How To Setup A Toutiao Business Account

January 8, 2021

Launched in 2012, Toutiao is a news aggregation app by Bytedance. It has an average of 120 million daily users who spend an average of 73 minutes a day on the app, even surpassing WeChat.

 

It’s sophisticated targeting AI offers personalized content, making it a great platform for advertising where the ads can appear in the users’ feed. Content creators get a certain percentage of Toutiao’s ad revenue along with rewards for hitting certain targets. Over 200,000 articles and videos are published on a daily basis on the app.

 

It’s a very lucrative market for brands to tap into. But first, you have to setup your official Toutiao Business Account to do so.

 

A STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS TO CREATE A TOUTIAO OFFICIAL ACCOUNT

Unlike WeChat, this app is focused on content creators and there are no functions in the app that can get your readers’ attention apart from the content. The content is ultra-targeted, allowing you to reach an audience that actually cares for your content. There are a massive amount of publishers and clickbait on the platform, but you can still work on publishing great content to set yourself apart.

 

Let’s check step-by-step on how to create a publisher account by yourself:

 

  1. On the top-left, click on 头条产品 (Toutiao Product). Select 头条号 from the drop-down menu and click on it.
  2. Then click on 注册 (Register).
  3. Enter and confirm your Chinese phone number. To register with an email address click on 邮件注册.
  4. Next, you’ll have to fill in your personal information – account type, account name, etc.
  5. Write a short intro. It needs to be 10 to 30 characters. Emoji and special punctuation are not allowed. 
  6. Add contact information or your website link.
  7. Upload a profile picture and keep in mind that QR codes are not allowed
  8. After completing your profile, you will get the option to upload more documents about your business. Mandatory documents are a Business license in .jpg or .png format.
  9. The app requires you to download, fill in, and reupload a business information form. Click on ”download the file” and fill in: company name, website, account name, ID for person-in-charge of managing account, date, signature, and seal. You then need to upload the document.
  10. On the same page, fill in the URL (optional), location, and email ID to receive notifications. Click on agree 请同意. You will receive another verification ID in order to complete the registration.
  11. Once you are done on the desktop, finish your ID verification via the mobile app. In order to download the app, look for 今日头条.
  12. Enter the same phone number that was previously used for the desktop. Wait for the verification code or log in with your phone and password.
  13. Once in the app, click on 我的 (mine). Upload a picture of your ID card and confirm through face recognition. You’ll be shown 4 digits that you’ll have to read in Chinese mandarin in a 3 to 6-second video.
  14. In the next 5 minutes, you will get a notification if your application is successful or not. Once your account is validated you can start publishing.

 

After getting set up, you can start publishing amazing content immediately. Also, you will need someone to manage your Toutiao account the same way someone manages your Wechat account.

Digital marketing is very dynamic. It’s not always easy to keep up with the changes, but if you are looking into new opportunities for your digital marketing strategy in China, then Toutiao will definitely set you for success.

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Toutiao Marketing Basics

November 13, 2020

Toutiao is an information and news aggregator where users can search for interesting and news-worthy content and subscribe to their favorite channels. It can also analyze and suggest a user’s interests based on their past enquiries, similar to what Google does.

 

Toutiao had 260 million monthly active users and 120 million daily active users in June 2019, with over 70% of its users aged at 19-35. Users posted 450 million posts on Toutiao with 9 billion likes for content creation.

 

The difference between Toutiao and other platforms is its huge traffic. Their AI assesses individual preferences based on interests and hobbies and accurately targets relevant content to its users, tailoring a user’s feed to include topics related to their likes.

 

The stats, tech and traffic on the platform makes Toutiao one of the best platforms to market on.

MARKETING ON TOUTIAO

1. Advertising

Based on big data and AI, Toutiao ads can accurately reach target customers. Toutiao can also support multiple advertising formats and purposes.

 

 

  • Open Screen Ads

 

Offers premium exposure and placement with a full-screen ad, providing a strong visual impact. It can also display advertising materials or landing pages in designated time slots.

 

  • Information Flow Ads

 

The most common ad format on Toutiao, information flow ads are native ads that appear interspersed in the user’s information stream on their feed. They can be text, image, GIF or video format. Also available in multiple sales models, such as CPM, CPT, GD and CPC. 

 

  • Detail Page Ads

 

Ads displayed on the article or video details page that appears when people finish the content. They also support multiple formats.

 

For more information on Toutiao’s advertising potential, check out this blog on Toutiao Advertising.

2. Content Marketing

  • Toutiao creators and KOLs

Brands can collaborate with Toutiao creators to attract target consumers through trustworthy content. Cooperating with creators who create content that is recognized as relevant and high quality by the users and the platform is good for brand awareness and exposure.

  • A Toutiao Brand Account

Brands can set up and manage their own Toutiao brand account and use it to publish high-quality content and engage with users directly.

 

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How To Leverage Douyin For Advertising

October 20, 2020

Douyin has a massive influence among Chinese people, both young and adults alike, and a lot of brands have started to make appearances on the platform as well. It only makes sense to take a closer look on how they are leveraging a social media app for their promotion.

💹 Douyin (China’s TikTok) Statistics 2022 [UPDATED!]

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Toutiao Advertising for Businesses in China

September 10, 2020

If you’re a new business in the Chinese media market, or if you know how the advertising industry works in China, Toutiao may or may not have been one of your top choices for platforms to advertise your business on. Toutiao is a popular destination for finding and curating content, offering a new and fresh way for your business to showcase itself with the help of its unique way of displaying ads.

 

What is Toutiao?

Toutiao is a news-reading app that runs on AI. The news aggregator organizes daily news from various media sources and gives recommendations on the homepage. Some can even say it’s the “most serious app” in China.

 

Toutiao Advertising

With over 120 million daily users, Toutiao has a somewhat complex algorithm that offers content tailored to its users based on their interest. On a daily basis, over 200,000 articles and videos are published and these appear directly in the feed of the user. Toutiao content is quite diverse as it is news-based and comes from private publishers, official media, and blogs.

Also, part of the advertising revenue is given to the content creators. What makes the platform even better for advertising is that all featured articles and videos are also selected based on the user location. It’s also important to know that users don’t need to follow your account in order to see your content, which is excellent for brand exposure.

 

Toutiao Advertising Formats

There are 3 different types of ad formats that Toutiao offers, and supports both picture and video display. Ads can be targeted to specific ages, gender, interests, keywords, regions, weather, time, occupations, phone carriers, phone operating systems, phone brands, and types of internet connection. Such a diverge targeting mechanism opens up a lot of opportunities for creative and effective advertising.

 

Full cover open ads: They cover the entire screen and include options of a wide large screen banner or a maximum of 3 smaller images.

Feeds ads: These come with several advertising styles including ads with text and an image, 3 smaller images, full-width image, image with call extension and app downloads.

Streaming feed ads: These types of ads blend as video format into the Toutiao feed for seamless user experience.

 

Charges for Toutiao Advertising?

Along with CPM (Cost per mille) and CPC (Cost per click), Toutiao provides 4 new ways for advertisers to bid on the platform including oCPM, oCPC, CPA and CPV.

oCPM/oCPC: oCPM (Optimized Cost per Mille) and oCPC (Optimized Cost per Click) run on the same ad methodology. They are quite similar to CPC, but also include an estimated conversion ratio which is based on audience behavior.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition): In this case, advertisers only pay when there is definite conversion.

CPV (Cost per View): This method only supports video ads. Here, advertisers pay for the number of views when the video ad plays for 10 seconds.

 

Benefits of Toutiao Advertising

 

  1. Toutiao ads allow brands to target groups that have certain apps on their phones. This is great for brands that want niche customers, but this is currently only available for Android phones.
  2. Geo-targeting options can bring more sales due to the fact that people living in the same areas usually have similar consumer habits. This can be good for a lot of offline retailers.
  3. Toutiao’s DMP allows brands to upload the audience traits of their existing followers, which brands could then use to find a similar ‘lookalike’ target audience.

 

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A Quick Guide to Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) Marketing

August 28, 2020

Since 2013, Xiaohongshu (also known as Little Red Book or RED) has become one of the fastest-growing platforms in China with over 80 million monthly active users.

But exactly who’s on the platform? And is this a platform you should be devoting resources to?

Xiaohongshu is a curious mix of social media crossed with e-commerce. However, it’s main focus is user-generated content. Users can post their recommendations, demonstrations, and reviews, and they can comment on and save these posts to themed boards.

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How To Market YOUR BRAND On BILIBILI?

August 20, 2020

WHAT IS BILIBILI?

Founded by Xu Yi in 2009, Bilibili is a Chinese video-sharing website based in Shanghai that focuses on gaming culture and anime-related content and is based on the real-time (live) interactive (bullet chatting) video concept.

In 2009, it was initially launched as a prototype website named Mikufans.cn. As the website improved traction, it included the video-sharing feature and was relaunched under the name Bilibili, the nickname of the protagonist in the anime ‘A Certain Scientific Railgun’.

With the growth in popularity, it included a plethora of features including advertising, mobile gaming, and e-commerce and live streaming service where audiences can interact with streamers. Apart from the main themes i.e. anime and gaming, Bilibili also offers videos from various other fields such as science and technology, entertainment, fashion and daily life.

 

FUTILITY OF THE TRADITIONAL MARKETING METHODS

Because of its unique features and interactive model, traditional marketing models don’t usually work on Bilibili.

User preferences are an essential part of the platform which not a lot of mainstream marketers and brands fail to understand. McDonald’s and KFC both were unable to find success on the platform but Alibaba, Xiaomi and Tencent quickly captured a lot of followers.

 

BILIBILI AS A MARKETING CHANNEL

Here are 3 ways for marketing your brand on Bilibili:

  • Feed your audience

Study your audience and user preferences thoroughly. It is important to your viewers that the content they are watching is a balance between what they would expect from the platform as well as the brand. Keep provided relevant content as and when possible, mostly in the form of live streams.

 

  • KOL Marketing

With the increase in video marketing over the years, the shift from text content to photo/video content has been quick, mostly because of vloggers or influencers (KOLs). Partnership and cooperation with KOLs is a very wise choice for new brands since KOLs already have a trusted group of followers and they know how to produce user-friendly content.

 

  • Live Streaming

The key differentiating point Bilibili has is its loyal and active viewer base. The types of unique content that can be used while live streaming is:

  1. Bullet screen – live commenting that enhances active engagement
  2. Animated content – most animations are available to the users free to use
  3. Autotune – This is the type of content that has the potential to go viral if used correctly
  4. Gaming – Mostly for mobile. Gaming brands (or any brand) can easily launch their game or mini-game and receive a high number of views.

 

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Establishing A Presence on Xiaohongshu, China’s Popular Fashion Platform

August 7, 2020

With e-retailers struggling to win over young Chinese consumers, it seems that Xiaohongshu is standing out. Looking into Xiaohongshu’s business model, it’s evident that it’s a great platform for foreign beauty brands that are targeting young Chinese women.

Xiaohongshu is a social media and e-commerce platform and it’s growing fast. Founded in 2013 as a community for users to find recommendations about foreign fashion and cosmetics, it has garnered more than 70 million subscribers and developed its own cross-border site called Fulishe, China’s cross-border e-commerce platform.

 

A Promising Future For Fashion

Demographics: Mao Wenchao, Xiaohongshu’s co-founder and CEO, revealed in 2015 that

  • 70 to 80 percent of the site’s users are female
  • More than 50 percent of Xiaohongshu’s users are students and office ladies
  • Age – 18-35
  • Living in first and second-tier cities

Girls are big purchasers of cosmetics and fashion. Xiaohongshu’s conversion rate is as high as eight percent, as compared to only 2.6 percent on Tmall, the biggest e-commerce platform for official Chinese brands. Also, every customer on Xiaohongshu makes three orders per month on average.

 

How Can Your Brand Establish A Presence On This Site?

Xiaohongshu has two sections: the user community and the e-commerce platform.

In the e-commerce section, qualified brands and retailers can submit an application through the official website.

As Xiaohongshu perceives itself as a first-party distributor, brands only need to sell their products to Xiaohongshu without any worry about the delivery and customer service. All that is handled by the platform.

The high engagement in its user community is what sets Xiaohongshu apart from other e-commerce platforms.

 

UGC And Micro-influencers

Xiaohongshu is a platform for girls and women to discuss fashion and beauty the same way they would with their friends offline (Peer Influence), making influencers on Xiaohongshu much more powerful than on other social media and e-commerce platforms.

Every single user who’s willing to share their real and comprehensive experiences can become a micro-influencer. On the platform, a lot of established influencers and celebrities share their personal favorites with their fans and their posts generally have high engagement (more than 1,000 likes and 10,000 saves).

Brands that want to try influencer marketing on Xiaohongshu need a translator or Chinese team to help them communicate with an influencer on the site with a decent following and one that fits the brand’s voice, tastes and target group.

 

In Conclusion

Xiaohongshu is a perfect choice for new overseas brands that want to test out the Chinese fashion market, particularly if they are targeting young Chinese women. Social listening is a major part of the community because the notes and comments are users’ feedback according to their first-hand experience. It becomes easy to understand the actual needs of the young Chinese female community and see whether your products can succeed in China.

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