Tik Tok traffic rules, playback volume from 1 to 10 million!

The reason why Tik Tok is so popular is definitely due to the algorithm. Tik Tok’s algorithm is extremely attractive. The charm lies in the fact that Douyin’s traffic distribution is decentralized.

01. What is the Douyin traffic pool?

A common understanding of this is this: On Douyin, after any work is released, Douyin will recommend the work to a group of people who may be interested in the work based on the content of the work, and "visualize" the collection of this group of people into a pool.

Every drop of water in the pool can be understood as every individual in the crowd.

Tik Tok’s traffic pool can be said to directly affect important data such as video playback volume.

For all TikTok users, any video you shoot, no matter whether it is of good or bad quality, will definitely have playback volume after it is released, ranging from dozens to thousands. We call this a traffic pool. Douyin will allocate a traffic pool to each creator of a work based on the algorithm. Afterwards, Douyin will decide whether to push your work to more people or stop there based on your performance in this traffic pool. Therefore, Tik Tok's algorithm gives everyone who has the ability to produce high-quality content the opportunity to compete fairly with big accounts.

02. Tik Tok traffic pool levels and allocation rules

If you want to enter a better traffic pool, you must first know the rules of the Douyin traffic pool.

Tik Tok traffic pool means that after a video is released, the video will be put into a traffic pool first. After analyzing the effect of these people watching the video, it will decide whether to upgrade to the next level.

For most people’s accounts, when they first release their works, the number of views is probably less than 500, which we call the initial number of views. That is to say, if your work does not violate any rules (not suitable for public release) or contains sensitive or banned words, the platform will give the work 500 exposures, and then decide whether to continue or stop the exposure based on the feedback data from these 500 exposures. If your playback volume is below 500, then you need to look for the reasons in your video content and title.

If these videos have data such as a 10% like rate or a 60% completion rate, the platform will determine that the video content is popular and recommend the video to the secondary traffic pool, where more people will see it. It will then continue to analyze the video playback effects to determine whether to continue to upgrade the traffic pool level.

By analogy, if the quality of the video is very high, it will enter a larger traffic pool. After passing the inspection of each traffic pool, the video will be pushed to most users only when the quality is guaranteed.

The data range of each round of recommendation volume in the Douyin traffic pool is:

The first recommendation volume is around 200~500 (primary/cold start traffic pool)

The second recommended amount is around 3000

The third recommendation volume is around 12,000 to 15,000 (intermediate traffic pool)

The fourth recommendation volume is around 100,000 to 150,000 (intermediate traffic pool)

The fifth recommendation volume is around 200,000 to 800,000

The sixth recommendation volume is around 2 to 3 million (advanced/premium traffic pool)

The seventh recommendation volume is around 7 to 11 million views (advanced/premium traffic pool)

The eighth recommendation will be based on the number of people recommended by tags. The number of people recommended by tags is over 30 million.

03. Douyin traffic pool reference standard

The traffic pool mainly refers to data from four dimensions: number of comments, number of reposts, number of likes, and completion rate to analyze whether a video is worth recommending.

First of all, the completion rate is the first factor. If other people swipe away before finishing watching your video, it means that your video is not attractive. If this happens too often, the AI ​​algorithm will judge it as a low-quality video, and the number of views will naturally not increase. Therefore, the first step to increase the number of views is to find a way to increase the completion rate.

Secondly, the forwarding rate, forwarding to Tik Tok status, Moments, WeChat QQ, or downloading, etc., are all considered forwarding. The higher the forwarding rate, the more popular your video is among users, which will naturally increase the number of views. However, if the number of views in the early stage has not exceeded 500, it cannot be downloaded, so comments and likes are very important in the early stage.

In simple terms

Early stage: completion rate > comment rate > like rate > forwarding rate > music usage rate

Mid-term: completion rate > forwarding rate > comment rate > music usage rate > like rate

There is no post-production.

The advantage of this mechanism is that even if your account has 0 followers, it is possible that a popular video will appear, which is more helpful for some new users.

For old accounts, once they have accumulated a certain number of fans, they can consider monetization methods and gradually think about ways to make money.

04. Reasonable use of dou＋

When your work is close to the next traffic pool and cannot go up, you can try to break through the next traffic pool by investing in DOU+. However, it is best for videos to be put on dou+ to reach the following data, which indicates that the work has the potential to become popular.

(1) Completion rate: Try to choose a broadcast within 15-30 seconds

(2) Like rate: If the like rate reaches 5%-10%

(3) Forwarding rate: The forwarding rate is around 1%

(4) Comment rate: about 1%

05. Conclusion

It should be emphasized that in order to encourage innovation among broadcasters, Douyin has also made corresponding adjustments to its recommendation mechanism.

For some creative videos with a small number of views on the platform, the platform will often provide them with more recommendation opportunities and give them more exposure opportunities.

Therefore, compared with the same old homogeneous content, these innovative and original videos are often more likely to succeed.

After gaining an in-depth understanding of the traffic pool, I believe everyone will have a clearer understanding of how the Douyin algorithm recommendation system operates, helping them optimize their Douyin operations.