The latest Douyin operation strategy in 2020

2019 is the best year for TikTok. In terms of the number of registered users, TikTok has surpassed Weibo in all aspects and is currently second only to WeChat. It is another national-level product after the QQ WeChat social platform. The dividends you have missed before: Baidu, Taobao, WeChat, Pinduoduo, are you going to miss them again this time?

Basics: A First Look into the World of Tik Tok

1. The development history of TikTok

In September 2016, Douyin was officially launched.

In August 2017, Douyin short video created the international version of Douyin - TikTok, and invested hundreds of millions of US dollars to enter the overseas market.

In November 2017, TikTok acquired the North American similar product musical.ly for US$1 billion. On August 2, 2018, TikTok merged with musical.ly to create a larger video community, integrating existing accounts and data into one application, retaining the TikTok name.

On July 16, 2018, TikTok’s global monthly active users exceeded 500 million.

As of January 5, 2020, the number of daily active users of Douyin has exceeded 400 million.

On January 8, 2020, Bytedance's Huoshan Video and Douyin Short Video officially announced their brand integration upgrade, and the original Huoshan Video was renamed Douyin Volcano Edition.

On September 26, 2016, Douyin version 1.0 was launched. When TikTok was first launched, it did not have the name and icon that everyone is familiar with today, but was a "music short video community" named "A.me".

For a period of time, TikTok was treated in a hostile manner by the market because it was too similar to the North American music short video musical.ly in terms of product positioning, interface, and functions. TikTok was considered to have plagiarized musical.ly, which was popular in the West. At the same time, from January 2016 to January 2017, Kuaishou has occupied an absolute leading position in the short video market, and its market penetration rate is far greater than the sum of the penetration rates of all other similar products.

Relying on Toutiao's powerful data capabilities, Douyin's strategic choice is very precise and firm, allowing it to enter the short video field. By taking advantage of the weakness that Kuaishou gives people a "low and low-level" feeling, it attracted users other than Kuaishou. Afterwards, with the strong financial support of Toutiao, it began to "take small steps and iterate quickly", and started to cooperate with celebrities and hip-hop programs with their own traffic, and gained early users.

Douyin not only has more fun special effects and music, but also constantly upgrades popular gameplay to create its own explosive content culture, and promoting popular content will also make itself popular. During the 2018 Spring Festival, Douyin added nearly 30 million daily active users, surpassing Xigua Video and Huoshan Video. The highest daily active users reached 66.46 million, gaining a wider user base and becoming completely popular across the country.

2. Tik Tok playback data

According to the latest data report released by Douyin in January 2020, Douyin's daily active users have reached 400 million, and Douyin users spend an average of 76 minutes per day browsing videos. These data reflect that Douyin has become a highly sticky and active platform like WeChat and Weibo.

The active peaks of Douyin users are concentrated in the lunch peak from 12:00 to 13:00, the evening peak from 18:00 to 19:00, and the night peak from 21:00 to 22:00. These times are also the golden time periods for users before going to bed, after meals, and on the way to and from get off work. These are the times that Internet products are competing for.

Based on the data of usage scenarios, we can conclude that the best time to publish content is during these three time periods. At the same time, light-hearted and funny content can be published after meals, and emotional content can be published before going to bed at night.

3. Tik Tok user data

When working on TikTok, you must understand the user profile of TikTok, know who the users are and what they like. The male to female ratio of Douyin users is roughly 4 to 6, with more females than males. The oldest age group for women is 21-25 years old, accounting for 50% of the total proportion of women; followed by 26-30 years old, accounting for 21% of the total proportion of women. The oldest male age group is 21-25 years old, accounting for 40% of the total male proportion; the second oldest is 26-30 years old, accounting for 22% of the total male proportion.

It can be seen that there are more females than males on Douyin. Males like sports, movies, and technology content, while females like food and cosmetics. Before 2017, the mainstream audience of Tik Tok was young people aged 18-24, but today, people aged 25-35 have become the mainstream. In terms of educational background, Douyin users have a higher level of education, with 50% coming from first- and second-tier cities. This shows that Douyin’s users have high income and consumption levels, and its overall brand value is high.

From its birth to its popularity, the content of Tik Tok has evolved from being single to being comprehensive, and its users have grown from being young to being universal. Using Tik Tok has become a standard feature of a company's communication matrix. Aren't you taking action yet?

4. Tik Tok’s matching algorithm

Douyin inherits Toutiao’s algorithm genes and uses powerful algorithms as operational support to ensure user stickiness and long-term user activity. Tik Tok is an "inverted triangle" high-quality traffic pool algorithm, which is promoted step by step based on the "positive feedback" of each video in the traffic pool, that is, the process of gradually upgrading from a low-traffic pool to a high-traffic pool.

Only when the video has passed the test of the previous level traffic pool can it enter the next traffic pool in the later stage and gain more exposure opportunities and playback volume. There are five core indicators to determine whether a video meets the requirements of "positive feedback": completion rate, like rate, comment rate, forwarding rate, and attention ratio.

• Completion rate means that you need to use selling points to attract users from the beginning, and then use high-quality content to make users patiently watch the entire video.
• The like rate means that your content has resonated with users emotionally and won their recognition of its value.
• The comment rate means that your content encourages users to express their opinions, or that you have created a more active interactive atmosphere.
• The forwarding rate means that your content can become a way for users to express and share themselves.
• The attention rate means that your content gives users a clear understanding of the positioning and they believe that they can obtain long-term useful value through your account.

Douyin’s long-term operational work is aimed at improving these five indicators.

5. TikTok’s popular content

Videos that are easily recommended by the system are more likely to become popular. Before operating Douyin, you must understand what popular content Douyin has. These contents can guide us in our own content orientation and find the direction that matches the popular content.

Appearance: Appearance-related content accounts for the highest proportion, reaching 32.4%. As long as the content features real people, it is all about appearance. This category is the most common on Tik Tok. Beautiful girls and handsome guys are about appearance, and acting is about appearance.

Song and Dance: The second most common type is song and dance. This is related to the history of Douyin's development. Douyin focuses on content related to music elements. Singing and dancing are naturally strongly related to music, and Douyin also prefers to recommend such videos.

Cute pets: Pets appear frequently on the Internet, and cats and dogs are popular pets among the public. When creating this type of content, you must not indulge in self-satisfaction and must not make it into a diary. It must have connotation, value and characteristics, such as a cat with a funny plot or a dog that can walk upright, and it must give users a unique reason to pay attention to it.

Funny category: When do you watch Tik Tok? After meals, before bedtime, and on the way to and from get off work, users prefer to see relaxing content during these relaxing moments. Therefore, funny content is more likely to be liked by users. Creating funny content requires a strong script and strong implementation capabilities, as well as the ability to grasp jokes and gags.

Food: Food is the first necessity of people. The content of food making can be food courses or food-related jokes.

Practical knowledge: Everyone has knowledge anxiety, and needs to learn knowledge and skills for work, hobbies, and life.

These popular contents are also the result of user screening. The more content users like, the easier it is for Douyin to recommend it. Accounts with this type of content will survive longer because of the recommendations.

Operation: Brand strength of the operating account

Brand value = number of fans x quality of fans. The following content will list one by one how to manage a personal or company’s Douyin account from scratch and achieve growth in brand strength.

1. Positioning

Many Douyin corporate accounts start by posting a lot of miscellaneous content, trying to move all the company's content to Douyin. This practice is wrong and will turn your account into a dead account.

You need to have a clear and accurate positioning before starting operations. Your positioning is the reason why users pay attention to you. Operating Douyin is not about posting content that is easy for us to post, nor is it about posting content that we want to post, but about posting what kind of content users want to see. Use the Douyin content style combined with the company's positioning to formulate the positioning of your own single account or even multiple accounts.

If you are not sure about the positioning at the beginning, it is recommended to create several accounts with different positioning until you try out the best positioning direction.

2. Naming

After the positioning is clear, we start to name the account. The name should not only be in line with the positioning direction, but also meet three principles: easy to understand, easy to remember, and easy to spread.

Easy to understand means that the name cannot contain uncommon characters or words that are inconsistent with the positioning. If it is a corporate account, it should have the company's identification text as much as possible. The more vertical our positioning is, the more accurate our name should be.

A good name is one that is easy to remember. Users pay little attention to names when browsing videos, so your name must be easy to remember so that users can remember it. Your name may also be searched out. It is best if your name contains the words that users want to search for, so that users can click in.

The purpose of convenient dissemination is to enable users to speak out quickly and accurately when recommending something to others. Your name must better reduce the cost of dissemination, rather than increase the threshold of dissemination for users.

3. Account maintenance

Unlike other accounts, before we start operating Douyin, we must start to maintain the account. Because the initial state of an account is a state without any labels or personality, by maintaining the account, the account can become a personalized, characteristic, and active entity. After having an account label, it can be better recommended and discovered by the system.

The process of raising an account is generally divided into the following steps:

1. Register using 4G network and start account maintenance without filling in account information;
2. Register using your real-name mobile phone number and bind multiple third-party accounts;
3. Improve account activity and spend more than 70 minutes on Douyin every day;
4. Get location changes and carry your account with you at all times, whether you are dining out, commuting to get off work, or traveling;
5. Do not change devices to log in, reduce the number of logouts, and use only one number for each phone;
6. Complete all the information according to the prompts of Tik Tok, including school, gender, introduction, certification, etc.

When the number of views of the first video is over 500, it means that the account has been successfully maintained.

The personal center homepage of an account includes, from top to bottom, the background image, avatar, Douyin account, various tags, number of likes, number of followers, number of fans, works, updates, and likes. Managing these elements is about managing the account's external image.

4. Profile and Introduction

The key point in setting the avatar is "iconic" and it should be directly combined with the characteristics of the account. For example, if you are a corporate account, it can be the company’s most iconic icon or the company’s most iconic product. If you are a personal account, use a photo with your most distinctive expression. It doesn’t have to be the most beautiful, but it must be the most distinctive. If it is an account for sharing knowledge, sharing movies, or recommending book lists, you can directly put the keywords on the avatar, because your positioning is the user's needs, which is the most iconic element.

The introduction of an account is a description of its positioning, and a good introduction needs to provide valuable information about the content. But remember not to write a long introduction, as users cannot remember it. Instead, use a simple and precise introduction that users can easily remember.

5. Top background image

There is a background image setting at the top of the Douyin account, and the location here can greatly improve the quality of the personal homepage. You can add some slogans and keywords to the design, which is also a good place to showcase your brand and positioning. It can also supplement the team’s introduction, guide attention and purchase.

6. Follows and Likes

In addition to the number of fans that reflect the popularity of the account, the account's homepage also shows the number of followers and the number of likes. You can add traffic diversion entrances from other accounts to the follow-up list, or it can become an entrance for cooperative promotion with others. Some accounts also set their follow lists to be invisible to users for the sake of privacy. The number of likes is also the entrance for diversion. The entrance here directly presents the video content, so it is more direct content-oriented. Of course, you can also turn off the diversion by not liking any video.

For example, the treasure boy’s follow list is hidden and the number of likes is 0.

The process of Douyin content publishing includes video images, music, titles, topics, and geographic locations. Each component of the content is the key point of our content operation, and the optimal state of each element produces the best works.

7. Video cover image

After shooting or uploading a Tik Tok video, a default cover image will be used. You can also select any frame as the cover image for the video. Be sure to pay attention to the setting of the cover image, which is the first thing users see. The cover image is more like the "inducing" information of the video. You will find that many popular videos on WeChat have completely different cover images and contents. This is because the content creators deliberately use the cover to "induce" users. The cover image can also display the general theme and core content of the video, allowing users to receive information more directly and quickly.

When setting the cover image, you also need to pay attention to the fact that the cover images of all videos should have the same or similar style, and the cover styles of videos from the same period should be consistent. In the general settings of Tik Tok, there is an entrance to turn off the dynamic cover. If your cover is in the best condition as a picture, then be sure to turn off the dynamic cover in the settings. The text on the cover can be written in the middle area of ​​the screen and displayed in large font to increase the click rate of the cover and the completion rate of the video.

8. Video title

Different title styles can play different boosting roles.

A straightforward title states the content of the video, and the title must include its value to users and a strong relationship with them.

Question-type titles are titles that trigger users' thinking and help them find answers. Such titles are also titles with strong value associations.

A suspenseful title will make users curious and keep watching. Users will have a sense of superiority and achievement after watching to the end.

An imperative title is meant to attract the user's attention. Users will pay attention because the content is important, such as a title like "The top ten skills you must master to play Tik Tok."

Titles with numbers allow users to quickly absorb the amount of information and make vague information more specific and predictable.

Titles containing high-frequency keywords can also generate traffic from searches.

9. Text topics and music topics

There are two types of topics: topics that you create yourself and topics that you participate in.

Tik Tok's topics and music interfaces are both gathering places for content. Users will click on the details page to look for more popular and interesting content because a certain type of content is fun and interesting. Therefore, those contents that participate in the topic and choose the same music can have more exposure opportunities.

If you follow recent hot topics while creating content, then be sure to use popular music from that type of content and never create your own music. In normal times, you should pay attention to collecting the music and topics that are commonly used on Tik Tok. By shooting the same ones, you can obtain the traffic entrance to popular content every time you publish.

Self-created topics are more effective when the traffic is relatively large. Through your drive and influence, the topic will become popular. You can also pay attention to social and news hotspots, and create topics and content in a timely manner, but be careful that the content must be positive. Douyin does not recommend negative topic content.

When creating content, you need to understand the psychological factors that influence users’ viewing of videos, improve the data on completion, likes, reposts, comments, and favorites, and improve the average quality of fans.

10. The golden three seconds start

Although the content of Douyin is short videos, it has higher production requirements for us. Users are impatient and need to get information quickly every time they see a video. If you don’t accurately capture every second of your video, it will be swiped away by users. So the beginning of the video is extremely important.

Either through music, others will know what you are going to shoot, such as the recently popular "Transformation Secret". If you use this music, others will definitely know what you are going to shoot, but if you use other music to transform, the effect will be greatly reduced. Or you can directly tell users in the video screen or dubbing that you should highlight the theme in the first three seconds and tell users what you are going to talk about next.

11. Guide users to save, forward and download

It is not enough to just read the content, you need to guide users to continue spreading it. Videos on Tik Tok are usually watched quickly, but some videos are worth watching again, so when we create an account, we need to guide users to collect, forward, and download videos. It is not only beneficial to the platform weight of the content, but also can acquire new users through user forwarding.

Through the language or animation in the video, guide users to click to follow, click, and share. This is especially important for knowledge-sharing accounts. When creating content, make users feel afraid of losing it, and directly emphasize the importance of the content to inspire users to collect and download it. For some emotional accounts, use content to help users express their opinions and resonate with them. Users will forward your videos to express their true thoughts.

12. Create a comment atmosphere

The culture of reading popular reviews has been verified on various platforms. Whether it is the comment section of Weibo or the barrage of comments on Bilibili, users will watch the content and the interactions between each other. When users click on the comment section after watching a video, this action itself adds a lot of weight. Then, by managing the comment section, fans can be maintained and an interactive atmosphere can be created.

Guide users’ comments through prompts in the video, such as asking users “Do you have any better suggestions?” or “Have you had such an experience?” Through "fake" interactions on small accounts, pre-designed jokes and comments were issued to get the tempo up.

13. Seductive Ending

Among videos, titles, and topics, what attracts users the most attention is the video itself. Therefore, no matter how many words you say in the title to remind users to pay attention to us, it is not as good as guiding users to pay attention through videos. If the video content can reflect the long-term attention value of the account, and the user happens to need such long-term value, he or she is likely to follow the account through the personal homepage.

An episode with exciting content but suspense is also a great way to attract users' attention. You can not finish the story, have an unexpected twist at the end, have a trailer at the end, split the same video three times, and describe your own positioning. These are all enticing endings to attract attention.

Advanced: Methods for sustained growth

1. Character Analysis

If you observe carefully, you will find that the accounts on Douyin with tens of millions of fans all have unique personality positioning. A character positioning can represent an independent individual or a group.

Personality refers to the external image and inner psychology that the publisher shows to fans. It is specifically manifested in the form of the video, the roles of the actors, the plot of the video, the setting of the environment, etc. The video forms a three-dimensional image and long-term positioning for users. Highlighting the personality positioning can highlight the difference of the account and separate it from all other accounts. A good personality makes it easier for users to remember, attract more traffic, and gain more attention.

Before deciding to operate an account for a long time, we should conduct a more comprehensive analysis of the account.

Analyze the rules. Pay attention to accounts of the same or related types, refer to mature and accurate personality positioning, and explore the internal rules, such as: what needs of users are met and what emotions of users are stimulated. We can use these rules when we create our own persona.

Analyze the advantages. Having a similar style isn't scary, but copying is embarrassing. There are a large number of active accounts with the same personality on Douyin. Users do not reject similarities in type and positioning. As long as they can grasp the subtle differences in specific content, they can stand out and break through the siege in traffic. Even if your preset character positioning is the same as others, you don't have to be discouraged. You can create irreplaceable excellent works by analyzing and creating your own differences and uniqueness in topic selection, content production, and team capabilities.

Ultimately, only a clear and accurate personal setting is the prerequisite for operating a Douyin account and the key to long-term popularity.

2. Find the right position

Why do users follow you?

It is the value you bring to users. Many accounts easily fall into positioning misunderstandings during the operation process, and their positioning becomes distorted and deformed as time goes by.

First of all, we must have a user perspective, look at our content from the user's perspective, and think about what content users want. Instead of forcing content on users and creating content that is easy for us to create.

Secondly, you need to have long-term thinking. You can’t give up just because a video doesn’t become popular, and you can’t change direction immediately just because a video doesn’t become popular. We need to review the entire process of video production, release, operation, and promotion. It may not be a problem with the video content, but that we chose the wrong title or topic. Or maybe we just need to "let the bullets fly for a while."

Finally, we must persist in producing good content. The initial videos are easiest for us to make because we are most passionate at the beginning, but we will become discouraged, compromise, and be perfunctory later on. This state is most likely to lead to distorted decision-making, where people start copying other people's content and plagiarizing other videos. Persisting in creating good content is the way to long-term operation. Insist on creating original and unique content; insist on creating professional content and continue to delve deeper into your own field; insist on updating content regularly, and ensure the frequency and quantity of updates. Don't go without a video for half a year, or users will forget about you.

3. Pay long-term attention to competitors

In 2020, more and more industries and companies will join the Douyin operation army. It is easy to find the same competitors for content of various positioning. As competitors grow, we must also grow in order to maintain our own position and surpass all competitors. So always keep an eye on your competitors and learn from their experiences.

Specifically, you can find these competitor accounts by searching for keywords and under the same topic. At the same time, in order to avoid diverting traffic to these accounts, you can follow them with a small account, or record them in other ways and observe their dynamics regularly. Through long-term observation of competitors, we summarize their experience through several factors.

• Content: Find your competitors’ content and draw inspiration for your own content from it. You can outdo your competitors with better editing, better format, better language, and more detailed descriptions.
• Direction: Find the direction of your competitors, try to see the advantages and disadvantages of your competitors' direction, correct your own wrong direction, and analyze the differences of your competitors.
• Time: To find out the publishing patterns of your competitors, you should not only look at the daily publishing time period, whether it is morning, afternoon or evening, but also figure out the time period from Monday to Sunday when your competitors publish.
• Topics: Find out the topics that your competitors post on, and find out what topics they often post on. If you find that a topic is very popular, you can also post on the same topic.
• Leave a message: Find feedback from your competitors’ fans, see how their users comment on their videos, and what opinions they raise. Reading users’ comments can help you find inspiration and direction for your videos and identify user needs.

4. Standardized operations

After the content quality is high and there is a certain amount of user experience, we begin to summarize the standardization of operations. Individual operators can make self-checklists to prevent mistakes, and team operators can replicate more popular content through standardization.

Establish standard production processes. Refined processes help to continuously improve the entire content production process, and the team can also better divide work and assist each other. The refined process can also effectively improve each link and ultimately continuously iterate the team's capabilities.

Establish a standard topic database. Only by establishing a strong topic library can we produce a steady stream of high-quality content. You can accumulate topics by summarizing your own experience, content from similar accounts, popular recommendations from Douyin, hot events, etc., and you should also update the topic library regularly.

5. Follow hot topics and stay online

Operating TikTok is a high-frequency job, because the hot topics of TikTok are changing all the time and are fleeting. Many professional teams will organize operations staff to watch Douyin at fixed working hours every day. The purpose is to keep an eye on popular content and remain sensitive to the platform's algorithms. The more experienced the operators are, the more sensitive they are to popular content, and the earlier they can discover the potential of popular content and release it.

During the operation process, develop a standard of "calmly" watching Douyin every day, and never watch Douyin blindly. Establish a standardized process for viewing content, including what content to view, which accounts to view content from, what topics to view content on, and how long to view content. Record key points while reading content and find out the trends of popular content on the platform.

An emergency mechanism should be established internally. Once a hot spot is discovered, an internal response team should be set up. Creativity, planning, shooting, editing and release should be completed within a short period of time.

6. DOU+ promotion skills

When using DOU+ for promotion, you cannot be blind. You need to master the rhythm of use to obtain the best benefits.

First, DOU+ can be launched only if the video reaches 1,000-1,500 views within 6 hours after release, which will have a push effect.

Second, about 6 hours after the video is released, the video has a small explosion, such as tens of thousands of views. At this time, if DOU+ is launched, it will directly add icing on the cake.

Third, the most suitable video for delivery is between 15 seconds and 30 seconds in length. Within 6 hours after the launch, if the like rate reaches 5.0%, the conversion rate reaches 1%, and the comment rate reaches 1%, as long as the above data indicators are met, the campaign can continue to be launched.

7. Regular data summary and review

Regularly collect Douyin's operational data and analyze the account's like rate, comment rate, forwarding rate, completion rate, and attention rate, such as once a week, once a month, and once a quarter.

In the early stages of Douyin’s operations, it is best for us to focus on the most authentic natural traffic and remove some abnormal traffic for analysis, such as traffic from promotions, traffic directed from other platforms, and forced traffic. Unlike other platforms, we do not recommend asking your friends and colleagues to follow or like your posts. These data will not significantly improve the account data. You should pay attention to the platform's algorithms and natural traffic. The earlier we are, the more important it is to focus on the most authentic data and win through TikTok’s algorithm.

Author: Mr.

Source: Growth Flying Elephant