SHEIN and T-Tok, two apps from China, let Europeans and Americans feel the mystery of the East.

Whether it's SHEIN or T-Tok, there's a "addictive" and addictive force.

Their addictive core is "content."

SHEIN's "content" is clothing. It launches more than 5,000 new clothes every day, with bright colors, rich styles, and shocking prices, which makes Europeans and Americans linger.

T-Tok's "content" is a steady stream of short videos uploaded by the majority of Up owners (content creators and bloggers), which meet the different needs of curiosity, healing, entertainment, and learning, and also make Europeans and Americans addicted.

Both SHEIN and T-Tok continue to experience traffic blowouts. Shein's monthly downloads once exceeded that of the e-commerce giant Amazon, and T-Tok's global installed volume reached 57.546 million times in July this year alone (Source: SensorTower)

SHEIN's "content" foundation is still solid, and thousands of factories with Guangzhou Panyu as the radiation core continue to supply it, and T-Tok The content foundation seems to be being "hollowed out".

According to T rendpop, video creators with more than one million followers on T-Tok are gradually churning, with a whopping 41% compared to July 2021.

In July 2021, there were still more than 2,000 users with more than one million followers on T-Tok, and as of July 2022, there were only more than 1,200 left.

According to Statista's research, users with more than one million followers on T-Tok already belong to the head user level.

Taking the United States as an example, in 2021, T-Tok had more than 1,000 followers in the United States, and the number of users with more than 1 million followers accounted for only 0.24%.

Although the loss of million-follower-level bloggers will not actually bring about the loss of users, it also means that the probability of high-quality content on the platform is decreasing.

This may not be a good sign for cross-border e-commerce sellers.

Brands going overseas rely on influencers to attract traffic, and bloggers reduce or trigger traffic "dry period"?

T-Tok has been an important tool for many sellers to attract traffic. However, the loss of 40 million followers on T-Tok means that sellers have fewer people to work with.

In fact, small and medium-sized sellers rely heavily on KOLs in terms of off-site drainage, and large sellers also have a lot of demand for KOLs.

For example, sweeper upstart Tim Tineco has only about 41,800 followers on its official T-Tok account, however, on #tineco All videos under this hashtag were viewed about 173 million times.

Where does such a huge amount of traffic come from?

Tim Ke's own influence on T-Tok alone is not enough to generate such a huge amount of traffic.

Some of these videos are official promotional videos of Tim Ke, but more of them are videos of bloggers on T-Tok introducing Tim Ke products. Therefore, bloggers with a certain foundation are a significant source of traffic for Chinese overseas brands on T-Tok.

Even SHEIN has a similar situation.

SHEIN's official T-Tok account has about 5.2 million followers, but the video under the hashtag #shein has accumulated views. It has reached 38.7 billion times, more than 7,000 times the number of followers of its official account.

In addition to the #shein tag, there are also #sheingal, #sheingalls等諸多標簽. The cumulative number of hashtag views associated with it is even greater.

Although SHEIN's T-Tok official account has been updated frequently, it is clear that such a huge amount of traffic is inseparable from the support of bloggers who bring goods to SHEIN.

Not only independent website sellers need to use it, but also sellers on platforms such as Amazon will use T-Tok for off-site drainage.

on T-Tok, #amazonfinds標簽 has accumulated 27.1 billion views.

Massive video creators support the huge traffic on T-Tok about Amazon topics, and such a huge traffic cake is particularly "sweet".

However, the loss of nearly 40% of top bloggers on T-Tok has a big impact on both sellers and e-commerce platforms.

The reduction of partners means that "odd goods can live", and the probability of advertising expenditure growth is also greater.

Big sellers like Tim Tineco and SHEIN who have already made their brand names still have traffic depth, even if they don't find a suitable blogger to cooperate with for a while, they can eat the traffic dividends accumulated before.

But for small and medium-sized sellers who have not yet made a name for themselves, the situation is completely different, and it is more difficult to rely on KOLs to achieve traffic growth, and it is more difficult to dispose of a small piece of the traffic cake from brand sellers.

An independent website seller who operates a T-Tok account drainage admits that relying on KOLs can only be a temporary means after all. If sellers want to get traffic on T-Tok, they also need to really polish their content creation capabilities and understand the platform's traffic distribution mechanism.

According to the seller, T-Tok new videos are generally recommended to 100-300 users.

If these users have a high completion rate, positive interaction, and meet qualified indicators, this video will be recommended to 2000-5000 people, and after reaching the completion rate and interaction rate, it will be recommended to 1-20,000 people.

The quality rights of the video are more important than the weight of fans, so the completion rate and interaction are more important than the fan base. This is beneficial in terms of quality in video creation content.

Raising an account is a long process, which is one of the reasons why many sellers choose to work with KOLs rather than spend time figuring out their own content capabilities.

The large-scale loss of top bloggers on T-Tok has actually reminded sellers that it is time to pay attention to the ability to create various content.

Ever-changing algorithms that tire creators?

The loss of bloggers is a loss for cross-border e-commerce sellers, but it does not hurt the fundamentals. But for T-Tok, it's a red flag.

T-Tok has always been known for "content is king, algorithm is the base", and the loss of a large number of top bloggers may lead to a decline in the amount of high-quality content on the platform in the short term.

The reason for the loss of T-Tok head bloggers is likely to be a platform algorithm problem.

29-year-old Newcomb makes $50,000 a year from T-Tok video creation. But she told The Washington Post that she was "tired of being busy."

The platform's ever-changing algorithm makes Newcomb dare not take a break. She fears that even a short break may lead to a loss of powder, which in turn will affect her income.

To stay hot, Newcomb had to work 50 hours a week. Since working full-time as a social media operator, Newcomb has had to see a psychotherapist and take anti-anxiety medication.

and Newcomb This is not an isolated case. According to Awin, the best Internet marketing platform in North America, 66% of short video content creators suffer from varying degrees of psychological problems, most of which are caused by fatigue and burnout.

Charli D'Amelio, 18, is one of the most popular personal bloggers on T-Tok, where she has over 146 million followers.

And earlier this year, Charli D'Amelio "dropped" from the "most popular" "throne" to the second echelon. Charli D"Amelio He was relieved to do so.

Charli D'Amelio says it's not worth being forced to do something all the time, and once you get bored, you end up switching careers. But D'Amelio She didn't really intend to leave T-Tok, just that she had temporarily lost her passion for creating.

Maintaining the popularity of the first echelon requires a huge cost. Everyone is working hard to create videos, and it is difficult to maintain the status of "one brother and one sister" for a long time with only the increasingly depleted inspiration.

Awin has to emphasize many times that the changing algorithms of the T-Tok platform are the main cause of anxiety for 70% of bloggers.

Of course, this is not an isolated scenario, as Marquez, a blogger with 16 million followers on YouTube Brownlee admits that digital media creators can't become a long-term career, and creating video is not a sustainable job.

In fact, continuous content output is a difficult task for individual bloggers. The algorithm change of the platform is only an adjustment to the indicators of video propagation.

The real impact is the problem of the blogger's personal inspiration drying up.

Under normal circumstances, T-Tok will recommend videos to the outside world, and will also recommend users with relevant browsing history according to the tags, topics, etc. set by the video.

If the blogger finds that the video starts to "not broadcast", it is very likely that the content of other bloggers of the same type is highly duplicated, and users have become aesthetically fatigued.

In stark contrast to the average blogger, there are bloggers in professional fields, some of whom have made good gains through their expertise.

CMC Markets has compiled the top 10 financial literacy accounts by revenue on T-Tok.

Kullberg, a 32-year-old former corporate lawyer who has 8.9 million followers on T-Tok, charges $7,040 per ad video, according to the data. On YouTube, She earns more than $100,000 a year.

Tilbury, a 53-year-old British entrepreneur, is the second most popular financial blogger on T-Tok, with 7.1 million followers and charges about every ad video It is $5860. Tilbury shares advice on how to invest, save money and negotiate, having the highest engagement rate among top bloggers, with an average of 154,700 likes per video.

These bloggers who share finance-related knowledge do not need to worry about changes in the platform's algorithms, because users will always pay attention to them as long as their knowledge is outdated.

Of course, from another point of view, even if they don't "make extra money" on T-Tok, they can still have a good income in their field.

Professional bloggers are, after all, a minority. But that's why their content is invaluable to the platform.

From this point of view, perhaps T-Tok can more calmly deal with the loss of top bloggers. Even treat this loss of bloggers as a "blood change", eliminating creators who have lost their ability to create high-quality content to make room for more dynamic bloggers.

T-Tok advertising is still a good business Although T-Tok's

head bloggers lost four percent, which looks very "terrifying", in fact, the total number of users has increased. It also means that its influence is not declining, but rising.

Therefore, there are still many merchants who want to advertise on T-Tok, and marketing with KOLs is still an inevitable means for merchants.

According to Insider Intelligence, KOL marketing spending in the U.S. will grow by more than 12% to more than $4 billion in 2022.

Among them, 45.7% of users will choose T-Tok as their platform to find KOL cooperation and advertising.

As of 2021, U.S. businesses reached a record high in spending on KOL marketing, achieving a record-breaking year-over-year increase of 33.6%. By the end of 2023, corporate brands will have a fee to work with KOLs Will double the 2019 level.

According to Aspire's research, approximately 91% of businesses will invest more in video advertising when choosing KOL marketing in 2022.

US consumers prefer to spend their time watching bloggers' original videos and actively engaging with them. The audience for hard ad videos will become smaller and smaller.

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