Short video operation guide for educational institutions!

For online education institutions, customer acquisition has always been a difficult problem. However, the currently popular short video operation provides a good choice for online education customer acquisition. So how do we choose a suitable short video platform to maximize the attraction of potential users?

The entry of short videos has become one of the hottest topics discussed by educational institutions in 2020. The value behind it is needless to say. Most of them have to do it, it’s nothing more than the time difference of "doing it earlier or later".

But the first question that many educational institutions struggle with is: should they use Douyin or Kuaishou? After all, the operating ideas of the two platforms are quite different, not to mention Bilibili, Weibo, Xigua Video, YouTube, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, and WeChat Video Account...

(Those who think that the difference is not big and are ready to make a set of content to be distributed across the entire network with one click, you can skip the following long-winded...)

If human resources are limited, I personally think it is best to focus on one platform first. So, for different institutions, what is the preferred platform?

First, the conclusion, my opinion (criticism is welcome)

The core consideration dimensions are nothing more than the following five directions: user portrait and interest preferences, business purposes, platform trends, supply and demand relationships, and team capabilities.

1. User profile and interest preferences

It depends on the degree of fit between the target users who pay for the product and the platform users. Your users will naturally go where they are. This principle is easy to understand, but many educational institutions make mistakes in platform selection. The reasons are:

1. Without doing any research and obtaining some data as the underlying support, they made a wrong judgment based on stereotypes;
2. We only focused on the overall data of the platform, without going into specific education and knowledge scenarios.

1. Kuaishou

User tag: small town youth

Knowledge tags: agriculture, rural areas and farmers, vocational education, skills, interest education

Among the consumers of educational videos on Kuaishou, 65% are from third-tier cities and below, which is 9.2 percentage points higher than the industry average. Kuaishou Education first started in the rural areas, and has now formed an ecosystem covering vocational education, skills education, interest education and other categories.

According to Kuaishou's "2019 Small Town Youth Report", about 230 million small town youth are active on the Kuaishou platform every year, and this group happens to overlap with labels such as vocational education and agriculture, rural areas and farmers. Due to the large amount of disposable time, young people in small towns watch learning videos at a rate 8 times that of young people in cities.

Small town youth: refers to users aged 18-35, living in third-tier and lower urban areas, county towns, towns, villages and urban-rural fringe areas.

In fact, only less than 20% of this group of people go to college, and 80% of users are actually constantly establishing their own goals through learning in their daily lives and work.

2. TikTok

User tags: first- and second-tier cities, young ladies

Knowledge tags: K12/family education, art training, language education

Overall, Douyin users are relatively balanced in gender, with males accounting for a slightly higher proportion of 4.4%. Male users account for a slightly higher proportion of users in each age group; those under 35 years old account for nearly 70%, and those aged 25-30 (born after 1990 and before 1995) account for the highest proportion. In terms of urban distribution, high-tier cities (second-tier and above) account for a relatively high proportion.

Although the proportion of males is high, female Tik Tok users prefer educational content more than male users. Among different generations, those born in 1995 and 2000 (under 24 years old) are the main audience of education, while those born in 1970 pay attention to education for their children. Note that this is different from the user portrait of TikTok.

3. Bilibili

User tags: Post-95s, student party

Knowledge tags: language learning, college entrance examination, postgraduate entrance examination, white-collar professional skills

43.3% of Bilibili users are under 24 years old, and 33.9% are between 25 and 30 years old; male users account for 51.6%, and the ratio of men to women is basically balanced; the user group is becoming more and more diversified. The two-dimensional culture of Bilibili has also attracted a large number of young people from first- and second-tier cities.

Their learning demands are dominated by language learning such as English and Japanese, supplemented by college entrance examinations, postgraduate examinations and various professional skills. This is consistent with the educational portrait outlined by the Bilibili platform.

4. Xiaohongshu

User tag: Urban female white-collar worker

Knowledge tags: maternal and child care, studying abroad, learning methods

As of January 2019, the number of registered users of Xiaohongshu has exceeded 200 million, with daily active users exceeding 10 million. Nearly 90% of users are female. In terms of age distribution, users aged 25-35 account for 63% of total users. Users in this age group are in a period of stable or rising career and have relatively strong consumption power. First-tier cities account for the majority, accounting for about 44.6%. The content is precisely vertically positioned in cosmetics, skin care, mother and baby, dressing, offline medical beauty, etc.

Occupational distribution includes white-collar workers in big cities, civil servants, and international students. White-collar workers and civil servants in big cities have a good income base and pursue quality of life; overseas students are the main force in producing shopping notes, they know more about overseas products and are more willing to share.

5. Zhihu

User Tag: New Knowledge Youth

Knowledge tags: popular science, interest skills, professional skills

Although Zhihu's short videos have not achieved particularly outstanding results, as an indispensable supplement to content forms, they are still well distributed and consumed in Zhihu's traffic pool.

Among Zhihu users, 73.93% have a bachelor's degree or above, and the proportion of high-income and high-spending people is several times higher than the Internet average. Not only do they have considerable insights and knowledge reserves, they also have a strong desire for knowledge in various fields.

On Zhihu, "From hobby to career" and "Seeing persistence and growth" became the most popular video topics in 2017, with 1 million and 600,000 followers respectively.

2. Commercial Purpose

If user portraits cannot help organizations make firm decisions, they can also make judgments based on business purposes.

For institutions, there are three purposes for entering the short video market: traffic generation, monetization, and branding.

1) If you simply want to drive traffic through short video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, the two leading platforms, will do. Currently, both platforms are relatively open to institutional traffic, from "personal homepages, private messages, to video details implantation." Douyin also supports educational institutions (merchants) to configure customized homepages, which can link to official websites, small shops, and even collect sales leads and direct traffic to offline stores. (Of course there is an additional charge)

2) If you want to complete the monetization loop directly on the short video platform and use videos to promote products, Kuaishou is your first choice. Why are Kuaishou users called "Laotie"? Old (acquaintance relationship), Iron (trust relationship). Kuaishou’s relationship chain has higher fan stickiness and conversion rate, and private domain traffic is more advantageous.

Moreover, Kuaishou’s education monetization tools are relatively complete, whether it is Kuaishou classroom or live broadcast. Kuaishou has built-in payment channels for educational content in live broadcasts and videos, forming a complete business closed loop. In addition, social interaction catalyzes consumption and shortens the traffic conversion path. In principle, organizations only need to focus on creating good content. In comparison, Douyin’s fans may not be that valuable and it may be difficult to convert them.

3) If it is for brand exposure, then you should return to your user portrait and go to where the majority of users reside.

3. Platform Direction

See which direction the platform's east wind is blowing, and grab hold of it immediately and decisively.

Kuaishou began to develop its education business in 2019 and has been active in the education ecosystem throughout the year. During the Spring Festival in 2020, it provided 6.666 billion traffic to support education authors. The "2019 Kuaishou Content Report" also positions itself as: K12 online education platform, vocational education center, and knowledge/skills online lecture hall.

Since March 21, 2019, Douyin has jointly launched an IP activity called "DOUzhi Plan" with the Science Communication Bureau of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Science Popularization Department of the China Association for Science and Technology, China Science News and the China Science and Technology Museum. It introduced scientific knowledge through short videos, set off a wave of popular science creation, and soon launched "DOUzhi Plan 2.0".

4. Supply and Demand

The supply and demand balance is the goal of the platform, and when supply is less than demand, it is an opportunity for platform players. From the perspective of the overall education category, all short video platforms are currently in a state of crying out for food, and are in urgent need of high-quality content and authors. However, there will be differences when it comes to different tracks and different sub-fields of education, which require specific analysis of specific situations. The analysis ideas can be:

1. First, compare the number of fans, average playback volume, interaction volume, growth rate, account stickiness, number of hot products, etc. of the top competitive accounts on different platforms to determine the platform's adaptability and further lock in the platform;
2. Then investigate the volume of accounts with the same positioning as the institution (which can be understood as competitors) on the platform, how many are there at the top, middle, and bottom, how is the traffic distribution, and determine the degree of competition;
3. You also need to evaluate the scale of your target consumer users on the platform, their growth rate, the extent to which their needs are met, and some core consumer data, and appropriately combine user interviews to determine the supply and demand relationship;

Based on the above quantitative and qualitative analysis, we can basically make a judgment whether to enter, not enter or wait and see. You can consult the official for some data, and you should be able to obtain it if it is not confidential.

5. Team production capabilities

Douyin and Kuaishou are vertical screen consumption ecosystems, while platforms such as Bilibili, Weibo, and Xigua are mainly horizontal screen. Once both enter the market at the same time, it means that you have to make two sets of videos, one in vertical and one in horizontal screen, which wastes a lot of energy.

Of course, many people say that you can just shoot horizontally, and then make it vertically by adding borders at the top and bottom, but there will still be editing costs and the experience will be compromised.

In addition, there is also the issue of video length. Douyin and Kuaishou are short videos of 15-60 seconds, while Bilibili and Xigua are both moving towards long videos (≧5 minutes), and the threshold for video production is relatively high.

You know, the standards that Bilibili users have for excellent up-masters can be described as "harsh". They can accept low production costs and 50-cent special effects, but they require the content to be informative, sincere, and carefully produced, and preferably a little creative. This kind of video is costly in terms of time and brainpower, so it cannot be mass-produced, and the update frequency will naturally be lower.

Don’t think about making some fancy little videos to fool them, otherwise your account may die miserably.

Of course, there is no need to worry too much. Douyin has 400 million daily active users and Kuaishou has 300 million daily active users. They have already covered the users of other short video platforms with their overwhelming size advantage, and can basically cover different portrait type labels and all kinds of people.

Moreover, as the content of Douyin and Kuaishou becomes more and more diverse, the number and playback volume of knowledge and education content continue to grow. Perhaps the only thing to worry about is why others have joined the train, but you are hesitant and give up the bonus...

Author: Enhan

Source: Liao Liao Dimension