6 major problems in short video operations to increase traffic

Whether it is "content is king" or "whoever has content rules the world", the essence is an objective description of the importance of "content" itself and the overwhelming advantage of "content" in acquiring traffic and growth.

Whoever has good "content" and can contribute high-quality "content" will be able to obtain a steady stream of public domain traffic on the platform.

But I have always believed that as a content creator (whether a team or an individual), when he firmly wants to gain traffic and achieve certain achievements through content (whether the number of fans or GMV), it means choosing to rush on the road of extreme "involution".

More or less, they will eventually have to face the following six major problems.

01 Impossible Triangle

In my article "TikTok Online Fans Channel", I mentioned content creation and proposed the "impossible triangle" in content creation.

What is the impossible triangle of content creation?

In the long run, no one can possess all three.

Originality requires time, and a lot of time, so it is doomed to be impossible to be productive, even if the creator has a lot of knowledge reserves and accumulation in the early stages. Even if you are doing general entertainment, shooting simple segments or telling jokes, it is the same, not to mention in-depth creations in the general knowledge field.

However, if you want to ensure high productivity (such as daily updates, whether pictures, texts or short videos), non-originality will definitely appear.

For example, in any industry or vertical category, there may only be so much content or topics that can be told in a variety of ways. One day, they will run out, and creators will have to "borrow" from other popular ones. Even if you are as productive as a sow (with a think tank of hundreds of people behind you), can you guarantee that every one of your works will become a hit?

This is the impossible triangle model of content creation: originality, hits, and high productivity.

02 Unpredictability of algorithmic recommendations

Those of you who have made short videos know what I am trying to express.

Take TikTok as an example. Since it is based on algorithm recommendation, your works and content must pass numerous tests of various indicators in the traffic pool (including but not limited to: like rate, completion rate, comment rate, forwarding rate, etc.) before they can meet (potential) users, including your own fans.

(Pictures from the Internet, please delete if infringed)

For example, one of the short video accounts I operate had one work that reached 60,000 views and over 1,000 likes 12 hours after it was released; while another work only received 2,000 views and 8 likes 12 hours after it was released. Moreover, the content, style and copywriting of these two works are almost identical.

If my own account is not convincing, the same is true for the "complaints" in the creator group. An account with 100,000 fans has a minimum of 378 views. Where can I go to seek justice?

In comparison, if your official account has 1 million followers, every time you push content, 100% of your fan users will be reached.

What is certain is that if your title is good, even if the content is junk, each article can get over 100,000 views, and just by relying on the advertiser revenue in each article, you can make a monthly income of 100,000.

The reason is that the traffic distribution logic of the two content platforms is different: the official account distributes content based on the "number of fans", while Douyin distributes content based on the "content" itself by "algorithm".

Even if your previous work has 100,000 or even 1 million views, you may even think that your future works can continue to be popular, but the next work will immediately pull you back to reality - the number of views is 2,000, even though your two works may have almost the same content, style, and genre.

Imagine, how long has it been since you last saw a certain internet celebrity you used to follow on TikTok? This is also the reason why fans on short video platforms are worthless and have poor stickiness.

It’s all about the “algorithm”.

This is terrible, and it brings huge insecurity to creators (of course it also means opportunities for new entrants).

Of course, another important reason why traffic is unpredictable is that in a certain period of time, the platform will give some traffic inclination and support to certain vertical categories based on strategic goals, such as "Teacher Zhang" which became popular at the end of last year.

I would rather believe that behind this is Douyin's strategy and tactics to seize Kuaishou's users in lower-tier cities, and through a series of traffic support and network-wide hype, it led to Zhang's popularity.

This is more like a black box for creators, and it is also an opportunity that is hard to come by.

03 Aesthetic fatigue

The short, fast and fragmented fast food culture is becoming more and more popular, and users are subtly trained to constantly pursue new and exciting things.

Especially in the interactive experience of sliding up and down in short videos, if the work fails to grab the user's attention within 3 seconds, it will never have another chance.

The threshold for users to be pleased has increased exponentially compared to before. This means that even your die-hard fans will eventually become tired of your content as they continue to consume it.

My friend, you have filmed this scene three times.

My friend, this joke is already outdated.

Hey man, can you come up with something new?

It's like being an emperor (although I've never been one), even if he eats sea cucumbers and abalone, dragon liver and phoenix marrow, and eats, drinks and has fun every day, he will still be annoyed.

04 Plagiarism and being plagiarized

As long as the content is public, whether it is pictures, text or video, there is no secret at all.

If you read the article carefully once, you can summarize roughly 1, 2, and 3; if you watch the video once, you can also break down everything from the text to the video timings to the BGM.

For example, you can directly take the original articles and content that others have worked hard on, racked their brains, and stayed up all night to create, and perform them through short videos with real people appearing on camera and speaking. With the blessing of others, then this work becomes your own "original".

vice versa. Are you surprised? Are you surprised? Is it irritating?

Therefore, content is the easiest to plagiarize and be plagiarized. As Steve Jobs once quoted Picasso: Good artists imitate, great artists steal.

But from another perspective, precisely because the video has the blessing of "people", it also means that your original work will be attached with extremely strong personal IP attributes.

This will be difficult or even impossible to replicate, such as Zhang, Xiao Yang, and so on.

Even if you copy their content and plot pixel by pixel, you cannot plagiarize the characters except the content. Compared with the content, users or fans may be more likely to "trust" this "person".

Even if the script of a short video is the same, different people will interpret it differently. Therefore, when we choose to create content, we must, based on the content, highlight the "human" attributes as much as possible and create your own "uniqueness" to minimize the potential risk of plagiarism.

By the way, some time ago, Douyin also launched a function to erase fans of homogeneous content. If homogeneous content is found three times in a row, the platform will block the account.

This is done, on the one hand, to protect original authors, and on the other hand, to protect the healthy and sustainable development of the platform's content ecology. There is nothing wrong with that.

05 Continuous Output

It's not a choice, it's a capability.

Under algorithm recommendation, "timeliness" is a very important indicator, so each work has its own life cycle, and it is extremely short. "Timeliness" has two levels: one is the timeliness of time, and the other is the timeliness of content creativity.

Specifically at the application level, for example, the hot-selling products you see in the Douyin recommendation stream every day are there any works that were released a month ago, let alone three months ago?

For example, if an idea becomes popular, all the videos will be similar to it this week, but the next week there will be a new popular idea.

If you want to gain traffic continuously, you need to create and output continuously. If you can’t, then there will be no referrals for (more) public domain traffic and no growth in more users.

And continuous output is an endless game. It's like life. Once you start, you need to keep climbing and conquering one mountain after another without end. All leads are only temporary.

Every creator should remember not to have delusions of achieving some eternal achievement by holding back on some big move; “opening a business and making a living for three years” is not feasible for content creators.

On the other hand, as a platform, in order to ensure user growth and usage stickiness, it must continue to achieve this through new types of popular works.

This will not only help the platform itself limit the siphon effect of top accounts, but also force creators to constantly innovate (in addition, the recent launch of Fanstong has further magnified this problem, and we have to admit that Douyin is becoming less friendly to old accounts).

Users are ruthless, and platforms are also ruthless. If you don’t have high-quality content, users will leave you; if you don’t produce popular content, the platform will abandon you. In short, my friends, please remember this sentence: high-level flash is not as good as low-level continuity.

06 Combination of deep and shallow, dry and wet

Everyone says they want to hear useful information, and everyone says they want to learn in-depth content. But is it really like that? What is dry goods? What is deep content? For example, the school textbooks, such as CET-4 and CET-6 vocabulary, grammar, advanced mathematics, etc., are all solid content that requires in-depth learning, and there is not even a word of nonsense.

The essence of short videos is still entertainment economy rather than a learning platform. Just as no one will get a TOEFL certificate or a CPA certification by studying on TikTok.

For example, on a short video platform, if you publish a work called “6 Steps for Fine-tuned Operation of Private Domain Traffic”, imagine what the reaction would be when one of the billions of people in China or just a random person on the street sees your work?

watt? What the hell? It rowed away immediately.

When the algorithm detects that your "self-proclaimed high-quality work" has not been stopped, has not been completed, and has not been interacted with, then it is a "junk" work. How can it possibly obtain the system's recommendation of larger public domain traffic?

Even Mr. Luo, the author of "Luo Xiang Talks about Criminal Law", who single-handedly brought the spring breeze of knowledge to B Station. If Mr. Luo had initially shared similar knowledge on short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, based on the algorithm recommendation mechanism and content distribution strategy, he might not have received much traffic and would not have had much room for survival.

Because on the short video platform, the practical knowledge you share by staying up late and working hard is far less effective than if you just say to the camera: "Today, my neighbor killed someone."

At its core, short videos are an entertainment-to-death platform. Don’t let users think, we have to learn to combine dry and wet, deep and shallow.

First, stand out through wet goods or popular content on more popular topics to increase your fan base, to support your image and build influence; then, retain your fans and increase your value through dry and in-depth content.

However, it is important to note that I mentioned in "Does a Hot Product Definitely Mean High-Quality Content?" Hot products are very attractive, and sometimes you have to do them, but you must do less of them.

This is why I personally think that, from the current point in time, learning on short video platforms is a false demand. Most of the time, businesses are creating anxiety under the guise of paid knowledge and then harvesting leeks.

07 Conclusion

"Content" is still the way with the highest input-output ratio in the closed loop of obtaining traffic, growth, sedimentation and conversion, now and for a long time in the future.

When you decide to gain traffic through "content", then please: continue to create madly, continue to innovate madly, and continue to please all users madly, no matter in form, content or theme.

No one can monopolize the content industry, even though there are multiple short video and long video platforms (for example, there are many TV stations surviving at the same time).

Well, the content industry is one in which a hundred flowers bloom. For all content creators today: this is the most inward-looking era, but also the best era! As long as you can't roll it to death, roll it to death, roll it up! ! !