The number of fans increased by 6.5 million in three months, and the "grandma version" of Li Ziqi became popular, and a meal made netizens cry

The rural track still has huge traffic, and how to walk steadily and for a long time in this track is what creators need to consider.

The news of Li Ziqi's comeback was like a bullet that pierced the entire Internet.

In September this year, Li Ziqi said in the promotional video of the Farmers’ Harvest Festival that she would "continue to bring more high-quality content in her own way", and then appeared in Douyin’s "Beautiful and Wonderful Night" promotional video in October.

Even though she has been missing for more than 800 days, Li Ziqi is still the "top rural influencer" on the Internet. Before the news of her comeback was announced, news of her signing a contract with Kuaishou and updating content on Douyin came out one after another. The reason why people frequently discuss which platform Li Ziqi will go to after her comeback is naturally because the rural track where Li Ziqi is located is a natural top traffic pool with unlimited business opportunities.

But until December this year, Liziqi still has not returned.

There are many players who want to fill the vacancy of the top streamer. From Zhang Tongxue, Shuai Nongniaoge, Rose to Peng Chuanming, and Dongbei Yujie, various versions of "Li Ziqi" have emerged one after another. The latest to take the center position on Douyin is the grandma version of Li Ziqi: "Grandma Xu from the Eighties".

This hunchbacked grandmother from Northeast China, who is in her eighties, has gained more than 6.5 million followers on Douyin in three months through her interactions with her grandson and various traditional foods. She has attracted 7.38 million followers on the platform and has even appeared on a CCTV program. In the comment section of the video, everyone tells their own stories about grandmothers.

"Grandma Xu of the 1980s" appeared on CCTV program

Following the script of "the end of traffic is monetization", the "80s Xu Granny" account has also begun commercialization attempts. The account has joined the creator advertising profit-sharing plan of the Douyin platform, and brand cooperation advertisements have also appeared in the videos. However, compared with previous versions of "Li Ziqi", the monetization channels of "80s Xu Granny" are still limited, and it is necessary to constantly weigh the balance between monetization and content.

Internet traffic comes and goes quickly. It all starts with traffic, but how to really seize the traffic and monetize it is a question that "80s Xu Granny" needs to consider, and it is also the threshold that each different version of Li Ziqi needs to cross.

1. Countryside plus food, the unchanging traffic code of the Internet

In early September, a short video about canned yellow peaches made in Northeast China went viral.

In the video, the greedy grandson Chengcheng finished the canned peaches that she had made before, so Grandma Xu had to buy some yellow peaches to make new cans. Because of Chengcheng's experience of stealing peaches, Grandma Xu was always on guard against her eldest grandson during the canning process. She hid the yellow peaches and warned him, "You can't eat this. You have to eat it after a month." Chengcheng's mother said, "Your credit is ruined!"

The daily life full of humor, combined with the "Northeastern yellow peach canned food" which is a hot regional topic on the Internet, the video easily received 2.2 million likes and 140,000 comments. Some Northeastern netizens joked that "canned yellow peaches were almost included in the Northeastern medical insurance", and some Sichuan netizens were shocked, "What? You can make canned food by yourself!" More netizens envied the relationship between the grandparents and grandchildren, and posted pictures of the delicious food made by their grandmothers in the comment section.

Afterwards, the account "Eighties Xu Laolao" took off like a rocket, with traffic soaring. In just three months, the number of followers increased to over 6.5 million, and many of its videos received over 1 million likes.

It takes time to become the center of Douyin.

The earliest video of "Eighties Xu Granny" was posted on January 13, 2023. Cheng Cheng, who was working away from home, drove back to Liaoning from Shanxi to celebrate the New Year. By January 20, "Eighties Xu Granny" had posted a total of 7 videos, recording Cheng Cheng's daily life with his grandmother in his hometown in Northeast China during the New Year. However, the account was not ready for long-term operation at this time. After the New Year holiday, Cheng Cheng returned to Shanxi to work and stopped updating for nearly 4 months.

Until May 18, Cheng Cheng drove back to his hometown in Liaoning to give his grandmother a surprise. "Grandma Xu from the 1980s" posted videos again and entered the rhythm of daily updates. In the subsequent videos, Cheng Cheng mentioned that he quit his medical-related job with an annual salary of more than 200,000 yuan, and started shooting videos to operate the account while taking care of his grandmother.

The video started to be updated daily, and the content also chose the countryside, a track with its own traffic. "Grandma Xu from the 1980s" tried many directions before slowly determining the main theme of the video "countryside + food". The video production and shooting are also becoming more and more professional, with a unified cover format, starting with the sentence "Let me show you/taste what my grandma made...", and the characters also have distinct characteristics.

The protagonists are Grandma Xu, who is in her eighties but still works skillfully and occasionally spits out some golden sentences, and her naughty but filial grandson Chengcheng. The supporting characters are Chengcheng's sharp-tongued mother, his henpecked grandfather and others.

In June this year, "Grandma Xu of the Eighties" finally had a unified video cover

After determining the video style, creating a distinctive personality, and entering the two major traffic tracks of "countryside" and "food", coupled with the warmth between grandparents and grandchildren shown in the video, "Grandma Xu of the Eighties" began to gain followers rapidly. In just three months, she attracted more than 6.5 million fans, and many of her videos received more than 1 million likes. She joined the top Douyin online celebrity camp and became the new top rural celebrity. She also appeared on CCTV programs.

2. Grandma is doing business with young people

In 2021, Li Ziqi chose to stop updating because of a dispute with Weinian Company. The rural-themed show with huge traffic lost its top anchor, attracting countless people who wanted to "take over".

In the years when Douyin has been continuously cultivating the sinking market, "Countryside" has become a popular vertical track within the platform. There is never a shortage of various "Li Ziqi", from Zhang Tongxue, Shuai Nongniaoge, Rose to the recent Peng Chuanming and Northeast Yujie. Every once in a while, a new star will emerge with a rapid increase in fans in a short period of time.

Northeastern Yu Jie is called the "Wolf Warrior version of Li Ziqi"

The video copy of "Grandma Xu from the Eighties" also includes the label "2023 New Farmers Plan" - the "New Farmers Plan" is a plan launched by Douyin in 2020, with the aim of attracting more rural anchors to join.

With the support of Douyin, a top traffic pool, "Grandma Xu from the Eighties" has once again become popular with its differentiated content.

Li Ziqi and "Grandma Xu from the 1980s" both have rural life in common. It is more like a contrast than a similarity.

Compared with Li Ziqi's exquisite country life and all kinds of fine food, the village where Grandma Xu lives is more rough and simple, and the food also has the simple temperament of "large quantity and fullness" of the Northeast. On the contrary, it is somewhat similar to the second uncle who "cured the young people's mental exhaustion" and classmate Zhang, the "male version of Li Ziqi".

When observing the videos of "Grandma Xu from the Eighties", we can see that there is no technique, only emotion - the writing is not very good, the subject matter is not very unique, the grandma is occasionally a little embarrassed in front of the camera, and the editing techniques are not advanced either. However, the true feelings of grandparents and grandchildren and the elements in the videos that frequently trigger the collective memory of a generation have successfully created "differentiation" in the popular rural track, thereby attracting a large number of fans.

With the support of the top traffic pool, differentiated content, and the "memory killing" that triggered emotional resonance among countless netizens, the popularity of "Grandma Xu of the Eighties" became inevitable.

The end of traffic is monetization. As the operator behind the account, Cheng Cheng, who chose to quit his job to take care of his grandmother and make short videos full-time, naturally had to consider this issue. The way he chose was to cooperate with advertising and participate in the Douyin creator advertising profit sharing plan.

At present, the cooperative products such as Miguhara whitening toner, KONO shampoo, Zhuan Zhuan second-hand trading platform and Blue Box mattress that appeared in the "Eighties Xu Grandma" short video are actually mostly aimed at young user groups, either directly recommended or using the "filial piety economy" to attract young people to buy for their elders at home.

The creator advertising profit-sharing plan joined by "Eighties Xu Laolao" is a monetization method officially launched by Douyin for creators. As long as users keep swiping to watch short videos on the short video creator's homepage, they will intermittently see advertisements matched by the system and generate monetization.

Many of the advertisements matched by "Eighties Xu Laolao" are also targeted at young user groups, such as AI learning English, CS Cam Scanner, etc.

In fact, it is a large number of young people who pay for the "Eighties Xu Granny" content.

According to the huge data from Star Chart, the fan portraits of "80s Grandma Xu" are "mostly from Generation Z", "mostly between 31 and 40 years old", "mostly from Shandong, Liaoning and Hebei", etc. Among them, fans from Generation Z account for 28.9%, and fans between 31 and 40 years old account for 30%.

Yi Ge, who previously created the film "Three Days Back to the Village, My Second Uncle Cured My Mental Exhaustion", once said in a media interview that among those born in the 1980s and 1990s, many left their hometowns to live in big cities, and quite a number of them grew up in rural areas, "and still have a deep connection with rural China."

The video of "Grandma Xu from the 1980s" also touched the hearts of these netizens. In the comment area, countless netizens said they "missed their grandma", and some envied Cheng Cheng for "being able to live with his grandma". Almost every short video had netizens posting photos of their grandmas and the food they cooked, which received thousands of likes.

3. Becoming popular is just the beginning, how to sustain it is the challenge

From the huge amount of star map data, it can be seen that as of December 8, "Eighty-year-old Xu Lao Lao" has completed 26 commercial cooperation tasks, with an expected broadcast volume of 30.75 million. However, the "Eighty-year-old Xu Lao Lao" account is in a "resting" state, and the cooperation quotation cannot be queried. An MCN operator said that although no relevant data could be found, it can be inferred that the cooperation quotation of "Eighty-year-old Xu Lao Lao" is basically in the six figures.

At present, the main monetization channels of "80s Xu Laolao" are still advertising cooperation and traffic support plans.

The two have one thing in common, which is "there is revenue only when there is traffic." This requires "Eighties Xu Granny" to constantly use content to leverage and attract traffic within the platform in order to realize monetization, and it also requires constantly weighing the balance between commercialization and content.

It is not difficult to monetize traffic, but it is obviously a problem to continuously attract traffic and then monetize it.

For content, only freshness can continuously generate traffic.

Under Li Ziqi's B station video, there are countless netizens who "ask for her return"

On the rapidly changing Internet, traffic comes and goes quickly. Apart from the "definers" of the rural track like Liziqi, it is difficult for other players to achieve "long-term success."

There is only the first one at the top, no second one. Li Ziqi is the same, while Zhang and Xu are the same.

Although "Grandma Xu from the 1980s" has created differentiation in content, there is no high threshold for imitation. There have been many "grandma" accounts on the Douyin platform, such as "Grandma Tian" and "Grandma Pan", and people who want to copy "Grandma Xu" are already on the way.

Zhang, who is known as the "male version of Liziqi" and became famous for his fast-paced editing, may be a reference for "Grandma Xu of the 1980s".

After becoming famous, Zhang chose to monetize through advertising cooperation, and later started live streaming to sell goods.

But after becoming popular, Zhang soon welcomed a large number of imitators, and the difference and freshness created by editing technology soon disappeared. It has been two years since Zhang became popular in November 2021, and his account likes have dropped from more than 2 million to more than 100,000 now, but Zhang has come up with a more unrepeatable "difference" through the development of the past two years.

The "difference" is the matrix number and the supply chain.

Tik Tok accounts related to Zhang

After Zhang became famous, he created multiple accounts for the people around him and the villagers, and gradually built a "Zhang Matrix" with multiple accounts such as "Daxia (Village Guardian)", "Qi Yemen", and "Er Tao". The protagonists of these accounts are not Zhang, but they are able to attract traffic to each other and create more fresh content through co-creation.

More important than content is the supply chain.

Zhang Tongxue established "Liaoning Province Zhang Tongxue Agricultural Development Co., Ltd." and has been deeply cultivating the supply chain since June 2022, endorsing agricultural and sideline products from his hometown and exploring the supply chain behind it. In a report by Shandong Business Daily in January this year, Yan Xiucheng, head of the Tourism Office of Jianyi Town, Yingkou City, said that Zhang Tongxue sold a lot of agricultural products for them and surrounding towns. This is a solid moat created by Zhang Tongxue, and it is difficult for others to imitate. According to Chan Mama data, Zhang Tongxue has conducted 9 live broadcasts in the past 30 days, with sales ranging from 1 million to 2.5 million yuan.

"80s Xu Lao Lao" currently has two matrix accounts, but both accounts have not yet separated from Xu Lao Lao's "soul figure". One is "Mibao Xiaopengyou" which started operating in October this year. The operator behind the scenes is another grandson of Xu Lao Lao, which mainly shows the daily life of the great-granddaughter and the great-grandmother; the other is "Chengcheng Ma" which officially started operating in November this year. The operator behind the scenes is still Chengcheng, and the content is the daily life of Chengcheng and his mother.

But at present, "Xu Laolao from the 1980s" still does not have its own solid moat. The rural track has huge traffic, and Xu Laolao has become popular, but the Douyin ecosystem has its own jungle law. Many phenomenal heads come and go, and even if they have had tens of millions of likes and accumulated tens of millions of fans, they will be forgotten by the algorithm. How to walk steadily and for a long time is the key issue that every "Li Ziqi" should consider deeply.

Author: Wang Zhan

Source: WeChat public account "E-commerce Online"