13,000-word complete guide to Tik Tok operations and promotion!

This sharing is mainly divided into 4 parts:

1) The rise of Tik Tok. Only by understanding its rise process can we understand this ecosystem and better create content in this ecosystem.
2) Regarding the explanation of algorithm recommendation, algorithm recommendation and traffic distribution method are the soul of Douyin. If you don’t understand the core principles of algorithm recommendation, you will take many detours.
3) To educate everyone about Douyin’s knowledge points and help them fully understand Douyin’s business ecosystem so as to find their own ecological position.
4) Regarding the way of thinking about playing Douyin, only by adopting the correct way of thinking to play Douyin can you obtain the matching traffic.

1. The rise of TikTok

Why has Tik Tok become a phenomenal app for all the people? I summarized the entire rise of TikTok and analyzed the following three most critical factors:

Young people are setting the trend;
Video is the trend;
Making money is the real thing.

1. Young people are leading the trend

Recalling the development history of the Internet, the earliest forms of the Internet in China were nothing more than BBS and blogs. The mainstream user groups at that time were young people. Then, after young people entered society, various types of webmasters and corporate website building began to appear.

In 2005, Wang Xing of Meituan created Xiaonei.com in China based on Facebook’s experience. Later, the product was upgraded to Renren.com. After three years of development, by 2008, almost all college students were using Xiaonei.com.

Kaixin.com appeared in 2008. The mainstream gameplay of Kaixin.com was to grab parking spaces, play Happy Farm, etc. Kaixin.com became popular among the whole nation at that time because a large number of college students entered society and began to lead the public to play.

Then in 2009 and 2010, Weibo became popular, and the mainstream user group at that time was also college students. In the early days of Weibo, apart from inviting some big Vs, the mainstream users invited were the school’s Youth League Committee or college students. Around 2012, Weibo experienced a trough. During its second rise, it became a national phenomenon-level product and has continued to develop to this day.

Later in 2016, when the product Tik Tok came out, its earliest user group was still college students.

Based on this set of growth process analysis, if you want to tap into a new traffic pool, just find out what mainstream young people are playing. The products that young people play with during college will create a nationwide trend after they enter society.

2. Video is the trend

First of all, as a form of media, video is currently the most advanced form of media, because video is the most efficient when transmitting information.

So, since video is such an advanced media form, why didn't it become the mainstream media form for information dissemination in the early days of the Internet?

Because when the Internet appeared, around 2010, the mainstream information of the Internet was mainly presented on the PC. On the one hand, the mobile phone experience was not good at the time, and on the other hand, the mobile phone data charges were too expensive. It was not until 2012 that the mobile phone data charges were reduced, and after products such as Dawangka appeared in 2014, it became possible to watch videos on mobile phones.

Then the question arises again, why when Dawangka appeared in 2014 and watching videos on mobile phones had become mainstream, there was no such nationwide phenomenon-level APP? This involves the third key point.

3. Making money is the real thing

In 2018, when TikTok was just starting to gain momentum and had only about 100 million daily active users, it immediately launched the Star Map platform and product showcases to help high-quality creators quickly monetize. In the later stage, there will be PICK plan, LINK plan, and national tasks, which are basically zero-threshold monetization forms.

After any independent creator can monetize through the various methods provided by Douyin, Douyin began to achieve a crazy growth of 100 million yuan a year, because only when the creator makes money will he be more motivated to contribute higher-quality content, which is a positive incentive.

Therefore, making money is very important for creators, and Douyin does a very good job in helping creators make money.

Now that we understand the key points that led to Douyin's rise, let's review how Douyin relied on brand promotion, product operation and traffic distribution step by step to become a national phenomenon-level app with 400 million daily active users.

① Brand promotion

In 2017, Yue Yunpeng posted a Weibo with a video attached. The theme was to find a buddy who looked very similar to him. This buddy was a creator of Douyin. The video on Weibo that Yue Yunpeng posted at that time had the watermark of Douyin, but this was just a small episode. At that time, Douyin did not have the ability to accept the influx of users from the whole nation.

In July 2017, The Rap of China set the entire summer vacation on fire. It was also from this time that Tik Tok began to truly and steadily carry out brand promotion activities. Douyin and The Rap of China have carried out a series of collaborations, and even specially co-produced a Douyin promotional video with Kris Wu. The timing was also very important. Summer vacation was a time when college students were bored, and this promotion played a very good role in attracting traffic.

In September 2017, Douyin collaborated with Hunan Satellite TV twice in a row, one of which was with Happy Camp, when Luo Zhixiang was still the spokesperson. Then in the same month, Douyin appeared on Day Day Up. After these two times, Douyin has become very well-known among the entire young group.

When we summarize Douyin’s brand promotion strategy, we can come up with two key words: young and fun.

Even now, the main content tone of Douyin is still centered around these two keywords. So when you create content, you must focus on these two core directions. Although some very niche tracks are different from mainstream content, the overall traffic share of niche tracks is very low.

② Product Operation

After such a large-scale and heavyweight product promotion, a large number of young people will definitely flock to the Douyin app. At this time , how to retain these young people depends on product and operation strategies.

Operational side: From 2017 to 2018, the content of Douyin was pushed forward in clusters, that is, within a month or half a month, a large amount of its content was a kind of gameplay. Why does this happen? Because Tik Tok’s earliest promotional strategy was to recruit 3,000 young men and women from the Communication University of China, who were good-looking young actors who could sing and dance, and asked them to post completely consistent content on Tik Tok according to the official guidance, such as the seaweed dance and finger dance that were very popular at the time.

When young people watch exactly the same content every day, they will have a very strong urge to imitate it. This is the time to test the capabilities of the product side . Why? Because if I am brainwashed by your content and I learn it, but I can’t do it as well as you, then my enthusiasm will be hit and I won’t shoot.

When TikTok was first launched, its product recording logic was different from other products, in that it could record in segments. You can record a segment of posing, and if it’s not good, just delete it. This completely saves the work of editing and is very convenient.

Another feature of Tik Tok is that it has very powerful filters, which means that no matter whether you are good-looking or not, the videos you shoot through Tik Tok will look good. This way, it is both easy to use and beautiful, and it brings completely positive incentives to users.

After the official promotion and brainwashing of users, and the participation of such a combination of measures, the richness and iteration of Douyin's content will be very strong, and the content production capacity will be very high, so it will be able to retain users.

We can summarize Douyin’s product and operation strategies with two key words: good-looking and easy to use.

③ Traffic distribution

Users are attracted by publicity and create content, but if no one likes the content they post, their enthusiasm will be greatly dampened. This involves the third key issue of Douyin - Douyin's traffic distribution.

The traffic distribution of Tik Tok is very balanced. Let's look at two examples:

The first one is Dao Xiaodao, who became extremely popular during the Spring Festival. She became extremely popular just by shaking her head and changing her makeup. On February 26, the number of fans was less than 1 million. After the head-shaking video came out, the number of fans increased to 12 million in one and a half months, and the number of fans increased by 10 million in one month.

Another account is Poisonous Tongue Movie. It also had less than 2 million followers in January, but now it has 14 million followers, an increase of 10 million in two months. This is not an isolated case, there are many such cases on Douyin. On TikTok, every creator has the opportunity to create a hit and gain huge traffic. As long as your content is good enough, you can quickly let a large number of people see it. The reason is that Tik Tok uses a traffic distribution model called algorithm recommendation, which gives everyone the opportunity to become a hit with a very high probability.

2. Algorithm Recommendation

Before talking about algorithm recommendation, can you recall how you get information in your daily life? There are only three ways: following, searching and being recommended.

1) Follow: A very typical example is Weibo/WeChat public accounts. After you follow an account, you can continue to see the content published by this account and get the information you want.

2) Search: Baidu and Google. When your needs are very clear, you can use keywords to search for search engines to get the information you want.

3) Recommendation: This is the model of TikTok and Toutiao. After you open the APP, you can read a few articles and click a few likes. You don’t have to worry about the rest. The algorithm will recommend content to you based on your reading behavior. All you have to do is lie back and wait.

The above is discussed from the perspective of the information receiver. So let’s change our perspective and think about it. When we are the information creators, let’s look at these three information distribution modes.

The first type is like the attention model. For example, if you want to create a public account, the most important thing is to increase your followers. If you enter the market late, it will be difficult for you to create a hit product. This model is very difficult for latecomers.

The second type of search is the same. When you are an information creator and you want your target audience to search for your content, you need to guess what users are searching for and what they will search for. You have to do a lot of SEO work. By the same logic, if you don’t become a webmaster in the early days and don’t join the Baidu News Source, your content can only be put on the back burner, which is also very disadvantageous for latecomers.

The third algorithm recommends this model. After you publish an article, as long as your target audience is accurate, the algorithm will automatically identify your content and recommend it to people who may like it. In simple terms, you only need to publish the content and wait for it to become a hit.

So the question is, Douyin now uploads 60 million videos every day. How can you make your video one of the 1/60 million recommended by the algorithm? This involves the core logic of Tik Tok’s algorithm recommendation. How does it work?

To sum it up in four words: judge people by things.

To judge something, the algorithm needs to identify what your content is.

Knowing people means that we need to identify the people who are browsing content on the platform and what are their preferences.

The algorithm knows that this person likes to play football. The algorithm just determined that there is an article about playing football, so it will directly recommend this article about playing football to people who like playing football. The logic of the algorithm recommendation is that simple. There are two main methods of algorithm recommendation. Let’s talk about them one by one.

The first type is content-based recommendation algorithm. What is a content-based recommendation algorithm? For example, after you enter Douyin, you like article A about playing football. After identification, the algorithm finds that article B is also related to playing football, so the algorithm will recommend content B to you. This is making recommendations based on content, because they are the same. If you like A, then you will definitely like B which is the same as A.

The second type is the recommendation algorithm based on collaborative filtering. The term collaborative filtering is very obscure, so we use another term to replace it, which is the recommendation algorithm based on user behavior. This type of recommendation algorithm based on user behavior is divided into two categories: one is the user behavior recommendation algorithm based on objects, and the other is the user behavior recommendation algorithm based on users.

1. User behavior recommendation algorithm based on items

Suppose you are user 1, and you like item 1 in the system. The system finds that there are also users 2, 3 and 4 who like item 1. Then the system also finds that user 2, 3 and 4 also like item 3 at the same time. Based on the user's behavior of liking items, can we guess that item 1 and item 3 are similar, so the system recommends item 3 to user 1?

This set of logic makes recommendations based on the user's liking for items, so it is called an item-based user behavior recommendation algorithm, because its recommendation logic is based on the user's behavior of liking items.

2. User behavior recommendation algorithm based on users

User 1 likes item 1, and user 2 also likes item 1, so can we say that in terms of liking item 1, user 2 and user 1 belong to the same type of people? Then the system finds that User 2 also likes Item 3. Since User 1 and User 2 are the same type of people, User 1 should theoretically also like Item 3. So the system recommends Item 3 to User 1. In this user behavior recommendation method, the system's focus is no longer on items but on people. It divides people into categories and makes similar recommendations to them. There is nothing wrong with this logic.

We just mentioned that Douyin uploads 60 million videos a day, so from the logic of the algorithm's computational complexity, we speculate that Douyin uses a collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm, that is, a recommendation algorithm based on user behavior, which is also officially recognized by Douyin.

From this logic, Douyin divides all the content into clusters and people with similar interests into piles, so there are many metaphysical statements about the need to maintain Douyin accounts and add tags.

In response to this statement, if you create an account to produce drama-style or funny content that everyone may like, you don’t need to maintain the account, because no matter who you publish your content to, they will like it, because humor can always bring joy to people.

But if your content is particularly vertical, then you have to classify the tags you have made on your account.

Because the person standing opposite us is not a person, not a senior editor, but a machine. The machine does not know whether your content is good or bad, nor does it know whether your content should be recommended to 1,000 people, 10,000 people or 1 million people. The only thing the machine can do is respond based on human feedback.

If a machine recommends your content to 500 people, and 499 of them like it, that means two things: first, the recommendation is in the right direction, and second, your content is of very high quality. At this time, the system will increase the recommendation amount and continue to snowball. However, if your content is recommended to 500 people and only 10 of them like your post, there are only two possible results: one is that the content was recommended in the wrong direction, and the other is that the content is of extremely poor quality.

What this brings us to is that if no matter how you adjust your content, no matter how you target the audience, no matter how you invest in DOU+, it only gets 500 views and does not exceed the exposure number set by the system, you need to reflect on the quality of your content.

Don't always think that you are good, what's more important is what the audience thinks is good.

3. Knowledge Base on Douyin

The first circle is the four core contents of Douyin, namely short videos, live broadcasts, e-commerce system and advertising system; the second circle is several important forms extending from the core circle; the various product forms in the outermost circle include Douyin’s mini-games, mini-programs, collection platforms, open platforms, musicians, special effects artists, Douyin stores and social networking, etc.

1. About short videos

On the left is content creation, and the creation methodology varies according to the content type. I have summarized a table to sort out all the categories of Douyin influencers on the Xingtu platform:

You can choose a category to output content based on your own strengths and main content direction. By the way, it is actually very simple to create IP. Socket Academy has a very detailed article on how to shape the IP image. After reading this article, you will basically have a very clear understanding of the character image and IP. (For the full article, reply to the keyword “TikTok literacy” in the WeChat public account backend)

2. MCN

The main value of MCN organizations is to help professionals who can produce content to realize their value. Everyone must remember this. If you want to be an MCN but do not have abundant advertising resources and strong ability to help professionals realize their value, I advise you not to be an MCN. Don’t think that if I have traffic, I will definitely have advertising. 95% of MCN teams that have this idea have failed.

In addition, if you want to be an MCN, you need to get official approval. You can click on the Douyin application link, pass the corporate qualifications to become an official MCN agency, and then sign talents. Certification is a must. Without certification, you will not be able to get official traffic support, including taking orders and some advertising activities of Star Map. It will be difficult to get better exposure and support.

3. KOL and KOC

The concept of KOL has been talked about in the Internet circle for many years. When you have millions of fans and can influence many people, you become a KOL. Then, if you are a little smaller, you may only have tens of thousands of fans, or even if you only have 5,000 WeChat friends as your own private traffic pool, this is also a KOC.

Currently, the most popular combination of KOL and KOC is: 1+10+100. It means 1 top celebrity/large traffic who can quickly achieve exposure on the entire network + 10 KOLs who do in-depth brand implantation and brand premium + 100 KOCs who can truly influence consumers' purchasing decisions, achieving product and effect integration through the form of 1+10+100.

4. Star Chart Advertising

The purpose of Star Chart Advertising is to help companies with money for promotion find KOLs who can bring them sufficient exposure. This determines that only two types of people can enter the Douyin Star Map advertising platform: the first type of people are business owners. You need to bring a business license with three certificates in one, and you can only see the influencer information after being certified by Douyin and making the payment. The second category is creators with 100,000 fans. They can enter the Star Map platform to publish advertising quotations by authorizing their Douyin account.

(PS: If the creator does not accept orders through the Xingtu platform, he will face the risk of being restricted if he is discovered by Douyin.)

In addition, some influencers have reached more than 100,000 fans and have joined Star Map, but they just can’t get any orders, no matter how low their quotes are. Why does this happen? Because on Douyin Star Map, if corporate customers want to place advertisements, they must first deposit money into the platform, then place an order with the influencer, and pay a deposit before they can do so. However, in the entire Internet advertising industry, no major customer is willing to advance payment before placing the advertisement, as this involves the issue of payment terms. That is to say, if you want to receive an order, you must put in money, but the brand owner is unwilling to put in the money first, so there must be a middleman to do the advance payment. On the one hand, this middleman is a private advertising company, and on the other hand, it is an MCN agency.

So if you are a lone expert and want to take orders on Star Map, it is still quite difficult. What should accounts that have less than 100,000 followers but want to monetize through advertising do? Douyin also provides corresponding monetization forms: PICK and LINK plans.

① PICK plan

It is a channel for ByteDance's products (Xigua, Volcano, Toutiao, Douyin, etc.) to place advertisements themselves. The advertising content in the PICK plan mainly comes from ByteDance's products, and there are also some brands with good relations.

The main income of this type of advertising is achieved through product exposure, and there is a concept of CPM here. M means thousand exposures. I will pay you money based on how many exposures you get. This is the format.

② LINK Plan

It has now been bound to the Star Map platform and no longer accepts individual invitations. Its main presentation form is a small blue diamond link in the lower left corner of the video and the first purchase guide link in the comment area, which is distributed through Star Map. The entry threshold for the PICK plan and the LINK plan is 50,000 followers, which is currently mainly achieved through application and invitation. So how can creators with less than 50,000 fans monetize? There are two types: one is game promotion, and the other is national mission.

③Game promotion

It is to promote the small games in Tik Tok, but this form of promotion is mainly on the Android side. If you want to pay to play games on IOS, Apple will charge a 30% service fee. This means that if you want to participate in the game promotion plan, you can only use an Android phone to do it. The reward is in cash, and I will give you as much money as you give me CPM.

④ National Mission

To put it simply, the national mission is to help Douyin official achieve its advertising KPI. For example, China Life launched a topic challenge on Douyin, with the goal of exposing the brand. However, not everyone is willing to actively participate in this topic. Douyin uses this form of national task. If you participate in this topic and post a video, Douyin will give you money based on the exposure you get, or give you some support rewards, to guide users to participate and help Douyin achieve its KPI.

⑤ Private domain traffic diversion

Another one is private domain traffic diversion. It is very difficult to create a public account with 100,000 followers now, but in Douyin, you can easily get a lot of exposure through the algorithm recommendation model. Therefore, some people will use private domain diversion to direct the large traffic of Douyin to personal WeChat groups.

There are generally two ways to attract traffic: the first is to put a WeChat account in your personal profile. It must be obscure and changed early. If your fans exceed 10,000, or even 100,000, you want to change your personal profile to include a WeChat account, it will basically not be approved.

The second form is to certify the corporate Blue V. Douyin will officially provide Blue V components. One is that you can insert a phone number, and the other is that when you send a private message to a Blue V account, it will automatically push a piece of content to you. This content can be made into an H5 landing page to guide users to click to copy the WeChat account and add it; another form is to directly push a message to you, telling you what benefits my WeChat group has. Regarding the private domain traffic diversion plan, Bangge has previously published an article about Snail Insurance’s private domain traffic diversion plan, which I will share with you later.

⑥ E-commerce distribution

Okay, let’s move on to Douyin’s most important monetization channel – e-commerce distribution.

E-commerce is a traffic business. Only when people enter your e-commerce store can there be a possibility of conversion, and Douyin is one of the platforms with the largest traffic at present. Douyin launched its product showcase in 2018, providing traffic to merchants on the e-commerce platform and enabling traffic owners to earn commissions, thereby achieving positive closed-loop incentives and promoting the development of e-commerce distribution business.

There are several important concepts about e-commerce distribution:

Showcase: It is a shopping cart with small commodities hanging on the personal homepage. To put it simply, you have a small cart that can carry 10 to 20 items. When you sell one, the merchant will give you a share of the profits. So how do you sell it? It means putting the products in the window into your video, then exposing them, generating conversions, and finally getting commissions. The main channels for purchasing goods are Taobao Alliance or Douyin's Selected Alliance.
Selected Alliance: It is the same thing as Taobao Alliance, but one is developed by Douyin and the other is developed by Alibaba.
Taobao Alliance: It is a platform under Alibaba that helps Taobao merchants obtain off-site traffic. Taobao merchants put their products on Taobao Alliance and offer a 10% commission. As long as someone sells the products from Taobao Alliance, I will give you one yuan if you sell for 10 yuan. This way, we can attract people with off-site traffic and help Taobao merchants sell their products.

There are three thresholds for Taobao Alliance to be listed on Douyin: the first is that the store must have one diamond or above, the second is that the store rating must be higher than the industry average, and the third is that Taobao will charge a part of the service fee, generally 10%. So if your commission is only 10%, the platform will collect the 10% from the traffic owner, not the 10% from the merchant. Therefore, the commission you offer must be higher than 10% so that the influencer can make a profit.

CPS: The full English name of S is Sell, which refers to a mode of cooperation in which you can get a certain amount of money for each item sold.
Planting grass: This concept has been talked about too much. It means that I recommend a product to you and say it is great, and then you also think it is great. At this time, you have been planted with grass by me. If you buy it next, then you have pulled out the grass.

Whether it is the window display, Taobao Alliance, CPS, or grass-planting, the logic behind all of this is commercially driven. What do you mean? I only do this because I can make money. I will only do it if ROI ＞ 1.

Why is ROI so popular on TikTok? Because everything about money-making and traffic in TikTok can be calculated. Let’s take an example. A product costs 100 yuan. After I put the product on a video, I bought 100 DOU+ and got 5,000 exposures. 500 out of these 5,000 people bought it, which is a conversion rate of 10%. The unit price is 100, which is 50,000 yuan. If you invest 100 and make 50,000, then you're out.

5. About live broadcast

As shown in the picture above, on the creative side there are e-commerce live streaming, knowledge and skills live streaming, and show live streaming. In fact, knowledge and skills live streaming and show live streaming are the same thing, which makes profits by bringing pleasure to others. The monetization forms of live streaming are: the first is audio wave rewards, the second is e-commerce distribution, and the third is private domain traffic diversion.

Sound waves: obtained through tips and gifts from the audience. But it doesn’t mean that if the audience gives the anchor 1,000 in tips, the anchor will earn 1,000. The platform will charge a portion of the fees for earning sound waves. If you are an ordinary individual, the platform will take 70%. If you sign a contract with an MCN agency, when your personal tasks and the MCN agency and the union agency reach a certain weight, the platform will take 50%.

Douyin will rank all people who are live streaming on a sound wave list every hour. The more sound waves you have, the higher you will be on the list. This list only shows the top 10. As long as you are on the list, others will have a greater chance of seeing you when they look at the hourly list. At this time, a key word called "beating the list" comes out.

When I go live streaming, if my fans are not high enough, or the traffic recommended to me by the system is not large enough, I can find a sponsor to spend money to push me to the hourly ranking of Douyin. In this way, I will get greater exposure. This is also a common way of cooperation between live streaming and e-commerce.

Two pieces of information will be displayed in the upper right corner of the live broadcast interface: the number of viewers, and the top five avatars with the highest current rewards in this live broadcast room. The first avatar is the number one brother on the list . You often hear similar words, "Give the number one brother on the list some attention." This method of putting up a list in the live broadcast room and then diverting traffic is not common in Douyin, but very common in Kuaishou.

Online PK: It is a competition mechanism of Douyin. I can connect with someone randomly, or I can take the initiative to connect with someone I know. What will the two people PK after connecting? Rewards from the audience. This kind of competition model actually comes from Errenzhuan. In the Errenzhuan, there is a man and a woman who are constantly slandering each other, creating conflicts and competition to get tips from the audience.

In addition to live shows, e-commerce live streaming is also very popular now. Due to the impact of the epidemic, many offline merchants have gone online to sell goods. In addition to the reward system, PK system and sound wave system, e-commerce live streaming also has an e-commerce system.

In the lower left corner of the interface, you can see who is making a purchase, and on the right it will show what product the current host is talking about. There is a word called "put on the shelves" here. In order to create a sense of scarcity, generally what the anchor is broadcasting will be put on the shelves. This kind of competition mechanism is very common in Taobao Live, and it has also become popular in Douyin.

The first two live broadcast forms are direct targeting mechanisms. I transmit the information directly to Douyin, and Douyin transmits it directly to the audience.

Another form is that the live broadcast is not recorded through Douyin, but on other platforms. I push the content of this platform to Douyin in the form of streaming, and then Douyin releases it to users after obtaining permission. Push streaming live broadcast is also called OBS .

This live broadcast permission needs to be applied for, and is currently mainly used for three types of users to do live streaming.

The first form is media organizations, such as TV stations and the Beijing News.
The second form is similar to Xueersi, which synchronizes the lecture content on its own platform to Douyin for live broadcast to gain traffic.
The third form is game live streaming, which is achieved by recording the computer screen and then pushing it to Tik Tok. Let me remind you again: OBS live broadcast requires permission.

There is a bug in the PC live broadcast on Android, so you can force it to go to OBS without applying. This method is now widely circulated in various WeChat groups, but once you live broadcast for more than half an hour, and the official finds out that you do not have permission, if you force yourself to broadcast, your account will be directly blocked without any room for reservation, so don't try this unconventional way.

Fan club: after you follow a host, you will not have an identity in his live broadcast room, but if you send the host a specific gift, you can become a member of his live broadcast room’s fan club. At this time, when you post a barrage, you will get a special identity. This is also an important way for Douyin to help creators monetize.

6. About Douyin’s e-commerce system

As shown in the picture above, on the left is Douyin’s own e-commerce system: group buying, small shops and Luban, and on the right is the off-site e-commerce platform.

Douyin Store: An e-commerce product that can be placed on Douyin, Huoshan Video, Xigua Video and Toutiao. When you first opened a Douyin store, you needed to have more than 300,000 fans. Recently, due to the impact of the epidemic and some strategies and plans of Douyin in its e-commerce business, you now only need to upload the business license of an individual business owner and a corporate business license to open a Douyin store, and then after paying a deposit for the corresponding category, you can sell goods on Douyin.

The Douyin store cannot be searched through Douyin. The products of the store are scattered in the shopping carts of various influencers. It feels like the products of Douyin’s store are everywhere, but you can’t find where it is.

Therefore, when running a Douyin store, you must not try to convert in-store traffic like you do with a Taobao store. To run a Douyin store, you need to use the CPS model like Taobao Alliance. You need to offer a high enough deposit and a high enough commission, so that the store can be put into the shopping cart of influencers, included in the video, and presented to users.

If your commission is particularly low, no influencer will promote your product. Of course, there is one exception, which is that you yourself have very strong traffic production capabilities. For example, the fruit sellers who were very popular last year, you can go to Xin Dou and search for “bad fruit compensation”. This is a system of goods that sells pomegranates, apples, oranges, pears, mangoes... You can search for it. Their ability to create traffic is extremely strong.

The form of small shops is called first-class e-commerce, and Luban is called second-class e-commerce. What is second-class e-commerce?

There is no store here. It just exists on a page of H5. The page is placed wherever the traffic is. Users can directly click on the page to complete the purchase and then get the product. The presentation of this product is like a duckweed, floating wherever the waves are strong in the sea.

So when you are creating content in the Douyin ecosystem, don’t think about creating a big brand like Taobao and Tmall, and creating a set of product collections. Once you promote your brand, your products will be sold. The probability of this happening is very low. From the emergence of the Douyin ecosystem to the present, almost no brand has built up a very strong brand premium in Douyin. Most of them just sell goods and earn commissions.

Luban e-commerce and Douyin stores can directly launch products through videos, but if third-party platforms, including Taobao and JD.com, want to hang on Douyin e-commerce, all things must first be placed on the Selected Alliance . Only after passing the Selected Alliance's commission screening and category content screening can they enter Douyin's videos.

The value of the Selected Alliance is that it can provide traffic for the products of the Selected Alliance, and then the products provide commissions for Douyin influencers. This is a very important link in the Douyin and distribution e-commerce system that we just mentioned.

It is actually quite difficult to get on the Selected Alliance. First, the store score must be higher than the average level, and there are also some category requirements, such as beauty, wine, seafood, etc. The current restrictions are relatively high. Because last year, those who sold beauty and health tea made the content of the Douyin ecosystem very bad, it is necessary to restrain low-quality content by raising the entry threshold of the Selected Alliance.

Douyin group buying is actually a food delivery platform. For example, a barbecue seller shoots a video, puts an order for the barbecue on the video, and then pushes the video to users within a 5-kilometer radius. After seeing it, users can click on the label to go directly to the purchase page. The purchase page will clearly tell you that free delivery is available within a few kilometers. It is actually the TikTok version of Ele.me.

6. About Douyin’s advertising system

At present, Douyin’s information flow ads mainly have the following forms:

Type 1: Brand exposure. For example, splash screen ads are generally from big brands.

Type 2: Product promotion.

Type 3: Game download. It will make a demo video of the game for you, and then guide you to download the game. After clicking, you will be directly redirected to the download page of the APP store.

Type 4: Form collection. After you click on a video and click on the form, it will ask you to fill in the relevant information. After obtaining your customer information, it will promote the brand to you through a follow-up phone call or guide you to make a purchase.

In the advertising form, there is a very important concept called delivery optimization. Because TikTok itself has a portrait library of all users, when you place an ad, you can target your ad to a certain group of people through keywords or interests. If the delivery is accurate, the unit price of acquiring customers will be very low. If the delivery is not accurate, the advertising effect can be optimized by adjusting keywords or adjusting the delivery direction. When brand owners place advertisements, they are not familiar with Douyin, so they need some optimizers who understand Douyin advertising optimization to help them improve the value of their advertisements. Xinbang has such business. You can go to Bangge to invest. They are doing very well.

7. Several product forms around Douyin

Although it is the outermost part of TikTok, it still has a huge user base and traffic. Many small teams of three to five people can earn millions a year by doing one of the sub-businesses!

① Tik Tok special effects artist

Many special effects on Douyin, such as the unicorn transformation that was particularly popular some time ago, were not made by Douyin officially, but by a third party or a completely independent creator. Douyin provides them with very convenient Douyin special effects production tools. I have put the download link of the Douyin Special Effects Artist software in the PPT. You can download it and try it out. It is very easy to use, just like opening a drawing software in Windows, putting a few pictures in it, and then making a few simulated expressions, you can generate a TikTok special effect of your own creation. Once your special effects become popular, Tik Tok will give you official special effects artist certification. For detailed information, you can click on the link to view it.

② Tik Tok musicians

The reason why Douyin is called Douyin is because music is very important to Douyin. There are two types of people who create its music. One type is ordinary talents who publish their own original sounds. The other type is people with musical expertise who create special music and publish it on TikTok for everyone to use. There are also links to Tik Tok musicians in the PPT. After entering, you can upload a music work with your own copyright to obtain independent certification, and then you can see very detailed information about how the music is being used in the background. If your music has particularly good exposure, Douyin official will also provide you with some unique music brand collaborations to help you monetize.

③TikTok mini program

Almost the same as WeChat mini program, Douyin mini program has very strong advertising exposure value, and its current revenue is also very high.

④Instant match platform

Because many advertisers do not have the video capabilities when they want to run videos, and influencers cannot efficiently produce videos that can bring exposure to the brand. At this time, professional video shooting teams can provide business owners with the opportunity to shoot advertisements through the instant platform.

The Jihe platform provides business owners with packages ranging from 500 to 2000, but unfortunately, the Douyin Jihe platform is no longer open to the public and can only be joined by invitation.

⑤ TikTok Open Platform

Because Douyin has accumulated a large amount of user data, it can provide this data to third parties with development capabilities to provide more services for Douyin. The Douyin open platform mainly provides four types of data. The first category is user and video data; the second category is user fan portraits; the third category is some data lists; and the fourth is some industry reports.

The many interface functions in this open platform can be used to develop particularly useful tools. There are still many opportunities here, and teams with development capabilities can give it a try.

4. How to play Tik Tok?

This topic is very broad, and I will only provide 6 ways of thinking. If you can understand these 6 ways of thinking, it will be very easy for you to create Tik Tok.

1. It’s never too late to start using TikTok

Because of TikTok’s algorithm recommendation mechanism and traffic distribution model, whenever you enter the TikTok ecosystem, as long as your content is liked by users, you can get high traffic!

A very typical example is Poisonous Tongue Movie, which makes movie remixes. However, in the Douyin ecosystem, movie remixes have been very mature since November last year. Poisonous Tongue Movie only started to really make a big push this year, and it gained 12 million fans in three months. This is enough to show that it is never too late to enter Douyin.

2. Understand the algorithm and let the algorithm understand you

Forget about content being king, study the algorithm first. For example, here are two slogans from Estee Lauder:

From a literary perspective, the first sentence definitely beats the second one. However, from the logic of algorithm recommendation, the algorithm cannot recognize what "accompany you through this winter" means. The algorithm can only break down the "moisturizing effect".

If the algorithm cannot recognize your content, it will be difficult for it to recommend it to the right target audience. Therefore, you must remember this logic of thinking: first find a way to make the algorithm understand your content, and then think about how to make the content better!

3. Fans are really worthless and useless

Apart from proving that you were great in the past. Its value lies in that when you have more fans, you can get a higher basic recommendation value. For example, if you have an account with 1 million fans and an account with 10,000 fans, the account with 1 million fans may recommend 100,000 users to it right away, while the account with 10,000 fans may only have 800 at most. Of course, this is just a base recommendation. As long as your content is good enough, you can quickly surpass the exposure of the million fans through continuous iterations, one or two iterations at a time.

4. Trying to get audience feedback is the only way to a hit product

The machine does not know whether your content is worthy of being recommended to 100,000 people. The machine can only judge whether to recommend it based on user feedback. If you actively encourage users to like your videos, give you feedback, and attract users to finish watching your videos, then these behaviors will be fed back to the algorithm: this video is worth continuing to recommend.

5. Clarify the content boundaries to obtain stable traffic

The most important thing about Douyin is to ensure stable traffic. We cannot have millions of exposures today and not have a single like tomorrow. Such content is not suitable for commercialization or long-term development. The key to obtaining stable traffic is to clearly define the boundaries of the content. You must ensure that your content will only be liked by a certain type of people, and that other people will not give you feedback after reading it. Only by correcting your content so that it will only be recommended by algorithms can you continue to expand.

6. Data-driven

Because algorithm recommendations are completely based on user feedback data, when you are creating content, you must use data to observe which accounts and content are recommended and recognized by the system. Only data can be used as a reference condition.

Previously, all content forms had a steadily increasing slope in terms of followers growth. However, the healthiest way to increase followers on Douyin is in a pulsed manner, that is, one video goes viral once. There is no stable and slow growth, only explosive and breakthrough growth. Therefore, you must find a very high-quality account that is growing.

Author: New List

Source: New List