Analysis from 3 aspects: two Weibo, one Douyin, one Bilibili, and one Live!

An indisputable fact is that new media operators are becoming more and more tired.

In the beginning, new media operators only worked on Weibo. After the birth of WeChat public accounts, dual-microblog operations became the standard for new media operations. In 2018, with the rise of Douyin, new media operators began to get involved in Douyin operations, and the saying of “two Weibo and one Douyin” spread like wildfire.

In 2020, an epidemic made live streaming marketing a standard for brand marketing, coupled with the sudden popularity of Bilibili. New media operators suddenly discovered that the official platforms they needed to operate had formed a pattern of “two Weibo, one Douyin, one Bilibili, and one Live.”

In fact, these platforms have formed a complete ecosystem for brand operations: Weibo - short pictures and texts, WeChat public accounts - long pictures and texts, Douyin - short videos, Bilibili - medium and long videos, Douyin and Kuaishou - live broadcasts.

Some people say that building a brand is becoming more and more tiring, but in fact, building a brand has never been easy. How could the efforts and hardships that brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, and BMW have put in over a hundred years of building be any worse than what we do now by operating official accounts on various platforms?

You feel that operating a brand is tiring. On the surface, it seems that there are more channels to operate. In fact, the problem of media fragmentation has been talked about for many years. The reason for being tiring is that the new channels are too distinctive.

McLuhan said in "Understanding Media": Media are an extension of man. If placed on several different media at present, the personalities of Douyin and Bilibili must be different.

Therefore, the strategy of relying on one trick to conquer all is no longer valid, and the way of brand operation is moving towards an era of gradual growth.

1. Brand operations have entered an era of gradual growth from barbaric growth

In the era of traditional advertising, the way of brand marketing has always been "one source of water for the world". Basically, a brand determines its strategy at the beginning of the year, spreads a set of graphics and texts on print media, and a TVC on television, and then repeats it for a long time to occupy the minds of consumers and guide their consumption decisions.

In China, this brand marketing method created an era of wild growth for brands. Brands like Qinchi and Melatonin achieved rapid growth during this period. They became famous almost overnight thanks to CCTV advertisements.

But in today's Internet media landscape, the user attributes of each platform are different, and the content styles preferred by users of each platform also vary greatly. Therefore, the "one water source supplies the world" model of the traditional advertising era has become increasingly ineffective.

I believe that under this situation, brand marketing has entered an era of gradual operational growth. Just as Darwin said in the field of biological evolution, “there are no leaps in nature”, brand operations can no longer become popular overnight.

Progressive operation means providing marketing and services that are in line with the characteristics of different platforms and different user attributes, forming close relationships with users over the long term, increasing users' awareness and favorability of the brand, and enhancing brand power.

As shown in the picture below, huge differences in form and platform attributes require you to personalize your operations, and it is no longer possible to "supply the world with one source of water."

What brands need most when operating on social media platforms is content and services. “WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili, and Zhibo” have formed a full content ecosystem for brand operations, but different platforms have different focuses.

From a content perspective, the acceptance of video content is better than that of text and pictures, so short video platforms and live broadcasts are gradually gaining the upper hand.

From a service perspective, the content + mini-program + service ecosystem formed by WeChat has greater service advantages. Douyin is also working on a similar closed loop, but its capabilities are second only to its competitors.

The details are shown in the following figure:

Therefore, in this era, brands can no longer “get rich overnight”. Instead, they must gradually increase their influence and fans’ favorability toward the brand through long-term operations, thus forming a brand accumulation effect and achieving gradual growth.

This way of brand operation actually started in the Weibo era.

2. The next generation of brand benchmarks may appear on Douyin

The most typical representative of the Weibo marketing era is Durex. Durex’s marketing is a representative of the brand’s progressive operational growth.

Durex creates different content every day, follows hot topics, tells love stories to users, interacts with users at fixed times, gives out prizes, etc., and gradually forms a large fan base based on its own brand on Weibo. During this process, Durex's brand influence, perception and users' brand favorability gradually increased.

Note that Durex is not allowed to do traditional advertising in China, so the massive growth in its fans and the increase in brand awareness are largely due to the brand's long-term operations on Weibo.

As WeChat marketing enters an era of deepening, some brands have turned their official accounts into service platforms. A representative brand in the early days was China Southern Airlines, and a more representative brand in the later days was China Mobile 10086.

In 2017, "China Mobile 10086" became the first public account with over 100 million fans. Its success is due to its positioning as a service. It is an online service hall platform that integrates self-service inquiry/processing, discount information push, promotional activities collection and intelligent + manual services. The official account has been providing users with various services and promotional activities for a long time, which makes the users very sticky.

When Zhihu marketing was at its peak, Audi also won the favor of fans by answering various car-related questions on Zhihu.

These brands that do marketing on social media did not become popular overnight, but instead operated over the long term, created content over the long term, and established connections and interactions with fans over the long term, gradually accumulating their own brand advantages.

The benchmark for Weibo is Durex, the benchmark for WeChat is "China Mobile 10086", if I ask who is the brand benchmark for Douyin? Can You Answer?

The truth is, there is no benchmark for Tik Tok yet.

This is normal, because TikTok has only been popular for about two years. During this period, some companies are watching, some companies are trying, and have not yet found the perfect way to operate TikTok. Some accounts, such as Alipay, Xiaomi, and Mercedes-Benz, are doing very well, but it is still difficult for them to become brand operation benchmarks like Durex in the era of Weibo and WeChat.

In the long run, Douyin's industry benchmark will inevitably emerge, because brands will study short video platforms more and more thoroughly, and Douyin also needs a brand benchmark, so that the value of Douyin as a long-term brand operation can be more prominent.

Recently, Douyin launched the "Top 100 Growth Plan", which will select 100 leading brands from 8 industries and register them in brand accounts. This can also be seen as Douyin's action to cultivate leading brand operation cases.

In the long run, the brand's social marketing landscape will be in a trend of coexistence of pictures, texts and videos. However, from the analysis above, the brand's Douyin operation is still in the blue ocean, and the following will mainly analyze this.

3. How can brands achieve incremental growth on Douyin?

Many brands view Douyin as a platform for one-time marketing, but I believe that like Weibo and WeChat, it should be used as a refined long-term operation platform for the brand to accumulate its own brand effect.

If a brand wants to achieve incremental growth on Douyin, it needs to consider two issues.

In terms of content, brands should not only create their own high-quality content, but also make good use of the platform’s own tools and leverage the power of influencers and fans to co-create content.

In terms of services, Douyin's brand accounts have gradually improved their functions in stores, mini-programs, live broadcasts, etc., and have full-link marketing functions. Brands should invest seriously in each part to achieve long-term operations from brand exposure to sales to services.

Generally speaking, brand operation of Douyin should be done together with content, effects and services. Specifically, we will look at how those potential Douyin brands carry out brand operation through the following questions.

1. Content operation: create your own content and make good use of fans to create

The essence of Douyin is to create content. High-quality content is naturally easy to be favored by algorithms and users, thereby gaining higher exposure. However, content of poor quality is difficult to achieve ideal results even if huge amounts of money are spent on promotion.

High-quality content is not about posting brand advertisements on TikTok, but about what value your content can bring to users. For example, Xiaomi teaches fans photo and photography skills, Make up forever teaches fans makeup skills, etc., all of which provide users with real useful information.

There is an account on Douyin called Dingxiang Doctor, which is very well operated. Most of the content is drama-based, with medical and life knowledge and skills added in, which is both interesting and informative. This type of content saves users time in acquiring medical knowledge, and fans' stickiness is very strong. Dingxiang Doctor currently has more than 8 million fans, which is not inferior to some vertical experts.

In addition to brands producing their own content, they should also mobilize fans and influencers on Douyin. Brands can initiate activities or topics on the platform to guide fans and influencers to participate in creation. This is actually no different in essence from the way Weibo marketing works, but most brands are not aware of this.

For example, the "Brand Mission" section of the VIVO account is this kind of content creation method. The current activity is shooting Vlogs, which have the opportunity to obtain recommended traffic and mobile phones. Judging from the page, users' enthusiasm for participation is still relatively high. Looking back, VIVO has carried out many such activities, effectively mobilizing users' creative enthusiasm and promoting the brand.

The core of content operation is long-term high-quality content. If you can produce above-average content over the long term, you will be better than 90% of people.

2. Traffic operation: accumulating private domain traffic

As a super APP with a DAU of over 400 million, Douyin has a huge traffic advantage. The challenge facing brands is how to capture their own private traffic from this huge traffic.

You may ask, since Tik Tok is an algorithm-driven platform, does it also have private domain traffic? Of course, if there is no private domain traffic, fans do not need to be displayed. When Luo Yonghao broadcasts live, a large portion of the traffic comes from private traffic that he manages himself.

IQOO's approach is to launch the campaign #IQOO3硬核心宅# through hard advertising, calling on experts to participate in national tasks, and finally depositing the task content in its own brand account. Most of the experts who participated in the event and their fans were converted into its own fans, which were operated in the long term in the later stage.

Therefore, through hard advertising, we can attract influencers and users from public domain traffic to participate in brand activities, and convert public domain traffic into private domain traffic during the participation process. This is a way of sedimentation.

In addition, live streaming and short video traffic can attract and settle each other. After entering Douyin, some brands will produce and publish content on a daily basis. These contents can be called content marketing. Interested users will watch and become fans of the brand. Then when the brand broadcasts live, these fans will naturally come in to watch.

At the same time, some brands will gain additional traffic during live broadcasts. If these users are interested in live broadcasts, they will also become fans of the brand and gradually become part of the brand’s private domain.

3. Fan operation: let fans form a circle

I have mentioned a personal case. The person who is good at expressing himself is called "The Great Watch Notes". This expert has been operating Douyin for about a month and has more than 5 million fans. In the era of Weibo and WeChat, it is difficult for people in this niche field to obtain such a large amount of traffic and fans.

Such a niche influencer has such a large amount of traffic, thanks to Tik Tok's algorithm, which allows the influencer's videos to appear in the information flow of users who may be interested in watches. Although the content is vertical, the high-quality content ensures that users who are interested in watches receive his information flow.

If these fans can be converted into private traffic, they will form a circle about watches together with the experts.

Douyin's brand accounts are gradually adding similar functions. For example, Mercedes-Benz has retained its fans through the participation of influencers and fans in official activities, and has opened a circle of car owners on its homepage, thus allowing creative users to form a circle. For advertisers, this circle can essentially be understood as a private traffic pool.

Another mention function on the homepage is actually similar to @ on Weibo. This allows the brand to collect relevant content that mentions the brand across the entire platform and deposit high-quality content on its own page.

4. Link operation: from exposure to conversion

In the era of Weibo and Weibo, most brands’ marketing focuses on brand exposure. Short videos, combined with live streaming which has become popular this year, provide brands with a complete conversion path when promoting their products.

Douyin is a content platform that forms the advantages of content e-commerce. When a user sees content related to a certain brand on Douyin multiple times, if he is attracted to it, he will be tempted to buy it. The mini programs, small stores and other modules on the brand homepage can directly encourage users to go from planting seeds to pulling them out.

For example, if you see an influencer introducing a Lancome product on TikTok and are attracted to it, you can learn about related products through the brand account and place an order directly through the product window.

As for the cooperation between short videos and live broadcasts, brands use daily videos to showcase the advantages and features of their products, which arouses the interest of fans and helps them to be attracted to them. By directly offering discounts during live broadcasts to promote short-term consumption, the entire chain from planting seeds to pulling them out is completed.

In 2020, as the traditional model of building brands through large-scale advertising bombardment has become less and less effective, brand building has entered a stage of gradual growth. Based on the platform's own characteristics and advantages, long-term brand marketing will be necessary, and you should make good use of the platform's own tools and products to help yourself. Because the platform also understands that only by bringing real and effective marketing value to advertisers can the platform's own commercial value become greater and greater.

Judging from the platform’s development time and current situation, Douyin’s brand operations are still in a relatively blue ocean, and the platform still lacks benchmark brand representatives. This is an opportunity for leading brands. The next "Durex" may be born on Douyin.

Author: Xunkong

Source: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (ID: xunkong2005)