There is a need to find the right balance between the seriousness of news and the entertainment of short video platforms.

Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “Dewaiwuhao” (ID: dewaiwuhao) .

Source: whatsnewinpublishing

Author: Mary-Katharine Phillip

Compilation: Du Tianyu

The integration of short video and traditional media is not only an important development direction that domestic media is trying to explore, but also for foreign media. As a typical representative of short video platforms, TikTok has been favored by large media organizations such as The Daily Telegraph and USA Today.

Whatsnewinpublishing website recently released “TikTok Guide for News Organizations”, focusing on why overseas news media are switching to short video platforms; at the same time, it also tells us what kind of content will shine on short video platforms.

Enter the short video track to attract young users

The report pointed out that short video platforms, including TikTok, have opened a new door for news media to attract young users. In terms of the influence of the short video platform, TikTok has more than 1.5 billion downloads on the Apple App Store and Google Play. This number will continue to grow. It has surpassed Facebook as the world’s second most downloaded application. Judging from the user loyalty of the short video platform, according to data, the average daily user opening rate of the TikTok platform is 9 times, and users spend more than 45 minutes on the platform every day. In terms of user age, TikTok has more than 500 million monthly active users, 66% of whom are under 30 years old, and young users are the main force of short video platforms.

The Washington Post is the first news media company to establish a TikTok account operated by the creative video team led by Dave Jorgenson. Since its launch in May 2019, the Washington Post ’s TikTok account has accumulated 362,000 followers and more than 18 million likes. TikTok provides a window to show the user-friendly aspect of the news industry to young users, helping mainstream media to regain the trust of young users, which is very helpful to ease the trend of users avoiding news. For example, Florida’s “Times United” recently published a short video on TikTok, in a popular form of imitation, to help users eliminate some common misconceptions about journalists.

Picture note: TikTok short video about the life and work routine of journalists published by Time United News (Source: whatsnewinpublishing)

News media companies should also pay attention to the “correct posture” of using short video platforms, and the content they publish must adapt to the rules and tones of the platform to avoid self-defeating. The report researched the content published on the account of the active news media company on TikTok, and found that the content of high attention often has the following characteristics.

1 Humane content

The report found that those TikTok accounts opened by news media are generally operated by a person or a small team, and often do not require a large news organization to operate. Because on short video platforms such as TikTok, the younger generation prefers to see things that are more humane than brand content that is high on the top. In Switzerland, the 20Minuten team has attracted the attention of a large number of users by publishing small stories that are common in the office, such as the excitement of people when they get off work on Friday.

Picture note: 20Minuten team office fun short video (source: whatsnewinpublishing)

2 Find a new way of telling the same story

Short video platforms, including TikTok, often use personalized algorithms to decide which videos to show to users, and these videos are not arranged in chronological order. Therefore, TikTok is not an excellent platform for breaking news . On the contrary, if news organizations provide timely and in-depth content related to news events within hours or even days, they will be expected to be a great success. For example, the La Nación newspaper in Argentina had a “Global climate Strik” last fall.e) At the time of the incident, a short video of “Suggestions on how to have a positive impact on the environment” was released, and numerous praises were gained.

Of course, the news media needs to find a correct balance between the seriousness of the news itself and the entertainment of the short video platform on the basis of respecting the authenticity of the news. One way to achieve this involves using a popular model of the short video platform and inserting news content related to it. For example, a short video uploaded by “USA Today” has attracted a lot of attention. This video shares a little-known phenomenon, that is, the US senator can only drink water and milk during the court.

To stand out on the short video platform, the news media needs to tell stories in a refreshing way. NBC News recently had a less-than-successful negative textbook: they tried to post a text article on TikTok as a short video. Although the content itself is directed to Generation Z and shares the use of the verbal expression “OK, baby boomer” in the Supreme Court, this article has received far less participation than other articles. Other short videos they recently posted received between two and three million likes, but this video has fewer than 900 likes. It can be seen that static textual content is not popular with users on short video platforms.

3 The commentary video works wonderfully

Although the Washington Post has succeeded in publishing non-strict news content on TikTok, other news media seem to have found a new way to inject news content into TikTok. For other news media, well-made commentary videos about major stories seem to work better. For example, a recent explanatory short video of the Australian Forest Fire published by The Guardian has been approved by nearly 10,000 users, while their most recent short videos have often received only a few hundred. Coincidentally, the main source of praised videos of the German news media Tagesschau is also short videos of commentary.

4 Add lighter news elements

Just as the older generation consumes news for information, the younger generation also wants to make sure they do n’t miss first-hand information. For example, they want to be the first to know novel stories and share them with friends . This is why a short video recently published by The Daily Telegraph about how to use mice to help detect landmines has been successful. This is the second short video they published, and they received nearly 70,000 likes. The younger generation hopes to find happiness when visiting TikTok, so short videos with light and funny content are often more pleasing.

Finally, news media need to consider how much resources should be invested in short video channels. “Washington Post” set up a special short video operation team, spend four hours a day to produce a short video, and put it on the TikTok platform.For most news media at the waist and tail, it is necessary to carefully consider the resource bias for short video services.

In 2020, global short video platforms including TikTok will have more audiences, and naturally more media companies will enter the short video field. It is recommended that the news media first register a short video account in case they want to start this business in the future, and tragically find that their name has been registered. For example, on the TikTok platform, the name of The New York Times has been pre-registered by a French-speaking young man.

The copyright of the original work belongs to What’s New in Publishing website (https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/).