Analysis and operational suggestions for Toutiao, Miaopai, and Meipai short video platforms

The concept of "user time" has become popular recently, which roughly means:

People have limited time. If they go to my place, they won’t go to your place. You and I should be smart and strive to seize every second of the user’s time. The short video boom that you are participating in today was initiated by a series of data reports proving a significant increase in the time Internet users spend on video content.

For the nine major short video platforms, the target user groups they cover do not have absolutely independent existence. Even Kuaishou, which is taking the route of surrounding the cities from the countryside, and even Station A and Station B, whose team changes are comparable to a two-dimensional drama.

In order to attract massive users, you must first have high-quality PGC content or massive UGC content that is suitable for the target users, which means you need to join in. This is the logic.

——The short video platforms can continue to expand their territory for another two years.

Therefore, several short video platforms have slogans such as "let some people get rich first" with "1 billion" on the left and "1 billion" on the right.

As short video practitioners/creators/operators, cross-platform distribution of output content is a consensus.

"At this stage, it is a pragmatic choice for short video creators to start from the algorithm platform, gain dissemination and income, and then combine other channels to build brand effect."

As for these so-called nine major short video platforms, in fact, there are many other short video platforms that are catching up and flocking in.

How can we operate content on these platforms to gain traffic and earn income to keep the project running?

How to understand the current planning and future direction of the short video platform’s platform bonus period?

This is what I want to tell you in this article today.

I have heard many short video practitioners say, "Toutiao has the fastest growth rate and you can get paid."

This may be the best footnote for Toutiao in the short video platform circle, but this sentence needs to be explained in detail.

Anyone who has heard of the "black technology" that Toutiao relies on to get started knows that it is simply an "algorithm mechanism." In order to help you get the points of the following operation tips, I will give a brief explanation.

When your short video is published, it will go through five steps in the "algorithm mechanism":

This is where the saying of "quick growth" comes from. Unlike online video websites, which require editing "operations" to get to the "homepage" or obtain traffic entry positions, under Toutiao's "algorithm mechanism", all content that has been "reviewed" and "de-duplicated" has the opportunity to obtain traffic, and even has the opportunity to obtain large traffic.

You can think of your short video as participating in a gambling game. Initially, the dealer will directly give you 30 yuan to enter the game. If you win, you can get more money, and if you enter a game with bigger chips, you can win more money.

Didn’t win? If you don’t win, come back next time and you will still have the initial 30 yuan.

Decentralized content distribution based on the "algorithm mechanism" allows Toutiao to stand out in the information platform/content platform stage. Relying on past accumulation and supplemented by the product design of being the second largest traffic configuration on the APP side, Toutiao's short video data has soared to 1 billion daily views, which cannot but attract special attention.

At this stage, Toutiao has three shortcomings for short video users:

1. The traffic pool is just a pool

Traffic is limited, but short video users are coming in droves.

Therefore, it is predictable that traffic supply will weaken in each category, and we are gradually hearing about it. In order to retain new accounts that entered the market late and to stabilize large benchmark cases, the only way is to make the mid-level short video practitioners who entered the market earlier but failed to grow in time feel like withdrawing. Please imagine the pyramid shape yourself to understand the traffic weight configuration.

2. Revenue depends on traffic, traffic depends on machines, and the machines are broken

Zhang Yiming, the founder of Toutiao, once said, "Technology is neutral, and non-interference may be the best principle for distributing information. Toutiao refuses to let values ​​take precedence and must face reality."

This sentence answers,

The reality is that the content on Toutiao is generally vulgar and entertaining.

Vulgar and entertaining content is more likely to attract users' clicks and stay longer. Users' clicks and dwell time will increase the recommendation volume of the content and eventually make it account for a larger proportion of the total content.

In order to gain traffic (revenue), many short video creators naturally "walk the tightrope for love." The show of imagination and marketing ability that exceeds the review standards...

This is also the reason why some major short video accounts such as Miaopai and Meipai received mediocre responses after entering Toutiao.

3. Original short video creators have difficulty gaining fans and establishing brand effects, so porters have temporarily won the game

This means that original short video creators cannot replicate the strategies and opportunities on social content platforms such as WeChat public accounts and Weibo under the algorithm mechanism of Toutiao.

Feelings and emotional content are far less satisfying than "funny" and "exciting".

The failure to transcend the product concept of information platforms and the “read and forget” mentality has led to low fan stickiness and low subscription volume on Toutiao, which is an old problem.

A clip from a local TV station's news was titled "Real shots at the construction site, real stories", and it was paired with a cover photo of an old man holding a little girl, and it earned 17 million views.

Weibo is so popular that the daily food diary with a playback volume of less than 10 million in a second can only pass by with the playback volume of 20,000 for "Teriyaki Chicken Legs"~

Toutiao operation tips:

1. Let the machine understand your title and get accurate category recommendations.

(The robot doesn’t know as much as you do, so write the keywords related to classification in the title clearly and accurately. Don’t make mistakes in the classification of the video you upload, and write as many tags as possible and write them accurately)

2. Clicks and dwell time are two important factors in the “algorithm mechanism”.

Use the title and cover image to get clicks,

There are many methodologies for title creation, and I’ll discuss them in a separate article if I have the chance.

In the waterfall flow of content platforms, users often only glance at titles when they are displayed.

The easiest methodology to understand is:

A. The title should be as few strokes as possible, easy to recognize, and colloquial

B. There should be an eye-catching keyword in the title to grab the user's attention. Create a whole title around this keyword. (Young woman, I know you first saw the word "young woman")

Give the plot a wonderful beginning as soon as possible, so as not to miss the time to stay and be judged as filtered.

On the contrary, clickbait titles with dull plots should prolong their entry to gain as much dwell time as possible to avoid being filtered out.

Avoid inconsistency between plot and clickbait titles, and quick exit after clicking, which will result in too short a stay time, which will be judged more negatively in the algorithm.

3. Manually deduplicate your title and cover before publishing.

In the recommendation algorithm of Toutiao, the first step is to eliminate duplicate titles.

The difference between short videos and text articles is that technology can convert text into digital code. The digital code comparison can be used to eliminate duplication. This does not apply to short videos. Therefore, video porters crash from time to time.

Manually check the title and cover image before publishing to avoid duplication. It also avoids the loss of clicks due to the cover image appearing too many times, causing the later covers to appear repeatedly.

4. Follow hot spots quickly and moderately

When a hot topic appears, immediately determine the length of time it will take to produce the content for that hot topic. The hot content in the later order has a high chance of being deduplicated, while the hot content in the earlier order has a high chance of being recommended.

5. Follow the style of Toutiao

Toutiao is the first choice for most short video users to start their cold start. However, how much effort you put into operations depends on whether the current style of Toutiao’s video content matches your output.

The current video content categories are: music, funny, social, sketches, life, film and television, entertainment, cute, games, original, eye-opening

Once the user groups of a content platform are aggregated, it is difficult to make qualitative adjustments. It always opens high and ends low, and the operation team needs to work hard to maintain a target level.

Under the "algorithm mechanism", users who are immersed in "surprise" and "funny" content generally have little motivation to "change their appearance".

In the eyes of many short video users, Miaopai, which entered the market in 2013, and Meipai, which entered the market in 2014, are highly similar.

By comparing the two, you will see it more clearly and better understand how to gain traffic and revenue on both platforms.

Miaopai and Meipai are both tool-based products for short video production and sharing that have transformed into short video content platforms.

The functions are highly similar and the interaction designs have many similarities.

However, when it comes to platform content operation, which is what short video makers should pay most attention to, there is a world of difference between the two.

Let’s take the first step of analyzing from the perspective of APP user data:

According to the ranking of short video apps in Cheetah Data, Meipai’s weekly active penetration rate is 7 times that of Miaopai.

According to Talkingdata's activity rate on December 25, 2016, Meipai's activity rate was four times that of Miaopai. Based on the overall data, the activity rates of both apps have basically remained in this multiple range in the past.

This is not much different from the data on iResearch Qianfan. In the third quarter of 2016, the comparison between Meipai and Miaopai was basically in the range of 4 times .

Thanks to Meipai's embedding of the live broadcast function into the same APP, Meipai has seen a rapid growth in usage time.

However, iResearch's 2016 short video report showed that Miaopai's average daily video upload volume was 1.5 million, the average daily playback volume reached 1.7 billion times, and the number of daily active users on the entire network was 60 million. And called Miaopai the number one short video platform in China.

Are you confused by the blind spots where the data and conclusions contradict each other?

Simply put, the most direct conclusion is:

Miaopai’s reach is on Weibo, while Meipai’s reach is on Meipai

Not quite understand?

At this point, let's do the second step of analysis from the perspective of product design and operation:

The product design of the APP must be coordinated with the product. Every design of the content platform revolves around the content operation ideas and purposes of the content platform.

Content Page

In terms of the front-end presentation of short videos, both use a two-column waterfall flow as the main design.

Meipai APP emphasizes and encourages UGC content - grassroots influencers

The videos shot and uploaded on the Meipai app are in a fixed 1:1 square format. The two-column waterfall flow method can adapt to square thumbnails, so the portraits will not be deformed, saving space and presenting more content.

(The thumbnails on the Meipai app are usually of handsome men and beautiful women... faces, not too eye-catching)

In terms of content operation, Miaopai obviously pays more attention to PGC content such as vertical classification than Meipai (and cooperates with the content orientation of Weibo).

In channels such as fashion, food, and cars, a single-column waterfall flow in the style of Toutiao is used. More emphasis is placed on the content itself, and the first-level page plays directly.

Channel Categories

Do you remember the joke at the beginning that Meipai was called the "friend of girls"?

Meipai was strongly influenced by Meitu products, especially Meitu XiuXiu, and was in the lead for a while in the early stage of the "tool-type product" phase.

Before Meipai embedded the live broadcast function, the ratio of girls to boys was as high as 19:1.

Meipai is deepening its content operations and taking advantage of this advantage. The female-oriented segmentation of channel classification is far different from other short video platforms.

(For those who create short videos with content oriented toward women, do you know where your important battlefield is? As a content platform, Meipai pays more attention to content oriented toward women, and both online and offline activities are meant to promote and achieve win-win results. What are content oriented toward women? — People, things, and objects that can inspire girls’ hearts.)

Miaopai’s channel classification can be said to be a classification of Weibo content orientation.

Based on the existing content on Weibo's entire platform, we hope to deepen the verticality and depth of the content through operations. Cars and travel are also trying to court male users. Although they are ranked last, they are still traffic entrances for vertical content.

Traffic inlet

In order to discover and cultivate UGC of internet celebrities in vertical fields, and also to increase the display of content and improve user usage time. Most content platforms use "lists" and "topics" to provide traffic and reading entrances.

This is also what short video makers should maximize.

Meipai and Miaopai both placed “Topics” and “Lists” sections on the 4th-ranked TAB page.

Generally speaking, "topics" and "lists" have more traffic than waterfall content presentation pages due to their strong content and directionality.

This is also the reason why both of them have placed "lists" and "topics" on the category channel pages.

Simply put, if you are a newcomer with no fans, topics are the section you should pay most attention to.

Mid-level short video creators should strive for exposure opportunities on the lists of classified channels to expand their exposure.

Content platforms that do not use Toutiao-like content distribution algorithm mechanisms

The content display mechanism is more about sorting by "update time + playback volume" in the classification channel.

The homepage is sorted by “short video author weight score + update time + playback volume + manual editing”.

Unless big names enter the market, new entrants to the short video market will have a slow start, so it is particularly important to make good use of every traffic entrance.

User Interaction

Compared with Miaopai, Meipai emphasizes and guides users to follow, comment and interact with short video viewers.

See the screenshot of the short video playback page, no explanation required.

On a content platform like Meipai where users and content can achieve perfect self-flow,

The dumbest way: go to the comments of large short videos with similar content and follow active users. You can successfully regain volume and gain cold start fans at the same time.

100 are not enough, what about 1,000? You can still comment, right?

Cold start + topic entry = increased classification sorting weight = list = large size

This is an easy formula to understand, right?

Second shot? ——Go and have fun on Weibo!

Compared to the vertical content field that Miaopai is targeting, the competition has just begun.

When I have the opportunity to write about brand building and monetization for short video creators, let’s talk about how to use social platforms like Weibo.

There are also related matters in the vertical content area.

Support

Meipai and Miaopai have chosen two completely different paths in supporting short video creators.

Of course, this is closely related to the future planning and development direction of the two.

Meipai can add e-commerce links to the text content of short videos. Traffic monetization routine 1 - content e-commerce

Miaopai launches a reward mechanism for advertisers to place ads, and short video creators claim the rewards. The second method of traffic monetization is advertising placement.

How to take advantage of the increasingly prosperous bonus period of short video content platforms is something that needs to be considered in real time. According to a saying often said by my friends who operate Baijiahao, if you never leave me, I will "stay with you through life and death".

In fact, cross-platform content distribution is a must (you can use Video Help’s one-click online uploading tool), but understanding and defending your main battlefield is also of paramount importance.