A detailed discussion on short video operation strategies (Part 2)

Preface: In the previous article, the author discussed the advantages and operation models of short video operations . This article mainly introduces the current problems and strategies based on the previous article.

1. Core Viewpoint

1) Analyze the short video operation strategy based on the 4C marketing theory, and analyze the operation strategy from four perspectives: customer, cost, convenience, and communication.

2) After analysis, it was found that there are still a series of problems with current short videos, including the old-fashioned UGC content that is crudely made and lacks creativity. There is also the social problem of "information cocoon" caused by recommendation algorithms, and the internet celebrity effect dominating short video operations; some internet celebrities damage collective interests for their own personal gain, ultimately causing adverse effects.

3) Platforms need to focus on high-quality content and improve content recommendation mechanisms; creators need to improve content creativity and quality; and strive to create an operational matrix that connects multiple platforms.

2. Operational 4C Marketing Theory Drives Short Video Operation Strategy

The 4C marketing theory was proposed by American scholar Robert LauterBorn in his article "4Ps Retire and 4Cs Come on Stage".

This theory is an optimization proposed based on the traditional marketing strategy 4C theory.

The strategy is guided by consumers (Customer's need), the cost that consumers are willing to pay (Cost), consumer convenience (Convenience) and communication with consumers (Communication).

The 4C theory has important theoretical guiding significance for short video operations in the current environment of Internet development. The author will analyze the "short video +" operation strategy from the four aspects mentioned above.

1. Accurately identify users and create diverse customer needs

The 4C principle is consumer-oriented, and here we can understand consumers as our target users. Precisely because the strategy is target user-oriented, in the "short video +" operating environment, KOL's vertical segmentation and intelligent distribution technology enable merchants to accurately reach target users when placing advertisements or content.

KOL (Key Opinion Leader) is a key opinion leader. In today's world, the people who most influence our opinions and choices are our family, friends, and the people we care about. This also reflects that the traditional top-down communication model has difficulty influencing users' choices of content. I had finally managed to avoid the recommendations of my friends, but before I knew it, I was defeated by the KOL on the short video platform.

In the operation of "short video +", KOLs have accumulated a certain fan group on the platform, have a high voice and influence among fans in vertical categories, and have become a favorable bridge between products and consumers.

In today's era of short videos, KOLs can be groups such as anchors, celebrities, internet celebrities, and bloggers. Greg Paul, head of the world-renowned information company R3|SocialBeta, once said that China's KOLs have surpassed most countries and have become the first true media carriers. China's KOLs are close to maturity.

In traditional media, most KOLs appear in the form of celebrities. With the development of the Internet and the emergence of short video platforms, various Internet celebrities have come into the eyes of users, and traditional KOLs dominated by celebrities are developing towards a popularization trend.

Among them, KOL plays an extremely important role in short video operations. On the one hand, every KOL has accumulated a large number of vertical fan groups. Merchants can reach this fan group through KOLs. These fans will think that the KOL’s products are already the optimal solutions after screening. On the other hand, KOLs can spread radially through fans on video platforms, reaching from one platform to other platforms, which will further expand the scope of operations.

2. Reduce consumer/enterprise costs in multiple dimensions (Cost)

In 4C marketing, the concept of cost not only refers to the production cost of the enterprise, but also includes the purchase cost of the user.

In addition to the purchase price of the product itself, it also includes the energy, physical strength, time and risk costs consumed during the purchase. Therefore, users' purchase costs are greatly reduced in the following four aspects.

1) Energy cost

In short video operations led by KOLs, fans no longer need to compare prices before purchasing products. Out of trust in KOLs, fans will make purchases directly. This greatly reduces the purchase cost for users in the entire purchasing process.

2) Physical cost

In the related operational activities of "short video + e-commerce", short video and e-commerce are connected to each other. Short videos can directly lead to the purchase page, and e-commerce platforms have also added short video recommendation sections accordingly. The platform itself helps users reduce the physical cost of purchases, which enables users to save physical energy in purchasing behavior on the platform.

3) Time cost

When users directly purchase products recommended by KOLs, they save time in selection. In addition, e-commerce also reduces the time users spend going out to buy. Finally, short video platforms continue to optimize the purchasing process for users and pursue the shortest transaction path, thereby greatly reducing users' time costs.

4) Risk Cost

In the "short video + brand" model, whether it is content native advertising, sticker advertising or related topic discussions, the advertising operations included in the content.

Judging from the number of comments, likes, views, and reposts, users are highly receptive to this type of content, and therefore naturally develop a favorable impression of the brand. Even if the consumer does not decide to buy in the end, it still plays a good role in brand communication for the brand.

3. Convenience of operation and reception

Before the short video platform and e-commerce channels were connected, if a user saw a product they liked on the platform, they could not buy it directly, but had to search for it on the e-commerce platform.

This undoubtedly consumes consumers' patience. Even if fans are patient enough to search and query in the e-commerce app, the results displayed are complicated and other similar products will be displayed. This is bound to cause consumers to "shop around", weakening their desire to buy the original product, and may ultimately cause merchants to lose the order.

Now, many short videos have opened up channels between e-commerce platforms, allowing one-click direct access to the landing page. Directly combine short video content and product purchase into one, so that short video operations form a perfect closed loop from content production to dissemination to consumer conversion.

Take the fashion video blogger, Late Night Teacher Xu, for example. Her self-made fashion and beauty videos are spread on social media and video websites such as Weibo, Douyin, and bilibili. At the same time, I run a WeChat public account to post late at night to retain my fans.

In terms of traffic generation, you can directly add product links on Weibo, and click them to direct traffic to Taobao stores. There are also product showcases, and clicking on products will jump to the Taobao purchase page.

WeChat cannot direct traffic to e-commerce platforms due to its operating mechanism, but it has a "My Shop" link in the WeChat public navigation bar, which uses WeChat mini-programs to jump out to the product purchase page.

In the operation process of such short videos, first of all, the content gathers vertical fans, and the fans then settle the traffic through the community, reducing the cost of acquiring traffic. When providing goods and services to fans, it is not only targeted, but the direct traffic model shortens the distance between consumers and goods, making consumers' consumption behavior more convenient. It not only increases the types of products that consumers buy, but also optimizes their consumption experience.

4. High frequency + strong interactive influencer guidance (Communication)

In the 4C marketing theory, companies conduct active and effective two-way communication with customers. This is no longer a one-way promotion and persuasion of customers by the company, but rather finding ways to achieve both goals at the same time through communication between the two parties. In short video operation activities, the internet celebrity effect gradually replaces the star effect, generating high-frequency and strong interactive "grass planting" with consumers.

In traditional celebrity advertising operations, fans cannot interact directly with celebrities, but in the short video operation scenario, content is the most important subject. Even if fans have no direct interest in the product, with the recommendation of KOL, the product can be presented to fans in a more three-dimensional and comprehensive manner. With this step-by-step push, fans are more easily influenced to consume.

"Planting grass" is a popular online behavior nowadays. The "2020 Consumer Trend Report" points out that China's consumption will show 10 major trends, among which "planting grass" consumption has become one of the trends. Nowadays, the behavior of "planting grass" has changed from spontaneous recommendation to commercial promotion, becoming a new type of product operation method.

After short videos became popular, this field has become another major battlefield for grass-planting operations. Its "high frequency" of delivery and "strong interactivity" attributes have established a strong connection between short video KOLs and their fans.

“High frequency” is an important factor for both KOLs and advertisers to capture fans’ memories.

For KOLs, the Internet is updating and iterating very quickly, and this is still the case in the field of short videos. Therefore, if a short video KOL wants to capture the memory of fans, he or she needs to be exposed to their field of vision frequently.

Taking beauty KOL Yan Jiu as an example, her Douyin account "Certified Girl-Yan Jiu" basically maintains the pace of one update per day. High-frequency updates can not only attract fans through high exposure, but also consolidate the relationship with fans.

"Strong interactivity" is the characteristic that the Internet environment gives to short videos.

The reason why social platforms have social attributes is that they open up interactive channels. Short video KOLs share content information and then achieve interaction through functions such as forwarding, liking, and commenting on social platforms.

Interactions on social platforms can generally be divided into two types: one is on-site interaction, which helps fans interact with KOLs and fans with each other; the other is off-site interaction, which mainly takes the form of sharing, spreading high-quality information on the site, which can attract more people to pay attention and interact.

KOLs gain a new foundation for fission communication through high-frequency video updates, and then promote the continued spread of communication effects through high-intensity interactive channels, thereby facilitating the conversion of fans into consumers.

3. Existing Problems in Short Video Operation

With the in-depth analysis of short video operations, some problems were also discovered. Among them are the old-fashioned UGC content that is crudely made and lacks creativity; due to the "information cocoon" caused by the recommendation algorithm, and the short video operations dominated by internet celebrities on campus, some internet celebrities damage collective interests for their own personal gain, ultimately causing adverse effects. Therefore, the author puts forward a series of optimization suggestions for the corresponding problems.

1. UGC content is highly homogenized and of varying quality

In the "short video +" operating environment, the entry threshold is relatively low. With the development of the platform, the entry threshold is getting lower and lower, resulting in an influx of UGC accounts.

Without good shooting equipment and reasonable editing techniques, they simply shoot the product and add music that doesn't match the picture to create a piece of content. This is a common problem for most UGC operating accounts.

This kind of crude and low-quality operational content will only easily arouse the audience's antipathy towards the video content and fail to achieve the promotion effect. In order to achieve the promotion purpose, short video platforms that think they have lowered the threshold will only make users more and more disappointed.

Short video platforms will provide creators with some music and video templates. Many users choose these ready-made templates and simply change the shooting scenes.

Users believe that video content follows popular content, but they do not realize that this creation model makes video content increasingly monotonous. Users think they are satisfying their own personalized expressions, but they do not realize the core of content homogeneity.

The content that audiences receive on short video platforms is becoming increasingly similar, which will eventually cause aesthetic fatigue among users.

2. “Information cocoons” are forced to reduce their scope of operations

In today's era, technology helps operations, and the short video industry relies more on algorithm recommendation mechanisms to allow operations to reach core users directly. On the one hand, the emergence of this technology is beneficial to the return on advertising content because it targets core users. On the other hand, it will passively narrow the target population and thus lose potential customers.

As short videos continue to develop, the problem of "information cocoon" has gradually emerged. When users are browsing short videos, the platform will recommend content based on their preferences. Users will stay longer on the content pages that interest them and even interact with them. They will quickly scroll past content that they are not interested in.

This habit will generate a label for the user under the calculation of artificial intelligence. When users browse again, the website will recommend content that they may be interested in based on the tags, and reduce the number of recommendations for content in other areas or not recommend it at all.

This will result in a single content area for users to browse, forming an "information cocoon". The emergence of this problem will result in merchants only being seen by users with corresponding tags when operating through short video platforms, which narrows the target audience and reduces the possibility of tapping into potential consumers.

3. Internet celebrities bring negative effects

In the short video operation environment, the internet celebrity effect has replaced celebrities. Unlike celebrities who need to establish a good public image, some internet celebrities, in order to achieve promotional purposes, focus on creating topics to expand their popularity, whether positive or negative.

As the "public figures" of short videos, the values ​​​​that short video KOLs spread are not just personal values ​​​​but also influence their fan groups. Fan groups have weak thinking abilities and are extremely prone to follow suit and imitate. The values ​​​​propagated by the current mainstream KOLs on the Internet, such as Papi Jiang, Liziqi, etc., are in line with the mainstream correct values ​​​​of today's society.

This is precisely due to the operational trend of KOLs establishing their “personality”. But it is undeniable that there are still some KOLs who lack a sense of social responsibility and convey wrong values ​​to their fans in order to gain traffic.

Taking a certain platform as an example, its users are mainly residents of third-tier cities and towns and villages, and their educational level is generally low. The platform uses the positioning of "earthy culture" to stimulate user activity, resulting in vulgar and spoof content. There are still a large number of minors under the age of 18 on the platform. Their self-values ​​are not yet stable and they are easily guided by wrong values. Vulgar and violent content seriously affects the healthy development of minors.

4. Opinions on optimizing short video operations

1. Improve content quality and creativity

Under the impact of information from the Internet, users have an increasing demand for high-quality content. Low-quality, similar, and unremarkable content is destined to be eliminated due to aesthetic fatigue.

In the short video field where "content is king", high-quality content has its own dissemination attributes based on the platform's algorithm mechanism. High-quality and creative content can arouse users' emotional resonance and gain their attention and love. High-quality content is the best way to retain users.

First of all, from the perspective of attracting users, valuable and original content is the main reason why users are willing to spend time watching.

Secondly, from the perspective of user stickiness, when passers-by can obtain valuable content from the video, they will actively follow the creator. When a creator's content continues to increase and it is easier to get traffic recommendations, casual fans will be transformed into hardcore fans, and will even actively forward and recommend the content to friends. As a result, the number of account followers increased and user stickiness continued to increase.

Finally, from the perspective of emotional resonance, high-quality content tends to be more popular and debatable, and can easily attract users to actively participate in discussions, express their opinions and express their emotions. This not only increases the activity of the account, but also builds a platform for users to release their emotions.

2. Improve the short video algorithm recommendation mechanism

In order to break the barriers of the "information cocoon", in addition to users consciously expanding the boundaries of their own interests, the platform also needs to improve its algorithm mechanism.

More and more platforms like to label users with fixed tags. However, when labeling users, the platforms also need to consider the concept of "tags" in multiple dimensions - can a few simple tags represent a user? The answer is of course no.

Therefore, the algorithm needs to be smarter. It should not only be able to detect the information that users like to see, but also analyze the information that users need and fully capture the full picture of user needs. And when promoting short videos, it is necessary to add more recommendation mechanisms to the original algorithm to seek recommendations to more users.

For example, in addition to making recommendations based on the content that users browse, you can also make recommendations based on the content that users search for, because the content that users search for is exactly what the users need at the moment. It can even directly monitor the products that users need at the moment. Compared with detecting user preferences reflected by the user's stay time, detecting search content is more efficient.

3. Innovate the operation model and build a comprehensive promotion matrix

The core operation of leading platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou is traffic. After the account is clearly positioned and high-quality content is produced, the most important thing is to achieve accurate traffic diversion.

At present, most video creators, after growing up on a certain platform, only focus on that platform and ignore multi-channel operations. A single operating channel not only limits the expansion of the account's influence, but also limits the monetization of short video traffic on multiple platforms.

In this regard, short video creators and operators should closely integrate platform operations with Weibo, WeChat and offline entity operations when promoting high-quality content. Generally speaking, short video creators can rely on major platforms to form a matrix, and then carry out phased, continuous and large-scale operational activities to accurately and effectively introduce traffic and maximize operational results.

Specifically, it can be expanded from the following aspects:

1. Build a Douyin/Kuaishou platform matrix, open multiple associated accounts and publish relevant content pointing to the main account to achieve internal platform traffic diversion;
2. Like and follow short videos with similar tags to your own and interact with them to achieve traffic diversion;
3. Actively participate in topic activities and use the topic initiation function to achieve external traffic diversion on the platform;
4. Share physical content, promote e-commerce sales, develop offline experience economy, and realize "online + offline" joint operations.

Fan Deng Reading is a typical example of matrix operation. It built a matrix on the Douyin platform and successfully created the Fan Deng IP. Currently, on the Douyin platform, several related accounts can be searched using the keywords "Fan Deng" and "Fan Deng Reading". The Douyin matrix formed by these accounts has over 100 million followers; the fan group is knowledgeable, has a wide age range, and covers a wide range of regions.

Specifically, Fan Deng Reading’s construction of the Douyin matrix mainly includes three aspects.

1. Build a large-scale account incubation matrix to achieve “winning by quantity”. This method seems simple and crude, but the effect it brings is very obvious. Its operating logic is closely related to the "decentralized" traffic distribution model of Douyin/Kuaishou.
2. Focus on differentiated content operations to achieve user precision. In the process of building the Douyin matrix, Fan Deng Reading attaches great importance to the differentiation of content production, and its content covers areas such as workplace, emotions, parent-child, and education. Meet the needs of different users.
3. Create the Fan Deng Reading Experience Store. Fan Deng Reading Experience Store uses book sales, salon sharing sessions, audio libraries and other forms to achieve online and offline content connection and positive interaction, keep up with the trend of experience economy, and ensure traffic conversion.

Author: Lueve

Source: Lueve