Becoming a rural internet celebrity

Rural themes are particularly popular during holiday traffic and holidays, so they will plan and release relevant video content according to the seasons and festivals to attract more viewers.

"I live stream on the farm, filming chefs fishing, catching chickens, and picking vegetables, mainly to let netizens see that everything is in its original state. I'll talk to a restaurant, give them a discount on ingredients, and ask them to cooperate with the live stream. If the account becomes popular, we can build a brand together. Fans can place orders online or come to the farm or restaurant to experience it. I post some videos of rural life on a daily basis."

My cousin excitedly introduced his new project to me. As a serial entrepreneur in the urban-rural fringe, he once again saw the red ocean as a blue ocean and popular things as his own amazing new discoveries.

In my cousin's opinion, this business plan is "definitely doable" and "not difficult at all." When asked by Hard Candy, "How to differentiate," "Where does the traffic come from," and "The monetization model of rural influencers," which are not even detailed questions, my cousin repeatedly said, "I don't understand, but it will definitely work. Someone in the next village has gained more than 100,000 fans by selling salted duck and fermented tofu."

For my cousin, the trumpet of victory is blowing from all directions. He showed me the rural bloggers in the short videos. Even the accounts with just over a thousand fans have hundreds of netizens watching during the live broadcast, and people often place orders. Looking higher, the million-level rural Internet celebrities such as Northeast Yujie and Xiaoying's family are standing proudly on the top of the mountain.

Once Hard Candy raises any doubts, my cousin can immediately bring out a reference coordinate, find similarities between himself and others, and then prove the feasibility of the plan. For example, he said that before the Northeast Rain Sister became famous, she also opened a farmhouse near the Pubao Bridge in Benxi, "our starting point is the same."

"Mobile phones are new farm tools, and short videos are new farm work." This is the way to get rich that a new batch of rural creators believe in. But wild creators like my cousin are just joining in the fun, and more MCN organizations are trying to play a big game.

1. Rural young man vs. returning youth

Xiaoying is the reference that my cousin often mentions. This pure wild rural internet celebrity was first exposed to the public by the hardships of life. She dropped out of school and was forced to marry her husband Shang Laru. From then on, she had endless housework and farm work to do. This beautiful young girl became pale and thin.

In the more than 500 short videos that Xiaoying has posted, the public will see a woman with a hard life, a rude and overbearing man, two young and inexperienced children, a cow with straight shoulders, and the sloppy life they lead together. Therefore, when Xiaoying first became popular, most online discussions focused on topics such as marriage, love-brainedness, and rural women.

Faced with enthusiastic netizens' "persuasion to flee", Xiaoying would occasionally express her helplessness in reality, or accept some pertinent advice, such as treating her daughter Dabao well. After repeated efforts in vain, everyone stopped worrying about Xiaoying's life and instead started to make fun of her life.

A rural internet celebrity with millions of followers was born. Before Xiaoying, most rural internet celebrities’ creative ideas were to deliberately avoid the hard side of rural life and create an idyllic utopia for the audience through prose-like images. However, these homogenized rural poems and paintings gradually entered a period of fatigue, and short video users needed new stimulation, which made rural life videos with anxiety and bitterness successfully rise to the top.

The cousin's confidence in "I can do it" also stems from this "downgrading" of content. In his opinion, it is quite difficult for an ordinary rural guy to copy Li Ziqi and create an idyll, but it is much easier to just record life. "Xiao Yingcai graduated from junior high school, and I am a high school student after all, so my creativity should be stronger."

But my cousin didn't know that his real opponent was not Xiaoying, but a large number of young people who returned to their hometowns. A Shi (pseudonym), an operator of an MCN agency, told Hard Candy that media and film and television companies have laid off employees in the past two years, which has led to a large number of laid-off young people returning to their hometowns to start businesses. They also generally chose the low-cost track of rural bloggers.

Yu Jie from Northeast China is the spiritual leader of this group of creators. Yu Jie, who is called "Wolf Warrior version of Li Ziqi" by netizens, focuses her camera on rural life in Northeast China. But unlike Xiaoying, she is full of energy and works efficiently. In fashionable terms, she has a strong magnetic field. Crispy netizens look at her more and feel that they have endless energy.

Yujie's videos are real but not crude, the script, camera movement, and copywriting are all quite smooth, and it can be seen that they are the result of polishing by a professional team. After Yujie became popular, netizens also found out that her husband Lao Kuai was actually a director. You think they are directly creating, but there is no superfluous role in the actual work.

In this way, Xiaoying and Yujie have respectively led two new schools of rural Internet celebrities, allowing both amateur and professional creators to see the bright prospects of their careers.

2. Some working women, some bitter melon farmers

My cousin's desire to become a rural internet celebrity may be just a whim, but Ah Shi's company's vigorous layout in the rural track is based on repeated research. There are two main reasons why MCN agencies attach so much importance to the theme of agriculture, rural areas and farmers:

First of all, 2020 is the decisive year for poverty alleviation. Films, live broadcasts, and short videos have taken advantage of this policy to create works on agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. Since then, Li Ziqi has stopped updating due to company disputes, leaving a huge blank market. The call to "copy the next Li Ziqi" has always been there.

Secondly, in the field of long videos, rural themes have also been quite popular in recent years. In addition to pure rural dramas such as "Mountains and Seas", the "return to hometown dramas" that have emerged in the past two years have become a new hot genre. Judging from Ah Shi's many years of experience in the industry, the popular content of long and short videos complements and reflects each other. "In emotional dramas such as "Spring Colors to Lovers", the heroine also has to go back to the county to sell unsaleable yams and sell braised chicken live."

Data shows that in 2021 alone, the average daily playback volume of short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers on short video platforms has reached 1 billion. Unfortunately, the vast majority of creators are still extending around traditional ideas, and for a long time they have not been able to create a phenomenal internet celebrity.

In Ah Shi's view, exploring a new content trend is a complex process of trial and error, exploration, and trial and error again. "It takes about one or two years to really adjust the creative environment through this cycle. Categories such as beauty, food, and fashion also have this cyclicality. You can see that it takes three to five years for food broadcasts to come up with new tricks."

According to Ah Shi, around 2021, many MCN agencies still regarded themes related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers as tasks to be completed. "To maintain close contact with the platform, we must keep up with the other party. We generally provide corresponding support and show our support for whatever category they need to endorse."

Compared with the highly uncertain wild bloggers, MCN organizations are undoubtedly more able to promote the scale of the industry. At the end of 2021, Ash's company quickly purchased a batch of rural accounts. "You don't have to maintain them yourself. Just update a few videos steadily. The platform will give you natural traffic if you determine that you are active. After the popularity rises, we can invest in traffic, and you can get results with only three to five thousand yuan. The bad ones will be eliminated immediately."

The most difficult part of being a rural blogger is creating a personal image. "As we worked, we found that Li Ziqi is irreplaceable and you can't copy her at all. The team started to study and learn from those rural bloggers who have average fans but high stickiness, and found that everyone is creating a personal image in a different way."

They immediately joined the team that created new stereotypes. Ah Shi concluded that there are two types of rural bloggers who are most likely to become popular: those who are patient with things and those who are patient with people. The former is like Yu Jie from the Northeast, who does not seem to work hard at all and whose vitality is almost overflowing. The latter is like Xiaoying who is trapped in Shang Laru's world, whose emotions are so complicated that everyone wants to complain.

"Relatively speaking, it is much easier to copy 'Yu Jie' and 'Xiao Ying' than 'Li Ziqi'. There are many people who are good at work. We can just sign people in the countryside and provide them with professional packaging. If we want to create a bitter melon-type peasant woman, it is better to go with the script model. The standard template is that she has not been to school for a few days, takes care of two or three children, and her husband is neither economical nor practical and does not provide emotional value. In summary, it is the life of Xinzheku."

It is worth noting that short videos, a new type of agricultural work, also require spring ploughing and autumn planting according to the solar terms. A Shi told Hard Candy that they found that rural themes have particularly good traffic during holidays. Generally, they choose to invest in traffic and promote new people during Labor Day, National Day, and Spring Festival, which can greatly increase the probability of a hit. Sister Yu, who has been dormant for a long time, also gained a large number of new fans during the Spring Festival by stocking up on New Year's goods, visiting the big market, and building a Toad Pond.

3. Fortune is beckoning, and the times are calling

After chatting with A Shi, Mr. Hard Candy summed up an experience: If you accidentally click on the live broadcast or short video of rural bloggers and see them busy in messy and small houses, don’t rush to feel distressed or sympathize, because the scene may be fake, and they may earn more.

How low is the daily cost of photographing rural bloggers? Let's put it this way, renting a bungalow in the countryside only costs a few hundred yuan, and even building a farmhouse only takes a month or so. Props can all be purchased online, such as the standard aluminum washbasin, which can be bought for a few dozen yuan and then smashed into two holes on the cement floor, and that's it.

From this perspective, it is not unreasonable for Hard Candy's cousin to believe that he can become a rural blogger. Selling local specialties such as salted duck and fermented tofu does have the opportunity to get rich. E-commerce platforms have released data showing that there are more than 17 million rural online merchants in China and as many as 100,000 rural anchors.

The problem is that there are still many invisible operating costs. Ah Shi’s company has promoted hundreds of rural bloggers, but only three million-level internet celebrities have emerged, and most of them have only a few thousand fans. “You only see the thief eating meat, but not the thief being beaten. Without a team, even if you have hundreds of thousands of fans, it’s all for love and fun.”

At present, the main way for rural bloggers to realize their income is still through advertising and bringing goods. Forget about advertising, as the brand's advertising budget is occupied by a few top accounts, and the middle and lower accounts hardly get a share. Bringing goods can be done by posting links and broadcasting live. The former is easy to operate but the income is meager, and the latter is difficult to implement as it requires connecting to the supply chain. In other words, even if wild bloggers have considerable fans, it is not easy to make money.

In contrast, MCN organizations have stronger monetization capabilities and more business models. Ashi's company has set up a training business and cooperated with counties and towns to let "star" anchors go to the countryside to carry out agricultural assistance courses. "In fact, it is still some superficial operational knowledge, packaged with new cases, which is enough to sink into the market to make money. The main reason is that many places now require village cadres and young farmers to learn to make short videos and live broadcasts. The market demand is there."

Another advantage of institutional operation is that the effect of "one account leads many" and "old leads new" is obvious. When a Northeast Yu Jie becomes popular, there are Yu Jie's Da Qiao, Yu Jie's Da Baobei, Yu Jie's Pei Si, Yu Jie's Shi Mao... springing up like mushrooms after rain. Whenever Yu Jie broadcasts live, these "supporting roles" stand behind her as assistants, and their popularity will also be added to the live broadcast room.

Talking about future plans, Ah Shi said that the company is considering shooting a short drama with rural themes. "We are currently planning a time-travel drama, where the heroine travels back in time to become the village chief, changing the backward habit of favoring boys over girls, and leading rural women out of the mountain village and into the vast world."

Regardless of the success or failure of the short play, Ah Shi thinks that rural themes can still be popular for another two or three years because they are so in line with mainstream sentiment. He joked that young people want to go home to farm because the wheat they grow will not suddenly notify them in the early morning that they want to grow mangoes the next day.

Author: Gu Han

Source: WeChat public account "Entertainment Hard Candy (ID: yuleyingtang)"