6 steps to play Douyin blue v account

Industry development has a cycle, with major changes occurring approximately every 20 years. This is true for real estate, finance, and the Internet. In the new media industry, major changes occur every seven years.

Since 2018, “Two Weibo and One Douyin” have become the focus of brand marketing for major companies.

On June 1, 2018, Douyin launched its corporate account, which is also a necessary path for platform-based companies to provide services of different value to different user groups.

The popularity of any platform is accompanied by traffic dividends and content dividends.

In the past two years, Douyin is still in a period of rapid development and the dividend has not yet been fully released, so there is still ample room for development.

It may not be easy for a corporate official account to have a post with more than 100,000 views nowadays, but on Douyin, it can easily get a post with more than 100,000 views, or even more than 1 million views.

In addition, with the arrival of 5G, short videos are unstoppable and an inevitable trend.

The connection between brands and users is inseparable from content. In ancient times, bamboo slips, letters, and lists were used; in modern times, newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet are used. Today, media carriers such as Weibo, WeChat, Tik Tok, and Kuaishou are changing.

From forum blogs to QQ spaces, from Weibo and WeChat to Douyin and Kuaishou, Douyin short videos are increasingly replacing pictures and texts and becoming the most important battlefield for scene marketing due to their immersiveness, strong communication capabilities, and rapidly growing fan base.

However, the core of the content has not changed. From text to pictures to short videos, content marketing has always been an important way to build, enhance and transform brands, and it is also the core of marketing.

There are no traditional enterprises, only traditional thinking.

What really hinders the transformation of traditional enterprises is actually the correct short video thinking. There are four major misunderstandings here.

First, character thinking.

In the future, all brands will be personality brands.

When making short videos, the first thing you should understand is what de-branding means, how to downplay the brand, and how to establish a personal image. Why do we need to build a personal image? Because it is more vertical, easier to attract users, and easier to gain trust. The essence of marketing is to gain the trust of users and to close deals better, faster, and more efficiently.

The core formula for brand upgrading: product brand * personal brand = future brand.

There are many ways to create characters, and you can start with four models: role, personality, scene, and content. There are five steps to building a personal brand: personal positioning, key areas of promotion, establishing differences, content positioning, and content production. I won’t go into details here.

Second, content thinking.

I'm afraid that most traditional companies are still stuck in self-entertainment. Even if you have many impressive awards, you often take photos with politicians, and you are a big player in the industry, these contents can only be published as official news or short videos. These have nothing to do with users and there is no benefit. They will not be interested, and if they are not interested, they will not pay attention to you.

When making short videos, the angle from which the content is approached determines the overall direction of the content and is the top priority before content creation.

Different industries have different entry points, and the most common entry point is from the perspective of product experience. For example, the clothing industry starts from celebrity outfits, and the consumer electronics industry starts from product reviews. You can also approach it from the perspective of the production process, for example, in the catering industry, you can approach it from the cooking process. You can also start from the consumption process. For example, the marketing of Answer Tea starts from the consumption process in which consumers uncover the answers to their questions.

Whether it is products, production or consumption, finding the right entry point is the first step for an enterprise to start content creation.

Third, horizontal screen thinking

Each short video platform has different rules and gameplay. The first breakthrough that traditional business owners should make is the shift from horizontal screen thinking to vertical screen thinking.

If you compare a horizontal screen corporate brand promotional video costing 80,000 or 100,000 yuan with a Douyin short video that costs only a few thousand yuan, most bosses won't be able to pass this test. What the hell is this? It must not be sent out.

When the boss wants to make short videos, he should have a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of the Douyin platform's rules, gameplay, dissemination logic, etc., to conform to Douyin's fast-paced temperament. For new accounts, why should a video that can make the story clear in 15 seconds be made into 30 seconds or even one minute? Users do not have the patience to watch the entire video, which will affect the completion rate, which directly affects the account weight, and the weight determines which level of the traffic pool the account can enter.

On short video platforms such as Tik Tok and Kuaishou, content length is calculated in seconds, and audience attention is extremely scarce. If you don’t understand user attributes and needs, and create content based on your own experience, users may not be interested in the content at all and skip it directly, which will affect the video’s data performance.

Fourth, user thinking

After operating for a long time, we found that all companies must first pass the leadership test, instead of focusing on who the users are, what the users want to see, and what the users' preferences are.

Short video marketing is not about moving the original product introduction from offline materials or online pictures and texts to short videos, but about being based on user thinking, understanding the user's real needs, and customizing corresponding content according to those needs.

It is impossible for one video to explain everything. If you try to express everything, you will end up expressing nothing well. Each video has one theme and should get to the point within the first five seconds. Therefore, the control of content rhythm, dialogue design, as well as basic settings such as avatars, covers, and introductions should all be carefully designed and refined, and cannot all be done according to the boss's requirements for traditional promotional videos.

Wait until your leader has thought this through and everything is perfect before releasing it. By then, it will be too late. The rules of Douyin change every day. If you do it later, the threshold will only get higher and higher.

When creating content, whether it is a public account or a short video, you must maintain a sincere and down-to-earth content background and output high-quality content. This will make it easier to establish a trusting relationship with the audience and facilitate the ultimate conversion. Use content to narrow the distance with potential users, break information asymmetry, and complete upgrade and transformation.

As a form of content, short videos do not help traditional enterprises by directly boosting productivity, but by providing greater room for imagination for corporate marketing through content as a carrier.

So, how should the Douyin corporate account be built?

To play with the enterprise account, of course you need to certify the blue v, the benefits are:

1.Official certification mark: highlight the corporate identity and authoritative credit endorsement.

2. Customize the homepage header image to make brand promotion more intuitive.

3. Home page link jumps to provide a landing platform for the company's official website content.

4. Pin the video to the top of the homepage to increase the viewing priority of key content on the homepage.

It can enhance brand video recognition, which is equivalent to giving a privilege to certified users, link jump services and vertical sales conversion components. After the short video attracts user attention, exploring conversion is the part that Douyin is constantly helping companies improve.

1. Link jump service: Currently, you can put any links and promotional content (such as official website) you want in this place, providing more display opportunities and visits for brand or product presentation;

2. Sales conversion service: Provide vertical conversion components for each industry to facilitate the implementation of marketing → communication → conversion behavior (this function is currently under internal testing).

After certification, the Douyin corporate account will be recommended at the top when searching for the full nickname. This unique lock shows that Douyin attaches great importance to this corporate account. For corporate accounts, there is a video pinning service, which allows key video content to be reheated, bringing more exposure opportunities.

Next, I will briefly share with you a complete set of methodology that Xiaohan has summarized from his past year of exploration into short video operations.

1. Research

As for the first step, many masters will tell you to do positioning, account positioning, and personality positioning. This is correct. However, they will not tell you how to do positioning. I come from a management consulting background. Whenever I get any problem, my first step is always research. The same goes for Tik Tok. Before doing positioning, you should do research first.

Positioning is, of course, necessary. To do accurate positioning, we must start with three surveys.

The first research is to research competitors, find competitor accounts, and see how successful competitor accounts in this field operate on Douyin? What content did they publish and how was it packaged? What is the character label of a person? How to monetize? How to plan a closed-loop drainage system?

After clarifying these questions, you will have a preliminary understanding of how a brand in a niche field can do Douyin.

For example, before going to the securities company where we are recently proposing a proposal, I looked through all the Douyin accounts with more than 100,000 followers, summarized several rules, integrated my own thinking, and thought about how we would operate. This way you will have a basic understanding in your mind, and when you communicate with Party A, it will show that you have done enough homework.

These can also be learned by communicating with the client or collecting information. The second survey is to survey users and create fan portraits, which is the same logic as creating a public account.

Who are the users? What are their ages, regions, occupations, genders, behavioral habits, hobbies, consumption scenarios, and personality traits? What are their needs, what kind of content do they like, and what kind of short videos should these contents be made into?

Another aspect of the research is to investigate the company's own advantageous resources, because it is necessary to combine the brand's own labels and tone for positioning, such as brand culture, what are the highlights? Talent team, are there any in-house talents with performing skills and special expertise? What selling points can be explored in the product? Are there any stories you can tell about brand consumption scenarios?

If the brand is a professional and scientific official brand, then the output content should also be professional and credible. If the entertainment content is operated in a spoof manner, it may cause damage to the brand.

Second, positioning

The second step is to enter the Douyin account positioning stage.

What exactly is positioning?

In fact, positioning is to make people remember your Douyin account, distinguish it from other accounts, form a clear cognition and label in the minds of fans, and give fans a reason to remember you, follow you, and recommend you.

Public accounts will also undergo positioning analysis. The positioning of personal accounts is built around personal brands, while the positioning of corporate accounts is built around the company’s brand value and monetization paths.

Therefore, when positioning a company’s Douyin account, on the one hand, it is necessary to consider the needs of fans and rely on high-quality content to attract more target users as much as possible. On the other hand, it is necessary to combine the company’s own brand labels and brand tone to make positioning.

The biggest difference between brands is culture. Starting with culture is a good entry point. But it is not absolute.

The key point of positioning is differentiation.

If direct positioning is not possible, positioning can be output from more detailed content. There are three principles for corporate Douyin content positioning that are relatively easy to monetize, which can be used as a reference. Most of the content that is relatively easy to become popular are professional vertical high-quality content.

1. Create segmented content within the field - vertical content.

2. ECG-style popular layout – content matrix.

3. Create precise content around the product—super strong conversion.

3. Content

Creating content, especially high-quality content on a continuous basis, requires a lot of cost and energy investment. For companies, they can either outsource or form their own team to operate it.

For corporate Douyin accounts, the content can basically be divided into three types:

1. Professional science popularization type

An expert explains professional science in a serious or excited manner. I believe you often see this kind of video. Currently, Dingxiang Doctor’s Douyin is operated in this way. This method is not difficult, the cost of creation is low, and the time and energy invested are limited. However, it has high requirements for the experts who appear on the screen. They must have strong professional skills, a sense of camera, the ability to give speeches, and good looks. However, the increase in fans will be slow, and monetization will not be so fast, and it needs to be accumulated slowly.

2. Creative Theater

Many accounts adopt this model, with actors, plots, and scenes. It has certain requirements for creative scripts, actor performance skills, and production level, but it is easy to produce popular videos. The connection with the brand and products is not very strong, it is more difficult to grasp, and the monetization is not so direct, but it is very helpful for initial brand exposure and popularity.

3. Sensory experience

Because of the sensory experience, the details of the product must be presented to users in a more vivid and intuitive manner, so the requirements for shooting are very high, and the subsequent monetization ability of the sensory experience type is relatively strong.

At the same time, there are two things to note when operating Douyin content:

1. Interesting and practical, reject vulgar imitations: It is best for brands to create interesting content, which is also the content that is easier to spread on Douyin. Of course, practical short videos about eating methods launched by restaurants or fast-moving consumer goods are also very popular. Then companies can create a lot of content based on their own characteristics. For example, how to take photos with a mobile phone, how to drink water, and creative packaging ideas.

2. Cleverly combine hot topics and refuse to follow the trend without bottom line: You can participate in hot topics and popular content. Official corporate accounts are different from works launched by ordinary users, so you must pay attention to copyright and bottom lines. Regulations should be made in advance for the standardized use of maps, historical figures, and attacks on competing products.

4. Team

The key to entrepreneurship is people. We need to find the right people to work on Douyin. The overall principle is to improve labor efficiency, improve material efficiency, be fast, edit quickly, iterate quickly, use fewer people, less time, and less cost.

The key point is to find the right person!

In new media companies, the golden configuration for playing Tik Tok is three people.

The first one is responsible for screenwriting planning, character creation, jokes, and scripts. This person must be very creative, have an active mind, a broad imagination, like to watch Douyin, be particularly sensitive to popular hot topics, and have good writing skills. He is equivalent to the editor in the era of official accounts.

This person needs to have a strong user mindset, not be self-satisfied, be able to plan content from the perspective of user needs and pain points, be able to judge what type of videos will be popular, know who his or her users are, and what kind of content can cater to his or her target user group. He or she must be familiar with video tools, be able to do storyboards, write scripts, and understand marketing, brands, and have new media promotion capabilities. This person is critical.

The second person is responsible for shooting and editing. Don't think that shooting and editing are complicated. In fact, one person can do it. There are many tool software now, and you can just use a SLR to shoot. A editor who has never been exposed to these can consider learning these skills. Generally, you can get started in 15 days.

However, you need to have a good sense of the camera, a "sense of the internet", and a certain aesthetic sense of lens composition. It is equivalent to a technical partner, responsible for the execution of shooting, editing, subtitles, and music. It is best to complete it with a mobile phone and a SLR camera. There are also many app tools in this regard on mobile phones.

Compared with the people who do shooting and editing in traditional film and television companies, they may not be able to do Douyin well, because their way of thinking is different. Douyin is more natural, down-to-earth, dramatic, and realistic, while the methods of film and television companies are too "rigid".

The third person is an actor who can perform on camera and is not required to have great acting skills. Either you need to be good-looking, or you need to show rapeseed flowers, or you need to be very funny, or you need to have useful information. If you need to shoot a real scene on Douyin, you will also need external staff to cooperate, such as makeup artists, lighting engineers, sound engineers, and packaging engineers.

5. Delivery

Now the client has taken the initiative to propose to advertise on short video platforms. Indeed, advertising should be placed wherever there is large traffic.

Brands all hope to leverage the mainstream, powerful, and positive influencer effect to bring about the most efficient conversion for their products.

At present, there is fierce competition among influencers on the Douyin platform, and prices are rising. How to deliver short video ads more efficiently? The following five steps need to be clear:

1) Communicate needs and understand the purpose of the campaign first

I asked the client, is the main purpose of this campaign to expose the brand or to promote sales?

If you want to promote products that can go viral on Douyin, the price should be within 50 yuan, 70 yuan is the watershed, and the commission must be above 70%. This is the truth, and many clients dare not invest. You know the details.

Clients who are mainly looking for brand exposure should consider that based on the video, social, and life fun needs of the TikTok platform, high-quality content should still be the important driving force. They should first think clearly about what subject matter to publish, which influencer accounts to publish it on, and what the rules and requirements are for the publication.

2) Keep up with hot topics and plan content selection

Content selection and planning is very important. It should focus on topics that users are concerned about and discuss a lot. The most fundamental thing is to return to the deep insight into users.

When planning topics, we will predict in advance where users’ attention will focus over a period of time, for example: 1. Traditional marketing nodes, such as the Spring Festival holiday, e-commerce festivals, and various holidays; 2. Traditional hot topics of public opinion, such as emotional life, workplace work, popular topics, etc.; 3. For current hot topics, we can focus on observing the hot search lists of Douyin and Weibo.

When advertisers use the "TikTok Hot Search List" as a reference for popular marketing topics, a high ranking means that a large number of users on TikTok have seen the hot topics and related content, which is determined by the platform's recommendation mechanism.

If it is implanted into short video creation as content insight, many users have already seen it and have psychological expectations, so it will be difficult for them to pay for the content. So, we usually start with around 10-15 on the list.

3) Integrate resources and select matching talent matrix

Secondly, in order to decide which influencer accounts to target, you need to have the resources and capabilities to select high-quality influencers that match your brand attributes.

At present, the positioning of Douyin influencers and video content are also developing towards verticalization, refinement and depth. There are vertical KOLs in all walks of life, and the content has risen to the spiritual level.

This part will also be the mainstream content of Douyin in the future. It is not enough to be simply "interesting". The content must also be "useful". Only "useful" content has vitality. The so-called Internet celebrities, funny people, and jokes are already amazing to be popular for two years, but the conversion rate and user stickiness are not strong.

A large part of our resource advantage is to help Party A quickly find emerging KOLs and core KOLs in vertical fields, and to cooperate in the early and middle stages of the vertical KOL life cycle, which can effectively reduce the cost of Douyin advertising.

To select high-quality influencers, you need to learn to analyze and judge the influencer's account data. Usually, there are three judgment principles to follow: 1. Whether the influencer's account data performance is high-quality; 2. Whether the influencer's fans overlap. If the overlap of fans of two accounts exceeds 50%, it is best to choose one of the two and do not waste budget; 3. Whether the influencer's content creation is stable.

In this regard, just like with official accounts, the water is quite complicated. Finding a professional new media company will help you avoid many detours and save money.

Judgment is made based on the three principles of "analyzing account data performance", "deduplication" and "content creation". In particular, in "Analyze Account Data Performance", focus on observing data such as fan likes, playback overflow, fan increase speed, and related costs of Douyin advertising.

Based on these strategies, you can basically screen out expert accounts that meet project needs, have high-quality accounts, and have low fan overlap. Finally, detailed adjustments need to be made based on the degree of cooperation between the influencer and MCN, schedule arrangements, whether they are willing to purchase dou+, etc.

4) Content creation, refer to the golden formula

Furthermore, there is a golden formula for "short video content creation" for what content to release: a suspenseful, eye-catching beginning - a popular, highly discussed topic - a dramatic structure - middle content with reversals and conflicts - guiding copywriting.

Specific content planning needs to be combined with the brand label, the message you want to convey, and specific analysis of specific cases. This is a technical job.

5) Data analysis, leveraging marketing tools

Of course, marketing tools are also essential. Douyin has a wide range of marketing tools for advertising, such as store promotion, landing page promotion, as well as dou+, Doudian, etc., which can help promote high-quality videos.

Because Tik Tok has unique social relationships, advertisers' marketing videos can also be expanded by allowing similar influencers to like and repost each other's videos, thereby allowing fans of the same tags on both sides to direct traffic to each other.

The quality of video content can be judged through the following data dimensions, such as UV and PV conversion, the ratio of users entering the page and the number of views, conversion effect, landing page clicks and interaction rate, etc., which mainly depends on the data range that the brand can monitor.

Therefore, at the marketing level, when advertisers make Douyin videos, they should focus on the compatibility between product selling points and influencers, and at the same time expand more traffic and achieve fan diversion through Doudian, dou+ and Douyin’s unique social relationships.

The future of Tik Tok marketing, from the vertical classification of influencers to the sublimation of content, reminds brand advertisers that they should keep up with the times and track cutting-edge trends!

6. Monetization

Douyin, a corporate blue v certified account, supports brand conversion and monetization. It also provides many channels, such as the Doudian tool released the day before yesterday, which is used to help physical stores attract traffic and conversions.

If it is a physical product, you can directly add the merchant address to facilitate users to jump to the map search page, making it easier for users to go to the physical store for consumption. If you want to incubate internet celebrities in the lifestyle and entertainment sector, you can use the traffic of Douyin to increase your traffic on WeChat, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu.

Now we are talking about a lot of private domain traffic, and Douyin is relatively fast. For example, it can direct traffic through private messages or signatures, private WeChat accounts, or communities.

If the company's Douyin IP becomes popular, it can also start live broadcasts, interact with fans during the live broadcasts, and receive gifts. Taking on advertising and e-commerce shopping carts is relatively far-fetched, and many companies have their own mature products and profit models.

The Internet has changed the business model, and self-media has changed the mode of information dissemination. Short videos, led by Douyin, have changed the content distribution logic and content consumption model, and may even change the reading habits of a generation.

With its characteristics of immersion, strong communication ability, and rapid growth in fans, Tik Tok short videos are increasingly replacing pictures and texts and becoming the most important battlefield for scene marketing.

Finally, what are the real benefits of short videos?

What short videos really bring us is: more "lazy" users, users who are more greedy for "short-term gratification", and users who are more greedy for "sensory stimulation". What Douyin has captured is the incremental group that missed out on the WeChat and Weibo era. Whether it is Tik Tok’s algorithm mechanism or the way the content is presented, it helps “lazy people” to better consume short video content. This is our opportunity, and this is the real benefit brought by short videos.

To understand the short video operation of corporate brands, you only need to understand this picture.

Author: Xiaohan Tang

Source: Tang Xiaohan