The operating secrets of Tik Tok, the international version of Douyin: Let users operate themselves!

Tik Tok, the international version of Douyin , has figured out a "secret code" for operation . To sum up their operation method in overseas markets in one sentence, it is "let users operate themselves" rather than "platform creating stars."

In just 7 days, from being temporarily banned to finally resuming service, Tik Tok, the overseas version of Douyin, experienced a false alarm in the Indonesian market.

According to China Economic Net on July 10, Tik Tok, which was previously banned locally, "has fully resumed services in Indonesia and local users can access it normally." The news also stated that Tik Tok’s management met with the Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Indonesia on the second day of the ban (July 4), who told the media at a press conference held locally that “he is also a loyal user of Tik Tok.”

This can be said to be the first challenge that Tik Tok has encountered in the Indonesian market 11 months ago.

In August 2017, Tik Tok officially entered the Indonesian market and established an office there; Douyin's global layout was also officially launched at the same time.

A small storm did not stop the internationalization of ByteDance, the Chinese information distribution giant. Previously, the outside world was well aware of the phased achievements that Tik Tok had made in its internationalization in just one year. The overseas version of Tik Tok, together with musical.ly, which it acquired in November last year, has covered more than 150 countries around the world, with more than 100 million monthly active users. At the same time, people from Tik Tok’s marketing department quoted App Annie data to the media, saying that Tik Tok has topped the local application distribution charts many times in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Japan.

Douyin, which was launched in 2016, and Tik Tok, which was launched a year later, have played a crucial role in the overseas strategy of their parent company ByteDance. Since the beginning of this year, founder and CEO Zhang Yiming has emphasized the "globalization" strategy in many public speeches.

First, at the sixth anniversary internal meeting of ByteDance, the parent company of Tik Tok, Zhang Yiming defined "globalization" as the keyword for 2018; in March of this year, Zhang Yiming once again declared in a speech at Tsinghua University, "I hope that within three years, the proportion of global users will reach 50%."

Zhang Yiming himself has also been closely following the progress of its global business. During the stalemate between ByteDance and Tencent in May this year, he posted a screenshot on his WeChat Moments to celebrate that "TikTok's overseas version ranked first in global downloads on the Apple Store in Q1."

Zhang Yiming posted a screenshot in May 2018

The company's vision, which was once described in three sentences, has now been simplified by Zhang Yiming into one sentence: a global creation and communication platform.

The gap in local entertainment and social products in the Southeast Asian Internet market has become an opportunity for TikTok in overseas markets. So, how did Douyin achieve the goal of “blooming inside the wall and fragrant outside the wall”? What experience do you have in localized operations in overseas markets such as Southeast Asia?

1. The platform only operates the “game method”, not the “people”

Like Douyin, the overseas version of Tik Tok platform has spent a lot of effort to stimulate "user creation". On the platform, user-generated content basically revolves around dubbing and dancing, scene interpretation, comedy, cute pets, travel, cooking, food and other scenes. Douyin’s operational thinking is similar to that of Douyin in China. In the early days, the operation team launched various interesting and high-participation challenge activities for users in the APP and shot videos of the same type to attract support from local celebrities and local Internet celebrities .

1. User activities in the “Challenge” and “ Imitation ” categories are extremely popular

In Southeast Asia, there are many people who are good at singing and dancing, and dance challenges are generally popular among users. In addition, funny challenges are also widely welcomed by users. The local operations team gave an example to Titanium Media , saying that reversal challenges (users shoot from above, place the camera at the chin, and then slowly move the phone camera to the front of the face according to the rhythm of the music, creating a contrast effect of "from ugly to beautiful") are particularly popular among users.

Among Indonesian users, content such as multi-person frame challenges, dance machines, camera movements and stickers have very high local playback volumes, and are also videos that receive a lot of likes and interactions; in addition, the "multi-person frame" challenge is very famous locally. Titanium Media learned that this type of challenge was online for only about a week, and the total number of video views exceeded 53 million.

Among Thai users, imitation content is the most popular. For example, many users will wear traditional Thai costumes and imitate certain clips and scenes from the popular Thai TV series "The Perfect Match".

2. Gain support from local stars

Tik Tok has invited many popular local stars from the entertainment, film and television or sports circles to help out. From the "Thai version of Jay Chou" to the "Thai version of Yang Mi", all of them are key internet celebrities in the eyes of the operation team.

Leeratanakajorn Thanapob (also known as Tor) is a very famous local pianist and singer, equivalent to the "Thai version of Jay Chou".

Ungsumalynn Sirapatsakmetha (also known as Pattie), a popular new generation artist in Thailand, is known as the "Thai version of Yang Mi or Zhao Liying."

Chanon Santinatornkul (also known as Non), a young Thai actor, is the male lead in "Bad Genius" (second from left)

In addition to internet celebrities, the operation team also attracted Thailand's most popular athletes to the platform. The soul figure of the Thai national volleyball team and the well-known deputy attacker, both women, registered Tik Tok accounts very early and participated in Thailand's "Face-lifting Challenge" on Tik Tok, which generated a lot of dissemination.

3. Local influencers are a breakthrough

Tik Tok's overseas operations team discovered that "local Internet celebrities" are a blue ocean waiting to be explored. Attracting those Internet celebrities who are already popular on the YouTube platform to gradually migrate to the Tik Tok platform has become the best way to achieve "new users" in localized operations.

The YouTube celebrity girl (Kaykai Salaider) has more than 5.7 million fans. After opening an account on Tik Tok, she currently has millions of fans. The multinational couple Nate & Mee in the picture below are very famous local YouTube masters with up to 1.5 million fans. They are good at funny videos and can make some videos with Thai culture and international cultural integration.

In addition to the above two experiences, Tik Tok’s positioning is clear enough: it not only wants to be a display platform, but also a talent incubator.

Although Tik Tok only officially started operating in Indonesia at the end of last year, within less than a year of joining Tik Tok, some Indonesian influencers said that their number of followers on Tik Tok has exceeded their current number of followers on Instagram, even though they have been using Instagram for a longer time.

The atmosphere of learning and communication is also what local Indonesian internet celebrities value. Cathy and Bella, Indonesian Tik Tok users, said in their sharing with Titanium Media, "You can meet a lot of people on Tik Tok, and there are many messages in the comment section. You can also learn from others how to shoot better videos, and users will also discuss shooting techniques and skills with each other."

At present, the two experts mentioned above mainly use Tik Tok to shoot videos, and then upload the videos to Instagram to share them with many people.

Titanium Media also learned that Tik Tok did not make any marketing investment in the early days of entering Southeast Asia, and relied on natural growth and word-of-mouth during the cold start phase.

At the same time, Tik Tok has not signed any internet celebrities overseas like it has in China, and has not yet been commercialized. In other words, Tik Tok's operating method in overseas markets is "let users operate themselves" rather than "the platform creates stars."

Tik Tok said that the interface of its products is unified around the world, and the functions are exactly the same in China and overseas. The only difference is in localized content and operations. "Tik Tok is not a team of agents, but a team that does product localization operations."

The so-called "localized operation" means that the operation team must explore the local cultural characteristics of a certain market, develop online activities and challenges suitable for local users, and operate these activities in a refined manner, rather than the operation experts themselves.

2. Integrate social traffic and offline traffic

Taking advantage of the differences between overseas markets and China's mainstream social products, Douyin's international operations also focus on external traffic, including traffic from social media and traffic from offline activities .

Many top overseas influencers will spontaneously share their Tik Tok experience with fans on their YouTube homepages, creating an "expert teaching" atmosphere, including sharing new Tik Tok features, recommending fun stickers, how to use filters, and so on.

Tik Tok users will simultaneously post the videos they create to overseas media and social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. An overseas user told Titanium Media that videos made on Tik Tok can be shared directly to Instagram with one click. He found that "after sharing the video you shot on Instagram, the chance of being recommended by the Tik Tok platform will increase."

In addition to content operations and social media traffic diversion, Tik Tok has also carried out many offline activities overseas, such as talent exchange meetings, cooperation with large-scale international events in the entertainment industry, etc.

The local office established by Tik Tok in Indonesia also holds offline events in the local area from time to time. Titanium Media has learned that Tik Tok currently has more than 100 core influencers in the Indonesian market. At the end of 2017, Tik Tok, as the only official video media platform, cooperated with DWP, the largest electronic music festival in Asia, winning a large number of users' recognition and being regarded by local media as a "barometer" of the latest trends.

Titanium Media communicated with some Tik Tok users in Thailand and Indonesia through social networks . These users said that there were no products similar to Tik Tok in their local mobile distribution market; Tik Tok's high-definition full-screen product design, as well as constantly updated special effects, stickers and special shooting methods, brought them many unique experiences.

“These are not available on Instagram and YouTube,” a Thai Tik Tok user told Titanium Media.

From traditional culture to popular trends, Tik Tok has done a lot of research on the local market in terms of localization; in addition, foreign employees recruited locally will also give a lot of good product and operational suggestions from the aspects of traditional culture and customs. For example, the stickers launched by Tik Tok in Thailand about the local traditional festival "Songkran Festival" are very popular among local users.

3. International Talent Strategy

Douyin's overseas talents are not only recruited locally overseas, but more come from global recruitment , using a large number of comprehensive talents with cross-cultural and cross-background talents who are familiar with local culture to open up new national markets.

According to what Titanium Media learned from Tik Tok, Tik Tok has employed many talents with diverse international backgrounds, who have experience studying and working in different countries and are very familiar with the local market. Tik Tok also recruits international students who are studying in universities in China, such as those from South Korea, Japan, and Thailand, and they join the company as interns. At the same time, some employees are recruited locally in a certain country and directly enter the local office. Both situations exist.

The successful operation of Tik Tok, the overseas version of Douyin, is based on two aspects: on the one hand, Tik Tok itself combines the three most popular elements of video, music, and social networking; on the other hand, Tik Tok seamlessly connects technology, products, and operations.

In an interview in June this year, a ByteDance insider told Titanium Media that Zhang Yiming once said internally that before entering the overseas market, the team "anticipated many difficulties", especially the restrictions of local culture on products, and had certain concerns; but in the end, they found that "after entering the market, the actual operation was not as difficult as imagined."

The Indonesian ban storm mentioned at the beginning has just subsided. When content-based products are exported, we must not only pay attention to the differences in local culture, but also maintain smooth communication channels with local governments in overseas markets in a typical multi-religious and densely populated country like Indonesia. From the perspective of promoting mutual trust between the Tik Tok platform and relevant departments of the Indonesian government, the turmoil may also be a kind reminder.

author: Liu Yi, authorized by Qinggua Media to publish.

Source: Titanium Media