With subsidies and traffic, Douyin and Kuaishou have increased their graphic and text content. Are new opportunities coming?

The promotion of goods with pictures and texts is on the rise again. Douyin has officially launched the "Picture and Text Gold Digging Plan", which offers six ways of playing for creators, such as submission traffic coupons and ranking competitions, to help merchants and influencers gain profits. Pictures and texts are not only for planting seeds, but also for content. They have become a new carrier for bringing goods and a new way for Douyin to commercialize. Let's take a look!

The wind is starting to blow again on the graphic track.

Recently, Douyin officially launched the "Picture and Text Gold Mining Plan", offering six ways to creators to participate, such as traffic coupons for submissions and ranking competitions, to help merchants and influencers earn profits.

Since its launch in November 2021, Douyin's pictures and texts have been developed for more than a year, and have evolved from pure content sharing at the beginning to being able to carry goods. Now, there is news that picture and text content will soon be able to be streamed.

In fact, Douyin is not the only one that has set its sights on the picture and text content pie. Some institutions have revealed that Kuaishou is also working closely on picture and text content.

What exactly are the short video platforms up to? Are live short videos not as popular as pictures and texts?

1. Will Tik Tok focus on graphic and text content again?

Can you imagine that without short videos or live broadcasts, you can sell goods on Douyin with pictures and texts?

A fashion blogger with only 8,000 followers achieved sales of over 340,000 per post and over 1.2 million per month with just a simple picture and text, without relying on short videos or live broadcasts; a book blogger posted a book review with pictures and text, bringing in over 480,000 sales for the book; a food blogger who took photos and shared delicious chocolates brought in over 320,000 sales with a single picture and text...

This is the official report of Douyin e-commerce on selling products through pictures and texts. In fact, Douyin’s picture and text selling function has only been online for 2 months.

In February this year, Douyin e-commerce fully opened the entrance for pictures and texts to sell goods, and users can attach product links when posting pictures and videos.

After two months of trial, Douyin e-commerce announced its "achievements" in selling goods through pictures and texts: data showed that from March to April this year, the average daily views of Douyin's pictures and texts increased by 150%, and the average daily transaction volume increased by 214%.

Perhaps seeing the imagination of the picture and text sales format, Douyin chose to increase its investment again.

On April 24, Douyin announced that it will officially launch the "Picture and Text Gold Plan", which will include six gameplays: submission traffic coupons, author ranking competition, targeted high-quality author ranking competition, celebrity ranking competition, celebrity peak competition, and excellent merchant ranking competition, to help merchants and influencers participating in the plan achieve revenue growth. The event will last for half a month, from April 25 to May 10.

This time, with the launch of the "Picture and Text Gold Mining Plan", it is not difficult to see that Douyin is once again increasing its investment in picture and text content to help creators gain more revenue.

Douyin pictures and texts refer to album-style content. When publishing works, influencers can select multiple pictures to form an album, and then add copywriting and background music. Users can click on the album to view the original picture, or slide the picture left and right to adjust the playback speed. The suffix "pictures and texts" will also appear next to the influencer's account nickname.

Douyin pictures and texts are actually a kind of "PPT" short video that will play automatically. Although it is in the form of pictures and texts, the final display method is still a short video. However, compared with short videos, Douyin pictures and texts have more direct effects, simpler operations, and lower production time costs.

If you observe these works carefully, you will find that there is actually not much difference between the pictures and texts on Douyin and those on Taobao and Xiaohongshu. The biggest difference is that the pictures and texts on Douyin can be played automatically, while the pictures and texts on Taobao and Xiaohongshu need to be slid manually.

As of April 28, the #抖音图文来了 topic has been played more than 160 billion times, and the popular video types are mainly food recipes, fashion outfits, cute pets, travel, daily necessities reviews, etc.

2. For the sake of planting seeds and for the sake of content

Tik Tok has been developing graphic and text content for a long time.

As early as October 2021, Douyin began internal testing of the picture and text function, allowing users to send short videos in "PPT format"; in November of the same year, Douyin's picture and text function was officially launched.

In August 2022, Douyin launched the "Picture and Text Partner Program" to encourage users to participate in picture and text submission activities with official topics. High-quality picture and text content selected through evaluation can receive traffic incentives. It was not until February this year that Douyin e-commerce officially opened the entrance for picture and text to bring goods.

Now, M, the person in charge of a Douyin service provider, has revealed to Xinbochang that Douyin pictures and texts will soon be able to be broadcast to Qianchuan, which means that they can be broadcast like live broadcasts and short videos.

After going through the process of attracting fans, hanging product links to promote products, and then to investing in traffic and promoting products, Douyin's pictures and texts have finally officially started its commercialization journey.

In M's view, the development of Douyin's pictures and texts has gone through three stages: 1.0 is pure content, 2.0 is the ability to hook up and bring goods, and 3.0 is traffic investment.

This also means that Douyin's pictures and texts, which have entered the 3.0 stage, have gone through the initial exploration stage and the gameplay has matured.

Why does Tik Tok go to so much trouble with pictures and texts?

When Douyin first entered the picture and text market, the industry interpreted it as a competitor to Xiaohongshu and a way to grab Xiaohongshu’s market share. Xiaohongshu has always been focused on picture and text marketing, and because it has many female users, it has very high commercial value and strong monetization capabilities.

Therefore, M also believes that Douyin’s picture and text sales are “the best way to migrate to Xiaohongshu.”

In addition to competing with Xiaohongshu, Douyin has also focused on graphic and text content, which is interpreted by industry insiders as a supplement to the platform's content ecology.

According to official data released by Douyin at the 2022 Ecological Conference, as of August 2022, the average daily views of Douyin's pictures and texts have exceeded 10 billion, and picture and text users account for 70%, which proves that pictures and texts have a high appeal to users.

However, it now seems that the commercialization of pictures and texts has also become a key consideration for Douyin. After the e-commerce value of short videos has been fully explored, any content has the opportunity to become a part of e-commerce. Today, pictures and texts have become a new carrier for bringing goods and a new way for Douyin to commercialize.

3. Are pictures and texts really new opportunities?

In fact, it’s not just Xiaohongshu and Douyin that are selling products through pictures and texts.

According to Xiao A, the head of an MCN agency, Kuaishou is also "closely engaged" in the promotion of goods through graphic content. At this stage, the platform mainly provides subsidies to agencies for attracting new users, and some influencers can get subsidies of around several hundred yuan. The head predicts that Kuaishou will increase its investment in the future.

A told Xinbochang that they had specially set up a company to develop the graphic and text track this year. However, he said: "We have not yet brought in goods, and we are still cultivating fans. We will consider (bringing goods) to realize cash later, and we can also take on product promotion." The head of the agency revealed that they had specially set up a company to develop the graphic and text track this year.

As for why he entered the picture and text track, Xiao A said that in addition to paying attention to various fields of the Internet, he mainly saw the development trend and growth potential of picture and text content on Xiaohongshu, so when other platforms made efforts, he chose to follow up decisively.

In other words, the commercialization capabilities of graphic and text content have actually been verified.

In the Xinbochang industry exchange group, there are also people who say that their organizations have long been engaged in Douyin pictures and texts to promote products, "two-dimensional game categories, and also clothing categories."

With a huge user base, accumulated content, and the support of excellent cases and mature models, picture and text sales have become a rare new opportunity in the severe internal competition in the short video and live broadcast tracks.

However, some traditional e-commerce people do not agree: "Videos are losing money, let alone pictures and texts." In their view, the essence of selling products with pictures and texts is still selling products with content. It is still necessary to focus on the three-pronged approach of grasping the content, increasing the traffic, and controlling the products. It is not that there are new opportunities just because the format has changed.

Some people even joked that Taobao is focusing on short videos, while Douyin is focusing on pictures and texts. However, according to a senior e-commerce person, the reason why the former is doing live broadcasts and short videos is because "Taobao pictures and texts have been out of business since 2018." Is Douyin betting on the picture and text track now to prevent problems before they happen? Or is it that its short videos and live broadcasts are also beginning to have the same problems as Taobao pictures and texts?

In short, in the new e-commerce ecosystem with content e-commerce as the core, whether it is pictures and texts or live broadcasts and short videos, the core gameplay and key points have not changed. To do a certain business well, although it is important to seize the entry point, it may not succeed if you are still impetuous and use rough human wave tactics like the industry did a few years ago.

Author: Xiaolongguo, Aligu

Source: WeChat public account "New Broadcasting Field (ID: New_bc)"