1． MAUs of 5 big platforms in 2019 and 2020
There are more than 512 million monthly active users on Weibo in 2019, 530 million on Douyin, 400 million on Kuaishou, 130 million on BiliBili, and 85 million on RED.
Comparatively, Weibo has 521 million monthly active users in 2020, Douyin has 657 million, Kuaishou has 481 million, BiliBili has 202 million and RED has 100 million.
MAUs on the five platforms increased from 2019 to 2020 differently, with Douyin experiencing the greatest increase of 23.96%.
2. KOLs Distribution on 5 Platforms According to Their Fan Base
With the development of the Weibo platform, Weibo top accounts with more than 5 million followers have increased largely which accouts for 43% of the total top 10,000 accounts.
Short video and social commerce including e-commerce and live streaming have gain great popularity in 2020. There are over 75% of the top accounts with 1 to 5 million followers on Douyin and Kuaishou.
3． High-Quality Fans Distribution of Top KOLs cross 5 platforms
Kuaishou
Users of Kuaishou are mostly active and more used to express their interest through interacting with the KOLs, as the majority of content is more quotidian, encouraging the followers to interact with the KOL by watching the live-streaming and leaving comments.
BiliBili
BiliBili’s culture of “pressing the like button” contributes to the high interaction rate as well. KOLs usually ask watchers to press the button at the beginning/end of the video to show their support. It successfully leads followers to express their likeness.
Weibo and RED
Weibo and Red have a relatively lower interaction rate compared to KuaiShou and BiliBili, as most users find the interested content through the search engine rather than following the specified KOL.
Douyin
Users on Douyin have a relatively low interaction rate because users mostly enjoy browsing the content in a short time period, and they hardly leaving comments during watching.
4. Content Seeding and Fans Engagement Comparison
Compared with other platforms, Weibo has put focus on content for many years, and the diversity of content formats such as pictures and short videos are easier for content creation. Users get used to post daily life on Weibo regularly, thus KOLs are more active to post on Weibo than other platforms. However, the total number of KOL content and interaction decreased slightly in 2020.
Douyin users are accustomed to engaging with KOLs. The public domain traffic and distribution mechanism of the platform have further increased the qualified content exposure and high-frequency interaction.
To compare the KOL content between 2019 and 2020, the number of total interactions per post on Douyin, Kuaishou and RED has increased respectively, while there has been a rapid increase of KOL content released on Douyin.
5. Fans Portraits Overview
Refer to the followers’ demography of the five major platforms, Weibo, Douyin, and Kuaishou have a more balanced gender ratio. BiliBili and RED have their own emphasis on the gender ratio due to the community and culture.
From the age structure perspective, Weibo users have a wider age range and are relatively more evenly distributed; Douyin and Kuaishou users are younger, with around 70% of the users under 30.
6. KOL and Fans Distribution according to Their Vertical Content Directions
With the feature of public media center and hotspot hub,, Weibo has attracted a large number of KOLs in entertainment, celebrities, social news, film and television and other categories to officially announce, raise public attention, and create buzz.
Although KOLs in entertainment categories are encouraged to create content on Weibo, many of the users are onlookers and have relatively weak stickiness.
Douyin
With labels such as “short video”, “entertainment”, the comedy category in Douyin has won first place for two consecutive years regardless of creators and fans.
In 2020, KOLs categorized in celebrity and politics have gained more attention.. Although the number of relevant accounts is relatively limited, fans have exceeded many other vertical content categories.
Kuaishou
Kuaishou’s top categories are more routine, and the KOLs in gaming, food, and pet has a higher follower stickiness.
Content category like ‘pretty face’ and ‘soap opera’ have attracted more followers. The content quantity of ‘pretty face’ is a bit more than the other one due to the higher production requisites.
BiliBili
In 2020, the “Reducing-ACGN (Animation, Comic, Game, and Novel)” campaign of Bilibili has been further developed, which helped to extend the content territory and enrich KOL categories and contents.
Content such as the widely known song “Into the Sea” has further promoted the development of BiliBili’s musical content and attracted many music lovers.
RED
There are many labels and influences attached to the profession of celebrity, especially for beauty products that help to draw more consumers. The celebrity content on RED serves as a great reference source for the platform users.
Users love lifestyle content such as fitness and knowledge-sharing, and there are more KOLs in the knowledge-sharing category for its wider scope.
7. KOL and Fans Growth Rates of Different Vertical Content Directions
Categories of the TOP10 increase in fans is nearly the same as the TOP10 in KOLs with all the rates positive. Weibo’s strong vertical content directions’ performance is eye-catching.
As the Chinese economy recovered in the second half of 2020, the number of KOLs in categories such as food and tourism has gradually increased.
Douyin
In 2020, with many government accounts have been created on Douyin. Douyin has become another main platform for the official broadcasting voice and news reports.
Attracting fans through the video clips has become the new way of content marketing. The number of KOLs and followers categorised in the film and politics sharing category has increased significantly .
Kuaishou
Users on Kuaishou are enthusiastic about comedy content, but with the continuous enrichment of vertical categories, the proportion of comedy KOLs has declined slightly.
In 2020, celebrities’ accounts have increased significantly on Kuaishou, and more celebrities are sharing their life with fans and live streaming to sell products on Kuaishou.
BiliBili
Users have always maintained a high level of attention to the categories such as gaming, daily life, animation and knowledge-sharing on BiliBili.
With the success of KOLs such as @罗翔说刑法 and @老师好我叫何同学, the number of KOLs in knowledge-sharing and technology categories have greatly increased in the second half of 2020 on BiliBili.
RED
The number of KOLs and fans on RED in different categories have increased in varying degrees, especially in the relationship and comedy categories.
Due to the RED KOLs’ specialty in beauty and fashion, content of sharing products from the celebrity accounts have strong attractiveness.
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