A detailed discussion on short video operation strategies (Part 1)

Short videos now occupy the leisure and entertainment time of many young people, and also allow many people to find a platform to showcase themselves. However, the large number of users has made public domain traffic tight, and some creators cannot be satisfied. The author of this article studies and thinks about the operation of short videos. Let’s take a look together.

Core ideas:

1. Combining various case studies, short videos have channel advantages and content advantages for operations. The channel advantages are discussed and analyzed from the aspects of communication power, accuracy, interactivity, etc. Content advantages are discussed from the perspectives of content quality, brand, and user shopping experience.
2. The "short video +" operation model is the most popular integrated operation model at present. The most popular ones are mainly divided into "short video + brand", "short video + knowledge payment" and "short video + e-commerce".

Note: This article will serve as the first part of the author’s discussion on short video operations , and the entire content will be divided into two parts. The first part mainly analyzes the advantages and business models of short video operations, and the second part mainly analyzes the operation strategies.

With the development trend of the Internet, the profit model of short videos is no longer limited to traditional advertising operations, as shown in the "2020 Short Video User Value Research Report":

Data source: https://cbndata.com/report/2410/detail?isReading=report&page=26

In the past six months, the usage rate of short videos among netizens over the age of 10 has reached as high as 91.2%. In addition, short videos have been integrated with other industries, and their daily use has been further expanded, becoming a standard feature in some industries. More and more industries have begun to explore and practice the "short video +" operating model.

While the "short video +" operating model is reaping huge dividends at present, it also has many problems. How to use the currently popular short videos for operations and promotions is what we need to think about. Therefore, the research on the operation model and strategy of "short video +" can guide us to recognize cross-border innovation methods such as "short video + brand", "short video + e-commerce", and "short video + knowledge payment".

1. Advantages of short video operation

1. Advantages of communication channels

1) Spreadability

The advantages of short videos in terms of communication power are mainly reflected in their rich choices and wide coverage. Traditional video advertising can only rely on major TV stations to promote the main content. If the main content needs to be promoted to users across the country, it is necessary to promote it to the four major TV stations, CCTV, and provincial satellite TV stations.

In such a traditional environment, we face the problem of high promotion costs. Short video platforms are filled with various types of self-media. Small ones include personal studios, and large ones include MCN agencies and media companies. This has led to a wider range of choices for advertising. As short videos have developed to date, the number of users on major short video platforms has continued to grow, and the reading mode of short videos has gradually become mainstream. User activity and stickiness are very high.

Compared with traditional media, short video platforms are decentralized platforms, and the starting line is the same regardless of the number of fans. Here we can briefly introduce the recommendation mechanism of short videos.

The author takes Douyin as an example: First, if the main content does not violate any regulations, the video will enter the Douyin recommendation system. The Douyin platform will judge whether the video is popular based on the initial traffic information feedback. If it is popular, the platform will distribute more traffic to the work. The information feedback here mainly depends on the video's playback volume and completion rate, and on the other hand, the video's likes, comments and reposts.

The first recommendation will be given 200-500 traffic depending on the weight of the account. If the recommended work has good feedback data, the platform will determine that the content is more popular.

Then a second recommendation will be made, which will give 1,000-5,000 traffic. If the feedback data of the second recommendation is good, the platform will make a third recommendation, which will give tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of traffic.

By analogy, if the feedback data is still excellent, the platform will use big data combined with manual review to measure whether the content can become popular. This is how Douyin videos gain natural traffic.

In addition to the provision of natural traffic, brands can also make full use of purchased traffic to make the video gain a certain degree of popularity in a short period of time. Therefore, as long as the video content is high-quality and the platform's recommendation mechanism is used reasonably, better communication effects can be achieved at a lower cost.

2) Accuracy

As intelligent algorithm recommendation technology is widely used in the field of short videos, the content users view on the platform is no longer randomly recommended. Instead, the platform will make recommendations based on users' personal preference tags and browsing habits. This makes the users recommended by short videos in the operation process more targeted and improves the quality of promotion.

Moreover, traditional advertising can only be selected in two dimensions: content and location, while short video advertising based on the algorithm recommendation mechanism can customize the target audience based on the system's classification of the audience.

The author still takes Douyin as an example. This platform can customize multiple labels such as gender, age, region, interest indicators, etc. for delivery. Such an algorithm mechanism can allow advertising content to reach the target audience directly, reduce the useless work done by traditional advertising, and make delivery more accurate.

3) Interactivity

Traditional advertising is still in the single-channel communication stage. Short video advertising makes full use of the communication advantages of the Internet to change this top-down single-channel communication model.

The social attributes of short videos naturally give them an interactive advantage in the promotion process. Whether it is likes, comment areas, downloads, or forwarding, the seller's operational advertising will no longer fall on deaf ears, but will receive a response. Whether it is an advertising video posted by a brand or an internet celebrity on the platform, many people often leave comments in the comment section to share their thoughts.

The advantage of interaction allows information to be transmitted in both directions. Merchants can use user feedback to understand consumer needs and then recommend good products to consumers based on these needs. Based on this virtuous cycle, businesses can continuously improve and optimize with the help of feedback, and the effectiveness of short video operations will become better and better.

2. Content advantage

1) Content becomes the profit of traffic

With the continuous improvement of user quality, "brainwashing" and meaningless advertisements have become difficult to impress users and arouse their desire to buy.

What can really win the favor of consumers are some high-quality contents. They can be in various forms such as heartwarming texts, cool pictures, interesting videos, etc. There is no limit to the form. Content becomes the link between products and consumers. Content operation is to impress users with meaningful and interesting content, and impressing users will gain traffic.

Taking the Helena Rubinstein advertisement as an example, its short video content directly hits the pain points of consumers and resonates with them. Helena Rubinstein's user positioning is middle- and high-income women aged 25-35.

A large proportion of women in this position are facing the crisis of women in their 30s. The skin and overall physical condition are beginning to deteriorate. At the same time, they are also suffering from marital troubles, and are even labeled as "leftover women", as well as bearing the external pressure that comes with this label.

The women in this series of short videos regained their confidence by using the products, dared to face the approaching age of 30, and dared to express their views on independent life. It just meets the pain points of most Helena users and has resonated with and been recognized by a large number of women. The advertisement attracted a large number of views and positive comments from users, achieving good communication value.

Traffic can be said to be the biggest advantage of content operation. The higher the quality of the content, the easier it is to attract traffic. High-quality content relies on the platform for wide dissemination. With the traffic guarantee of social networking platforms, high-quality content can be used to inspire users to spread the content for the second time, thereby continuously stimulating the influx of new traffic. Such content has become a powerful tool for attracting traffic, which is beyond the reach of traditional shelf e-commerce.

2) High-quality content helps brands build reputation

The operation directly hits the user's pain points with high-quality content, while relying on content platforms for dissemination. The "secondary dissemination" that occurs spontaneously after users have generated emotional resonance can help to spread brand value more efficiently.

Such word-of-mouth spread spontaneously by users can further enhance the brand's credibility in the minds of users. The relationships among users in the circle of friends are strong relationships, and users are more likely to be influenced by the "circle of friends". At the same time, there will be many people with the same interests or similar positioning in the user's circle of friends.

At this time, the actual effect of the secondary dissemination of information in the circle of friends will be more significant and can reach the target consumer group more directly. In Helena Rubinstein’s advertisements, the “secondary dissemination” after the audience resonates can better help ensure the effective communication of brand values.

3) Content operation optimizes user shopping experience

In recent years, many e-commerce platforms have realized the importance of high-quality content and have extended olive branches of cooperation to content platforms. When users actively click on e-commerce platforms, it simply means they have a clear intention to consume. However, when users actively click on content, such as live streaming platforms, short video platforms, information platforms, and even chat software, it may be because of entertainment, obtaining information, social needs, etc.

Users originally had no consumption mentality, but they developed a consumption mentality during the process of social entertainment, which ultimately led to consumption behavior.

With the gradual and widespread application of content operations, content operations are optimized in terms of technology, content, etc. to improve users' consumption experience. For example, insert a product purchase link into the operational content, and click directly to go to the product consumption page, eliminating the complicated product query process in the middle, making consumption behavior more convenient and quick.

In addition to the support of technology, operators are also working hard on the content. Today, content operations have reduced the traces of advertising to a minimum or directly erased them. Users' acceptance of operated content is getting better and better, and their experience is gradually improving.

With the rapid development of short videos, mobile short videos have not only become a social form of entertainment for all the people, but also a creative marketing method highly praised by advertisers. The rapid development of the short video industry and the rise of content operations have created a good development environment for short video operations.

Many companies have focused their attention on the integrated operation of short videos. As short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have gradually opened the door to commercialization, the "short video +" model of monetizing content has gradually become popular.

2. “Short Video +” Operation Model

1. Short video + brand

In today's world of complex information content, users are becoming more and more picky, and high-quality content can attract more user attention, which means that the era of content operation has arrived. Brands hope to build emotional bonds with users, which requires rich emotional content to touch users.

Compared with traditional graphic and text content, the competitive advantage of short videos is more prominent. Video content is more three-dimensional and immersive than graphic and text content. Short videos, which also belong to audio-visual content, have become a new battlefield for traffic due to their strong traffic aggregation capabilities and competitive advantages in satisfying users' reading habits.

1) Information flow advertising

Simply put, information flow advertising is advertising that exists in information content. Information flow advertising can be understood as a type of embedded advertising, but the particularity of its form is worthy of separate study. The competitive advantage of information flow advertising lies in its ability to increase users' acceptance of advertising through short video push, while at the same time reducing users' resistance to advertising implantation.

However, information flow advertising places high demands on the platform's data accumulation and algorithm performance, and not all platforms can meet the technical requirements of information flow advertising. At the same time, too dense information flow ads will also affect the user's viewing experience.

Apply accurate user portraits to various scenarios, analyze user behavior, interests and other information based on big data, and grasp factors such as time and location to carry out accurate distribution, so that the effective conversion rate of advertisements can be significantly improved. The actual value of information flow advertising mainly comes from three factors: users, reach and content.

Short video information flow ads were initially introduced from overseas. After becoming widely popular on social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, many domestic social networking platforms also adapted to market needs and optimized their platforms for information flow advertising operations.

Taking TikTok as an example, the name of the product or service recommended by this information flow advertisement is displayed on the left side of the platform page, and the corresponding text of the video description is displayed below, with the word "advertisement" marked as a prompt. The "View Details" bar at the bottom of the page directly connects to the product introduction or purchase link.

Ads are usually 5s-30s long, each user sees at most one ad per day, and each ad is only presented once to each user. This setting is to avoid causing user reception fatigue and prevent users from having negative emotions.

As a clearly priced "advertisement", the presentation form of short video information flow advertising is to present the content to be promoted through the information flow of the short video recommendation channel. In addition, when watching short videos, users can directly reach the product landing page with one click through corresponding operations, so as to achieve the purpose of operating and promoting the product on the short video platform in a short time.

2) Content-native advertising

Native advertising is a broad concept. On short video platforms, any advertising content that is consistent with the short video content watched by users can be called native advertising.

The advantage of native advertising is that its content can completely match the brand tone, its dissemination is relatively high, and its expression form is more diverse and three-dimensional. This improves users' perception of advertising content and can better stimulate users' desire to buy products.

The author takes the Douyin blogger "Sanjinqiqi" as an example. The content of his account is mainly based on sweet love stories between men and women. The content can arouse emotional resonance among today's young people, and therefore has accumulated a large number of vertical users.

On May 27, 2021, the blogger posted a piece of content showing the shy behavior of a boy when pursuing a girl, and the plot of seeking brothers to act as his wingman in the process. The content of the advertisement is introduced by the male protagonist. This expression of scene + emotion + creativity is natural and not rigid. While conveying the plot, the advertisement appears unexpectedly.

Even the advertisement itself became a small part of the plot, reducing users' resistance to advertising content and improving its acceptance and dissemination value. As soon as the content was released, it received 804,000 likes and 11,000 comments. It can be said to be a very successful Douyin native advertisement.

3) Other brand operations

In addition to the first two methods, brands also focus on utilizing the gameplay of short video platforms for operations. For example, we can jointly initiate the "Tik Tok Challenge" with the short video platform to discuss the topic, and establish an official account on the short video platform.

This type of operation method focuses on user communication and interaction, stimulates users' interest by inspiring them to participate in topic activities, and opens up communication channels with users through official accounts, thereby enhancing users' loyalty and recognition of the brand.

In March 2018, Douyin conducted internal testing of cooperative brand homepages with brands such as Dior and Xiaomi. On June 1, 2018, Douyin Enterprise Account was officially launched, and certified companies will obtain Douyin platform Blue V certification.

According to the statistical data of "Douyin Enterprise Blue V White Paper 2019 Edition", the number of enterprise blue V accounts increased by 44.6 times compared with June last year. These statistics show that the newly certified enterprise blue V accounts have gradually become an important and active user group on the Douyin platform. With the continuous increase in corporate Blue V accounts, the operational strategy of using official accounts on short video platforms to release information has huge development opportunities.

Faced with the huge potential operational value of Douyin, many companies have settled in Douyin and established blue enterprises "Blue V". Compared with uncertified ordinary accounts, officially certified corporate accounts have more credibility among users. Publishing video content, especially operational theme activities with certain rewards, can stimulate user participation and help expand the scope of operations.

2. Short videos + paid knowledge

2016 is known as the first year of knowledge payment, and paid content products gradually appeared. In order to meet the audience's knowledge needs, various subscription columns, paid courses, content plus paid Q&A, knowledge communities, etc. from Himalaya, Zhihu, Dedao, Fenda, Weibo, WeChat, 36Kr, Douban, etc. have begun to sell content. The development of knowledge payment has reached a point where there are many industry-leading high-quality products.

At present, domestic knowledge payment products are roughly divided into three sections:

1. In the skill-based teaching field represented by NetEase Cloud Classroom, the fees are generally high. There are many learning tutorials for office software and financial management courses, which can make users feel that they can acquire knowledge.
2. In the paid audio field, represented by Ximalaya, paid content is mainly presented in the form of audiobooks:
3. The field of paid video and text Q&A represented by Zhihu.

As knowledge payment has developed to date, the combination of short videos + knowledge payment is still an emerging model with great room for development.

In the field of short video knowledge payment, in addition to providing pure knowledge to the audience, the comprehensive capabilities of other short videos can also achieve the purpose of brand operation. Short video + knowledge payment. The current domestic models mainly include PGC content payment and question-and-answer community.

1) PGC content payment

Paying for short video content is essentially users paying for content. What makes users willing to pay for content is simply content that users find useful. “Thinking it is useful” is the antidote to collective anxiety.

No matter what purpose users have in acquiring knowledge, the content that requires payment is classified by users as high-quality content after screening. The moment the payment behavior is completed, users can get the satisfaction and fulfillment of acquiring knowledge.

Take the app Kanjian Micro Video produced by CCTV documentary production team as an example. The content of this application focuses on documentaries, history, nature, folklore and other well-produced and rich content.

The paid content provided by Kanjian Weishi is mainly knowledge and cultural content. Compared with short video platforms with more entertainment content, Kanjian Weishi naturally has an advantage in acquiring knowledge and making users "feel useful".

In June 2019, Kuaishou, a leading domestic video platform, launched Kuaishou Classroom amid the current craze for paid knowledge. It can be said that it is actively joining the trend of paying for knowledge. The teaching method of Kuaishou courses is a combination of live broadcast and recorded broadcast. Both live broadcast and recorded broadcast adopt a paid model.

You can watch it live; recorded broadcasts are recorded in advance by familiar customers and released on the platform. Interested users only need to pay the corresponding fees to watch it. Kuaishou Classroom adopts two review methods. The platform will always pay attention to and review the content broadcast by users before the live class and during the live class.

Most of the instructors in Kuaishou classroom are grassroots users, and they cannot even be called "teachers". They are more people with certain experience in certain fields. They pass on their acquired experience and experience in Kuaishou classroom to gain income and attention.

The users of Kuaishou Classroom are positioned in the user group of Kuaishou, who do not have a high level of education. Unlike the paid content apps such as Get and Fan Deng Reading Club that are popular among the social elite, the users of Kuaishou Classroom do not have a high level of education, so its course settings are relatively practical, such as "Sharing Experiences of Grassroots Electricians", "How to Do Well in the Street Stall Industry", "How to Open a Malatang Restaurant" and so on.

Although the course is not high-end, it is differentiated enough. For every "Kuaishou friend" who watches the course, what they need is not high-sounding cultural knowledge. Only by learning the skills of these courses can they have a skill in society to improve their lives.

The Kuaishou Classroom launched by Kuaishou can be said to be a way to take advantage of the popularity while breaking through itself and making new attempts. Gradually transforming the original UGC content into PUGC not only realizes its core value but also creates more possibilities for the future development of the platform.

Although PUGC short video content has entered the market for many years, the system is not yet fully mature. Whether it can cultivate user payment habits like live broadcast rewards, long video and audio payment depends mainly on the highlights; first, whether it can continuously output high-quality content, and second, whether it can solve the pain points of paying users, thereby increasing the repurchase rate.

2) Short video Q&A community

Another model of paying for short video knowledge is the short video paid Q&A community. Unlike the well-known question-and-answer community Zhihu, the answerers in the short video paid question-and-answer community mainly answer questions in the form of short video content, and the answerers obtain commission income through rewards from users who watch their answers.

3. E-commerce + short video

If you open e-commerce videos now, you can find that short videos are everywhere. The most obvious example is the product introduction page, where short videos have replaced traditional picture introductions.

In addition to using short videos to explain products, Taobao also adds short videos to promote products during shopping. Compared with graphics and text, videos allow people in the fast-food era to obtain high-quality content more easily. The readability of audio-visual content has become a necessary condition for the combination of "short video platform + e-commerce".

Many e-commerce merchants have turned their attention to short video platforms with huge traffic. Whether it is opening up a one-click direct channel from short video platforms to e-commerce platforms, or short video platforms creating a new e-commerce model, they all use high-quality short video content to convey product information, which can weaken consumers' sensitivity to prices. Consumers no longer make purchases by comparing prices from three stores, but pay more attention to the video content itself, strengthening their consumption motivation.

Douyin and Kuaishou have successively opened free stores for celebrities - Douyin Stores and Kuaishou Stores. At first, the application requirements for celebrity stores were high, and only the top celebrities on the platform who had undergone real-name authentication were eligible to open a store. But after tasting the sweetness of traffic monetization, both platforms relaxed the requirements for stores.

Taking Douyin as an example, on December 11, 2018, Douyin launched the Douyin shopping cart function, which allows product links to be embedded in short videos. The application requirements for Douyin Shopping Cart are relatively low, requiring only more than 8,000 followers, more than 10 works, and a self-application with real-name authentication. Subsequently, the Douyin platform launched the "Goods Alliance Recruitment Plan" one after another.

During this period of time, as long as users have their own store, they can apply to participate in the event. There is no limit on the number of fans that applicants can have. Since then, the Douyin platform has basically achieved zero requirements for "bringing goods".

Faced with the strong attack of the Douyin platform, Kuaishou, as another "giant" in the short video industry, is naturally unwilling to lag behind. In December 2018, Kuaishou launched the revised Kuaishou Store. The new version of Kuaishou Store opened up channels with third-party e-commerce platforms, presented a new e-commerce service model, and truly realized the "watch and buy" short video shopping ecosystem.

With the rapid development of short videos, short videos have attracted more and more traffic and gradually become a traffic hub.

As short videos become a new hot topic, each short video platform has attracted a large number of content producers, who continue to create content and attract tens of millions of fans. Having fans means traffic, but the biggest problem for these content producers is how to turn traffic into profits.

When a platform fails to provide sustainable benefits to users, they will eventually choose to leave the platform. Currently, among short video influencers, there are only two ways to monetize: advertising and e-commerce sales. However, since users have a natural resistance to advertising, short video influencers do not have a solid fan base, and too many advertisements will usually consume their own popularity.

Short video influencers have vertical fan attributes and are more suitable for e-commerce monetization. Weibo’s internet celebrity e-commerce is a good example. The short video format has a greater impact on users' audio-visual senses. Statistics show that the audio conversion rate of short videos is 20% higher than that of traditional text and image e-commerce models. So nowadays, short video e-commerce has become a way for many short video platform influencers to realize long-term monetization.

Moreover, the social attributes of short video platforms make the operations of short video influencers different from those of traditional celebrity operations, and there is no longer a sense of distance between consumers and influencers. Short video experts are more like partners of consumers, communicating and sharing with them. Such warm companionship will naturally cultivate consumers' sense of trust and generate consumption behavior.

At the same time, the low requirements of the short video platform and the connection between the short video platform and the e-commerce platform allow merchants to directly access the product purchase page through the shopping cart link, allowing merchants to achieve high profits at low costs, meeting their needs for operational accuracy and controllability, and truly achieving the integration of product and effect.

The operating model of "short video platform + e-commerce" is also in line with the advertisers' needs for transformation and development. It can be said that the marketing model of short video + e-commerce truly achieves a win-win situation for advertisers, users and platforms.

Author: Lueve

Source: Lueve