On the first day of 2023, Maomao told a story about "belief"

Maomao Jie unexpectedly gained countless fans due to her live broadcast, attracting many netizens to watch, and the interaction between Maomao Jie and Auntie Wang, her own cleaning lady, also brought more traffic to the live broadcast room. From an old celebrity to a second-time celebrity, why did Maomao Jie accidentally unlock the traffic code? Can she become the new top traffic influencer on Douyin? This article analyzes this, let's take a look.

"Stop, I've tolerated you for a long time, and today I finally caught you." In Sister Maomao's live broadcast room, cleaning lady Wang pointed the thermometer at Sister Maomao as usual. The live broadcast of the funny duo was simply "crosstalk + sitcom", acting as the "electronic ibuprofen" for the audience during the epidemic.

As a worker chosen by the heavens, Maomao Sister clumsily explained the product, posted links, cooked hot pot, and played music by herself when the entire live broadcast team was all alone. The experience of fighting alone was both sad and funny. From time to time, he couldn't find the product, there would be errors when posting links, and the live broadcast room would go black... The whole live broadcast process was more like a major accident rollover scene.

Unexpectedly, this sincere and generous live broadcast unexpectedly attracted countless fans and attracted many netizens to watch. Maomao Sister also successfully achieved a second popularity. Perhaps because she was too busy, Maomao Sister invited her own cleaning lady, Auntie Wang, to help. It turned out that Auntie Wang was a natural comedian and had great potential to become a "number one sister". The teasing in Henan and Guizhou dialects also brought more traffic to Maomao Sister's live broadcast room.

According to the heat wave data, on December 17, the cumulative number of viewers in Maomao Sister’s live broadcast room reached 9.4 million, and the GMV of a single game was as high as 9.42 million. In the past week, the number of live broadcast viewers ranged from 5 million to 12 million, and the highest GMV reached 17.547 million.

Going back half a month, the GMV of Maomaojie's live broadcast was only over 1 million. Although Maomaojie's latest performance is still difficult to compete with the top anchors, it has increased exponentially compared with her past live broadcast performance. From an old celebrity to a second-time celebrity, why did Maomaojie accidentally unlock the traffic code? Can he become the new top anchor on Douyin?

1. “Pretending” and “Not Pretending”: The Peak of Traffic of Ancient Celebrities

The real name of Duoyu and Maomaojie is Yu Zhaohe. In 2018, Yu Zhaohe quit his job at a newspaper where he had worked for three years and started traveling. In his spare time, he uploaded the videos he took during his travels to TikTok to record his daily life.

Although Yu Zhaohe is very handsome, compared with many handsome bloggers on Douyin, Yu Zhaohe lacks recognition, and his mumbling vlogs are difficult to impress the audience, so there are not many likes. It was not until he started to try cross-dressing and separated Sister Maomao from the extra body that he gradually became a top star.

Maomao Sister's most popular video is "City People and We Country People Dancing Together", which has received 2.703 million likes. In the video, Maomao Sister dressed as a woman is extremely contrasting. Her orange-red wig and down-to-earth Guizhou dialect are simply too funny. She sings while dancing, "I'm so happy, I feel like my life has reached its climax; I'm so happy, I feel like my life has reached its peak", and this joke is still a hot topic on the Internet.

At that time, the Internet's traffic dividend could make some unknown grassroots content creators famous overnight, and Douyin's deification mechanism even placed high-quality celebrities represented by Maomao Sister on the altar of traffic.

As a "split personality" creator, Yu Zhaohe takes the route of funny plots. He often plays multiple roles by himself. Duo Yu, who speaks Mandarin, and Maomao Jie, who speaks Guizhou dialect, also produce a magical chemical reaction, and the lines accurately hit the girls' little thoughts.

In the video "Girls' Mental State When Shopping", Maomao originally planned to buy an eyebrow pencil, but ended up eyeing a new lipstick. When she was hesitating whether to buy it or not, the salesperson told her that it was a limited edition. Maomao immediately found reasons for herself to buy the lipstick and not to buy it, "I already have a lot at home", "You don't smoke, you don't drink, are you going to wait until your skin breaks before using it?"

In less than a minute, Maomao Sister highly reproduced the psychological activities of girls who were both entangled and eager when shopping, and established an emotional connection with female fans. Many netizens left comments: "Maomao Sister understands women better than women themselves."

In fact, Maomao's delicate thoughts are closely related to his family environment. Maomao was born in a single-parent family and was raised by his mother and sister since childhood. Such life experience also provided him with valuable creative materials, and the short videos he created always resonate with people.

In addition, Sister Maomao is not only considerate of girls' delicate thoughts, but also able to show the performance of straight men in relationships. When trying on clothes, Sister Maomao said: "Actually, I don't like it very much, I just like it a little bit." Duoyu replied bluntly: "Then let's go, we'll buy something we like." After returning home, Sister Maomao performed a monologue of complaints in her heart. The whole process was exactly a mirror projection of a boyfriend and girlfriend shopping.

In terms of content creation, Maomaojie has always been on the edge of "pretending" and "not pretending". Maomaojie's "pretending" is reflected in her ability to dress up, and her clothes and hairstyles are constantly changing, which is in line with her personality and has formed a funny and nonsensical style. Maomaojie's "not pretending" is reflected in the revealing of her true nature.

In the eyes of fans, Maomao Jie is very friendly and is simply a common best friend of female fans. With her down-to-earth narrative expression, Maomao Jie gained more than 2.5 million fans in a week and more than 30 million fans in three months, becoming a well-deserved top streamer on Douyin, and also collaborating with Li Jiaqi, Huang Xiaoming and others. Maomao Jie's popularity is not only driven by the Douyin algorithm mechanism, but also by the dual support of content and character.

After a brief period of popularity, how to retain fans and maintain popularity became the biggest challenge facing Maomao Jie. Unfortunately, Maomao Jie failed to achieve long-term popularity. Although she kept trying to "struggle" to get out of her comfort zone, she could not escape the fact that she lost fans year by year.

2. “Retreat” and “Advance”: Stepping out of the content comfort zone

On January 12 this year, Maomao Jie posted a video mocking her loss of followers. She said she had cleared 860,000 fake followers, which accounted for 2% of her fans, which made her feel distressed. In fact, Maomao Jie has lost millions of fans in recent years. At her peak, she had more than 32 million fans, but later dropped to more than 29 million.

According to Heat Wave data, before Maomao Jie started live streaming alone, she lost about 5,000 to 6,000 followers every day. The same situation occurred in his videos, and the number of likes on Maomao Jie's videos has dropped from millions to hundreds of thousands, which is far from her peak.

Some users said that they had been following Maomao Jie for more than a year, but they could no longer see her videos without realizing it. Some users also left a message: How did Maomao Jie become outdated? All of this can still be traced back to the changes in the short video content environment that Maomao Jie experienced.

As the saying goes: "The camp is permanent, but the soldiers are transient." Tik Tok's decentralized algorithm has provided a broad space for development for the emerging short video bloggers, but it has also caused the former top streamers to lose their glory.

When Maomao first became popular, his orange-red hair, funny Guizhou dialect, and caring friend to women were all labels for him. But as time went by, these labels locked him up like a tight ring, and also restricted his content creation.

Girls only have so many little thoughts, and the content that Maomao Sister updates frequently is mostly a one-man show of her inner thoughts. Although her clothes and hairstyles change from time to time, in the eyes of some viewers, Maomao Sister's performance is nothing more than a routine repetition. When the novelty of cross-dressing wears off, Maomao Sister's top-tier attributes also weaken.

In fact, it is not just Maomao Sister who is also in the same situation as Maomao Sister. Other top celebrities who became popular at the same time as Maomao Sister, such as Daigula K, Piyou, and Houge Shuoche, have also fallen into the dilemma of fading popularity. When TikTok was just born and flourished, Daigula K's dance video could get more than 10 million likes, but because she has always created dance as the starting point, her content has gradually lost its former appeal.

Piyou has also undergone a series of transformations, gradually transforming from a goddess in the car circle to a blogger who leads fans to explore stores and experience life. The beautiful and cool girl riding a motorcycle and electric car has "transformed" into a girl next door. While Monkey Brother Talks about Cars creates short videos about picking up cars, he also integrates his life in food, travel, etc. to bring more "freshness" to fans.

In contrast, due to the deep-rooted personality of her early years and the constraints of content format, Maomao Sister has to maintain her inherent image and video style. Undoubtedly, this is not a welcome change in the ever-changing short video track. As users' demand for content becomes more diversified, the environment forces content creators to continuously create multi-dimensional content. Maomao Sister, who has not forgotten her original intention, is gradually losing her strength in following the audience's aesthetic footsteps. In order to return to the audience's field of vision as soon as possible, Maomao Sister participated in the variety show "Swordsman" and appeared in the movie "My Hometown and Me", but these measures received mediocre responses.

In fact, Maomao Jie is very "caring" about the viewing experience of fans. In order to create high-quality content, Maomao Jie has always been very restrained in accepting advertisements. In his opinion, advertising is based on content. If the advertisements are too frequent, it will inevitably affect the fans' perception and reduce stickiness. Regarding how to choose advertisements, Maomao Jie once mentioned in an interview that he accepts at most five or six advertisements a month: "If you don't do a good job of content and take all advertisements, you will really be out of date after this wave of popularity." For this reason, Maomao Jie did not even accept any advertisements from January to May this year.

Unfortunately, fans did not choose to stay because he accepted fewer advertisements. Obviously, how to break through the creative bottleneck and bring a refreshing content experience to the audience is an unavoidable problem after his second popularity. Otherwise, once the popularity of live broadcasts is over, Maomao Sister will still be selectively forgotten by the audience.

3. Secondary Resurgence: Realization of Value Dividends

Sister Maomao seems to take her popularity lightly, and she once said, "Even if one day people think it's not good enough and don't want to pay attention to it anymore, then my mission during this period will be accomplished. I have brought so much joy to everyone during a period of time, and I am already very lucky." The popularity of this live broadcast was also an unexpected result for Sister Maomao.

On December 17, Maomao Jie started a live broadcast by herself and contracted the work of more than 20 people. As a result, the topic #Maomao Jie is sour and funny# quickly dominated the Douyin hot list and rushed to the hot search on Weibo, attracting a large number of netizens to watch. When they entered the live broadcast room, they found that in a live broadcast room full of routines, Maomao Jie was like a stream of fresh air, showing a long-lost sincerity.

As a funny short video blogger, Maomao Sister has made the most of her funny attributes in the live broadcast room. Although a live broadcast by one person is hectic and she often makes mistakes, she has hit the funny points of her fans. The audience who enters the live broadcast room not only pays for the product, but also for the content.

After Aunt Wang entered the live broadcast room as an assistant, the two got along very harmoniously in their daily life. The funny duo's live broadcast of selling goods with a plot has won countless fans. The audience can also feel that Sister Maomao is not arrogant, and has a sincere and low-key personality. Since it was the first time for Aunt Wang to enter the live broadcast room, she was not familiar with the live broadcast process and made mistakes, but she unexpectedly showed her funny qualities. Some netizens left messages on the barrage: "The picture of a loving mother and a filial son", "Aunt is so funny."

From the product perspective, according to Relang data, the products sold by Maomao Sister are mainly food and beauty products, with a price range of 10-50 yuan, which is relatively affordable and covers a wider audience. Since December 17, Maomao Sister's live broadcast room has currently listed a total of 305 items, with live broadcast sales of 1.817 million and cumulative sales of 102 million yuan.

From a commercial perspective, Maomao Sister's GMV of tens of millions in a single game made Douyin see the potential of a new top-tier streamer. After Luo Yonghao retired from the Internet, Oriental Selection took over, but Douyin has always been trying to promote native top influencers to sell goods through live streaming.

Douyin has made many attempts to promote native talents, but all failed. Zhang Tongxue, who has more than 18 million fans on Douyin, only had a GMV of 3.42 million in his first live broadcast. Liu Genghong, who has more than 71 million fans, also failed miserably with a GMV of less than 1 million in his trial on Taobao. The fact that Luo Yonghao, Yu Minhong, Liu Siyao and others have joined Taobao live broadcasts has also sounded a wake-up call for Douyin. Since Douyin started to build the Douyin Mall and launched the Good Goods Festival, it is in urgent need of promoting native top anchors to carry out live broadcasts to compete with other platforms. At present, it seems that Maomao Jie is expected to take up the banner of "Douyin's No. 1".

After Aunt Wang became popular as an assistant broadcaster, she also participated in the creation of short videos by Sister Maomao. The several videos currently posted on Sister Maomao's account have received more than 400,000 likes. In the future, Sister Maomao may be able to transform its content around the clips of the two of them laughing and playing.

In 2019, Duoyu and Maomaojie won the Most Commercially Valuable Celebrity Award and the Most Popular Celebrity Award on Douyin at the 3rd New Media Summit of Crawley. Maomaojie is persistent in content creation. During the creation process, she always maintains a rigorous attitude. She not only repeatedly ponders the psychological state and body language of the characters, but also performs an action dozens of times. A video of less than one minute often takes a whole day to shoot.

Now, three years later, Maomaojie, who has persisted in content creation and never forgotten her original intention, has finally ushered in her second comeback and formed a unique style of live streaming sales. Recently, Maomaojie has just returned to 30 million fans. She said to her fans in front of the camera: "The ups and downs of life are too normal. When you are experiencing a dark moment in life, you must have your own bottom line, stick to your heart, just work hard, and leave everything else to God."

Maomao Sister’s first time becoming a phenomenal celebrity may have been due to luck. At that time, she was in the era of Internet traffic and reaped the benefits of this wave.

But Maomao Sister’s second rise to fame was due to the dividend of her values. Routines are not necessarily shortcuts in life. Only sincerity can get you to the end, and opportunities should belong to those who keep working hard.

As Sister Maomao said in her speech: "In fact, each of us is like a caterpillar. As long as you work hard enough and don't give up easily, you will definitely break out of the cocoon and become a butterfly." I hope Sister Maomao can achieve better results in the field of live streaming and I hope all content creators can keep their original aspirations in mind and wait for the clouds to clear and the moon to appear.

Author: Rain and smoke

WeChat public account: TopKlout (ID: TopKlout)