Please read this section with these questions:
1. Why is the development trend of short videos and live broadcasts so rapid?
2. Why does TikTok have so many users and is growing so fast?
3. Is it a good time to enter TikTok now?
Every time I am asked by friends or students whether to do TikTok, I will first ask them a question: “Can you tell me first, why do you want to learn TikTok?” Every time I get the answer: “TikTok is too popular now! I have no chance to play Douyin, so I will try TikTok.” “I heard that you can become popular by posting videos on TikTok casually, and I also want to be an Internet celebrity to have fun.” If your answer is similar to theirs, then please read this section carefully. TikTok is definitely worth learning, but we must also be clear about why we learn it. I will show you the reasons why TikTok is worth learning from three aspects: new media trends, TikTok platform traffic growth and entry timing.
1. The new media trend of short video + live broadcast is sweeping the world
In recent years, short videos have developed rapidly and have strong spreadability. We spend a lot of time watching short videos every day, and “shooting” and “posting” have become essential skills for everyone. Many people did not have much contact with short videos at the beginning, but now they cannot do without short videos, and even regard short videos as their main career. There are special positions for the content, shooting, editing, post-production, and interpretation of short videos, equipped with professional training.
The live broadcast section is even more popular. Live broadcasts of entertainment, games, goods, knowledge, virtual, etc. are not only attractive, but also interactive. When the anchor says “Count down five numbers, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, link up”, the audience can’t control their excitement and shaking hands, and frantically buy products. As a result, the live broadcast sector has derived related positions such as anchors, assistants, field control, operations, product selection, supply chain management, and partner negotiations.
TikTok went online overseas and quickly gained the love and attention of global users. Short videos and live broadcasts are also becoming more and more popular around the world. There are two factors behind this: first, the addictiveness of short videos and live broadcasts themselves; second, short videos and live broadcasts are an irreversible trend. Let’s look at them one by one.
1. Why are short videos and live broadcasts addictive?
First, short videos and live broadcasts have a high information density and can frequently produce strong “stimulation” to users. We are most likely to be attracted by the following points: laugh points, tear points, cool points, and inspiration points.
But in our daily life, the density of these four points is very low. When we read a book or a movie, it takes a long time to see the cool points of the whole book or the whole movie. But short videos completely subvert this rhythm: every high-quality short video can directly deliver the four most stimulating points of laughter, tears, coolness, and inspiration to us, making us unconsciously addicted to it.
Second, the creation threshold of short videos is lower and the output is greater, so there are more high-quality short videos. Compared with movies, TV series, medium and long videos, short videos do not have such strict requirements on time, scenes, characters, props, pictures, and post-production; compared with writing a book, there is no need to consult a lot of reference materials, and there is no need to think and output particularly rigorously and deeply. You may find that there are only a few film and television practitioners and writers around you, but short video practitioners seem to be everywhere.
Third, there is another very important factor that makes short videos addictive: dubbing. Listening to those interesting dubbing, dynamic music, and rhythmic sound effects alone will make you feel very happy even without pictures. When short videos are accompanied by them, the user’s attention will be immediately attracted by the dubbing, and it will be easier to enter the scene, atmosphere and emotion of the current short video and get an immersive experience. When you swipe to a new short video, you will also quickly enter the scene of the next short video because of the different dubbing. It can be said that good dubbing will make the laughs, tears, excitement and inspiration of the short video more obvious. If we turn off the sound when swiping short videos, we may want to quit after a few minutes. Therefore, good dubbing is also an important factor that makes users unconsciously addicted. The major short video platforms are also very clear about this, so they have established their own powerful music and sound effect libraries, and some even put popular funny dubbing in the editing software, which makes it more convenient for creators to use.
2. Short videos and live broadcasts are an irreversible trend
First, the way users choose to spend time is shifting from “cold media” to “hot media”. McLuhan once mentioned in the book “Understanding Media”: “Cold media” has low information clarity and is a medium that requires a high degree of audience participation. Cold media conveys less and vague information, and requires the coordination of multiple senses and rich imagination to understand, such as comics, manuscripts, books, etc. “Hot media” has high information clarity and is a medium that requires low audience participation. The information conveyed by hot media is relatively clear and definite, and the receiver does not need to mobilize a lot of senses and associative activities to understand, such as photos, short videos, live broadcasts, etc.
When users spend time, they will slowly tend to choose hot media, which is more in line with the user’s state of entertainment and relaxation. Think about it, when we are watching short videos and live broadcasts, we enjoy the feeling of passively receiving strong stimulating information. It doesn’t take much effort, but it can be very happy. We can clearly feel that since Douyin became popular, many people have changed their previous habit of browsing Moments to browsing Douyin. This is a transition from cold media to hot media.
Second, the form of media that users choose is shifting from “single sense” to “multi-dimensional sense”. Many years ago, our parents would be very happy to listen to the radio and broadcast, and we felt that we were “richer” than other classmates if we had a walkman, CD player, and MP3 player in our hands; later, with the advent of MP4, MP5, and smart phones, because hearing and vision were taken care of at the same time, products such as walkman and radio were eliminated. Short videos and live broadcasts, a new form of media, not only satisfy the sense of hearing and vision, but also add a layer of tactile stimulation to users because of their strong interactivity (users can like, comment, interact in the live broadcast room, give gifts, PK, etc.). We often hold our mobile phones and like them crazily, and are ready to buy goods in the live broadcast room, all because this interaction brings a strong sense of participation. Therefore, compared with ordinary TV movies, users are more inclined to choose short videos and live broadcasts that stimulate the three-dimensional senses.
Third, users receive media information faster and faster, and it is difficult to slow down. In the past, we not only liked TV series played at normal speed, but we could even patiently endure the half-hour advertisements inserted in each episode. Now, we are used to watching any video at double speed, and the speed is getting higher and higher. After we get used to 1.25 times speed, we will find the normal speed too slow; after getting used to 1.5 times speed, we will find 1.25 times speed too slow. When we get used to the fast speed, it is difficult to go back to the previous slow speed. We look at short videos from this perspective: many short videos are often edited and post-produced to increase their information density and give users a stronger sense of stimulation, and the speed is directly increased to the point where people can’t stop watching. After developing this habit, when watching other media, we can’t help but want to click the “double speed play” button, otherwise we will feel uncomfortable and have no patience to watch it, and then quietly open the short video app again and continue to watch short videos.
Combining the above factors, we can draw a conclusion: short videos and live broadcasts are addictive, and they are an irreversible media trend. We can clearly feel that short videos and live broadcasts are becoming more and more popular among users, whether in China or other countries, and new media represented by short videos and live broadcasts are slowly spreading around the world. Learning TikTok can better adapt to the trend of world media, layout and adjust your own business. This is the first reason why we need to learn TikTok.
Second, TikTok has huge traffic and is growing rapidly
In 2022, TikTok’s monthly active traffic has exceeded 1 billion, and it has a very rapid growth rate. Let’s take a look at the user growth of TikTok since its establishment.
As can be seen from the figure, the growth rate of TikTok users has been increasing year by year. In addition to the new media track of short videos + live broadcasts mentioned above, which is in line with the trend of the times, TikTok also has two unique skills of its own, which makes it popular with users.
1.TikTok’s exclusive For You recommendation mechanism
If short videos are addictive, then what makes people unable to stop is the recommendation mechanism that customizes short videos exclusively for you based on your personal preferences. ByteDance is most proud of its recommendation algorithm. Whether it is Douyin or TikTok, it can quickly label creators and users and accurately recommend matching content to them.
The platform will recommend popular videos in various fields to each new user at the beginning, and then label him one by one according to the user’s stay time, likes, attention and other data, and then adjust the field of recommended videos according to these labels, and adjust the push ratio according to the user’s latest data. After a period of swiping, the account will be “tamed” by the previous user behavior to only recommend the content that the user likes, and for the platform, this account is also labeled with multiple labels and made into a “user portrait”. I often joke with my friends: “The one who understands you best is not your lover, or even yourself, but your Douyin or TikTok.”
So when short videos and live broadcasts, which are inherently highly stimulating, are combined with the platform’s personalized recommendation mechanism, they together create a new media platform that is widely loved by users and continues to improve—TikTok.
2.TikTok has made three major efforts to attract high-quality creators
First, the platform lowers the threshold for creation and prepares a large number of creative auxiliary tools for users. TikTok’s built-in “camera” function has many special effects and stickers built in, allowing every ordinary person to shoot a short video with special effects; CapCut, the overseas version of Jianying, allows every ordinary person to cut a short video at any time with a mobile phone; TikTok also has a built-in popular music library and sound effect library, so that every ordinary person does not have to worry about where to find good materials, and can easily use them to make their videos more attractive. TikTok has used these tools to greatly lower the threshold for creators to enter the short video field, making video production more popular than before, and allowing creators to focus more on creating good content. Second, TikTok’s recommendation mechanism will reward high-quality creators with more traffic. I mentioned earlier that TikTok’s exclusive recommendation mechanism will match users with works they like, which also means that popular works can continuously obtain platform traffic. Creators will find that as long as their works are popular, they will be pushed to a higher traffic pool by data algorithms again and again, and their fans will also increase rapidly. Many amateurs have become popular because of TikTok, because the platform encourages new creators to continuously produce high-quality content, so it will continue to give new creators opportunities.
Third, TikTok has specially launched a creator fund to encourage and support high-quality creators. For excellent creators who meet the platform’s requirements, after applying for the permission of the creator fund, TikTok will calculate the amount of the fund based on the creator’s playback volume. This practice has further promoted creators on TikTok to continuously produce high-quality video works to improve the user’s experience of watching short videos.
TikTok uses these three methods to encourage more high-quality works to be produced continuously, and then matches them to users who like them, so that they can keep brushing them every day and become dependent on TikTok. In this way, the platform has more and more users and more and more traffic, thus forming a reinforcing loop.
Third, enter TikTok early and have the opportunity to enjoy the initial dividends of the platform
1. Why is the timing of entry important
The term “timing of entry” is mostly used in stock-related investments, referring to investors choosing high-quality potential stocks and buying them at their early low prices. When we choose a career and industry, it is also an investment in our time and energy. I will talk about why the timing of entry is important based on my own experience.
First, on the right path, the earlier the entry time, the greater the growth space. We all know that the 18 Arhats of Alibaba chose to join Alibaba at the earliest opportunity and pieced together the initial 500,000 startup funds, which made them billionaires after Alibaba grew and developed. Therefore, the earlier the time to enter the market, the better (provided that you recognize that this is the right path).
Second, the earlier you enter the market, the more you can occupy a good resource position at a lower cost. Just like we bought the best school district house in a first-tier city ten years ago, it really took very little money to occupy the best location and wait for the house to appreciate. For us, it may be difficult to have the opportunity to buy a house again, but for some emerging and promising industries, such as TikTok, we can lay out for ourselves as early as possible and occupy a good ecological niche.
2. How to judge whether it is a good time to enter TikTok
First, domestic Douyin developed earlier than international Douyin. We can refer to the development history of domestic Douyin to judge whether TikTok is currently in the preparatory period, start-up period, development period or mature period. As I mentioned before, TikTok’s current content is much less sophisticated than Douyin in China, and is still in a “primitive” stage. Foreign users’ understanding and attempts of new media such as short videos and live broadcasts are also at a relatively “shallow” stage. Not only that, user education and user habits are also difficult to change, and it takes a long process. Therefore, whether it is short videos or live broadcasts, the development level in foreign countries is still in the early stages, and there is still a long way to go before they can develop to maturity. This means that we are now in a relatively early stage of entry and there is a lot of room for development.
Second, it is a good thing that we choose to enter the TikTok track at an early stage, but be careful: we must avoid becoming “cannon fodder” and spending money to make “wedding clothes” for others because user education requires a lot of time, energy and money. There is a cross-border company downstairs from our office. Last year, it spent several million yuan on TikTok, and finally went bankrupt because it could not recover the cost. At this stage, they used a lot of advertising fees to bring goods, and a large part of the money was spent in the process of “planting grass”. They use their own money to speed up the process from users’ seeding to purchase, without properly selecting products and calculating their ROI (Return on Investment), and spend money with the mentality of “I will spend money first to let users know me, it doesn’t matter if I lose a little, I will make it back when they repurchase.” After the money was spent, they found that this amount of money was far from enough to help the platform with user education. User education is not successful immediately after spending money, but has a lag.
Third, how can you better grow with TikTok if you enter TikTok early? This is what our team has concluded after having hundreds of accounts on TikTok, selling dozens of products, experiencing the joy of explosive sales, and suffering losses from wrong decisions: a platform needs to slowly develop and mature. We must follow the growth rules of the platform, strengthen our understanding of the platform algorithm, and constantly polish and improve our own content power based on it, screen the supply chain, cooperate with the correct product selection and marketing methods, and constantly adjust the monetization strategy with the development of the platform while ensuring profits. Doing so can enable us to have a deep understanding of the platform and improve our own strong strength. When the “wind” of the platform really blows up, we can seize the opportunity to win; when the “wind” of the platform does not blow up, we can also make good profits and move forward steadily. So TikTok is now at a very good time to enter the market. We must correctly understand and learn this platform, strengthen our own strength, and make good arrangements in advance.
Tips
Correct entry strategy = early entry into a good track + correct play + follow the growth rules of the platform + perseverance and waiting for the flowers to bloom