Please read this section with these questions:
1. What is the core difference between TikTok and other overseas social media?
2. What is the core difference between TikTok and domestic Douyin?
3. Combining the above two questions, what opportunities can we find from TikTok?
TikTok is a global new media content platform that has attracted more and more attention in the past two years. I am often asked by my friends: What is TikTok? What is the difference between it and Douyin and Facebook? Is it difficult to learn this thing? Can I do it without having been abroad? So I decided to explain in the first chapter what TikTok is, why should I learn TikTok, what is the underlying logic behind it, and other important basic questions. If you are a novice, you must read the content of the first chapter carefully, which can help you build your understanding of TikTok from scratch; if you know something about TikTok, or even have in-depth contact with it, I suggest you don’t miss the content of the first chapter, and follow my thoughts to go through its underlying logic. Believe me, you will be inspired.
I. Basic information about TikTok
1. The origin of TikTok
TikTok is the overseas version of Douyin launched by ByteDance, and has now become a short video social platform that is popular overseas. In 2017, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly, which owns overseas music copyrights, integrated its own platform and officially named it TikTok. The pronunciation of TikTok is very similar to the ticking sound of a clock, which is catchy and easy to remember, and also represents the tone and characteristics of the platform’s short and concise content.
2.TikTok’s user volume
So far, TikTok has been downloaded more than 3 billion times worldwide, with more than 1 billion monthly active users. It ranks first in downloads in the United States, Japan, India, Russia and other countries, and has topped the download charts of Apple Store and Google Store many times. It covers more than 150 countries and regions in 75 languages around the world. From 2021 to 2022, TikTok’s visits have successively exceeded Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google and others.
II. The difference between TikTok and other overseas social media
1.TikTok and YouTube
YouTube is not only a video platform, but also the world’s second largest search engine. Its content format is similar to that of Bilibili in China, mainly medium and long videos, and the threshold for content creators is higher. YouTube’s user group has a wider age distribution and is mostly used on the computer. I have summarized the five differences between YouTube and TikTok. From the perspective of traffic acquisition, it is much easier for us to do a good job in content acquisition platform traffic support for TikTok than for YouTube. Because YouTube’s traffic ecosystem is very mature and saturated, it is relatively difficult for a new creator to obtain free traffic on this platform. However, TikTok started late, and there are more traffic dividends for new high-quality creators. From the perspective of the long-tail effect of content, the long tail of YouTube’s high-quality content is very long, and sometimes there can be a lot of growth in playback volume in 1 to 2 months. Therefore, YouTube creators will feel that it is worthwhile to spend a lot of time polishing high-quality videos. However, the long-tail effect of TikTok is much weaker. The popularity of a video generally lasts for 3 to 5 days. The duration of particularly good content will be longer, but the proportion is very small. Therefore, creators need to continue to produce high-quality content.
From the perspective of content, the content on the YouTube platform is more extensive and in-depth, attracting a wider target audience. There are not only entertainment videos, but also a lot of long video content on news, politics, science, medicine and other categories. Users will spend a relatively large amount of time on YouTube for different purposes. TikTok users tend to consume their fragmented time on this platform and are more inclined to entertainment content.
From the perspective of the threshold for creation, the threshold for creators of TikTok is much lower than that of YouTube, which allows more content creators to enter TikTok. However, YouTube has also launched a new YouTube Shorts section, which directly imitates the functions and vertical video ratio of TikTok, providing YouTube creators and users with short video services within 60 seconds, competing with TikTok for users’ fragmented time.
From the perspective of monetization, TikTok is now in the early stages of platform development, so it will also vigorously support truly high-quality content creators in terms of traffic and policies, and has also launched a creator fund. Many YouTube creators can support themselves by producing YouTube content full-time or earning commissions from merchants for promotion by influencers. There are more diverse ways to monetize on TikTok. Although if you, as a simple content creator, want to monetize by receiving creator funds and influencer endorsement fees, the effect cannot be compared with mature YouTube influencers (I specifically talked about it in Chapter 6), but individuals or small teams have more ways to monetize on TikTok. Combining them will make the gameplay richer.
Tips
In comparison, YouTube content creation is difficult, but monetization is easy; TikTok content creation is easy, but monetization is difficult.
Later, YouTube also launched YouTube Shorts-a short video section with a vertical screen, which can publish 15-60 seconds of videos. However, based on the user’s inherent habits and cognition of YouTube, YouTube users are currently more sticky to long videos.
2.TikTok and Photo Wall
Photo Wall is a bit like a combination of Xiaohongshu and Weibo in China. Many bloggers like to post multi-grid photos on it. As short videos become popular, Photo Wall has also launched a new short video section: Photo Wall Reels. It was once regarded as a “copycat version of TikTok”. Many TikTok creators will use TikTok as their main creation platform, and then simultaneously publish on YouTube Shorts and Photo Wall Reels.
3.TikTok and Facebook
Currently, Facebook has 3 billion monthly active users worldwide, and TikTok has about 1.4 billion monthly active users. In comparison, TikTok’s users are younger, but Facebook’s users have stronger purchasing power.
From the perspective of content, TikTok has more potential than Facebook, and for us, there are more opportunities to make money. First, it is because the number of times the young user group opens the App and the length of time they use it has a strong growth trend; second, it is because TikTok has not yet fully launched global live e-commerce and interest e-commerce abroad (I will analyze interest e-commerce in detail in Section 4 of Chapter 1). At this point, we, who have strong experience, capabilities, and supply chains in live e-commerce, are making our own layout for global live e-commerce at this time. It is a very wise choice.
TikTok is gradually changing the lifestyle of overseas users. Many people will slowly shift the time they spent on other social media platforms to TikTok, and also use TikTok as their new way of socializing.
Third, the relationship between TikTok and domestic Douyin
TikTok has attracted much attention, largely because domestic Douyin has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. It not only gives us a new lifestyle, but also creates a lot of commercial value. TikTok is the overseas version of Douyin. Understanding the relationship between them will make learning TikTok twice the result with half the effort.
1. Geographic and age distribution of users
From a geographical perspective, Douyin in China mainly serves users in mainland China, while TikTok, as an overseas version of Douyin, serves other countries and regions in the world. Although the population in mainland China is not as large as in other countries and regions in the world, China’s population density is relatively large, and the language is Chinese, and there are not many cultural differences. The difficulty of acquiring users and spreading content is relatively low. TikTok faces the whole world and has a large market, but there are differences in language and culture, which leads to the coexistence of difficulties and challenges in its development.
From an age perspective, domestic Douyin users basically cover all age groups, and every age group can find the type of content they like on this platform. Not only young people like it, but parents can’t stop watching Douyin with their mobile phones. Douyin’s huge content pool relies on an exclusive recommendation algorithm to recommend videos to users, allowing everyone to watch short videos that interest them and spend time unconsciously. When we get different people’s mobile phones and open Douyin, the “world” we see is completely different. It can be said that “everyone has a thousand faces”.
TikTok platform users are concentrated in the age group of 18 to 24 years old, accounting for 42% of the total users. There are also many users aged 13 to 17, accounting for 27%. In other words, the number of users under 24 years old accounts for nearly 70% of the total users, which means that the vast majority of TikTok users are young people. It has a great guiding significance for us to select products, sell goods, and determine user portraits.
2. Characteristics of platform content
First, let’s look at the content characteristics of Douyin that we are familiar with. Now the content on the Douyin platform has become more and more mature and diversified from the pan-entertainment in 2017. In addition to rich entertainment content, there are also a lot of life skills content, learning content, food sharing content, and emotional healing content. In today’s words, the content of Douyin is becoming more and more “volume”. In the past few years, a video shot casually may become popular, but now if you want to become popular and monetize on Douyin by posting videos, you need to systematically learn Douyin’s algorithm logic, know how to label your account, organize professional content planning, shooting team, post-editing team, etc.
Let’s take a look at the content characteristics of TikTok. The content on TikTok is more about users’ self-display and daily sharing, which is relatively more “original”. European and American users like interesting and interesting lifestyles, such as cute pets’ daily life, or handmade and decompression videos and live broadcasts; the content style of Japanese and Korean users is very similar to that of China, with more obvious styles of dance entertainment and cartoon IP content; accounts in the Arab region can often see various local tyrants driving luxury cars with their leopards to show off their wealth; the video style of Southeast Asian users can make you feel that even if life is hard, it cannot stop everyone from having a positive and optimistic attitude towards life, and from time to time you can also see funny videos of special Indian folk customs.
Like the popular short drama videos on Douyin in China, there are even fewer on TikTok. I often joke with my employees that TikTok is like Douyin three years ago. Everyone is “simple” and they have a chance to reach a million views by playing music and dancing. The shooting and production of videos are also relatively rough. Most of them are shot with mobile phones, and there is no sophisticated post-editing. One of my American friends is an Internet celebrity with millions of fans on TikTok. She has no team and has not purchased professional equipment. She only has a mobile phone. She shoots, edits and posts by herself. In 8 months, she has exceeded 1 million fans.
Looking at the length of the video, it can be clearly felt that the videos on Douyin in China are long and short. As the sophistication of content production continues to improve, Douyin’s creators and creative teams have more and more room to operate on the length of videos. Relatively long videos continue to become popular and receive high praise. But on TikTok, although it is now possible to post videos up to 10 minutes long, short videos of 15 to 30 seconds still appear the most and are the most popular.
3. Algorithm and recommendation mechanism
Here I will briefly talk about the recommendation algorithm of Douyin in China to help you gain a basic understanding of the algorithm of ik Tok. After you have established a basic understanding of TikTok through the first and second chapters of this book, I will specifically talk about TikTok’s recommendation logic in the third chapter, taking you step by step from understanding to familiarity, and from familiarity to application.
(1) Douyin’s recommendation algorithm
The recommendation algorithm and logic of Douyin in China are worth learning and referring to. I briefly summarize our team’s summary and arrangement of Douyin’s algorithm.
First distribution: intelligent distribution, 200~500 views stage. When each user publishes a video, the official will recommend this video to users with the same interest tags, your fans, people in the same city, people you may know, etc. according to a certain ratio based on your account and content tags. As long as your account has not been punished, each work you publish will have a basic playback volume of 200 to 500. However, many students are confused: Why do my videos only have dozens of playbacks? Is it because the system does not give me fair playback volume? This is because the playback volume you see in the background is the “effective playback volume”, and users will only be counted if they stay on your video interface for more than a certain period of time. If you slide away in an instant, it will not be counted. It’s like we opened a supermarket downstairs, and there are 1,000 people passing by, but only 100 people may enter the door to look at the goods.
In the account creation stage, many people will experience a frustrating and maddening “black hole period”: you spend five or six hours carefully making a video, and after sending it out, you look at the data with great expectations, but the result is only single-digit likes, and the better ones only have double-digit likes. Many people can’t hold on after a period of time, but they don’t know that most people will experience this dark and long “black hole period” when making an account. This “black hole period” is the process of the Douyin platform going from “not knowing you” to “knowing you” (TikTok will also go through this “black hole period”, and in the third chapter, we will talk about how to get through the “black hole period” faster). For example, if your account content is about beauty and makeup, when you don’t tag your account at the beginning, the videos you posted will be randomly recommended to 500 users. Assuming that there are 300 men and 200 women among them, then your initial audience will have a ratio of 60%, that is, the 300 men will directly swipe away, and the remaining 200 women will consider whether your video is good, whether it has reference value, whether they want to learn beauty and makeup from you, or whether they want to buy products based on your recommendation. As you post videos again and again, and your fans who like you accumulate little by little, the system will become more and more clear about your account portrait and your fan portrait, so that it can more and more accurately recommend your videos to users who are most likely to like your work. Of course, you can use homepage profiles, video tags and many other methods to help the Douyin system get to know you faster, but the most important thing is your work and quality.
Second distribution: data weighting, 1000~5000 views. If a work has a good completion rate, like rate, comment rate, forwarding rate, and collection rate, it will be recommended to the next traffic pool. Based on repeated measurement experience, our company has set the following data requirements for its own works:
3.5% or more likes ratio + 0.35% or more comment ratio + 45% 5-second completion rate
For example, if a video has 1000 views, it has received 35 likes, 3~4 comments, and 450 people have watched the first 5 seconds of this video, then our video is very likely to be recommended to the 1000~5000 traffic pool. Third distribution: superimposed recommendation. When the secondary distribution data is good, it will be recommended by the system. At this time, it will enter the fast lane of exponential growth. You will find that the views, likes, comments, and reposts of this video are rising wildly. The video data will grow rapidly and get better and better. At this time, the video will break through the limitations of its own tags and be recommended to more people who do not match the interest tags. This is why we often see some videos on Douyin that are not related to our familiar interest areas, but still find them very interesting or rewarding. Such videos are popular videos that have been de-tagged. (2) The difference between TikTok and Douyin algorithms With an understanding of the domestic Douyin algorithm, it will be much easier to look at the recommendation algorithm of the international Douyin TikTok. The two platforms have the same infrastructure, so our domestic friends who are familiar with Douyin can learn and disassemble TikTok’s gameplay faster and better, and use it to realize their own income.
However, there are also differences in algorithms between TikTok and domestic Douyin. Mastering these differences can help us better grasp the direction on the road of learning and monetization of TikTok.
The most important difference is the scope of the basic traffic pool. The basic traffic pool of domestic Douyin is all Douyin users, and then a certain proportion is allocated according to interest tags, the same city, fans, friends, strangers, etc. to distribute the corresponding traffic for a video; while TikTok’s traffic distribution will give priority to the country and region where the account is located as the largest basic traffic pool, and then distribute traffic according to interest tags, the same city, fans, friends, strangers, etc. Only when your account or video has become popular to a certain extent will it break through the geographical restrictions and be recommended to users in other regions.
Don’t underestimate this little difference, it determines where our target market is when registering and using this account. Although you can search for accounts and content in all regions of the platform on the search interface of TikTok, when you want to obtain traffic and monetize through TikTok, you need to first consider which country’s market you are going to enter. Once this step is wrong, your content does not meet the “taste” of the locals, then it will be very difficult to obtain excellent data performance and break through the restrictions of local traffic. 4. Platform openness and traffic circulation Douyin in China is a relatively closed platform. It competes fiercely with major domestic social media such as Kuaishou and WeChat for users, and tries every means to increase the online time of users. Douyin does not want to see the traffic it has finally obtained easily flow to other platforms, so the rules of the Douyin platform are relatively strict and it is difficult to divert traffic outside the station. Many accounts have been punished for guiding fans to add their WeChat or follow accounts on other platforms.
TikTok is relatively open in this regard. You can directly bind your photo wall account on the homepage of TikTok, and your fans can directly jump to your photo wall. If you are a merchant, you can directly hang your independent website link, Amazon store link, YouTube channel link and other links that you want your fans to click on on your homepage, so as to guide your fans to other platforms. As long as your content is attractive enough, give your fans enough trust, and make your fans willing to pay according to the path you set, then there will be no obstacles in diverting traffic or settling private domains.
5. Comparison of monetization methods
In the last two chapters of this book, I will systematically explain the different monetization paths of individual entrepreneurs and Chinese business owners on TikTok. Here I will make a simple comparison with Douyin in China, so that you can have a basic understanding of TikTok’s monetization methods.
The following differences are worth noting.
(1) Creator Fund
Currently, TikTok is still in its development stage. In order to attract more high-quality content creators, a special fund has been set up to encourage creators to continuously produce more high-quality content. So even if there is no other way to monetize, you can apply for TikTok’s official Creator Fund based solely on your high-quality content. TikTok’s US region has set aside $200 million in Creator Fund to encourage high-quality creators to continue to produce good content, but the amount of this fund will change with the development stage of the platform. So while obtaining the Creator Fund, it is also necessary to plan and consider other monetization models.
(2) Yellow Cart Sales
The Yellow Cart sales of Douyin in China have developed relatively maturely. Whether it is the video Yellow Cart or the live broadcast Yellow Cart, users are already accustomed to clicking on the shopping cart to purchase the corresponding products. Although TikTok’s video and live streaming platforms have been tested in some regions, overseas users have not yet developed a habit of shopping on such platforms. There is still a long way to go in educating users of global interest e-commerce. We should be aware of this when choosing a market, identify the geographical areas we want to penetrate, and have a deep understanding of the corresponding market characteristics and user profiles to better determine the product selection logic and marketing methods, rather than simply assuming that everyone on the platform is my customer.
(3) Live Reward
Most of the Douyin anchors who use live rewards as their main source of income are show anchors, talent anchors, entertainment anchors, knowledge anchors, and product anchors. If you don’t understand the local culture and humanistic habits, I don’t recommend that you use live rewards as your main monetization path on TikTok.
(4) Knowledge payment monetization
The knowledge payment in Douyin covers a wide range: teaching business, sales, certification, foreign languages, skills, financial intelligence, life, aesthetics, emotions, entertainment, etc. As long as we can think of it and there is a demand, it will be made into a course to be shared or sold on Douyin. At present, there are also various types of knowledge sharing on TikTok. In addition to sharing their professional knowledge, Chinese creators are also very popular in teaching foreigners to learn Chinese. If you want to monetize knowledge or services on TikTok, you can operate TikTok based on the areas you and your team are good at and the needs of local users. The above is a simple comparison between TiTok and Douyin in China. In the first and seventh chapters of this book, I specifically disassembled the conversion and specific operation methods for two different types of readers in detail. After reading the previous chapters, you can practice according to the contents of the last two chapters.
Tips
Both the similarities and differences between Douyin and TikTok are important. The similarities can help you transfer existing good methods to TikTok, and the differences can become points of differentiation in competition.