With over 200 million views and 3 million followers, has traditional culture become the darling of short video traffic?

Traditional culture has always been a traffic source for short videos. Recently, a video of Jiang Xunqian carving an ice dragon has sparked heated discussions. Let’s take a look at the status of traditional culture on short video platforms~

A short video has 200 million views on a single platform and has increased the number of followers of the account by nearly 3 million across the entire network. What is its "magic"?

Recently, Jiang Xunqian, once known as the "next Li Ziqi" and a traditional culture short video expert, became popular because of a video of carving an ice dragon. This is not the first time she has become popular.

From "making iron flowers" to "carving ice dragons", we can see that the popularity of traditional cultural short video content continues to rise. From last year to now, there are many short video masters who have gained millions of fans and become popular by relying on traditional cultural content.

What is the reason behind this? After these influencers create hits and attract traffic, how do they monetize?

1. Livestreaming the carving of an ice dragon, gaining 3 million followers

"I carved a dragon out of a piece of ice."

On February 6, short video expert Jiang Xunqian (Jiuyue) released a video of carving an ice dragon in Jilin. In this video, she recorded the entire process of carving the dragon: using ice hooks and ice saws to get ice on site, sketching the outline of the dragon on the ice, and finally carving the image of the dragon bit by bit...

After the video was released, it quickly became popular on all platforms, with the number of likes on Douyin alone exceeding 8.5 million and the number of views exceeding 200 million.

However, what Jiang Xunqian might not have expected was that while this video went viral, it also caused controversy, with some netizens questioning whether she had carved it herself at all, and it was simply a staged photo shoot to take credit for the team's work.

As public opinion grew, Jiang Xunqian responded with a video: Since you don’t believe that I filmed it, I will start a live broadcast to show you the sculpture.

So, on February 22, she once again rushed to Jilin Ice and Snow New World and broadcast live for two consecutive days, a total of 14 hours, and carved out an ice dragon again.

Data shows that the two-day live broadcast had a cumulative audience of over 34 million. Moreover, according to Xinbang data, thanks to this live broadcast, Jiang Xunqian gained more than 2.7 million followers on all platforms last week, including 1.67 million on Douyin and 690,000 on Kuaishou.

In fact, this is not the first time Jiang Xunqian has become popular.

Last June, when her number of fans exceeded 10 million, she released a video of "making iron flowers". This video has been played over 200 million times on the entire network, and it also brought over 2 million fans to the account at that time.

Earlier, she also shot sugar painting videos and made "Mermaid Silk Sea Clothes" and "Burning Fire Dragons". Almost all of these videos related to traditional culture have become popular.

Jiang Xunqian did not target the traditional culture track from the beginning.

Before making videos, she was a game concept artist. Because the work intensity was too high, she quit her job in 2019 and started sharing daily food videos on the Internet.

She has loved traditional culture since she was a child, and accidentally came into contact with sugar painting. After the video was released, it was widely welcomed. After that, she began to spend more time and energy studying and learning traditional culture. She made tea, arranged flowers, brewed wine, painted sugar paintings, made kites, created traditional Miao silver jewelry, made iron flowers, carved ice dragons...

Today, her label has changed from food to traditional culture. The title of "the next Li Ziqi" that she was given when she first became famous has rarely been mentioned since she proved her unique style and content ability through one hit video after another.

2. Why has it become the track with the fastest increase in fans?

Jiang Xunqian is not the only one who has become famous thanks to his traditional cultural videos.

In recent years, short video experts have emerged in the traditional cultural content track, such as "Shan Bai" who uses ancient methods to make Hui ink, "Li Yichun" who successfully reproduced the rolling lantern, as well as Nanxiang, Peng Chuanming, Peng Nanke and others.

Last July, Shanbai released a video about making ancient Hui ink, which has received over 10 million likes and over 500,000 comments. After releasing the video about making ancient Hui ink, Shanbai gained 2.5 million followers in 12 days. At that time, it was only over 3 months since he posted the first video on his homepage. Not only that, his videos about making summer cloth, cowhide drums, and woodblock New Year paintings have all become hits.

Similar to this is the handicraft blogger Li Yichun, who has reproduced rolling lanterns, fire grass clothes and oil-paper umbrellas. His video of making rolling lanterns has received more than 2.4 million likes on Douyin.

So far, Shanbai has 9.91 million fans on Douyin, and Li Yichun has exceeded 5.12 million. Peng Chuanming, known as the "craftsman who records rural life", and Peng Nanke, known as the "rural artist", have both exceeded 5 million fans on Douyin because of their filming and production of traditional handicrafts.

So, why are these short videos more likely to become popular and help influencers gain followers faster?

First of all, the threshold for this type of content is high and the production cost is also high.

The "iron flower making" video shot by Jiang Xunqian requires time to learn the skill of "iron flower making", and one also has to face the problems of high difficulty in operation and high risk of injury.

The video on the ancient Hui ink making method shot by Shanbai took nearly two years, starting from cutting the lacquer, and going through the steps of refining smoke, taking smoke, washing smoke, drying in the shade, mixing with glue, and beating ink, and finally made the Hui ink which is more valuable than gold.

Moreover, under the premise of plain-style recording, video producers need to fully demonstrate the charm of the products they produce. This tests the blogger's hands-on and learning abilities, as well as the content team's understanding of traditional Chinese culture and grasp of public sentiment.

Therefore, the scarcity of content due to high thresholds and high costs makes these contents often high-quality.

Secondly, users are becoming more and more interested in traditional culture, and this type of content is more likely to resonate with them.

According to the "2023 Short Video User Value Research Report" released by China Media Research (CSM), 66.5% of short video users have watched traditional cultural short videos. Historical stories/characters/relics and unique folk customs are the content types they are most interested in, with the proportion of users exceeding 50%; secondly, users who are interested in traditional costumes/etiquette and customs, traditional performing arts, and traditional skills/crafts also account for more than 40%.

Therefore, this is one of the reasons why traditional cultural short video content is gaining more and more attention.

3. How do traditional cultural masters monetize?

So, after creating hit videos and gaining followers, how do these traditional cultural short video experts make money?

There are three ways for short video influencers to monetize: advertising, live broadcast rewards, and e-commerce. E-commerce is further divided into live broadcast sales and short video sales.

Nanxiang, Peng Chuanming and Jiang Xunqian have all opened product display windows. Among them, Nanxiang has its own brand "Nan Xiaoxiang", and the products sold are mainly fresh meat biscuits and steamed dumplings. Data shows that the window has sold 1,800 pieces; Peng Chuanming also opened a small shop with the same name, mainly selling tea, and has sold more than 30,000 pieces; Jiang Xunqian sells products from Nanxiang's small shop and handmade soaps, etc., and has sold more than 10,000 pieces.

In addition, these traditional cultural short video experts still mainly rely on advertising for monetization.

Take Jiang Xunqian as an example. According to the background data of Juliangxingtu, her short video advertising quotation is: 450,000 for 1-20s video, 500,000 for 21-60s video, and 550,000 for video over 60s. The background shows that she has received orders for more than 8 advertising videos, and her cooperative clients include OPPO, Pepsi, Xiaomi, Lancome and other brands. The cooperation method is product placement, which is just planting grass, and there is no trailer.

Recently, her ice dragon carving video has achieved business cooperation. In the middle of the video, she mentioned that the weather is too cold, which is also a huge test for the skin. At this time, Lancome's small black bottle advertisement was inserted to highlight "resist the damage of cold to the skin, and is not afraid even of ice and snow", which well reflects the product characteristics and does not affect the fluency of the video content.

In addition to advertisements, there is also an intangible cultural heritage short video expert who has done a great job combining the promoted skills with selling goods, that is "Liu Family Bamboo Weaving".

This expert has 110,000 followers on Douyin. He was originally an ordinary farmer who made a living by selling bamboo baskets and bamboo baskets. During a live broadcast, a netizen joked in the barrage: the bamboo basket in the host's hand is more suitable as a "love bed" for his two cats.

Unexpectedly, this slightly funny suggestion was approved by many netizens, and more and more fans hoped that the expert could put this idea into practice. So she "changed her career" and became a pet products maker.

Perhaps because the product is really excellent, the continuous positive feedback has made the sales of "bamboo cat beds" higher and higher, becoming a generation of Internet celebrity products. Because so many products are sold, the production cycle of handmade products is also long. The expert also led the old bamboo craftsmen in the village to join the production, and carried forward the bamboo pet products.

As we can see, as long as the content is high-quality enough, traditional culture short video experts have many options for monetization. However, in the current short video track with a faster pace and more intense competition, maintaining investment and focus on content is the biggest test.

Who will be the next traditional culture short video expert who breaks out of the circle and grasps the "traffic code"? Let us continue to pay attention.

Author: Changmei WeChat public account: Xinbochang