Not just Tik Tok, there are 20 common senses that brands need to master when planning short videos!

1.

Tik Tok officially announced the latest user data: daily active users exceed 150 million, and monthly active users exceed 300 million . With the addition of players such as Kuaishou , Weishi , Meipai , and Miaopai , and with the new entries of Alibaba and Baidu, the short video industry will become even hotter in the second half of the year.

2.

No matter how the times change, people will always consume content. From text to pictures, from audio to short videos, they are actually different carriers of information. The greatest contribution of the short video war driven by TikTok is that it has made short videos another form of content consumption in the national sense after text and pictures.

3.

The average daily usage time of short video super users is 87 minutes, and the average daily launch frequency is 6 times (according to Trustdata monitoring data). For brands , we are not betting on how long Douyin will be popular or whether Weishi and Kuaishou can catch up. The important thing is that user habits have been formed! The important thing is that user habits have been formed! The important thing is that user habits have been formed! Important things should be said three times!

4.

Most Internet platforms have two attributes: one is social attribute, and the other is algorithmic attribute.

The representative of algorithmic attributes is Toutiao . Toutiao emphasizes recommendation algorithms and downplays social relationships, authors, and brands. The advantage is that the algorithm is equal to everyone in some ways, and new accounts also have the opportunity to create hits . The disadvantages are also obvious. The effects are unstable and unpredictable. It has both fan attention attributes and traffic distribution mechanisms , and sometimes there will be flow restrictions .

The representative of social attributes is WeChat public account . For operators , the benefits are predictable. As long as a social relationship is established, fans will definitely have the opportunity to see my content. WeChat public accounts have 100% private traffic, and there is a ready-made ratio between the number of fans and the opening rate. Bloggers have a very strong motivation to create content and realize commercial benefits.

5.

When it comes to short video content, we have to mention MCN. The MCN (Multi-Channel Network) organization is the short video content provider of the platform, responsible for recruiting and training talents and acting as a talent agent .

In the live broadcast era, they are called "guilds". Usually, the number of experts signed by a guild ranges from dozens to thousands.

In the early stages of the development of short video platforms, the guilds’ long tentacles extended to various social platforms, becoming the most important way and channel for recruiting talents, and also the vanguard in the competition for talents.

6.

Ideally, platforms and MCN agencies have their own clear positioning and roles in the industry. The platform is responsible for content distribution and traffic provision, and the MCN agency provides high-quality content to the platform . Both parties use their respective advantages to promote the prosperity of the platform ecology. But the reality is that faced with the anxiety of finding high-quality talents and good content, platforms play the role of MCN to varying degrees.

7.

MCN and the platform are close yet distant allies, and have a competitive and cooperative relationship. The platform relies on MCN to recruit and incubate talents, especially in the long-tail market, but when the time is ripe, the platform hopes to keep high-quality talents in its own hands, whether it is Douyin or Weishi.

8.

Douyin has set many restrictions on the signing of contracts between MCN and platform influencers, and is very concerned about MCN signing away platform influencers. Douyin has also tried to sign exclusive agreements with platform influencers and become its own MCN. Douyin stopped signing exclusive agreements with influencers in April because the input-output ratio of this business is not high for Douyin: there are too many celebrities and it is difficult to manage them all.

9.

Currently, Douyin is opening up official MCN certification, allowing certified MCNs to sign tripartite agreements with top influencers. The first batch of 20 companies has been confirmed. The Yingchuang Lab has partners among them and can help contact them if needed.

10.

Even though TikTok is currently very popular in the short video field, MCN is unwilling to be tied to a single platform and would rather take the initiative. If TikTok declines too quickly during its bonus period, they will quickly switch platforms.

11.

In what situations is it suitable for a brand to find an MCN? When doing marketing planning, you can imagine MCN as the "Weiboyi" in the short video field. They have a large number of Internet celebrity resources that can be recommended to you, and you don't have to look for Internet celebrity BDs one by one.

12.

Douyin’s direct competitor is Weibo , not Tencent which is currently engaged in the fierce “bumping into others” competition.

When the platform's traffic dividend period disappears, content entrepreneurs will inevitably migrate to other platforms. Tik Tok’s rise is due to its algorithm recommendation mechanism, which has also made it impossible for content creators to accumulate a loyal core fan base.

In fact, many influencers on Douyin have now realized the problem of completely uncontrollable traffic distribution and have begun to consolidate their fan relationships on Weibo .

13.

Currently, the content on Douyin can be roughly divided into two categories: general entertainment and vertical categories .

Vertical or KOL -oriented content, such as beauty, maternal and child care , and automobiles , require the team to have relatively professional knowledge reserves and have relatively high commercial conversion rates , which may also be opportunities for companies.

14.

Although relying on algorithm recommendations, Douyin is a product that requires a lot of PGC and strong operations :

After Douyin influencers release creative videos, they will guide ordinary users to imitate them through operations. When a certain type of creative video becomes popular, the machine will also make more recommendations for this type of video to attract ordinary users to participate.

At the same time, both Douyin officials and users can launch topic challenges to guide users to create under the same topic . Seaweed dance, C哩C哩, gesture dance, the performance clip of Concubine Hua from "The Legend of Zhen Huan", the clip of the white snake transforming into a human from "The Legend of White Snake"... A large number of short videos are presented in the form of comedy and imitation.

15.

Algorithm recommendation content process: content understanding → cold start → collecting user feedback → diffusion/extinction → long-tail propagation .

16.

Which industry’s brands are most suitable for opening a Douyin account for marketing?

In terms of input-output ratio, the fast-moving consumer goods industry ranks first. Although the average order value is relatively not that high. Brands entering Douyin must have a clear idea of ​​their goals. Is it to create brand awareness or directly generate e-commerce conversions ?

If you are directly doing e-commerce conversion, the Douyin fan conversion rate is lower than you expected. Tik Tok’s influence is not proportional to its fan conversion capability. The reason is that Douyin is a place where time killers (people who kill time for leisure and entertainment) dominate the user group. This group of people use Douyin just to kill time, which is different from their mentality of browsing Taobao or Weibo.

For a Douyin celebrity with millions of fans, if the number of views can reach 600,000, it is normal for the average number of orders to be only a few hundred, which does not give it an advantage over other platforms; for some accounts, the conversion rate is even lower than the industry average. The conversion rate of accounts in vertical fields is much better , such as food, travel, mother and baby, pets, etc.

17.

What content will get more traffic?

In short, content that machines can understand and users are willing to consume. Because the platform's algorithmic recommendations are continuously rolling and iterating, there are hundreds or even thousands of A/B experiments running at the same time. A more practical approach is to analyze the popular content of the past week to help determine what content is likely to become popular.

What content should be avoided? There are political issues, sensitive words, cheating and loopholes. Otherwise, once it is blocked, the loss will be heavy.

18.

For a 15-second video, the investment cost seems to be lower, and it seems easy?

In fact, it is not the case. In 15 seconds, users can easily skip the page by just swiping away. It is not easy to make users read from beginning to end and remember what the brand wants to convey.

19.

It is recommended that a company’s short video team should be composed of three types of people: content editors; brand marketing creatives; and data analysts .

One is to suggest what kind of content is more marketable based on the attributes of the director, and the other is to make suggestions for communication based on the attributes of marketing. In addition, it would be best if there is someone who understands data and algorithms, who can analyze the popular content of a platform in the past 7 days and know which content will be popular on the platform.

People who create content may not necessarily understand marketing, and people who do marketing may not understand content. People who understand content and marketing may not necessarily understand data analysis.

20.

What to avoid: Unstable content creation.

On the one hand, the algorithm of Douyin will increase the weight of accounts that have a continuous and stable output of content. Once it is interrupted, the previous accumulation will be reset to zero, and it may even be worse than a new account. This is to encourage the account to continue creating content.

On the other hand, Douyin’s traffic is inherently unstable. If the content creation is unstable, the brand’s marketing actions on Douyin will completely become a "random process" and lose their meaning.

When we talk about TikTok, it’s not just about TikTok, but also about the brand’s overall renewal in content presentation – All in the layout and planning of short videos, so that we can take the initiative. No matter how your platforms change, you just educate your users and I will build my brand.