He Tongxue: A “Normal” College Student
Shijie He, better known as He Tongxue, is one of the top influencers on Bilibili (a popular video-sharing website focused on entertainment content, mostly for young generations). Since 2017, Shijie has produced more than 30 digital product review videos that attract nearly 7 million followers on the website.
When college students often use instalment plans to buy Apple products, how was Shijie, a 22-year-old boy, able to amass such a huge following and became so influential that he even got a chance to interview Apple CEO Tim Cook? It generates two aspects of answering this question.
Seizing the Hotspot
Shijie has a sense of trending which has helped him to make his name. 5G devices didn’t flow into China’s market before 2019. And 5G was still a foreign concept to most people. Fortunately, Shijie received a smartphone from OPPO’s 5G experience campaign. It just so happened that his university had the earliest 5G bases, which allowed him to test the handset. He Tongxue uploaded a video named “How fast? The real experience of 5G in daily use” went viral on the day when China’s three major mobile operators launched commercial 5G. Mainstream media and public figures even reposted the video as promoting 5G was a state strategy. The massive media exposure created a whopping 170,000,000 views for the video.
There were many other videos and articles to explain 5G. What is it makes He Tongxue outstanding? Basically, Shijie showed the first-hand impression of how fast the 5G is in a very accessible way while bringing out his in-depth analysis and understanding of the impacts of 5G:
It is not just the higher speed but the unfathomable potential of technology development.
Making fewer but better videos
He Tongxue’s channel gained so much attention also because of the high quality of his content. Shijie usually posts new video monthly, or even slower. In comparison, most content creators upload videos once or twice a week. So why does making videos so time-consuming for He Tongxue?
In “A No-show’s Confession”, Shijie presented how he creates a new video: two weeks for scripting, another two weeks for filming. Finding an interesting topic is not easy. It is even harder to get beautiful, delicate, but complex shots. And don’t forget good videos also need a process of editing. Besides, Shijie doesn’t have a production team to enhance the efficiency of video producing. In this case, he needs to complete all the tasks by himself, which makes the whole journey of making videos lonelier and more complicated.
He Tongxue put in a great deal of effort to create his content that people would be genuinely touched by the conscientious pieces of work, or say artwork. With dedication and enthusiasm for making good videos, Shijie makes his way to success in today’s ever-competitive social media.
To sum up, He Tongxue is an excellent, hard-working and talented influencer. Knowing how to seize the trending and sparing no effort to produce high-quality content distinguish Shijie from other social media influencers. And that’s also why audiences adore He Tongxue and his videos.
