How to reach 637w Douyin views in 1 month?

On TikTok, how can a single video reach millions of views? What kind of skills are required for this?

On January 6, 2020, Douyin released the "2019 Douyin Data Report". The report pointed out that as of January 5, 2020, the number of daily active users of Douyin has exceeded 400 million. In one year, Douyin’s DAU grew by more than 150 million.

Many people are jealous of the ubiquitous traffic on Douyin. They think that any video they watch will get hundreds of thousands of likes, and they think they can easily get a piece of the pie. However, after operating for a long time, the number of fans is still no more than 300, and the number of video views is only two or three hundred.

Although I didn't make it a big account, I operated Douyin for 2 months from August to October 2019, released 56 works, and gained more than 5,600 fans. From the beginning to the end, I still decided to tell you my exclusive story so that you can find out.

The most views for one of my videos is 637w.

What does this playback volume mean? I took a screenshot of Tik Tok’s hot spots and you can see that 600-700w views are already among the top.

Although other videos do not have as many views as this, there are still many that have a stable playback volume of 400,000, and of course there are also some that have more than 1,000 views.

The popularity of Tik Tok videos seems to be full of accidents, and it all depends on how much traffic Tik Tok allocates to you. But in fact, there are still many inevitable rules behind this.

1. How to find the video location?

As you can see from the screenshots above, my focus is on celebrity romance stories. Why locate this? Why is this so popular? Let’s first analyze the popular video types on Tik Tok.

1. Tik Tok popular video categories

If you watch Douyin more often, you will find that these 7 types of videos are very popular on Douyin.

1) Good appearance

Pretty young ladies, young men in Hanfu, cute babies, cute pets... Who doesn’t like beauty?

Although I am not convinced, I cannot deny that the internet celebrity girl only needs to stand in front of the camera and twist her body a few times to get millions of likes.

2) Talent

Those who write, paint, sell pancakes, do wood carving, and do makeup... no matter what the talent is, as long as it is done well, it can attract everyone's attention and is more likely to get likes. Everyone admires things that they cannot do.

3) Comedy

This type of video is most likely to break the limitations of age, gender, and occupation, and is a subject that everyone loves. For example, Zheng Jianpeng and his wife, your Uncle Acan, and nine distant places. After all, with so much pressure in work and life nowadays, everyone wants to have some fun and laugh.

4) Teaching

The focus of this type of video is to teach everyone a skill in a simple way, because its practicality is deeply loved by everyone. For example, how to make your girlfriend have long legs in a photo, how to make quick and delicious dishes, how to tie a scarf, and some small tips in life.

5) Celebrity

Whether celebrities are on Weibo or Tik Tok, they bring their own traffic wherever they go. Nowadays, many celebrities have their own Douyin accounts, such as Cecilia Cheung, Wong Cho-lam, Zhang Ting... Although we are not celebrities, we can still get some traffic. This is the trick I use.

6) Movie and TV Golden Songs

Through familiar movie clips and song clips, it brings everyone back to memories and evokes emotional resonance. For example, "Our Memories", I didn't listen to Li Zongsheng when I was young...

2. Expression

Different themes require choosing appropriate forms of expression, and these four are the most common ones on Douyin.

1) Real person departure

This is the most common form, and apart from film and television hits, other themes are very suitable. Real people appearing on screen can give people a sense of reality. This is also Douyin’s value proposition: recording a beautiful life. Let ordinary people record their happy and simple moments.

2) Animation

Animation production is relatively complex and time-consuming, and the threshold is very high. It is difficult to do well without being a professional. The one who did the best among them was "Little Monk Yichan". The beautiful pictures and heart-wrenching dialogues are hard to surpass. There are not many videos of this type on TikTok, and even fewer that do well.

3) Screen recording and dubbing

This is mainly a form of expression of film and television hits. It is not complicated to make. Just use the computer screen recording tool to record the clips, and then use tools like Pr to splice them. We also often see 3-split screen and 2-split screen formats, which can bring a strong visual impact. As long as the pictures are well chosen and the text is well matched, it will be quite popular.

4) Image carousel

This form is the simplest. Just select a few pictures on Tik Tok and upload them. A carousel video will be automatically generated and you can then add music to it. It only takes a few minutes to make one. Initially, this form of content was very common on Tik Tok, as fewer people were willing to appear in person at that time. However, due to its poor expressiveness, this form of content is less common now.

3. Cost-effectiveness considerations

For the audience, they don’t care what form the performance takes. The key is to clearly convey what they want to express and to be able to get the spiritual comfort they want from a few dozen seconds of video.

But for creators, different forms of expression mean spending different amounts of time and energy. It seems simple to perform real-life scenes, and Tik Tok has many built-in video effects, but to shoot a good work, you need to write the script, direct and act by yourself, and you also need professional shooting and editing. Not simple at all. It is already very efficient if 2-3 people can complete a good video in a day.

Not to mention animation production, it is definitely impossible to do it.

Screen recording and picture carousel are good ways to try. One person can do it. No scene props are needed. You can do it with a computer. I have tried to record the screen several times, but the problem is: the reason why classic scenes can resonate with people is inseparable from the previous preparations. If you just cut out a section, it will end before the audience is emotionally invested, and the desired effect will not be achieved.

Finally, you can only choose the picture carousel. From choosing the topic, finding the materials, making the pictures, to adding the background music, a video can be completed in half an hour. I can do a week’s worth of videos on the weekend, uploading one a day.

The monotonous format of picture carousel has very limited video types that can be selected. Good looks, talent, teaching, and film and television hits are not suitable, so the only ones left are comedy and celebrity. Being funny requires talent. I know I don’t have a sense of humor, so I can only borrow the celebrity effect.

2. How to choose a topic?

What should I say about celebrities? Gossip!

My target audience is young women. This type of people are emotional, understand celebrities, and like to gossip . I will specifically talk about the love affairs of celebrities. Of course, there are some tips when choosing celebrities and events.

1. Take advantage of the trend

It is actually quite painful to think of topics every day, and marketers like to take advantage of hot topics. For example, Durex, the originator of hot topics, I also go to Weibo, Douyin, and Baidu every day to check out today's hot topics.

Wu Yifan is involved in a scandal, and the next issue is a list of rumored girlfriends, with 43w views; Fish Leong is divorced, and the next issue is a pity it’s not you, stay with me to the end, with 62w views. There is also Li Xian, who is very popular in the summer, and I will borrow his good looks for this episode.

2. There are some problems

You can deliberately add some controversial points to the video content so that the pros and cons have different opinions, which can easily push the video to a climax.

For example, the theme of my video with 637w views is: I will support you, which is probably the most poisonous love words in the world. I raised you, and eventually it became you who I raised. In the eyes of women: I support you = unlimited credit cards; in the eyes of men: I support you = steamed buns and rice.

There are a lot of comments. Some people say that they are supported by their husband and are very happy. Some people say that women should be independent...

3. Strong Emotion

Be sure to choose events that will evoke strong emotions in your audience. Happiness, joy, and satisfaction are not strong emotions, but divorce, breakup, and cheating are.

So when I tell stories about celebrities’ happy and loving relationships, people don’t like it. When I talked about breakups and cheating, everyone got emotional. The stronger the stimulation, the better.

4. Be well-known

Don’t choose stars that everyone is not familiar with, choose those that are well-known.

Ma Yili and Wen Zhang divorced, Liu Tao returned to work to pay off her husband's debts, and Aaron Kwok married a young wife...

Although many people know these things, it is not averse to watching their stories again and understanding the true meaning of love and marriage. If you choose a star that no one is familiar with and the audience doesn't understand the situation, it will be difficult to explain things clearly in advance.

Our focus is to use the stories of celebrities to reveal some heartbreaking truths. Don't put the cart before the horse.

3. How to stabilize traffic?

Although we do not have the right to distribute traffic, we can still do something to increase the chances of exposure.

1. Understand the Douyin recommendation mechanism

There are many introductions to Douyin's recommendation mechanism on Baidu. To put it simply, after a video is released, it will be pushed to a small number of people first. If the completion rate, number of likes, and comments are high, it will trigger a new round of push and throw it into a larger traffic pool.

So if you want your video to go viral, you have to work hard to trigger push notifications. When the pool is large, there is little we can do to intervene. But there are still a lot of things we can do when the video is first released.

2. Fixed publishing time

Choose the most appropriate publishing time for your video type. For example, my videos are usually posted around 8 o'clock. For emotional videos, the peak viewing time is between 10am and 12pm. I need to make sure that the video has reached a large traffic pool during this time period.

The two hours from 8 to 10 o'clock will trigger several rounds of push notifications, and I need to reserve some time for the video to warm up. When I watch it at 11:30, the number of views is often only 50,000, but when I watch it the next morning, it has 40+0,000 views. We cannot rule out data delays for TikTok, but there are indeed many night owls.

After 12 o'clock, Douyin will focus on promoting new videos with low playback volume, but there are too few people online to make a difference, and the videos will be overwhelmed by new videos the next day. If it's too late, I'd rather not post it.

3. Add trending topics

When posting on Douyin, remember to add a topic. When we enter “#”, we can see the popularity of the topic, select the popular ones, and add more.

There were a few times when I forgot to add a topic and the number of views was obviously very low. The speculation is that Tik Tok doesn’t know what kind of topic it is, doesn’t know how to categorize it, and doesn’t know who to push it to.

We have categorized Douyin, which greatly increases its exposure opportunities.

4. Increase traffic first

After the video is released, find a few more accounts to share it. Each account plays the video dozens of times, and then comments and reposts it, which can trigger the first round of push.

This step is very important, especially for new accounts, which have low weight. Moreover, there are few people watching at this time, so these few accounts can account for a very high proportion, making Douyin think that the audience likes this video. The effect is very obvious.

5. Respond to comments promptly

As mentioned above, the number of comments is also one of the measurement indicators. If the audience makes 10 comments and I reply to each one, there will be 20 comments, which can trigger a new push.

Comments are like a snowball that can make a video more and more popular. This is also something you can intervene in after obtaining a large amount of traffic. Don't waste the opportunity you can grasp.

4. Why do big accounts abandon their accounts one after another?

The reason I gave up was simple: I couldn’t cash in. Even if you only spend half an hour making a video every day, it is difficult to stick to it without visible benefits, not to mention that some accounts consume a lot of time and energy.

I found that if I didn’t check Douyin for a while, when I looked at it again the next time, most of the accounts I had followed before had started to disappear. As one group falls, another group comes up.

An account that was quite popular at the same time as me: The Mother Who Can’t Get Fat has stopped updating for half a year. Nine far away, the frequency is also very low...

1. Difficulty in monetization

This is like the micro-business in the circle of friends. It looks like the business is good, but you will only know if you do it yourself.

There aren’t many ways to monetize on TikTok, and even fewer ways to actually make money. It’s really not possible to become Zheng Jianpeng and his wife just by doing it casually.

1) Window display

When I opened it, the showcase was still in the testing phase, and it was opened as soon as I applied. Then select products in the Douyin Mall and put them on the shelves. In fact, there are only about a dozen opened. Selling things is even harder.

Think about it, this is a false proposition in itself. Why would people come to your window to buy things? There is nothing you can’t find on Taobao. What’s more, the fan loyalty on Douyin is very low.

2) Video promotion

Some people can make money by selling products through videos, but it depends on what they are. Skin care products, daily necessities and snacks are okay. The price is low and the value is low, so the audience just watched the video and bought it.

However, Douyin has regulations that if a video is used to promote products, real products must appear in the video. That is to say, I can’t sell anything in the carousel of pictures.

3) Advertising

It is very difficult to make money by taking advertisements. You have to make your account big enough before advertisers will look for you. I haven't come into contact with it, so I won't say much.

4) Live broadcast

It’s the same type as Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi. There are only a few who do well, and most people can’t sell a single item even after broadcasting for an entire night. Live streaming has high requirements for people, time, and venue, and it is not a method that can be easily monetized.

2. Limited materials

Each account has its own tone. For example, if I am in the emotional field of celebrities, then landscapes and photography will not appear in my account. Many people will emphasize that the cover of the video page should look unified in style.

But for a certain type of topic, the materials are limited and you won’t be able to find topics later on. There are only a few celebrities, and only a few of them have flaws. After talking about the different stories of those people over and over again, there comes a time when I have finished.

The same goes for comedies, people usually copy jokes from platforms like Zhihu. After copying the jokes, how many people can create new jokes?

3. Following the trend is serious

I still remember that when "Nine Distant Places" just came out, a large number of imitators sprang up like mushrooms after rain. At the beginning, everyone found it interesting, with two people telling jokes, often with unexpected and surprising twists, but after watching it too much, it started to get boring. Especially some imitators, the video quality is very low, which makes the audience begin to feel disgusted.

"Mu Zhexi" was also very popular during that period. He sang in the streets and shopping malls. His handsome looks, melancholy eyes, and beautiful voice were indeed very attractive. However, when those who can sing imitate others, it always gives people a sense of inferiority.

The originator account itself was good, but it was ruined by some followers.

4. The craze fades

No matter how delicious a dish is, you’ll get tired of it if you eat it every day. The same goes for videos. For the same account, no matter how beautiful the people are or how humorous the jokes are, you will get aesthetically fatigued after watching them too many times. When the audience's sense of novelty faded, the craze for that number also faded. At the same time, a large number of accounts of the same type and theme also faded away.

I used to like watching Fairy Yeast and Meng Po Nineteen, the scenes were very beautiful. It becomes boring after watching it too much, the acting is average and the plot is boring. Next time I see a video about ancient costumes, I won’t want to watch it anymore.

5. Is Douyin still worth doing?

I think this is a question that everyone is concerned about. Since monetization is so difficult as I said, is it still worth doing?

If you want to make money by just posting casually, I don’t recommend it. But if you want to do it seriously, towards Zheng Jianpeng's ideal of being the landlord, or for other publicity purposes, it is worth a try. Tik Tok is still a traffic mecca. How many apps can have 400 million daily active users?

Summarize

I gave it a small try, and experienced the joy at the peak, and the disappointment when no one was paying attention. Especially when you spend half a day shooting a live-action video but only get less than 100 traffic.

But in the process of exploring the themes, formats, and topics of Douyin, I also found some patterns, understood the audience's minds, and understood human nature. Isn’t this a kind of harvest?

Author: Team Smart

Source: Smart Team