How to attract 1 million new followers in 2020?

Attracting new customers is a key point in operational work. When you receive a task from your superiors to attract new customers, how do you plan and prepare well? How to take advantage of hot spots, coordinate resources, and organize teams?

Today, let’s call it the “Million Plan”. Many of my colleagues may laugh at me and think I am just daydreaming.

The author recalled that when I was at Sina iAsk two years ago, the traffic director gave me a goal of attracting 5 million new public account users in half a year. That was what we call daydreaming!

What I want to talk to you about now is how we can take advantage of the situation, coordinate resources, and organize a team to complete the task of 1 million users in 2020! If you have different opinions, you are welcome to leave a message to communicate.

1. Traffic: The lifeblood of enterprises in the Internet era

In the second half of the mobile Internet, it is a consensus that it is difficult to acquire users and the cost is high. For an Internet company, in addition to the product itself, users are the first matrix that the company should place in its development.

In view of this, for a platform with basically no brand influence, how can it quickly and cheaply acquire millions of high-net-worth traffic? How to improve resource ROI?

2. Trend: Find the right direction and follow the trend

Where users gather, that’s the world.

With the launch of short video platforms such as Meipai and Weishi, and then to Kuaishou, Huoshan Video (15s), Douyin (15-90s), and Xigua Video (2-5min), why have short videos developed so rapidly in just a few years?

With the maturity of mobile technology and the continuous development of mobile Internet, the ways users obtain information are changing with each passing day, and the amount of information obtained is increasing exponentially; the content presentation form has also developed from pictures, texts, videos to short videos. Now the content is becoming more and more fragmented, and human energy is undoubtedly limited. Faced with overwhelming information, the evolution of content video is in line with the human nature of users pursuing "convenience".

At this point, everyone can imagine what the user's usage scenario is like?

"Seaweed, seaweed, dancing in the waves, seaweed, seaweed,..." I believe everyone has heard this brainwashing BGM on the subway or bus. The author has even heard it in shopping malls and on variety shows. Its popularity was continuously fermented on Douyin.

Under the influence of three factors: the boring text content, the fatigue of users' energy, and the driving force of the network environment, it is self-evident that users are less accepting of video content.

According to QuestMobile data, the monthly usage time of mobile video users has been rising in recent years, as shown in the following figure:

The total monthly usage time of short videos is also increasing, which proves that video content has been well developed.

Currently, short video platforms, led by Tik Tok, have begun to fully penetrate users' leisure time, leaving no room for any gap. On the other hand, according to QuestMobile data analysis, the number of users of Douyin short videos is constantly moving to third- and fourth-tier cities, which shows the momentum of short videos sweeping across the country.

At the beginning of the first lunar month, New Weekly also mentioned in the article "50 Predictions About 2019" that "short videos will become the biggest trend in 2019" and it is not groundless.

3. Contradiction: Emotional cognition vs. rational cognition

At this point, I would like to first mention a doubt I once had, or this may also be everyone’s current doubt. I welcome everyone to discuss this together: Can the user’s emotional cognition coexist on a short video platform? (If you are not interested, you can ignore this paragraph, because it is quite long.)

For example, let me talk about the financial industry where I work. Our department has also discussed this issue. Because entertainment content and financial content, one is an emotional understanding and the other is a rational cognition, both appear on the same short video platform at the same time, will it make it difficult for users to accept or cause cognitive conflicts?

In early 2018, the slogan of Douyin was changed from "a music short video community focusing on the new generation" to "recording a beautiful life". From the perspective of the product's underlying design, what remains unchanged is that the TikTok product is carefully designed based on the physiological characteristics of the brain - humans are often unable to resist their own instincts and desires, and the purpose is to make people constantly addicted and spend a lot of time indulging in it. This design logic has a compliment in the product world – user stickiness. But users have been immersed in entertainment short videos, and their sense of guilt will continue to increase as time accumulates. What is guilt?

Explanation of guilt: "Guilt" is also known as "moral phobia", which refers to the "moral phobia" that occurs when humans intentionally or unintentionally have some unrealistic ideas, or have done something wrong, and are afraid of being condemned. This is also the reason why Douyin was previously at the center of public opinion, with all kinds of "entertainment to death" labels attached to Douyin.

At the beginning of 2018, the content structure of Douyin changed: from "focusing on the new generation of music short video community" to "recording a better life", the content structure has undergone tremendous changes. Obviously, Douyin has become a diversified short video UCG/PGC platform (that is, it opens diversified short video content to all mobile users/there is also no shortage of professional short video content in vertical fields).

Learning from history, we can infer from the development trajectories of Tieba, Weibo, and WeChat public accounts that the iteration pattern of platform content is from disorder to order, that is, development towards vertical classification.

For example, categories such as media, celebrities, social affairs, internet celebrities, beauty, technology, life skills, and knowledge. Back to the feeling of guilt, since we have done something wrong, can we do something right to make ourselves feel better? Having received 12 years of education, we have already formed an inertial thinking of learning, coupled with users' innate knowledge anxiety. Based on these two points, each user's demand for content is different, and it will become increasingly difficult to satisfy their needs. Therefore, for most operators, it is possible to output vertical content and valuable content/dry goods.

For short video platforms, perceptual knowledge and rational cognition exist in a mutually reinforcing relationship. The constantly enriched PGC content is more conducive to the long-term development of the platform.

4. Growth: Fission is the only way to increase user growth at low cost

Continuing with the second part above: How can we leverage the momentum to boost user growth in 2019? The author will elaborate on this in the following five parts.

1. Short video platform

With the continuous enrichment of material life, it can be said that the people's demand for spiritual entertainment has exceeded the demand for daily material life, so it is not surprising that a popular short video can attract thousands of users.

Next, I will talk about the preparations that need to be made before starting a corporate short video (taking Douyin as an example):

a. Content positioning

Pay attention! ! ! Content positioning is the lifeline of a short video account. The key is to find content that hits the popular needs.

The author found 6 representative Douyin corporate account examples, and you can first refer to their content positioning and number of fans.

Data as of January 2019

It can be found that the author believes that the content of corporate Douyin accounts can basically be divided into three types. The first is knowledge and content, the second is mass entertainment, and the third is sensory experience.

For products/services such as Dingxiang Doctor and Medical Educator, you can go for the knowledge-based approach to demonstrate professionalism and authority, but you need to be as interesting as possible in your explanations and start with topics that are close to life to avoid setting a high learning threshold for users.

Taking the Rolex watch as an example, the popular entertainment style is very consistent with the tone of the Douyin platform. Of course, there are many other cases, such as: Blue Xiaobai in the Workplace, Dushe Entertainment, Tan Zhou, etc.

For beauty and apparel products, I take Blue Babe as an example. It mobilizes users’ emotional cognition through sensory experience to gain traffic and sales.

To sum up, we can find some rules (for enterprise accounts):

Knowledge-based content: The update frequency is the highest because the content is easy to produce. The average number of followers per video will not be particularly high but is relatively stable. Overall, the number of followers of the account can continue to grow steadily and is highly relevant to the product.

Mass entertainment: The update frequency is the lowest, and it is difficult to produce high-quality content. It requires higher creative ability from content personnel. Good content can increase the number of fans per video, but the growth stability is not necessarily strong. It is difficult to grasp the relevance to the product, and whether it is compatible with subsequent monetization remains to be discussed;

Sensory experience type: The update frequency is moderate, the requirements for shooting and post-production are higher, the details of the product can be more intuitively displayed to users, and the subsequent monetization capabilities are strong.

b. What route to take

Before deciding which route to take, we need to break down the capabilities required of operators for the three types of content short videos mentioned above:

1) Requirements for personnel capabilities of knowledge-based content: content operation > actors > video production;

2) Mass entertainment type has requirements on personnel capabilities: content operation > actors > video production;

3) The sensory experience type has requirements on the strength of personnel capabilities: video production>actors>content production.

From this and part a above, we can see that the preliminary framework plan has been formed, but please note that this does not mean that the layout, positioning, and route of the content have been completely determined. The next step is to officially enter the execution, verification, and correction part.

If you slowly find that the number of fans increases by at least 30,000 to 50,000 every day and it lasts for more than a week. Well, congratulations, you have found the right position!

c. Short video matrix

In fact, short videos can be distributed on multiple platforms just like text content. During the previous article distribution process, the author found that articles that were not recommended on Toutiao received more than 200,000 clicks on the Dafenghao media platform. This situation still occurs frequently.

In addition to the Douyin short video platform headed by "5 minutes on Douyin, 2 hours in the real world", the short video sections of Weishi, Kuaishou, Xigua Video, Bilibili and information platforms can also be settled in.

2. Traditional video platforms

The three old-fashioned video platforms such as iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video can also be used as content distribution platforms. The purpose is to gain brand exposure, but the brand display in the opening and ending credits must be done well in the early stage.

3. Comprehensive information platform

​At present, the competition for corporate self-media in the fields of culture and education, sports and health, culture and tourism, maternal and child care, finance, etc. on information platforms is not very fierce, which means it is still a blue ocean. The author once had an article (finance category) published on Dafenghao (Phoenix News Media Platform) that received nearly 10 million recommendations.

Number of vertical industry programs on consulting platforms

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Financial content, data performance in news media

According to the author's experience, comprehensive media platforms mainly measure the weight of an account based on five dimensions: verticality, originality, interactivity, health, and activity. The weight of an account is directly related to the recommendation of the account content.

4. WeChat Official Account

WeChat official account is a PGC platform for outputting information/services/content that is attached to the national social software WeChat. Needless to say, it is very convenient in terms of user maintenance, user fission, and user conversion. There are also many mature cases in terms of user growth: red envelope fission, community fission, sharing assistance, etc.

The figure below shows the data of red envelope fission activities conducted in 2016 and 2018 selected by the author. According to the retention data statistics on the second day, the lowest cost of red envelope fission is 0.23 yuan per person, which should be the lowest cost in the entire traffic market. Next, you can pay attention to the fission speed and fission effect:

a. The time to receive the red envelope is in seconds, which shows its fission speed;

b. The first event was held during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2016, and dozens of similar events were held in 2018. The fission effect still worked.

2016 Mid-Autumn Festival Red Envelope Fission Activity

2018 Mid-Autumn Festival Red Envelope Fission Activity

5. Weibo

As a long-established new media platform, Weibo’s trust endorsement effect is unquestionable, so it can be used as a platform for corporate platform brand display.

In addition, Weibo's fission environment is more open, and the interactive methods supported by the platform are applicable to many industries. The main marketing methods include: lucky wheel, limited-time flash sales, rewarded forwarding, pre-order purchases, free trials, and rewarded solicitations. Generally speaking, these functions can also attract traffic for the company.

5. Conversion: Conversion and monetization is the most basic respect for users

What this means is that after attracting traffic, you must continue to output valuable content or services to users and convert them into cash. Just like in a relationship, you attract the person but then you don’t take responsibility. Congratulations, you’ve been labeled a “scumbag”.

There are many scenarios for corporate media conversion, such as directly inserting advertisements in the content to guide traffic to the APP/public account that needs to be refluxed, or Douyin and Toutiao accounts themselves have the function of releasing products.

There are many successful cases of taking advertisements to become traffic sources, doing e-commerce, and offering online courses. At the same time, you can also strive for advertising revenue sharing from information media platforms, platform subsidies, etc. Due to space constraints, I will not list them all here.

6. Team: Unity is strength, we are not fighting alone

No matter how much you say, no matter how good it is, it is just talk. Only action is the only criterion for testing methodology.

Hey, we finally come to the hardcore part. Let’s talk about how to build a content team. For your reference, I will give two examples. One is purely in the field of entertainment short videos, and the other is self-media in the financial field.

1. Short video group

Members: 3 people (taking Douyin user “Feichai Chai Maomao” as an example)​

1. a. Starring: Starring x2 + Guest appearance xN
2. b. Screenwriter: The main actors take turns to be screenwriters, mainly responsible for content and scripts, etc.
3. c. Shooting + post-production: (editor + photographer) x1
4. d. Display of some works: Spring Festival travel ticket grabbing, New Year's Day work, "I will support you" (click to watch the video)

Note:

a. The above lineup is suitable for the initial team to form.

b. Adhere to the principle of 3-5 updates per week. Based on the scripts submitted by the team members, the script will be voted on at the discussion meeting on Friday. On Monday, the screenwriter will organize the script and synchronize it with the team members based on the discussion content. If there are any objections, such as problems with the lines or shots, adjustments will be made again, and we will strive to finalize everything before shooting. Shooting starts on Tuesday, editing on Wednesday and Thursday), and reviewing the video results of the previous week every Friday.

2. Financial We-Media

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Members: 3 people (taking Douyin’s financial account and financial vertical KOL “Xiaobai Reads Finance” as an example)​

1. 1. Starring: Editor-in-Chief x1 + Editor x1
2. 2. Screenwriter: The screenwriter is a senior financial editor-in-chief/editor, who mainly produces content and scripts.
3. 3. Shooting + post-production: (editor + photographer) x1

Note: The above lineup is suitable for the initial team to form.

1. We adhere to the principle of updating 3-5 times a week. Based on the scripts submitted by team members, the script will be voted on at the discussion meeting on Friday. On Monday, the screenwriter will organize the script and synchronize it with team members based on the discussion content. If there are any objections, such as problems with the lines or shots, adjustments will be made again, and we strive to finalize everything before shooting. Shooting starts on Tuesday, editing on Wednesday and Thursday), and reviewing the video results of the previous week every Friday.
2. Financial content can also be published in the form of text on information content platforms, which has a higher use value than entertainment videos;
3. The domestic market economy is not doing well at present, so entering the financial field at this time will achieve good results.

7. Resources: When investing resources, you should understand the principle of leverage.

It is no problem to have 1 million users. It depends on how much resources the boss invests. Once we have the resources, we can continuously integrate resources, optimize operating methods and improve ROI value. Generally speaking, our resources consist of the following parts:

1. The composition of the team members (try to have women who are dramatic/good-looking, financial experts who look very convincing);
2. Equipment for video shooting (camera, lighting, tripod, earphone microphone, depending on the budget);
3. Budget for activity resources (needed for various traffic generation and new customer acquisition activities);
4. Account verification fees, etc. (If there is anything else, it should be what the author did not expect).

8. The dust has not yet been washed off after the first crossing of the mountain pass, so I spur my horse and gallop forward again

"New media", a product of the development of mobile Internet, can itself bring great development opportunities to Internet companies. But for us operators, why are we still struggling until now?

Let’s take a look at the comebacks of major self-media such as Luoji Siwei, Mimi Meng, Papi Jiang, Gu Ye, and Xiaobai Reading Finance, and you will find that “continuously creating valuable vertical content” is the key.

Faced with an environment of content homogeneity, fragmented reading, and entertainment-oriented demands, simply pursuing popular articles or hot events to acquire users is obviously difficult to achieve the goal.

How about we do low-cost activities to attract traffic? As far as I know, the lowest-cost traffic-generating plan for public accounts currently costs 0.5 yuan per account (stable period). Completing the "Million Plan" means investing about 500,000 yuan, which is not a small amount.

Therefore, if you want to get a piece of the pie in the second half of the mobile Internet, in 2020, the way out is to focus on short videos and create hits.

Author: Shengjie

Source: Shengjie is not surnamed Li