How do Xueersi, Yuanfudao, Zuoyebang, etc. operate short videos?

Previously, in the future of "Education + Short Video", what else can I do besides creating Douyin and Kuaishou accounts? In the article "The article takes TAL Education Group as an example to analyze the tortuous exploration journey of this industry giant on the Kuaishou and Douyin short video platforms, and puts forward a point of view: it is a case of educational companies shelving their existing product operation processes and mature teaching and training systems and starting from scratch on short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou to produce content in a fragmented manner. The combination of "education community + short video" will become the best landing point for future educational companies to acquire users, build trust, and convert marketing.

In fact, the focus of the combination of educational companies and short videos is outside the terminal and inside the terminal. The two methods have completely different directions and logics: establishing video matrix accounts outside the terminal such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Video Account to strengthen their own brands and teacher IP, thereby obtaining new examples. This action focuses on attracting new users; videoizing existing educational resources within the terminal to create content space and scenarios for users to continuously consume, and gradually forming diversified conversion scenarios for educational products to explore. This action focuses on conversion.

At present, the short video customer acquisition, which was once highly expected by education companies, is not actually effective in attracting new customers. The overall ROI cannot be self-sufficient, the efficiency of large-scale customer acquisition is lower than that of investment, and the expected rhythm of customer acquisition cannot be kept controllable and stable. When it comes to reducing customer acquisition costs through short videos, it’s a pity to throw it away because it’s tasteless. This is probably the common feeling of many educational companies that have already dabbled in short videos.

Given the common pain point that the best way to acquire customers at low cost through short videos outside the terminal is still unclear, how education companies can make good use of "short videos" as a popular magic weapon to improve conversion efficiency within their own traffic pool is another path worth trying. Perhaps they can "carve out a broad and long road to success"?

Let’s take a look at the interim results of Xueersi , Yuanfudao , and Zuoyebang on the road to combining “short videos + education”.

1. Xueersi Online School APP: All in short videos, unwavering

1. The video process of Xueersi Online School app

In June 2020, Xueersi Online School released a new version of its app, which embedded large-scale short video content, marking the beginning of the construction of short video content based on its own traffic pool. From June 2020 to the present, Xueersi has been rapidly filling the site with video content around the main online school app. Thanks to the 17 years of teaching and research accumulation of Future Education, the short video content in the Xueersi Online School app ranges from animations to live class videos to short videos featuring teachers, which can be said to be a hundred flowers blooming.

The Xueersi Online School app, which has just started to use video, uses a grid-like module display format on its homepage, which is classified by subject and theme. Although the screen design is bright and colorful, the videos on the homepage are still presented with teachers as the main body in the cover packaging, and the overall style still maintains a stubborn unity and restraint.

Only the videos on the discovery page are presented in the form of a feed stream. The cover is directly taken from a frame of the video content. Both horizontal and vertical videos are available to highlight the content.

With the massive increase of video content and the fact that users' browsing habits will not continue to decline, how to improve the efficiency of video distribution is an inevitable problem that must be faced. The approach of the Xueersi Online School app is to directly turn the homepage into a double-column feed stream. Compared with the previous more visually neat homepage module, the current homepage cover has completely lost its sense of unity and order, replaced by a variety of cover styles that make it look a bit messy.

On the balance between brand vision and efficient content distribution, Xueersi Online School embraced the latter. The current Xueersi Online School app, when you open its homepage, looks like an educational version of Bilibili.

(Left: Xueersi Online School homepage Right: Bilibili double-column homepage)

Xueersi Online School may be the first among all educational companies to embrace short videos so boldly. This is enough to show Xueersi's firm determination and courage to integrate with short videos. After Xueersi Online School went all-in on video, I always felt that it was like the educational version of Tik Tok and Kuaishou. At least it was using the logic of short videos to operate its own content and teachers.

2. Launch a large number of fragmented and diversified free video content

First, on the content side: quickly expand the video content within the app. If all education companies go all in on short videos, the first problem other education companies will most likely face is: how to obtain a large number of high-quality short video content with rich types?

Competitors may need to negotiate one by one to introduce external video content suppliers, but only Xueersi, the big brother, can breathe a sigh of relief and say proudly: "Oh wow, there are plenty of good resources in my backyard." Yes, rich and high-quality content resources are Xueersi’s unique moat. This is a treasure accumulated over more than ten years for Xueersi, the big brother.

Xueersi’s all-in approach to short videos is not only an innovative revision of the app’s content format, but also a reorganization and reuse of the company’s resources. At present, the content types and forms on the app are relatively rich, and resources are mainly presented in the form of videos. At the same time, there are live course slices, horizontal/vertical videos of teachers, animations, articles and comics online.

3. Official account and teacher account operate in parallel

In August 2020, I counted the number of teacher accounts and official accounts in the Xueersi Online School app. At that time, the distribution of the two types of accounts was relatively balanced, with slightly more teacher accounts than official accounts. Look, do the official accounts and teacher accounts look similar to the institution accounts and expert accounts on Douyin and Kuaishou?

The difference between the official account and the teacher's account is that the official account pays more attention to content teaching, has clear grade and subject positioning, and does not have a specific personality. For example, "Fourth Grade Chinese Synchronous Class", "Fun Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry", "English Score Improvement Camp", "Junior High School Language Basics Consolidation" and so on are all official accounts, and the video content released is mostly video slices of live classes of various teachers that meet the account positioning.

The teacher account focuses more on the shaping of the teacher's personal characteristics. There is a high probability that the teacher and the operation are operated simultaneously, which also forms a relatively fair competition field within the terminal. The teacher operates the account by himself → provides valuable content → gains more attention and trust from students → and thus obtains a higher probability of class conversion. Unless the teacher account is strongly linked to incentives or instructions from higher-ups, it is difficult to explain why the teachers at Xueersi have enough motivation to persist in publishing valuable learning updates in addition to their heavy workload.

(Comparison between the official account and the teacher's homepage)

The hidden risk of delegating content production to teachers is that the scale of the content may exceed the bottom line that educational content should abide by. After all, today's teachers are also energetic young people, and content that is full of life and humor can best narrow the psychological distance with students.

If you pay attention, you will find that some teachers’ personal pages have some very lifelike video displays, such as showing their cute pets, showing their life talents, showing their own beautiful photos or spoof videos... This kind of content that has nothing to do with learning currently exists in the app and can still be recommended. It can be seen that Xueersi is relatively loose in the review of video content.

(Left: Teacher shows off piano talent; Middle: Teacher shows off cute pets; Right: Spoof of Ultraman)

Of course, it may also be that Xueersi intentionally wants to show the three-dimensional image of teachers and establish intimacy with students. After all, only living people can make people feel approachable and lovable. This can also be proved by an example. Students love to use emoticons when chatting. Xueersi has thoughtfully put its own teacher's emoticons online in the user comment area. The logic is probably similar to: It doesn't matter if you don't know me, you will get to know me slowly if you use my emoticons frequently...

4. Conclusion

Throughout the process of short videoization, Xueersi Online School has grasped two key points: first, it attaches importance to short video content and drives user activity and retention through short videos; second, because the free content is mostly taken from video slices of live classes, it can also allow users to understand the quality of the course in advance.

The second is to focus on shaping the teacher’s personal IP within the terminal, so that a hundred flowers can bloom and promote the prosperity of the learning ecosystem. It provides all teachers on the platform with a stage to showcase themselves in all aspects. The various learning content and slices of their own lives produced by teachers can greatly enrich the intimacy between teachers and students, build students' trust in teachers, and ultimately help form a video-oriented learning community.

Now that the entire content consumption scenario is in place, we can gradually create more scenarios for conversion. At that time, the logic of advertising positions can also refer to Douyin or Kuaishou. Advertising positions can appear on the official account homepage, teacher homepage, video feed stream, video advertising position, top position in the comment area, etc.

After all, the reason why educational companies invest so much energy in Douyin and Kuaishou is simply to accumulate trust assets with students through valuable free content and eventually monetize them. Although the Douyin and Kuaishou platforms have a lot of traffic, they lack a stable and continuously operating learning atmosphere. "Take the strengths of short videos and make up for your own weaknesses." Although it may not be helpful for large-scale customer acquisition, it is still a kind of refined operation and innovative gameplay within the site.

On January 4th of the past, I happened to receive an in-site questionnaire survey from the Xueersi Online School app. The questions mainly focused on whether you are satisfied with the current version of the Xueersi app, and whether you are satisfied with the four core functional modules (functional tools, class playback, live class viewing, and recommended free content). Among them, "recommended free content" mainly refers to the short videos, articles and other content recommended on the "Discover" page of the app.

After nearly half a year of short video development, Xueersi is still exploring and moving forward. We can still continue to observe how far “education community + short video” can go.

2. Xiaoyuan Search Question: Short video planning started, late

Xiaoyuansouti started to launch the short video module on the site in January 2021. At present, the course pages for primary, middle and high schools in the Xiaoyuansouti app have special modules for short video content. In addition to the classroom pages for high school grades, the "Famous Teachers' Big Moves" module is also launched on the homepage.

I really want to complain that educational companies probably really like to emphasize "famous teachers" and "big moves"... The video module recently launched on the Xiaoyuan Question Search app is almost identical to the video module in the Zuoyebang app, from module layout to module naming.

(Left: Xiaoyuan Search Questions, Right: Homework Helper)

The video section that Xiaoyuan Search Questions has just launched is also mainly composed of sliced ​​content from live classes. Compared with Xueersi and Zuoyebang, the short video module content of Xiaoyuansouti is still in the testing stage. The video area is not yet available on the homepages of elementary and junior high schools, which can be said to be a late arrival. But in fact, Xiaoyuan Search Questions had explored video content as early as 2019, but it was integrated into the "Xiaoyuan Column" and presented in the form of an information feed stream together with pictures, texts, comics, etc.

As of the time of writing, Xiaoyuan has 60 columns, with both self-built column accounts and external accounts introduced in parallel. One-quarter of the column accounts are introduced from platforms such as Bilibili and WeChat public accounts, including the well-known "Museum in the Ear", "Hunzhi Education", "Crayon and Xiaoxun", etc.

It is worth mentioning that Xiaoyuan’s self-made video content “Zero Distance to Tsinghua and Peking University” discusses efficient learning methods with many Tsinghua and Peking University students (former Yuanfudao students) in the form of a symposium in each episode. It is relaxed and shares practical learning materials, and is well received by users on the site. From now on, this type of self-made learning video columns and learning documentaries will surely emerge in large numbers on the site.

The number of visits to the video section and the number of video playbacks are currently Xiaoyuan Search's evaluation indicators for the video area. Free video content helps retain users. Currently, each video details page of the video module on the Xiaoyuan Question Search homepage is configured with conversion and new course acquisition functions. Subsequently, guiding course conversion through video content and improving the sales conversion rate of courses will definitely be a path that Xiaoyuan Question Search is determined to explore.

3. Zuoyebang app: short video on the homepage, slow iteration

In mid-September 2020, Zuoyebang launched a newly upgraded theme in the App Store to coincide with the start of the school year. The version update information clearly mentioned "massive learning videos and customized exclusive learning columns." It is understood that Zuoyebang actually launched short videos in the Zuoyebang app earlier than this.

Currently, there are three main places where Zuoyebang externalizes short videos, namely the homepage of the Zuoyebang app, the result page of the search in the Zuoyebang app, and the discovery page in the Zuoyebang live class app. The VIP video lecture function was launched as early as 2019, so we will not discuss it here.

1. The entire homepage of the Zuoyebang app is video-based

The most obvious place where Zuoyebang has adopted the short video approach is on the homepage of the Zuoyebang app. Except for the photo search, learning tools and conversion resource positions, almost all other positions on the first screen are presented in the form of short videos.

90% of the short video content types are mainly live class slices, and there are also some vertical videos on the Douyin and Kuaishou accounts outside the synchronized terminals. The homepage module for high school grades has a small amount of self-made content called "I'm taking the college entrance examination this year."

(Short video modules for each grade on the homepage of the Zuoyebang app)

Compared with the Xueersi Online School app, Zuoyebang continues the grid module arrangement of "picture on the left and text on the right" and "picture on the top and text on the bottom". The video covers mostly feature teachers, and the overall cover style remains relatively unified and restrained.

The content of the videos is also strictly limited. They are basically knowledge points and problem-solving techniques that are strongly related to the subject. The focus is on highlighting the value of the knowledge content, and there is not much external publicity for the teachers. After clicking on the teacher's avatar to enter the teacher's personal homepage, you will find that the teacher's personal dynamics have almost no signs of strong operations, and are entirely updated by the teacher at his or her own leisure.

2. The results page of the Zuoyebang app search

The search results page of the Zuoyebang app is a high-traffic entrance. There is also an entrance at the bottom for free video content, called "Solve Similar Questions in Seconds". Except that the cover is different from the video cover on the homepage, the content of the video is almost entirely slices of live classes.

I tried searching for a few questions. For example, when searching for content related to the surface area of ​​a cylinder, a free video about the volume of a cylinder was launched at the bottom. The free video content that appears does not specifically solve the user's question answering and analysis tasks, but is independent videos with knowledge points as granularity, existing as extended content.

The free videos on the search results page are more like a window for users to explore and learn on their own and understand live classes.

3. Discovery page in the Zuoyebang live class app

As a main battlefield for live classes, the Zuoyebang live class app only fills the discovery page with some non-live class video content, called "Problem-solving Tips", which are divided into four subjects: English, Chinese, Mathematics, and Writing. These contents basically come from the Kuaishou accounts outside the terminal.

4. Conclusion

90% of the short video content on the Zuoyebang platform comes from slices of live classes. Overall, the content is strong but the teachers are weak. Apart from the integration of internal video resources, there is no attempt to encourage teachers to produce or contact external cooperation channels to supply video content. For the existing short video content, it is more of a "presentation" and there are relatively few operational actions on the content itself.

In addition, each video itself and the bottom of the video details page are basically associated with low-priced conversion course ads, which are quite advertising-like.

Based on the above observations, it is speculated that the goal of Zuoyebang’s short video project should be more inclined towards active users, externalized live classes, and attracting new users through examples. From its public release in September to now, the value of short videos as free content has not been fully developed or has not been rapidly iterated and followed up. Compared with Xueersi, the overall investment in short videos is not as high as that of Xueersi Online School, which seems to be a constraint. The short video trend may be more of an internal exploration and attempt, and it is highly unlikely to be elevated to a strategic level.

4. The content value of “short video + education” is being explored

On the road to combining "short video + education", the three well-known education companies each have their own determination and actions.

Recalling that in November last year, Xiaoyuan Search had been promoting VIP for more than a month, calling on users to receive 60 days of VIP for free. The annual learning reward activity currently being promoted also uses VIP as a reward. Among these, the core benefits of VIPs, "knowledge point explanation", "learning area" and "detailed explanation of questions", all use short videos to present the value of knowledge content.

The value of combining short videos with educational knowledge content is unquestionable, and its value is gradually being explored and utilized by educational companies.

Judging from the overall trend of the industry, in 2019, educational companies made large-scale attempts to create their own content on short video platforms outside the terminal in order to quickly, accurately, and stably acquire customers efficiently. In 2020, they gradually tried to explore the value of short video content within the terminal, and improve the sales efficiency of courses through users' consumption of free short video content. This is not only a rethinking and recognition of the value of short video content by educational companies, but also the beginning of content-based traffic operations within the terminal.

As the content value of short videos is being explored, to some extent, the three companies may eventually reach the same destination, namely a one-stop service-based learning app that integrates "short video content construction - short video community - learning ecological scenario".

At the moment, short videos are a good entry point. Judging from the three education companies, Xueersi Online School is embracing short videos more boldly with determination and innovation. Let us wait and see where “short video + education” will go in 2021.

Author: Tian Xin

Source: "Operator's Notes"