How to use short videos to direct traffic to the live broadcast room!

This is a relatively hardcore article. In addition to analyzing the traffic sources of Douyin's live broadcast room, it will also provide some methods to optimize the traffic of the live broadcast room based on this.

This article focuses on: how to heat up the live broadcast room through "video content" and "live broadcast content" recommendations, including some optimization methods for live broadcast DOU+. The article contains a lot of information and is expected to take about 10 minutes to read.

Before I officially start writing, I would like to point out that the author's TikTok is the Android version, version number 10.9.0

Why do you say this? Because the iteration speed of TikTok is so fast, we also secretly conduct a lot of grayscale tests.

If anyone sees a different function than I described, please don’t start a fight, especially if you’re an Apple user.

Well, without further ado, just post the picture.

From a product perspective, there are four main entrances for Douyin users to enter a live broadcast room.

Including: recommendation page, follow page, city page, live broadcast page

However, the display methods and recommendation logic under the four major entrances are not exactly the same. How to optimize the content for the traffic entrances and grab more live broadcast room traffic dividends is the focus of this article.

Let’s first study the default homepage— the recommendation page.

As the core module of TikTok, the recommendation page harvests the largest traffic and user attention. As Douyin continues to increase its support for live streaming content, more and more content is leading to live streaming rooms on the recommendation page.

Currently, there are two major ways to enter the live broadcast room from the recommendation page.

The first one is the common form of directing traffic from short videos to the live broadcast room, as shown in the figure.

▲Recommendation page-short video recommendation

When users see a short video, if the KOL is broadcasting live, users can click on the KOL avatar to enter the live broadcast room.

As long as Douyin’s positioning on short videos does not change, for the vast majority of live broadcast rooms, the model of directing traffic to the live broadcast rooms through short videos will be the largest source of public domain traffic, both now and in the future. So here is the most important place for us to optimize.

1. Create warm-up and traffic-generating videos at a high frequency to increase the popularity of the live broadcast room

Let’s take a look at the function description again. For users to enter your live broadcast room from a short video, at least two conditions must be met. The first is that users are watching the short video you posted; the second is that you are broadcasting it. It may seem like nonsense, but there are actually many tricks involved.

1: How can you let users see your video when you start broadcasting?

2: How to make users willing to enter your live broadcast room after watching your short video?

For Tik Tok creators, they should all be aware of the importance of Tik Tok hits. Only when the video becomes a hit can it get more exposure, attract more fans, and generate more monetization. Therefore, we have formed the habit of racking our brains to create hit products.

But for live streaming, this is not entirely correct. The purpose of releasing videos for live broadcast is not simply to create a hit, but to attract traffic to the live broadcast through videos. So for live streaming, the timeliness of short video content and its relevance to live streaming become important. Therefore, KOLs who intend to increase the proportion of Douyin live broadcasts must strengthen the creation of "warm-up and traffic-generating videos" .

We have seen a lot of hit videos, but what are warm-up and traffic-generating videos? How is it different from the content of our usual account operations? See table:

Warm-up and traffic-generating videos must be strongly related to the live broadcast. There are some differences between the preheating type and the drainage type.

The subtext of warm-up videos is "I'm going to go live, remember to watch it", and they will often combine the live broadcast theme with the account owner's personality to create the video. Teacher Luo’s video is a good example, such as:

▲Typical cases of preheating videos

The video was released on May 1st and the live broadcast time is May 1st. Mr. Luo’s video is a typical warm-up video, which uses the content to inform users in advance about the products that will be broadcast live that night, as well as the 50% discount promotion. At the same time, it was cleverly integrated with Mr. Luo's "unique" personality of selling products, making the video a hot topic and creating the possibility of becoming a hit, with a cumulative number of likes reaching 732,000 in 7 days.

Let’s take a look at another typical traffic-generating video.

▲Typical cases of traffic-generating videos

The subtext of traffic-generating videos is "high quality, low price, great value, come and buy it." For this type of video, the most important thing to highlight is the "instantaneous" value of the live broadcast. Tell users simply and clearly the benefits your live broadcast room can bring to users, and guide users to enter the broadcast directly.

However, for many content-based KOLs, when creating such videos, they must also pay attention to the unity of their personalities. If Li Ziqi, with such a fairy-like personality, were to promote 50%-off snail noodles, her fans would probably not be able to accept it. Almost all of Luo’s videos have become popular. In addition to the official traffic support, this is also inseparable from the strong sales personality he established as soon as he entered Douyin. Therefore, for content-based KOLs, it is extremely important to find a balance between the account personality and the live broadcast personality before starting the broadcast.

2. | The “3-hour principle” for live DOU+ delivery

When creating and publishing traffic-generating videos, it is recommended that creators follow the 3-hour publishing principle, that is, publish the traffic-generating video within 3 hours before the broadcast.

First, after a new video is released, Douyin will immediately allocate a certain amount of initial traffic to test and tag your video. Determine whether your video can enter the next level of traffic pool. Test traffic is positively correlated with the number of followers of an account, and it is "free traffic" that can directly attract the live broadcast room. We have no reason to give up, especially for small accounts.

Second, DOU+ veterans all know that when we place DOU+, the minimum amount is 100 yuan, the shortest placement time is 2 hours, and DOU+ usually has a half-hour review period. Therefore, if you start broadcasting within 3 hours and cooperate with DOU+ delivery, you can quickly reach the first wave of traffic peak that can be reached by short videos.

Therefore, we must release a traffic-generating video within three hours before the broadcast to assist the live broadcast. If conditions permit, it is recommended to release the video half an hour before the broadcast in conjunction with a certain amount of DOU+ delivery. You can even prepare multiple videos to continuously stimulate the traffic pool.

In addition, for traffic-generating videos, we don’t need to pursue quality excessively, and we just need to try our best to avoid conflicts with the character setting. For this type of video, we can “burn it after reading”. Kas Data once monitored the number of videos released by the famous Douyin influencer "Zhengshan Niurou Ge", who updated up to 79 videos in one day, and the average number of video updates per day was 30+.

The second type has only appeared in the past two months, namely: directly synchronizing the content in the live broadcast room for recommendation. As shown in the picture.

▲Recommendation page-Live broadcast recommendation

When users see a live broadcast recommendation, they can enter the live broadcast room by clicking anywhere except the top navigation.

From the display form, this type of live broadcast content in the recommendation page is the same as the follow-up page to be discussed in the next article. The difference is that after the user clicks on the "recommendation page" to enter the live broadcast room, he cannot swipe up (he will not enter the live broadcast traffic pool), and can only return to the recommendation page by clicking the close button. Such a bold form of recommendation must have a strong ability to attract traffic and fans.

The official has not given any explanation on how to get such a recommendation. The author has watched tens of thousands of videos and found that there are generally three situations in which recommendations can be obtained.

First, live broadcasts released by media Blue V and institutional Blue V, such as Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily, etc. The live broadcast content of these media will often be recommended. There is nothing wrong with this. We can't get any traffic even if we want to.

Second, participating in Douyin’s official activities, top anchors with excellent live broadcast content can get official traffic boosts. As shown in the picture above, @贫料理 is participating in Douyin’s agricultural assistance activities.

The third is the live broadcast of DOU+. Before April 2020, only video content could be placed in DOU+ live broadcast to attract traffic for the live broadcast. In subsequent updates, the display format of "directly heating up the live broadcast room" was added. Now the two delivery methods coexist. (As shown in the picture)

▲The left is a screenshot of the DOU+ live broadcast page, the middle is the "directly heat up the live broadcast room" instruction, and the right is the "select short video to heat up the live broadcast room" instruction

The DOU+ delivery format of "directly heating up the live broadcast room" has undoubtedly strengthened the customer acquisition capabilities of e-commerce anchors who lack content genes, allowing merchants/anchors without a fan base to successfully start broadcasting on Douyin in the form of "paying to purchase public domain traffic", which indirectly reflects Douyin's determination for the e-commerce live broadcast business.

So, can we use this method to avoid spending energy on content creation and bring high user conversions through large-scale delivery?

Let’s calculate the cost of acquiring customers in this form. First, let’s look at the estimated bidding results given by the DOU+ system. Video DOU+ gives the estimated number of impressions, or CPM; while live broadcast DOU+ gives the number of viewers brought to the live broadcast, that is, the number of people who see the video from the recommendation page and then click to enter the live broadcast room. The number given here is 100 yuan = 25-150 people , that is, the cost of each user entering the live broadcast room through live broadcast DOU+ is between 4 yuan and 0.67 yuan (we can call it "viewing cost") . Please note that this only includes entering the live broadcast room, and does not include the length of stay or whether there is any conversion behavior.

Through this simple calculation, we can see that the viewing cost of this type of delivery method is not low. If you invest without thinking, you will definitely lose money. When should we use DOU+ for live streaming? How to improve conversion rate?

First of all, please make sure you understand the significance of DOU+. Whether it is video DOU+ or live broadcast DOU+, it has always served as icing on the cake, rather than providing timely assistance. Even the official website has clearly written under the ICON that it is “help to become popular” rather than “become popular”, and it is to “heat up” the content rather than cook it for you. DOU+ can only be effective if your content is warm. If the content is cold, DOUx will be useless.

Secondly, DOU+ is a bidding mechanism similar to OCPM, that is, a delivery model in which the system automatically performs bidding optimization based on the delivery target selected at the time of delivery. For example, in the video DOU+, it is clearly stated that 100 yuan can bring 5,000+ playbacks, which means a minimum guarantee of 20 yuan per cpm (thousand impressions). When the number of likes, comments or attention you choose when placing an ad is better than that of other videos placed during the same period, you can get a lower price per thousand impressions, which means more exposure.

In fact, live broadcast DOU+ also uses this mechanism, but the conversion goals given are completely different, as shown in the figure:

▲The left is a screenshot of the video DOU+ delivery page, and the right is a screenshot of the live broadcast DOU+ delivery page

This means that compared to video DOU+, live broadcast DOU+ assesses more interactive data after users enter the live broadcast room, including:

1. Planting seeds for viewers - the behavior of users clicking on the shopping cart and viewing product details (only live streaming with goods will have the option of "planting seeds for viewers");

2. Audience interaction - comments, sound waves, gift behaviors;

3. Live broadcast room follower growth - user attention behavior after entering the live broadcast room;

4. Popularity of the live broadcast room - the number of users online at the same time (the length of time users stay in the room).

Therefore, if we want to optimize the delivery effect of DOU+ live broadcast, we must work hard based on these four points. Design these links during the live broadcast. For example: plant seeds for the audience - design fan-favorite products and hot-selling products to guide users to click and buy; audience interaction - ask more questions to guide users to deduct 1 or 666; increase followers in the live broadcast room - red envelope attention, guidance in speech, fan-favorite products; user stay time - optimize the layout of the live broadcast room, multi-person interaction (live PK, etc.).

After designing these links, DOU+ delivery will be meaningful and efficient, and it can help you gain more exposure in the live broadcast content pool and bring in more users. This is why many live broadcast rooms where people follow and like each other can become popular. Because their user interaction data is very good, it is considered to be excellent content by the algorithm and is recommended by the system, increasing their chances of becoming popular on live broadcasts.

Please note that although the optimization method discussed here is for live broadcast DOU+, it is also suitable for the optimization of live broadcast rooms. The key indicators of live broadcast DOU+ are also the key indicators that determine the natural recommendations of live broadcast rooms. However, the natural traffic of the live broadcast room in the live broadcast traffic pool is also affected by other indicators, which we will analyze in the next article.

Okay, this sharing ends here. There are four major traffic entrances for Douyin live broadcast. This time we mainly shared the most core entrance, that is: how to optimize the content of the recommendation page to divert traffic to the live broadcast room.