Two key points for Kuaishou promotion and traffic generation!

Kuaishou started to build an education vertical category in 2018, and attracted many individual or institutional operators in the education sector by launching traffic support activities such as "Education Partners" and "No Classes but No Learning".

From the "2019 Kuaishou Education Ecosystem Report" released by Kuaishou in October 2019, we can see that Kuaishou currently basically covers institutions in K12, knowledge payment, adult, preschool, agriculture, rural areas and other education categories.

For Kuaishou, it has achieved some phased success in creating the education category. However, for the educational institutions or individuals that have settled in, after the traffic support period, most of them do not seem to have fully achieved the expectations they had when they settled in. For example, Spark Education has been in business since 2019, but so far only has more than 1,000 followers among its dozen or so accounts; the number of followers of all Wendu Postgraduate Entrance Examination accounts is around 1 million, and the number of followers of its Douyin account is around 4 million.

By analyzing the positioning, content and operations of these accounts, we found that there were various reasons that prevented the operators from achieving expected returns. For example, Wendu's operations on Kuaishou are basically similar to those on Douyin, still centered on a single video. However, Kuaishou has greater restrictions on the exposure of a single video and should use the platform's social attributes to expand exposure. Sparks' operations on both Kuaishou and Douyin are not ideal, probably because of a lack of focused investment.

So for education operators, how do they operate on Kuaishou? This article will analyze the characteristics and users of the Kuaishou platform, and use cases to explore Kuaishou's entry and operation ideas, hoping to provide some inspiration for education-related practitioners. The article mainly includes:

• Analysis of Kuaishou platform characteristics and users
• What type of educational operators are suitable for Kuaishou?
• How to obtain expected returns on Kuaishou?
• Summary and some thoughts

Kuaishou platform characteristics and user analysis

By tracing the development process of a platform, we can better understand the platform’s rules and restrictions, and even predict future developments, thereby helping us obtain the platform’s dividends.

In 2011, Kuaishou came into the public eye as a funny GIF production tool. During the 9 years, it has evolved from a tool ➡ community ➡ short video platform, and gradually become a national-level app with over 300 million daily active users.

Kuaishou was initially a tool product, and the GIF animations it produced were mainly "parodies" and "funny", which were widely circulated on Weibo, so "grassroots, loser, down-to-earth, rebellious, and young" became the labels for this group of seed users.

Although these labels have been gradually washed off in recent years, the darker background color has been preserved. The slogans such as "Everyone deserves to be recorded" and "There is no high or low in life" promote a kind of "universal" value, which is quite different from Douyin's positioning of "recording a beautiful life" and fashion trends.

Because tools have problems such as being easy to replace and difficult to monetize, Kuaishou began to transform into a community in 2013. At that time, 87% of Kuaishou's users were born in the 1990s, and 46% were born in the 2000s. Kuaishou met the needs of many young people to express themselves and expand their social circles. And by using methods such as "sinking & rural areas & the north" to surround the city with the countryside, a unique "old iron culture" was quickly formed.

Although Kuaishou now has more and more users in first- and second-tier cities, and its user portrait is getting closer and closer to Douyin, it still has a strong "jianghu flavor".

Version V4.09, which was launched in April 2014, makes Kuaishou truly short-video-oriented, and users can dub and present the animated images they have created. At that time, the popularity of 4G/WIFI/smart phones led to a rapid increase in the number of Kuaishou users. MC Tianyou registered an account and posted a seven-second video, "My name is Li Tianyou, and I will remain the same." After waking up, he had 400,000 followers. This was also a period of rapid growth in the number of Kuaishou users.

In terms of monetization, Kuaishou is no exception, just like most traffic platforms sell advertising. But in addition to this, due to its unique "old iron culture", the live broadcast + e-commerce model has achieved great success in Kuaishou. This is also the core revenue source of Kuaishou after it developed the live broadcast function in 2016. Therefore, in terms of commercial monetization, compared to Douyin, which mainly relies on advertising marketing, Kuaishou has more advantages in selling goods.

To sum up, we can see that Kuaishou is a community platform that is inclusive, community-based, and values ​​individuals. At the same time, we also hope to achieve the common interests of the platform and operators by bringing goods or providing services through the close relationship between creators and users.

Based on the above characteristics, is it worthwhile for online education institutions or individuals to invest in it?

What kind of educational operators are suitable for Kuaishou?

From the perspective of the purpose of operators entering the platform, one is to gain product exposure and increase the market penetration of the brand or product, thereby promoting word-of-mouth communication and trust endorsement; the other is to obtain leads and convert fans of public domain traffic into customers to gain profits. So, is Kuaishou suitable for brand promotion or obtaining leads in the education category?

In general, Kuaishou is not suitable for brand promotion, and whether it is suitable for lead acquisition needs to be analyzed in combination with the operator's current situation.

The reason why Kuaishou is not suitable for brand promotion is that it uses a universal algorithm. When the popularity reaches a certain threshold, the exposure will decrease, and it cannot achieve the purpose of large-scale exposure and penetration.

When it comes to obtaining sales leads, the important criterion is the ability to obtain more leads at a lower cost. There are two main ways: advertising and self-built account system operation.

If you just want to quickly gain traffic, use Kuaishou as a channel for advertising. You can combine the cost of the current delivery channel with the cost of obtaining form leads for the education category you operate on Kuaishou, or measure it based on the final ROI of the channel.

If Kuaishou’s lead cost is lower, it can be directly delivered. If the cost of Kuaishou leads is slightly higher than the current delivery channels, you can also try to deliver it and measure the final ROI by tracking the back-end conversion effects.

If you plan to build your own account system for mid- to long-term operations, you need to consider building a closed loop of traffic ➡ fans ➡ fan conversion. Currently, Kuaishou provides certain traffic support for the education category. At the same time, based on the inclusive algorithm, video content can obtain a certain basic traffic.

However, its community attributes require operators to have a certain frequency of interaction with users so as to establish intimacy with fans. Then, based on the intimacy and trust built, e-commerce live streaming is carried out to gain profits.

This is quite different from TikTok, which uses the content of each video as its granularity and needs to consider how to create a popular video. In content production, various forms can be adopted, such as outsourcing and cooperation. Kuaishou is based on operators. What is important is that it can enable users to form a certain degree of trust in creators through content. It is creator-centric, so it needs relatively fixed editors, directors, marketers, and live broadcast personnel, etc., so there is a certain investment in the team.

In addition, in addition to providing traffic for educational products, Kuaishou also hopes that operators can directly use the platform's live broadcast or Kuaishou classroom to complete corresponding services and thus receive commissions, so there are certain limitations on conversions. The course products in Kuaishou stores need to be able to be experienced and learned directly on the platform. This is of great benefit to individuals or small organizations that do not have a capacity building system, but it is not very friendly to organizations that have their own systems.

In general, if you plan to build your own account system:

• For individuals or operators without a service system, Kuaishou is a good platform that can achieve a closed loop from traffic – conversion – service;
• For organizations with their own system support, it is necessary to determine based on the existing resources of the company or department: ✅ If there is a complete video content production, operation and live broadcast team or the company has the ability to build a complete team, you can move in as soon as possible; ✅ If resources are tight, you can consider a small investment or no investment for the time being

Next, let’s talk about how to obtain expected returns for operators who are preparing to or are already operating their own account system on Kuaishou.

How to obtain expected returns on Kuaishou?

To operate your own account and obtain the expected benefits, you must do the following four steps:

• Account positioning: Determine the account persona and tags to accurately reach target users
• Content production: Multiple themes and formats cooperate with each other to enhance the richness of content and ensure high-frequency interaction with fans
• Operational exposure: Using the social attributes of Kuaishou to amplify the exposure of content and accounts
• Traffic conversion: efficient conversion of fans based on trust relationship

1. Account positioning

This is the first step in operating Kuaishou. As mentioned above, Kuaishou also adopts recommendation logic and has strong community attributes. For individual operators, it is necessary to refine your most distinctive features so that users will remember you.

For example: Lao Huang teaches English and Achaige teaches mathematics. They all teach English or mathematics vertically in a humorous way, with obvious personal characteristics.

For institutions, it is necessary to build vertical accounts in combination with the company's business. A matrix combination of multiple accounts is more commonly used, with each account having its own positioning and main points. At the same time, traffic is directed to each other among multiple accounts, and traffic backup is performed to form multiple touch points, which is similar to TikTok. For example: Xueersi, Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao and GSX.

The above is a general method for account positioning. As for how to set up specific information such as avatar, introduction, geographic location, etc., it needs to be based on specific business and circumstances.

2. Content Production

Content production consists of two aspects: theme and form. The themes of the education category mainly fall into the following five categories: teaching content, expert opinions, campus life, other people's children, and current affairs. Below are descriptions of these five categories of topics, their content features, and related cases.

In actual account operation, operators need to consider the characteristics of each topic and the areas in which the operator is good at making a combination. Among them, content teaching, expert opinions, and campus life are more suitable for stable content, while other people's children and news hotspots are more suitable for users to capture explosive content.

In order to capture hot content, in addition to the more conventional hot topics such as the college entrance examination, the start of the summer school term, etc., it is necessary to keep an eye on education hotspots through some platforms and channels, such as Weibo, Zhihu hot list, and Kuaishou’s own hot list. You can also use technical means to pay attention to the content of education tags.

In terms of content format, in addition to what was mentioned in the previous article on Douyin: graphic dubbing or animation, real-life appearances, video editing, etc. Kuaishou also supports picture albums and long text dubbing, which further reduces the difficulty of content production.

The last point worth mentioning is that Kuaishou uses a double-column design. Users choose whether to play the video based on its title and cover, so the image and text on the video cover are very important and need to be polished.

3. Operational exposure

After determining the account positioning and content theme, what you need to consider is exposure. The four main ways to increase exposure on Kuaishou are: following through recommendations from friends, group chats and comments, participating in platform activities or collaborations, and paid placements.

Friend recommendations are pop-up recommendations that appear after a user logs into the app or follows an account (as shown below). Recommendations are mainly based on the people you have followed recently, your address book, and your geographic location. Once you are followed by a user, the videos you post will be displayed in the "Follow" section of the homepage. Therefore, if you want to be recommended, you can look at similar accounts. After users follow such accounts, they may recommend your account to users based on the same tag attributes.

Another feature for building a community is group chat and chat. Account operators can create group chats, screen core fan groups, and further build intimacy and spread the influence. And Zhuoshuo is similar to the circle of friends, which allows users to interact. Compared with the traffic logic of Douyin, Kuaishou pays more attention to building more links for users, which is also an important reason why Kuaishou’s sales effect is better than Douyin.

Participating in platform activities or cooperation is a way to quickly obtain platform traffic. For example, a common practice is to use “#” to add an activity tag to the video, which may gain support from activity traffic.

If you are participating in the "Education Ecosystem Partner Program" or B-side access cooperation, you will need to review the operator. There will be more requirements on the premise of providing traffic rights and interests, and the operator needs to make a comprehensive judgment based on its own situation. For example, the previous "Kuaishou Ecological Education Institution Recruitment" activity will have requirements for the qualifications of operators and will also require operational assessments.

Finally, let’s talk about how to gain exposure through paid advertising. Exposure promotion can be carried out through the "work promotion" tool. The forms can be selected: "Promote to fans", "Quick promotion", "Live broadcast promotion" and "Promote for him".

If you look at it from the perspective of the purpose of exposing your own short video content, the main ones you will use are "promote to fans" and "quick promotion". Promoting to fans means pinning your work to the top of the fans’ attention page, while quick promotion means promoting the content to the discovery page and the local page. The specific gameplay can be learned directly in the app.

4. Traffic conversion

In terms of conversion, Kuaishou and Douyin have significant differences in their approaches to education. Tik Tok is positioned as a traffic provider, and educational institutions can place advertisements on it to earn revenue. Kuaishou hopes to serve educational institutions or individuals so that they can complete the closed loop from traffic to services on the platform and thus earn a commission. Therefore, there are certain restrictions on the sale and display of courses. Currently, the main conversions that can be made on the platform include video and introduction-guided conversions, Kuaishou stores, and live broadcasts.

Video and personal introduction guide conversion

Similar to Douyin, Kuaishou can also insert products into videos, but they must be products sold in Kuaishou stores. If it is a course-type product, users can even try it out directly. As shown in the picture below, for a product from Xueersi, users can directly enter the product details from the video and try it out in the details.

Secondly, in the personal profile on the homepage, you can add guidance such as live broadcast, adding WeChat, and following public accounts. However, because Kuaishou also has certain restrictions in this area, relevant actions need to be taken based on the actual level of the account.

Kuaishou Store

Kuaishou Store is Kuaishou’s core conversion scenario. From the perspective of its business logic, a more direct way to build a close relationship is to recommend products. This is one of the reasons why Kuaishou is better than Douyin in selling goods. In a small store, you can sell both physical goods and course-related service products.

However, if you need to sell course products, you need to use Kuaishou Classroom to provide corresponding services, otherwise they cannot be put on the shelves. This provides system services for individual operators, but it is a not-so-good restriction for institutions because they have their own service systems and do not want to take commissions from Kuaishou. Therefore, they usually only put some low-priced courses on the shelves to divert traffic, or only sell physical goods to obtain sales leads.

live streaming

The last step is to sell goods directly through live streaming. The live broadcast room is a place where you can interact directly with users in real time, and it is also an important link in conversion. In addition to allowing users to randomly enter the live broadcast room at certain times, Kuaishou can also inform and warm up with users through group chats, introductions and other channels, which will help increase the number of people in the live broadcast room. At the same time, they can also view the recorded content on the homepage.

Live streaming + e-commerce is Kuaishou’s core conversion method, so individual operators in the education category can consider direct live streaming conversion. For organizations that have live broadcast systems and their own traffic, they can also consider using the Kuaishou live broadcast room as a channel to occasionally broadcast live to users in the platform's fan pool.

Summary and some thoughts

Kuaishou’s product logic is “centered on users, i.e. creators” and advocates that “everyone deserves to be noticed and seen”, so it is more conducive to individual teachers to complete the closed loop of traffic acquisition – conversion – service on the platform.

For organizations, they can decide whether to place advertisements by comparing the lead cost or ROI with that of already invested channels; and for those who intend to build their own account operation system, it is more suitable for organizations with complete video content production, operation and live broadcast teams or companies that have the ability to build a complete team.

If you have decided to operate your own account system, you can refine the path from the four aspects of account matrix, content production, operational exposure, and traffic conversion to optimize the funnel and increase revenue.

For Kuaishou advertising , please contact Qinggua Media official

Author: The Fainted Maori Kogoro

Source: The fainted Maori Kogoro

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