Actual case: How to quickly create a Douyin influencer with more than 10 million views?

What content is most likely to dominate TikTok ? How to cleverly use algorithms to quickly increase interaction rates and completion rates? How to quickly create a Douyin influencer with over 10 million views from 0 to 1? The person in charge of NetEase’s most popular Tik Tok IP project will teach you step by step how to create a hit video!

In the era of TikTok, everyone is building IP and seizing traffic dividends. So how can we quickly create a hit video and build a Douyin IP? Today, I will take "Waste Chai Maomao" as an example to share with you.

First, let me briefly introduce “Waste Chai Maomao”. "Feichai Chai Maomao" has been operating for nearly half a year. Up to now, we have released more than 50 short videos. The main operating platforms include Douyin, Kuaishou , Volcano, etc. The cumulative number of views has exceeded 10 million, and the number of likes has exceeded 47w+.

Today's sharing will focus on 4 aspects:

1. Briefly introduce the current situation of the short video industry and explain why we should make short videos from a macro perspective;
2. The microscopic analysis of the production process of the 15-second short video IP "Feichai Chai Maomao" will be the focus of my sharing;
3. Let’s briefly talk about TikTok’s decentralized algorithm and give some suggestions on account operations;
4. Share the commercialization of Tik Tok.

Okay, let’s officially get into today’s sharing.

1. What drives the rapid development of the short video industry?

Before June 2017, there was no legend of Kuaishou in the world, but overnight, Kuaishou entered the public eye like a dark horse . At that time, Kuaishou led the short video industry with a total of 300 million users and tens of millions of daily active users.

In May of the same year, Toutiao announced that it would invest 1 billion yuan in short video content creators from Huoshan Video in an effort to erode Kuaishou’s market share. At this point, we could already sense the smoke of war on the short video battlefield. Finally, the annual data for 2017 also confirmed this. The total usage time of users in the short video industry reached 372.4 billion minutes, a year-on-year growth rate of 360%, leading all sub-sectors. The average daily usage time of users in the short video industry is as high as 65.8 minutes, a year-on-year growth rate of 44%.

It can be said that the most important driving force for the development of the short video industry is the strong demand from users.

The short video industry can be simply divided into upstream - content producers, and downstream - platform parties, among which content creators are the core of the short video industry chain.

Content creators are mainly divided into PGC and UGC . PGC has extremely strong monetization capabilities, while the creative power of UGC is crucial to the formation of the platform ecology. Since short videos have the characteristic of extremely low production costs - that is, users can complete the process of video shooting and post-editing on their mobile phones, and the operation interaction is extremely simple, it is easy for users to realize the transition from consumer to consumer role. This feature also explains why short videos spread quickly and develop rapidly.

The short video platforms downstream of the industry have their own characteristics, and the tool types are moving towards community. Among them, the community platforms have high user stickiness and are currently the best developing trend.

We can briefly understand the marketing strategies of several community platforms such as Kuaishou, Douyin, and Weishi :

• Kuaishou currently continues to lead with 120 million daily active users, and has achieved a 10-fold increase in daily active users in just 10 months. However, it has a lot of Toutiao-related apps such as Douyin, Volcano, and Xigua following it. Therefore, in order to seize market share as quickly as possible and achieve 180 million daily active users, Kuaishou has no upper limit on its marketing budget.
• During the same period, Douyin set a budget of 2 billion to help it compete with Kuaishou, which can be seen from the fact that Douyin and Kuaishou are competing to sponsor various variety shows.
• Weishi has come into the spotlight thanks to the fact that WeChat blocked Douyin and Kuaishou, as well as the widely circulated "3 billion yuan short video subsidy policy". The subsidy is quite large. For every 10,000 effective views and 1,000 likes of an S-level video, you can get a cash reward of 1.5k.

Against the backdrop of the rapid development of the short video industry, Feichai officially began to enter and embrace the development of the industry by using short video content production as a starting point in November 2017.

2. How to quickly build a short video IP from 0 to 1

1. Content positioning - what content is most likely to dominate Douyin?

First, we can look at the breakdown of the most popular short videos on Douyin (see the picture below), from handsome boys and girls, to actors and funny joke tellers, to sharing of life skills.

However, I personally prefer to call these "feature values ​​of videos" : In order to clearly define the content positioning of a short video IP, feature values ​​alone are not enough, you also need to choose a vertical field. The combination of "feature values ​​+ vertical fields" can determine the positioning of the IP.

Taking the useless character Maomao as an example, the characteristic value of "drama spirit" is this: our actor, Maomao, is a very interesting, funny and exaggerated woman in real life. Therefore, we chose the characteristic value of "drama spirit and funny" based on the actor's own characteristics.

The second point is to identify the vertical field. We chose the office field for two reasons:

• One is that in the past, when we were advertising in channels , we commissioned agents to find influencers in offices, but there were basically none, and most of them were in home environments or outdoor scenes;
• Second, the office scene is easy to shoot. It can be said that we chose a scene that is not very common but very convenient.

After you determine the general framework of content positioning, you need to slowly explore more specific directions. For example, Feichai, which has been operating since November 2017, was initially positioned as a punching bag who was often bullied in the office. However, after publishing nearly ten short videos, we found that the dissemination effect was mediocre. So we chose to expand the scope and output works with "funny + office + combining hot spots".

2. Team Building

After determining the content positioning, a team needs to be formed. Fei Chai Chai Maomao formed a small team of 4.5 people, including 2 people as the leading actor and editor. On average, each person needs to invest about 3 working hours per week. The director, screenwriter, and photographer are taken turns by 3-4 people, and each role requires about 2-3 working hours per week on average. In terms of team personnel investment, the Feichai project team operates with the smallest unit and lowest cost. This model is particularly suitable for early-stage teams.

Here we need to emphasize the actors, especially for videos featuring real people. The actors and their appearance or acting skills will determine how far your IP can go. The PPT simply lists the beautiful UP hosts currently promoted by Douyin and Weishi. It can be seen that they are all young ladies with very high looks.

Of course, your leading actor may not be very good-looking, but he must be a good actor, bold and funny enough. For example, "The Drama Queen Peony". If you watch the videos, you will find that although the scripts of some films are average, his acting skills are very good. No matter he plays a young goblin in the workplace or a middle-aged woman, he can do it with ease and is very talented.

For videos of non-real humans, they either rely on the beauty of the picture, such as scenery, or on superb skills, such as cooking demonstrations, iPhone tips demonstrations, etc., immersing themselves in a certain niche and achieving perfection.

3. One week system

Next, let’s talk specifically about Feichai’s division of labor and cooperation. Feichai adopts a model of 2-3 updates a week. The entire process includes: topic selection, script writing, shooting, editing, and publishing. Among them, topic selection and script are the most important links, which fundamentally determine the quality of the short film and whether the subsequent process can be carried out smoothly.

Here’s a quick look at what we did:

On Monday, everyone will first throw out their own scripts at the topic selection meeting and simply describe the story line content; then we will finalize on the spot 2-3 scenes to be shot this week from these 5-6 scripts.

Next, we discuss the specific storyboard, how many shots should be shot, what each shot tells, where the climax is, whether the logic is smooth, etc.; then through storyboards, we simply illustrate the details of the picture, lens movement, positioning, etc. in the form of images.

After the discussion, on Tuesday, the screenwriter will organize the script based on the discussion and synchronize it with all members. If there are any objections, such as problems with the lines or shots, adjustments will be made again in an effort to finalize everything before filming.

During the specific shooting process, external conditions - the assistance of props, the lighting can make up for the lack of indoor light, the tripod can help you fix the lens, and the ear-clip microphone helps to better receive the sound; but if your funds are limited, then I suggest you buy a tripod first, which can be done on Taobao for just a few dozen dollars.

Wednesday is our fixed shooting time. During the shooting, the most important thing is the performance of the actors. The director and photographer needs to communicate with the actors about how they want the movements and expressions to be shown under this lens. If necessary, the director needs to demonstrate in person. Basically, we will NG more than 10 times for each shot, and sometimes more than 20 times; but it is not recommended to do too many times, as everyone will get tired easily, so just do it with discretion.

Thursday and Friday are reserved for editors. In principle, filming follows the script, and editing also needs to follow the script; but we usually encounter a problem: the edited film feels rather flat, so post-production of the video is very important, whether it is adding sound effects, fast cutting, repeated fast forwarding, or slow forwarding, all of which can make a film come alive.

4. Specific Examples

Next, I will explain the specific operations through several examples. You can search "Feichai Chai Maomao" on Douyin to watch specific cases.

The first example is "I support you":

• Source of the joke: The King of Comedy by Stephen Chow, but we added a twist and set the story to a young couple .
• Basic story line: After the girl got off the car, her boyfriend shouted: Maomao, can you not go to work? Maomao: If I don’t go to work, you will support me. The boyfriend was scared and said, “Then you better go to work. The family loan depends on you.”
• Storyboard: 5 shots, basically one shot for each line of dialogue. See the picture below for details.

The video has been viewed nearly 4 million times so far, and both the number of likes and the like rate are very good.

To sum up: with a good storyboard, smooth performances by the actors, and appropriate music and special effects, the possibility of every link being well done is very high.

The second example is a pornographic film:

Because of the suggestion of a male colleague in the department, I used the sound effects of Tokyo Hot! We didn’t get the meme at first, but after it was released, the comments exploded and many experienced drivers were driving, so it was reported and removed from the shelves.

From this case, we can find that being good at using sound effects can often have a finishing touch.

The third example is the Spring Festival travel ticket rush:

We used the sound effects of Honor of Kings and combined it with the hot topic of difficulty in getting tickets during the Spring Festival travel rush to make a short film. We made a total of three films, and this one was the best. The three short films have accumulated more than 2.2 million views, 140,000 likes, and a 6.4% like rate.

The fourth example is going to work on New Year’s Day:

Sometimes we face this dilemma: when we are talking about the script, everyone thinks it is good, but after filming we are dumbfounded: why is it so bland, just like boiled water? This movie will definitely not be a hit.

So we mainly used post-production editing, the slow-motion marketing of "Today is a holiday", and the shock at the end borrowed the special effects of the "dong dong dong" sound made by Goro from The Lonely Gourmet when he was hungry. This clip is also our short film with the highest like rate, with a like rate of nearly 10%.

5. Video release & data statistics feedback

After looking at several examples of video production, let’s look at the last two steps - video publishing and data statistics.

(1) Video release:

When publishing a video, you need to pay attention to the uniformity of the cover, select key frames as the cover, and the uniformity of the personal homepage. The difference between Douyin and Kuaishou and Volcano is that: the early Douyin did not allow customized covers, and the system selected them; the later covers can be selected by yourself, but they are animated pictures. Please pay attention to this when uploading now.

The role of a title is to guide user interaction, whether it's to promote likes, comments, or full playback. You can be witty, but don't copy something that's too common.

Key point: For some short videos without popular background music, or short videos that do not have a climax at the beginning, funny jokes like ours are easily skipped by users, resulting in a low complete playback rate, so the title is even more necessary to guide users to watch the last second.

Release time: We figured out the time from our own account. For offices, it is more appropriate to release it earlier. However, there are also suggestions for evening releases, so you need to figure it out for yourself.

(2) Statistics:

I will count all the data that can be seen in the background twice a week at a fixed time, including the number of fan plays, likes, comments, etc., track the data, and synchronize the data of the short films released by everyone last week at the topic selection meeting every Monday, and some process issues in shooting and editing, and provide feedback and optimization.

Finally, let’s summarize, how to make a hit video? It must be the optimization of the entire link.

3. How to use Douyin’s decentralized algorithm

First of all, Douyin's decentralized algorithm is different from Weibo public accounts . You can only see the content of whoever you follow. Douyin is more like a video consulting product. In order to ensure the diversity of content, a certain amount of traffic will be pre-allocated for each video after it is released, from 1-200 to 500 to 1000, in a stepped manner. If the effective, complete playback rate, and interaction rate perform well in the traffic it gives you, then the video will get more exposure; and this judgment is updated in real time.

So the question we face is: How to increase the interaction rate and completion rate?

1. Newly released video: Manually like, comment and forward one-stop operation
2. Title guide: Guide to full playback - Don't watch the last second, Can you count how many times I turned? Guide to like and comment - For my 25 fans... Like me if you understand; Manually guide comments and rhythm - Which car - Bicycle
3. Video content: Video complaints - bloopers, costumes, props, topics; the subject matter hits the user's pain point - difficulty in getting tickets during the Spring Festival travel rush
4. Comments & private messages: actively interact with fans and develop loyal fans

For example: “Which car”, 88,000 likes, 6.4% like rate.

The reason why this video is so popular is that the video content itself is highly sarcastic, so we can see a lot of very interesting comments. Here is a brief list of the comments - some complain about the clothes, saying that the red and pink combination is tacky; there are so many cars - bicycles (our colleagues helped to lead the comments); impulsive users made all kinds of comments in the comment section, saying that the person has no money, is pretentious, and shows off everything he lacks; more rational users commented that it's just a joke, can't you understand it? I'm impressed by his IQ, and he still said that this brother is a smart person.

Here we can also give you some references and suggestions for playback data.

According to the data from Feichai accounts:

The like rate of popular products is generally higher than 4%, and the highest is nearly 10%.

During the same period, we can compare the official data of Douyin x Tmall 38 Queen's Day: the like rate was only 2.7%, the total exposure was 5.07w, the effective playback rate was 78%, and the complete playback rate was 20%.

So to put it simply: if you want to evaluate whether your video can go viral, simply calculate your like rate. If it is less than 1%, then there is basically no hope. It is relatively difficult to get it between 1-2%. If it exceeds 3%, you can dream about it. If it exceeds 4%, then just wait for it to go viral (provided that you do not inflate the number of likes).

Here we also tell about some of Feichai’s experiences of being locked up in a small dark room on Douyin. It can be said that he took a lot of detours and hopes to give some suggestions to those who come after him. Please be sure not to make the mistake of the 4 points listed here, otherwise having your video removed is a small matter, but having your account downgraded is a big deal.

• Inflating traffic: Watching movies - paycheck to paycheck, 5 yuan to get 10,000 views, 3,000 likes, and 100 custom comments. It is so cheap that we cannot resist the temptation, so we take the risk. The result is very sad. Douyin did not give us any extra exposure for this short video. It is estimated that the complete playback rate of the videos inflated is 0%, and it is concentrated in a certain time period, so the system can easily determine that it is inflated traffic. This also resulted in the subsequent films not receiving much exposure. So everyone must remember not to inflate the volume.
• Pornographic content: The short film “Little Porn” was directly judged as pornographic content and removed from the shelves because it quoted the screams of an AV girl for a few seconds. Recently, a short video was taken down because it showed a picture of a woman in a swimsuit. Even though it was only a fleeting picture and the number of views and likes soared rapidly in a short period of time. Therefore, whether it is audio, video, images, or pictures, we must resolutely eliminate pornographic or yellowish content.
• Watermark: No matter it is Douyin’s or someone else’s watermark, or someone else’s Douyin account, even if it is printed with your own Douyin account (i.e. the video is re-uploaded), it will be judged as non-original, will not be given normal exposure, and will be locked up in a small black room.
• Advertising comments: If an advertiser who has signed a contract with Douyin privately inserts soft advertising with Douyin up-masters, and advertising information appears in the comment section, these comments will be directly deleted by the system. We have worked with Yanxuan on product soft implantation before, but a lot of advertising comments were deleted. The reason why Douyin does this is obvious: it encourages influencers and advertisers to establish business partnerships using the Douyin platform as a bridge and take commissions from them. If you bypass it, you are infringing on its interests.

4. How do content creators earn money from TikTok?

The last part is to synchronize Douyin’s current commercial monetization model.

Currently, Douyin does not provide many ways to play for advertisers and influencers, mainly including startup ads, single-page information flow - directly jumping to the brand landing page , native information flow, and influencer offline activities . The native information flow is that advertisers work with Douyin to launch a challenge with prizes, invite influencers to shoot related videos, participate in the challenge, and spread it within the domain to expand the brand influence. Offline activities are used to carry out Douyin’s most core top CP operations to ensure stickiness and influence.

Here we can talk about the Idou plan in detail, formerly known as the Talent Plan. This is also a project for Douyin to support talents to make money, as well as for the platform to make money and advertisers to spend money. The specific process is as follows:

1. Advertisers submit a request form: promotion budget, number of cooperating influencers & nicknames or other requirements
2. Expert list recommendation & order placement: Cooperation script confirmation
3. The maximum number of script modifications is 2 times. Video shooting: fine-tuning is possible, but the maximum is 2 times; if you are not satisfied, you still need to pay 50% of the fee
4. Video release: Specified time

Here we can continue to cite the example of Tmall’s 3 Queen’s Day , where a total of 3 influencers were invited, Zhang Xinyao (960w+), Yitingyo (600+), and Little Annie Big Sun (260+). In terms of the influencer publication rate, the first two are non-standard prices, and the third is 100,000 yuan, with a conservative estimate of an investment of 30,000 to 400,000 yuan. However, the report of 50.7 million yuan, calculated based on a CPM of 30 or 50 yuan, means that the activity is worth 250,000 yuan. So from this perspective, the effect of Douyin's native information is currently average, and it is still mainly based on brand promotion and sponsors.

The above is all for today’s sharing. I hope everyone has gained something. You are welcome to leave a message in the comment area and express your views and opinions~

The author of this article @胡雯 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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