Tik Tok’s content flow and algorithm logic

In the past two years, Tik Tok , as a national-level application, has not only attracted huge traffic, but also become a new battlefield for consumer brands. But as of today, there is no talk of dividends. For players who missed the opportunity, should they still use TikTok now?

The answer is undoubtedly yes. With 400 million daily active users on Douyin, there is no reason for anyone to skip such a huge traffic.

But where are the new opportunities for Douyin? How to understand the underlying communication logic of TikTok today, and how to transform it into a feasible methodology?

“There are many teams that can make good-looking videos, but if you really understand its underlying algorithms and recommendation logic, the results will be completely different. So everyone must make up for this lesson.”

Recently, at a membership event held by Inspur New Consumption, Murong Jicheng, founder of Xindong Media MCN, shared in depth the content flow and algorithm logic of Douyin, as well as the IP incubation methodology for 120 million fans, based on top IP cases.

Murong Jicheng was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Daqi.com and the operations director of Liujianfang. In just over a year since he founded Xindong Media, he has incubated top IPs such as Zhu Xiaohan and Laozhangren Talking about Cars, and accumulated more than 120 million fans. We have a deep understanding of short video IP incubation and live streaming e-commerce.

The following is a sharing record, this article only excerpts some of the highlights:

Let me give you a brief introduction. We started working on Douyin in May 2018 and Kuaishou in August. In addition, we also distribute on 35 platforms.

It has also incubated some top IPs, such as "Zhu Xiaohan" who has 36 million fans and ranks eighth on the Douyin Star Chart's short video commercial value list, and "Father-in-law Talks about Cars" who has 12 million fans and ranks first among Douyin Star Chart's annual car creators.

We have accumulated approximately 120 million fans in the entire short video field.

01. Track analysis: Now may be the best time to make short videos

I habitually start with the analysis of the short video track.

Short videos are rapidly taking over the usage time of mobile Internet, with 821 million monthly users and an average usage time of more than 60 minutes per person. During this year's Spring Festival, short videos accounted for 17.3% of the total mobile Internet usage time.

This is a comparison between June 2019 and June 2018. We can see that the growth rate of short videos reached 65.4%, far exceeding the following games and e-commerce.

Judging from the data in the audio-visual field in 2019, short videos have the most obvious impact on the number of new netizens. You can understand that in the audio-visual field, 53.2% of new netizens are coming for short videos.

Moreover, in the short video track, there are two platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, both with DAU exceeding 300 million. This has never happened before in our content entrepreneurship.

1. Douyin relies on hits, while Kuaishou focuses on the masses

Although TikTok has only been around for more than three years, its DAU has exceeded 400 million, with more than 45 million videos uploaded every day and an average daily playback volume of 60 billion. The characteristics of Tik Tok are popularity and hits. If a video becomes popular, Tik Tok's algorithm will push it to more people.

Kuaishou emphasizes accessibility and fairness, and it will distribute traffic to more ordinary content creators. Therefore, there will be many popular IPs in Douyin, while Kuaishou has more low-level users.

Kuaishou officials once said that it takes more than 800 days to grow from 0 to 1 million followers. But Douyin can gain millions of followers overnight just by having a hit video.

This is where the two platforms differ, and it is also where they envy each other. However, it is precisely the differences in the top-level designs of the two platforms that make the ecosystems of the two platforms prosperous to different degrees.

Douyin’s content is younger, more trendy, and cooler, and users are used to liking it, making it more suitable for promoting content; Kuaishou is a real record, and everyone likes to comment, reward, and consume, making it more suitable for conversions.

2. Future trends: It’s not too late to make short videos now

From the perspective of future development trends, the first is the arrival of 5G. I believe that by next year or the year after, when 5G is popularized in more remote cities and rural areas, short videos and live broadcasts will truly explode. Now it is still in a stage of rapid growth.

Especially live streaming. Strictly speaking, short videos are the product of 4G, while live streaming is the real product of the 5G era.

There is also the development trend of hardware. Now a lot of mobile phone hardware is focusing on how to shoot better-looking videos, while in the past it was more about how to take better-looking photos. Including AI technology, at this stage, with the support of big data, it will be more accurate than before.

The same goes for the business ecosystem. How does a brand spread its influence on Douyin? How can merchants promote products on Douyin and make them hot-selling products? In fact, there is no mature methodology yet. Although the entire business ecosystem is developing rapidly and evolving quickly, in my opinion it is still in a very early stage.

From this, we can draw two conclusions:

First, short videos will become an entry-level application and infrastructure for the mobile Internet. You will find that more and more young user groups, when they open their mobile phones, basically watch WeChat, short videos, games, e-commerce and some tool applications.

Second, it’s not too late to make short videos and live broadcasts now. And if you look at the next 3-5 years, this might be the best time to do it.

02. Analysis of Douyin: The underlying algorithm logic is a compulsory course for short video operations

1. Why is Tik Tok so popular and worth cultivating?

Why is Douyin so popular amid the explosion of the entire short video industry?

I think the first thing is the industry foundation. The popularity of smart phones and 4G networks has increased the number of users consuming content, reduced the cost of creating content and improved efficiency, which is the foundation of the entire short video industry.

The second is Toutiao’s comprehensive support from AI algorithms to traffic matrix and user growth. ByteDance actually shouted the slogan "Short videos are the trend" a long time ago, especially on Toutiao, short videos have consumed a lot of users' time.

The third is strong operation. Tik Tok is a typical example of strong operation, and the operation team of the mobile Internet should be the strongest.

The operation of Douyin started with seed users, including young men and women from early art schools, and then firmly expanded MCN organizations, and then invited celebrities and influencers to join, and then more government agencies, traditional media, etc. What problems has Douyin’s strong operation solved?

There was a very popular software called Xiaokaxiu, which was about lip-syncing. There were many reasons why it did not develop, and one of the most important reasons was that it did not solve the problem of content diversification. It had been focusing on lip-syncing and could not meet the basic needs of more users.

Tik Tok was originally a lip-syncing platform, but through its strong operations, it has attracted almost all the people and teams in China who can continuously produce high-quality content, thus solving the problem of the richness of the content ecosystem. Douyin's strong operation essentially solves the problem of content production, thereby improving user retention.

The strong operation has played an important role in the growth of TikTok to 400 million DAU.

The fourth is the business ecosystem. After the user growth and retention of the entire product were stable, and the content was enriched, they quickly began to support the entire business ecosystem, including advertising platforms, traffic e-commerce, Blue V, live broadcast rewards, and product promotion. Although this started not very early, it has developed very rapidly.

Perhaps the only two platforms that can truly do and coordinate all the above-mentioned aspects are Douyin and Kuaishou. So why is Tik Tok so popular? Why is Douyin worth cultivating? Because it is really building a platform and ecosystem efficiently.

2. Tik Tok’s content flow and algorithm logic

We also started from scratch when making short videos, and we did a lot of research on the algorithm logic of Tik Tok. Let’s first take a look at the content flow logic of Douyin:

When a user uploads a short video, the system program will determine whether it violates the rules. If it does not, it will be uploaded to the seed traffic pool, which means it will be distributed to the 200 users who are online at the time.

These 200 users will have a behavioral record of this video, such as how many people have watched it, how many people have commented, liked, and shared it, how many people have clicked on the homepage to follow this IP, etc.

If the calculated value exceeds the threshold of the next traffic pool, the video will enter a larger traffic pool, and then decide whether to make further recommendations based on the behavior records of users in this traffic pool. This cycle is the logic of the entire content flow.

Of course, the review will become more stringent as time goes by, and manual review will be added. Even when the number of views exceeds one million, there will be an audit of values.

Why do many people feel that Douyin has limited traffic? But the official TikTok does not actually limit the flow of traffic, unless your video violates the rules. Why do your videos have so few likes?

Because when TikTok recommends a video to seed users, there may be almost no one watching it, no likes, comments, or shares, so it will determine that the video is not suitable for recommendation to more users.

Your fans may see it when they are browsing, but it will not be put into the larger public traffic pool. This is the logic behind the content flow on TikTok.

What is the algorithm logic of Tik Tok?

Douyin’s AI technology has excellent content recognition and scene recognition capabilities. The logic of Tik Tok's algorithm is to achieve precise recommendations by analyzing the characteristics of people, videos, and popularity and matching the three.

What is a human being? It is the user-side feature. Within the scope permitted by the agreement, TikTok is able to roughly know the basic behavior of each of our users.

For example, Douyin can tell you what types of videos you spend more time on, and what kind of content you like, comment on, or share. Even your phone model, gender, geographic location, etc. can be obtained after authorization, and your address book can be found to know who your friends are.

Second, the features of the video side. Tik Tok can identify the general content of each video, whether it is about food, cars, pets, or beauties and handsome guys.

The third is popularity prediction. There are 45 million videos uploaded to Tik Tok every day. Why do some videos become popular while others have no traffic? This involves the prediction of popularity, which is also the logic of content flow that we just talked about.

For example, it will judge how many users a video is suitable for recommendation based on its playback volume, dwell time, completion rate, replay rate, sharing rate, and other dimensions.

Therefore, Tik Tok knows the basic characteristics of each user, as well as the characteristics of each video, and can also determine the popularity of the video. By recommending content based on this logic, we can get Douyin with different faces for different people.

The logic of this algorithm is definitely incomplete, because TikTok's algorithm is actually very complex, and it has entered the field of deep learning, and it will evolve on its own. But we know its general logic, because all it can recognize is data, and data only has those dimensions.

3. How to understand short video thinking?

You may have heard of these factors on many occasions, but the key is how to influence these factors.

This is an advertising video that I often share. The IP that released it is "Laozhangren Talking about Cars". It has been played over 50 million times, received 1.77 million likes, 47,000 shares, 39,000 comments, and gained 200,000 followers.

The total length of this video is only 36 seconds. In the opening "golden 3 seconds", we set up a highlight such as Zhu Xiaohan parking his car, and then created a suspense of fighting for a parking space.

Several highlights were added in the middle, such as the car competing for the parking space was a Mercedes-Benz, as Mercedes-Benz was a hot topic on Douyin at the time.

The second highlight is Zhu Xiaohan's action of pinching her waist, which is a very detailed operation. You will find that someone in the comments said: Zhu Xiaohan’s waist-pinching action is like my grandma’s, and this comment received a lot of likes.

If you see a comment like this in the comment section and you didn’t notice this point the first time, then you will most likely read it again, and its replay rate will be very high. So in fact, professional teams will have a dedicated team to manage the comment section.

The third highlight is the advertisement for automatic parking. With just a car key, the car can be parked automatically, which exceeds user expectations. The fifth highlight is the dad’s expression, which ends with an expression of dishevel in the wind.

So in just 36 seconds, we have a beginning and an ending, and we also add so many highlights in the middle. This is the thinking required for making short videos.

Every time we review a video, we will look at the number of likes for each of our videos, and you will find that there are peaks in the number of likes. A successful video will most likely have likes at the beginning, in the middle, and then there will be a peak of likes at the end. This is also what we require of screenwriters when creating short videos.

In fact, it is "three acts", which is consistent with traditional film and television creation.

How to attract fans at the beginning? Why are there “golden 3 seconds” and “golden 5 seconds”? Because the cost for users to obtain good content on Douyin is so low, if you can’t attract them in 3 or 5 seconds, they will just swipe away, so the opening is very important.

Second, there must be enough highlights in the middle. Every highlight will form a discussion point. The longer the user stays in the comment area, the better the data of this video will be, so the management of the comment area is also very important.

Finally, the ending must satisfy the users. The ending of those highly-rated videos will definitely make you feel comfortable.

Another thing is that the total duration should be short, which is also what we often tell our customers. At the beginning, many clients would think, I gave you so much budget, why did you only give me a 30-second video? This is actually a misunderstanding. As long as the expression is complete, the shorter the video, the better.

Why? Because among the factors that affect the video recommendation rate, there is a very important one called "completion rate". The higher the completion rate, the greater the chance of being recommended. The length of the video will affect the completion rate. It is quite stressful to ask users to watch a one-minute video repeatedly.

Therefore, our requirement for the entire short video team is that the length can be reduced by one second, the post-production can be reduced by one frame, and the script can be reduced by one word.

This is also something everyone needs to reflect on. Has your short video team truly achieved short video thinking?

Including the setting of highlights, can you add one more highlight to the video? Our requirement for the director is that every detail that appears on the screen is designed.

For example, why did we have to set up a Mercedes-Benz car, why did Zhu Xiaohan have to pinch her waist, why did we have to design an expression for the father, etc., all of these were designed.

Every highlight you design can be presented in a data-based manner in the background. This is my understanding of the thinking behind short videos.

Understanding the underlying algorithm logic is a must for short video operations. In fact, there are many teams that can shoot good-looking videos, but if you truly understand the underlying algorithm and recommendation logic of Tik Tok, the effect will be completely different when you create videos, so everyone must take this course.

03. Implementation Methodology: How to Build Douyin IP

1. Three elements to make Douyin work

How can we do TikTok well? I think it’s still about solving cognition, changing thinking and empowering the team.

The first step is to solve the problem of cognition. Short videos and live streaming are a major trend, there is no doubt about it. In the past, the communication model was centralized and editorial recommendations were adopted. It’s different now. The videos you shoot are not recommended by editors, but by algorithms.

But no matter how you change, content is king, which has never changed, because users' demand for good content has never changed. Whether it is BBS, Weibo, WeChat, or the era of short videos, content is always king.

The second is to change your mindset. The question most often asked by people who make short videos is how to increase followers. But if you really want to increase your followers, you should first forget about increasing your followers and return to the value itself.

The reason why an IP can be established must be because of its value. So first of all, you must ask yourself, what kind of value can you provide to users? How to continue? Instead of thinking about how to increase followers right away.

Third, empowering the team ultimately depends on the people. You must enable your team to have short video thinking and make it a learning team. Because the evolution is so rapid, the gameplay of many popular videos may only last for one or two months.

2. Four steps of IP incubation

(1) Track selection

The first step in IP incubation is track selection. How to choose a track? We need to look at it from the perspective of external factors and internal factors respectively. External factors are divided into platform trends and commercial value.

First of all, why should we look at platform trends? Since you have chosen to work on a platform, you must know what is popular on the platform recently and what users like, so that you have a greater chance of succeeding.

Just like when we are building the WeChat ecosystem, we must understand what WeChat should focus on at different stages. For example, WeChat’s original functions, WeChat’s mini-programs, etc., each trend promoted at the platform level will create a group of valuable accounts. The same is true on TikTok.

This is the type of video preferred by Douyin users in the second half of 2019. We will see performances, life, food, film and television, culture, etc. These contents are the most popular on the Douyin platform and are the most worthy of our energy.

So when choosing a track, I suggest you choose a trend-type track. But some people may ask, there are already many top IPs in a track, is it a red ocean of competition?

I don’t think so. The top IP represents the ceiling of this track. If a track does not even have one million fans, it is definitely not a good track.

Second, we can be simpler and more direct in looking at commercial value and how to monetize it.

This is the public data of some of TikTok’s IPs. If you look at the types of these IPs, you will find that they are basically the same as the most popular video types we just saw. Therefore, platform trends and commercial value are the references we should make when choosing a track.

What are the internal factors? What is the situation of your own team? What kind of advantageous resources do you have? What valuable content can you continuously provide?

(2) Personality and roles

The second step in IP incubation is to have a clear character label, to explore human nature and psychological archetypes, to find emotional resonance, and to use storytelling to establish a sense of identity.

Taking "Zhu Xiaohan" as an example, you will find that her personality labels are very clear, such as silly, kind, foodie, single, etc. Many of Zhu Xiaohan’s popular videos are centered around these personality labels of hers.

Of course, another very important reason is authenticity. This is basically a very real Zhu Xiaohan. Zhu Xiaohan is like this in real life. This is also a very important reason why everyone likes Zhu Xiaohan.

(3) Rapid content iteration

The third step is called rapid iteration of content. I found that many teams have determined their track and analyzed their own advantages, but they are still hesitant when it comes to actually doing it. They say that I can use method A or method B to do this track, so what should I do?

I tell you all, don’t hesitate, do A and do B as well. Because many times our judgments are often not so accurate. Even if our team chooses the track now, we will still face these problems. We must also go through a process of content iteration before we can find the correct content direction.

But don’t worry too much about this. Before the content is finalized, any attempt and change is valuable.

(4) Refined operations

The fourth step is the refined operation of content. How precise is it? Starting from account registration, to how to make avatars and backgrounds, how to set introductions and tags, to the time, frequency, and steps of posting, etc., a complete operations manual is required.

For example, regarding the frequency of posting, I suggest that it is best to update daily, or at least two to three times a week, because if you stop posting for more than a week, the Douyin system may have to re-identify you.

We have had such a case. Before the suspension of updates, the number of fans increased by more than 10,000 every day. Due to certain reasons, the updates were suspended for more than a week. When we updated again, we lost fans every day. It took a long time to reverse the trend of losing fans.

There are also many techniques in the publishing process. For example, the IP "Guo Congming" has 40 million fans on Douyin. If you study his videos, you will find that many of their titles are directive, suggesting that you should watch to the end. This operation can actually increase the completion rate to a certain extent.

There is also a comment section, and here I would like to emphasize that the comment section must be cultivated in depth. How to write the first review? How to design and discover great comments? What kind of comments can make users stay in the comment section for a while longer? These are very important in the entire video recommendation process.

Another thing is data analysis and mining. Tik Tok provides a very powerful data analysis function. You can know at what point in time the user liked the video, which means that each of your memes can be presented in a data-based manner.

The data can correspond to your content design. For example, if some videos don’t have a like button at the end, we will consider whether we can add a highlight at the end so that users can give me a like after watching it? Therefore, data analysis should feed back into our content creation.

We still review the data once a week. Why is the data good or bad? Why is this link so popular? We are constantly optimizing the content creation process, which is also part of refined operations.

3. IP incubation system: distributed assembly line operation

For the entire IP incubation, we now use a distributed assembly line operation. What does it mean? In fact, it is normal for you to incubate an IP, but only if you can incubate more IPs in batches, your overall scale, volume and value will be greater.

We have dedicated IP incubation teams in Tianjin and Beijing, and we also encourage directors to try different tracks. We have an editorial committee to control the selection of the entire track and the direction of the content.

The next step is to match resources and assign the right directors, screenwriters and actors. After the sample film comes out, our operations team will do testing and data analysis. The whole process will last about 1-3 months. Those who meet the standards will enter into refined operations, while those who do not will be eliminated.

This is our incubation system, which may not be universally applicable. But if your IP doesn’t have more than 100,000 video likes in a month and doesn’t have 300,000 followers in three months, you will basically be eliminated.

04. Short videos are not the end

Short videos are actually not a new thing. They have existed since the first day videos were born. Many advertisements on TV are actually short videos. So short videos are definitely not the end, they are just a stage in the development of media.

In the future, there will definitely be more content-rich expressions to replace short videos. It’s just that at this stage, short videos are the most popular for various reasons.

Short videos will eventually form an ecological platform that will enable more participants to have more efficient connections. Whether it is content creators, brands, supply chains, or physical stores, there are many possibilities.

QA Excerpt

Q: What do you think about the prospects of WeChat Video Account?

A: If Tencent can make a breakthrough in short videos, 2020 will actually be a critical year. In this process, I think there are two products worth trying: the first is Weishi, and the second is WeChat’s Video Account.

At this stage, if you can get the internal test of WeChat Video Account, it is best to try it as soon as possible. Because if you do it now you may catch a wave of dividends, don't hesitate. There is no time to hesitate during the dividend period. Those who can get the dividends in the end are all those with strong execution capabilities.

The same goes for Weishi. Tencent’s last chance to compete with Douyin and Kuaishou in the short video field is Weishi. All of Tencent’s winning teams have gone to Weishi.

Q: Should a new brand build brand IP or character IP? How to avoid the problem of corporate accounts relying on character IP?

A: Enterprise account is Blue V. If the enterprise has the ability, I suggest that it must become Blue V.

However, I think that for accounts named after companies, it is better to let them focus on the task of corporate publicity and promotion. It is quite challenging to create a distinctive IP for a corporate account.

So I usually recommend that companies set up two systems. One system is Blue V, which is dedicated to brand publicity and promotion; the other system is responsible for content and personal setting to influence target users. Open up both brand IP and character IP lines at the same time, don’t hesitate about this.

Q: What do you think of Kuaishou and Douyin e-commerce? How should an e-commerce company choose?

A: First of all, Kuaishou started e-commerce much earlier than Douyin, so in the e-commerce sales process, Kuaishou users have been educated in advance. Moreover, Kuaishou’s inherent culture of “old irons” has made people accustomed to giving rewards and to online celebrities promoting products.

Therefore, Kuaishou seems to be more mature than Douyin in the field of e-commerce.

But there are also great opportunities in Douyin e-commerce, but Douyin's short video e-commerce and live streaming e-commerce are still in the initial stage. If you do a live streaming to sell goods, it is even difficult to review it because there is no more data to support it. But TikTok will be made sooner or later, it’s just still in its early stages.

Author: Inspur New Consumption

Source: Inspur New Consumption