.0 in September 2016, exploded in November 2016, iterated 2 to 3 times per month, and operated for 6 months to drive a new round of "sensation" in the circle of friends?

1.What is Tik Tok?

Tik Tok is a short video app whose main usage mode is mainly “lip syncing”. The product provides music, and users create a short video work through "lip-syncing" performances and simple post-production. In Douyin, everyone is the first producer.

The product features include the 1.0 and 2.0 versions of most photography apps, including filters, scene effects,

Simple video editing, with popular English electronic music as the background music of the video, "cool, trendy, magical and fresh" constitute the basic positioning of this product.

Someone said this when introducing Douyin before: If you are a young person and are still using Momo and Tantan , then you are low. Just like how Tik Tok positions itself - a music short video community focused on the new generation.

Like many popular products, most users see that it spreads quickly through word-of-mouth through content operations .

We can analyze the reasons for its popularity and possible future development directions from several points.

2. Content Elements

Compared with shooting products, such as Meipai’s multiple theme gameplay, Xiaokaxiu ’s format gameplay, and Kuaishou’s content gameplay, Douyin’s element positioning is obvious: music.

Users choose their favorite music, create their own works through various performance forms, and edit them into short video MVs of less than 15 seconds. In terms of time, the 5 to 15 second time limit represents a higher requirement for the user's performance content. Just like a competition, whoever can fully express what they want to express within a fixed and short period of time and cause the content to be widely disseminated will have better quality work. At the same time, this time is the optimal length for dissemination on the platform. If it is too short, the producer cannot express fully, and if it is too long, the audience will lose patience, and the work will not have complete meaning.

From the perspective of the "music" element, it is very conducive to dissemination. For example, in the case of Meipai, the main body of the content may be concentrated on the things around the photographer that he or she wants to express and share. The material is limited to personal ideas. Over time, users lose interest in this IP. The advantage of Douyin is that it uses music as content to spread. There are more than a dozen types of music, ranging from pop, electronic music, two-dimensional to classics. Because music itself has a long-accumulated large amount of traffic , Douyin provides it with a more interesting way to play, and users can also fully integrate their own dance, costumes, expressions and other elements into the entire video performance; it is not like Changba, which has requirements for ability. If you sing well or are unique enough, people will pay attention to you. Douyin does not have any threshold of ability for content producers. As long as you have ideas and creativity, and are bold, exaggerated and free to perform, people will pay attention to you and cheer for you.

3. Operation and communication

First, let’s talk about the user portrait of Douyin.

From the perspective of the "new generation", the main target group of this product in the beginning was young people aged 18 to 28. Firstly, users in this age group are relatively familiar with the gameplay and dissemination of similar applications, and they can grasp new functions and content faster.

Secondly, young people can easily form an atmosphere quickly, just like the beauty trend in the girl circle. They have a strong interest in various filters and photo editing functions and are willing to spend a very long time on this product.

So what are users of this age group interested in and willing to learn about immediately? The key words are "cool, personalized, diverse, trendy, and simple." Most of the time, a product can represent a user's attitude, which is also an important reason why they use the product.

From the perspective of "community", the interactive content provided by Douyin includes following, liking, commenting, and forwarding, and more focus is placed on content creators. This is because there is a very simple logic that most products themselves have no shortage of fan users, but are extremely short of producer users. From another perspective, its mechanism is much simpler than other community-based products. There is no reward, no rating, no featured recommendation, etc. Everyone has the same opportunity, which is an encouragement for creators and a fair threshold setting for the content itself.

In terms of operations, at the beginning of this year, Douyin received an angel investment of several million yuan from Toutiao , and the average daily video playback volume has exceeded 100 million. Previously, there was an entrance for "Volcano Video" in the navigation bar of the homepage of Toutiao, but it has now been removed. However, this makes people wonder why they should invest in a product similar to Volcano again? Moreover, this market is relatively saturated. Where is its operational solution?

From the product perspective, firstly, the screen is simpler than other community products, and the key content is fully highlighted; secondly, the interactive function will not affect the user's viewing experience, and the smooth process allows users to stay more focused on the content itself; thirdly, it is disseminated simultaneously with music, bringing new traffic in the form of music +.

In terms of dissemination, Douyin’s audio playlists can already be searched on NetEase Cloud Music , providing a wider dissemination channel for the product and not being limited to the app as a production channel.

In terms of marketing, one is the marketing method commonly used by enterprises: IP traffic. Invite some celebrities and internet celebrities to create momentum, use their fans as the first source of traffic, and the amount of publicity brought by the celebrity effect as the second source of users;

The second is to cooperate with multiple platforms, bring traffic to each other and form platform accumulation, and jointly promote online marketing, referrals and offline activities ;

The third is to start from the product itself, operate its own traffic, and carry out "community" type interactions in a meaningful sense, such as initiating multiple topics to cover various groups of people, forming multi-effect dissemination and attracting more creators to join, thereby extending the user's usage time and reuse rate.

4. Thoughts on future development direction

All products that suddenly become popular will face the same problem: how to extend user usage time and keep users?

There are several aspects worth thinking about:

In terms of positioning, is it to deepen the attitude of the product and the values ​​it communicates so that the positioning is firmly established in the minds of young users; or is it a new transformation in the form of community to form a new product positioning based on user experience and sharing habits?

In terms of content, we can increase product functions and creative content forms, and give new labels to the content. For example, if it is trendy and cool now, what can it be in the future? interesting? upscale? We can explore future content possibilities based on users’ product usage habits; secondly, in addition to the traffic of music itself, what will be the long-term form of content in the future? How to build content barriers in the industry?

From an operational perspective, in addition to following up on cooperation with new traffic IPs and strengthening mutual promotion of platforms, what new forms can be used to promote product marketing? If we make full use of existing users, how can we achieve secondary growth of our own traffic through new promotion methods, combining offline and online?