She helped her best friend get into Tsinghua University, and her followers increased by 3.5 million in 3 months

In the ocean of short videos on Douyin, new stars rise and old stars fall every month. This article will take you to an in-depth analysis of the Douyin fan growth list in May to find out. From the peak of traffic of the "grassroots" Internet celebrity @郭有才, to the sudden rise of the educational account @清华小高数学理思考, to the talent debut of the high school girl @拉小琴的王主管, each fan growth has its own unique story and strategy. Together, we will explore how they quickly attracted millions of fans in a short period of time, and the deeper meaning behind these phenomena. Let us uncover the secrets behind the Douyin fan growth list and explore the traffic code in the era of short videos.

The Douyin fan growth list for May has been released. Let’s take a look at the list:

As expected, the person who topped the list of most followers this time was the grass-roots internet celebrity @郭有才 (Heze Shuge), who reached the peak of traffic with a cover version of "Promise". He gained tens of millions of followers in 10 days, becoming the "new god" of Douyin recently.

@Guo Youcai sings "Promise"

It is worth noting that after being quickly pushed into the spotlight, Guo Youcai's road to fame was met with multiple crises.

On the one hand, because netizens reported the "demon dance" live broadcast chaos at Heze South Station in real name, Heze officials had to start to rectify the live broadcast environment; Guo Youcai was also reported for making bad remarks during the live broadcast, and #Must cut off the harm to children, this national Internet celebrity cancer, became a hot search; on the other hand, after the popularity of "grassroots narrative", Guo Youcai was frequently questioned about his fake grassroots persona. For example, although he had set up a barbecue stall, he had accumulated a lot of traffic by shooting videos as early as 2022, and his girlfriend Su Chang's Douyin showed a petty bourgeois life that was completely unrelated to grassroots. Under the influence of multiple factors, Guo Youcai's fan growth rate has slowed down significantly, and his popularity has gradually declined. (Douyin's "new god", "cool" in half a month?)

After Guo Youcai, the " big male protagonist of cool articles " @Lei Jun, who continued to output content on Douyin and continuously strengthened the founder's IP construction, topped the fan growth list in April and was on the list again in May , and his popularity remained high.

The third on the list of followers is @宝力龟龟, which also performed well in the list of followers in April . This account mainly records the interesting daily life of the cute baby "Niu". Due to the proper education of his parents, Niu often speaks surprisingly and wittily at a young age. He is cute and wise, and is deeply loved by users.

@宝力龟龟TikTok video screenshot

Apart from these three accounts, there is only one account that gained between 2 million and 3 million followers, and the remaining 16 accounts gained between 1 million and 2 million followers. Although there have been new top-tier accounts like Guo Youcai who have gained tens of millions of followers, judging from the overall trend of fan growth, there has been a significant decline in May compared to the first few months of this year .

In terms of account types, the May follower growth list covers multiple vertical categories, including drama, vlog , sports and fitness, music, film and television entertainment, outdoor, maternal and child, knowledge, and appearance. Although the number of accounts is not as rich as in March and April , some new faces with eye-catching content and forms have emerged. Next, Kas will select several of these accounts for analysis.

1. @清华小高数学思智: Attracting 3.5 million followers in 3 months , how does an educational account shine?

In addition to the emerging top-tier celebrities like Guo Youcai, the dark horse with the greatest potential in the May follower growth list is the education account @清华小高数学理思考.

According to observations, the account only released its first work on Douyin on March 18 this year. In less than three months, its number of followers has exceeded 3.5 million. The speed of fan growth cannot be underestimated.

As an educational account, @清华小高数学理思考's content theme is actually very simple, that is, sharing various elementary school math Olympiad problem-solving ideas for users on a whiteboard. So, why can such a boring teaching content with a relatively narrow audience gain such a fast number of followers? Kas believes that this is first of all inseparable from Xiao Gao's highly educated personality and professional skills.

On Xiao Gao's account homepage, her resume is displayed directly: a graduate student in mechanics at Tsinghua University, a bachelor of engineering mechanics at Dalian University of Technology, a recipient of Tsinghua Future Scholars Scholarship, and more than 20 national science and technology awards. Each title is a height that ordinary people cannot reach. With the blessing of this aura of self-contained traffic, Xiao Gao can undoubtedly easily win the favor and attention of users.

Screenshot of @清华小高数学思理抖音 homepage

In addition to the halo of Gao Zhi's personality, the professionalism she demonstrated in teaching further strengthened the trust of users. According to Kass's observation, Xiao Gao chose the elementary school Mathematical Olympiad track. In each session, she would list a math problem on the whiteboard and then give her unique solution step by step. The whole process is intuitive and easy to understand, which not only allows users to digest it easily, but also allows them to follow the teacher's rhythm and feel the joy of doing the questions.

@清华小高数学思考TikTok video screenshot

In addition to the underlying reason of professionalism, another core reason why @清华小高数学理思考 can quickly gain followers is due to its development, companionship and fun content setting.

From the first video, the account set a goal for itself: "The Xth day of training my best friend to go to Tsinghua University". Based on this goal, Xiao Gao, who was lying on the bed playing with her phone, was called up by her best friend every day: "Hey, Tsinghua students, how do you do this problem?" After being called by her best friend, Xiao Gao jumped up from the bed and began to explain the problem to her best friend on the whiteboard. During the explanation, Xiao Gao kept throwing out questions just like giving a lecture in class, and her best friend, the student, would respond in time according to her ideas. Under this kind of guided interaction, the solution to a problem would appear on the whiteboard, and it would be clear at a glance.

@清华小高数学思考TikTok video screenshot

In this content model, Xiao Gao's image forms an interesting contrast with the public's perception of a top student, further narrowing the distance between himself and the users . On the other hand, since the bestie does not appear on screen, every user in front of the screen is actually transformed into the bestie who is being trained to go to Tsinghua University in the video, which reduces the boredom of learning and greatly maximizes the interactivity and sense of participation. With the dual factors of professionalism and fun, more and more users are attracted to come to the class.

It is worth noting that among @清华小高数学理思考’s fans, 56.15% are middle-aged people aged 31-40 . Many parents of primary school students are waiting for them, hoping to improve their children’s learning through their own improvement. In Xiao Gao’s Douyin store, 714 copies of “数学理思考Parents’ Class”, which is priced at 199 yuan, have been sold. While the number of fans is increasing rapidly, the speed of monetization is also far higher than other similar talents.

@清华小高数学思理腦TikTok store screenshot

2. @Director Wang who plays the violin: A high school girl who debuted as a star with her talent

A desktop electric fan was used as the steering wheel, and a chair was used as the driver's seat, and the outline of a very simple convertible car was outlined. In the "car", one "Zeng Yi" and six "Ling Hua" sat together happily, holding a microphone made of rolled-up books, and passionately sang Phoenix Legend's "Free Flying".

The 7 young and innocent faces, the "precisely" restored MV scene, and the very emotional cover made this video full of highlights, and eventually received 404.2W likes. Along with this, the account @拉小提琴的王董事 has been loved by more and more users.

Screenshot of @王讲琴的TikTok video

It is understood that the account mainly records the extracurricular life of several girls in high school. They are all members of the school music club, and they participate in club activities together after school every week, and then the teacher records their videos of singing various songs.

Although these girls exuding a strong youthful atmosphere have different styles, they almost all have good musical skills. Among them, the girl called "Bala Sister" won the double championship of Chinese and English songs in the Campus Singer Competition in 2023. Her strength is very strong.

Screenshot of @王讲琴的TikTok video

Looking through the videos they released, the cover songs cover a variety of languages ​​and styles . There are many Korean songs sung by Blackpink , such as " Pink Venom " and " Boombayah ", as well as Mandarin pop songs such as Wang Leehom's "Full Fire" and "Change Yourself", Jay Chou's "Rice Fragrance" and "Dandelion's Promise", and rap songs such as "Floating to the North". No matter what style of music, they can handle it. In addition to singing, they sometimes arrange simple MVs to increase the highlights of the video. Although the overall style may not be perfect, it presents a unique style.

Screenshot of @Playing the violin Director Wang's TikTok video

There are countless music accounts on TikTok. If you want to stand out, you must have your own style and memorable points. The reason why @拉小提琴的王主管 can attract users' attention is not only because of its strength, but more importantly, it shows the beautiful face of youth : a girl in her youth, versatile, generous, actively releasing her vitality and energy, exuding an unpolished vitality and beauty, which makes people involuntarily attracted to it and exclaim "It's great to be young", which is enough to become a major reason to drive users' attention.

3. Other Accounts

In addition to these two accounts, there are several other accounts that are also worthy of our attention, such as:

Fitness expert @花小龙 is committed to maintaining a low body fat figure. His videos record his self-disciplined life and convey his energetic mental state, so as to encourage users to lose fat together. With this kind of self-disciplined content, the account has accumulated a lot of fans. After starting to cooperate with top experts such as @李炮儿, @张百乔, and @陈泽 and leading them to "self-discipline", his various data have increased more significantly than before. Recently, his "emotional entanglement" with the appearance expert @王老师 has also attracted many netizens to come and CP, and the account's attention has been further improved.

@花小龙TikTok video screenshot

@李建国, records the funny daily life of Shanxi girl Li Jianguo and her father. The various witty and interesting conversations make people laugh. As of press time, the account has 156.4W followers.

The above is the complete analysis of the follower growth list in May. Will there be another "Guo Youcai" in June? In addition to Guo Youcai, will there be any new dark horse accounts? We will continue to pay attention.

Author: Yue Yao, WeChat public account: Kas Data