11 core strategies for operating and promoting Xiaohongshu!

Xiaohongshu is a community that promotes beauty, fashion, and other content, with over 100 million active users per month. How to operate Xiaohongshu well is a question that many people are thinking about. The author of this article has personally experimented and summarized 11 core operation strategies to share with everyone.

Nowadays, we can see that many people have an app called Xiaohongshu on their mobile phones. It is committed to creating a content community focusing on lifestyle, and it has become very popular with its slogan “everything can be promoted”, attracting a large number of young users.

According to official data, as of July 2019, the number of Xiaohongshu users has exceeded 300 million . As of October 2019, Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users have exceeded 100 million, of which 70% of new users are born after 1990 .

Xiaohongshu claims that the community generates 3 billion exposures of pictures, texts, and short videos every day, of which 70% are from UGC content. These impressive statistics have made Xiaohongshu a new traffic pool and a new offensive front for many companies.

But a big tree attracts the wind, and Xiaohongshu's "crazy grass-planting" model has brought trouble. In July 2019, the APP was removed from the shelves due to problems with some content in the community. Subsequently, the official announced that it would conduct a comprehensive investigation and rectification of the content on the site.

After being removed from the shelves for 77 days, Xiaohongshu was put back on the shelves with a more stringent mechanism. One obvious thing is that the content review has become more stringent .

Someone from the Xiaohongshu platform also revealed that "the review team has expanded by two or three batches. Now every note posted by a user will enter the review process, first by machine and then by manual review." "The team reminds us the most now that we must stay alert at all times and never miss a single post," the insider said. "Sometimes we block several accounts in one day."

From the perspective of Xiaohongshu bloggers and MCN agencies, the strict review process is also very obvious. The publishing time of notes has been lengthened, the failure rate has increased, and there are not as many advertisements as before.

This move has plugged many small loopholes that operators had discovered before, so it is no longer feasible to operate Xiaohongshu using the previous methods.

Next, I will share some operational experience of the “new version” of Xiaohongshu based on my practical experience.

1. Positioning

Previously, Xiaohongshu was indeed a bit "biased", with more content in the fields of beauty, fashion, food, etc. , but as the platform grew, the content also began to become diversified. Based on the characteristics of the user base, it has expanded to multiple fields such as technology and digital, comedy, games, music, film and television, and fitness .

So you have a lot of choices when positioning yourself, but one thing you need to pay attention to is that Xiaohongshu’s "biased" fields already have multiple top bloggers, and the competition is fierce. If you don’t have very hardcore content, I don’t recommend squeezing in. It’s better to be a chicken head than a phoenix tail.

2. Content

1. Title Tips

① The number of words should be controlled within 18 words , because the note title can be displayed in two lines at most. On a large-screen mobile phone, one line can display 10 words , and two lines means 20 words . Leaving two spaces will not make it look too full.

②Add appropriate emoticons for decoration , as many users are girls and you should cater to their preferences, but be aware that emoticons take up two words .

③Reject clickbait titles. Platforms are now cracking down on titles that are too exaggerated or false. Titles that are too exaggerated or false are easily suppressed.

④ Add keywords, such as the crowd keyword "student party", product keyword "Mac lipstick", etc. Insert 1-2 two keywords, it will bring you long-tail traffic .

2. Cover/Image

① The cover should either be nice and clean, or focus on the content. For example, you can summarize some of the content of the title on the cover.

② First, the style suggestion should be consistent with the cover, and secondly, the order of pictures should be consistent with the order of text introduction.

③Add tags. Xiaohongshu currently has "5+1" tags, namely location, brand, product, film and television, user and custom tags. Adding appropriate tags according to the content can supplement picture information and increase exposure.

3. Main Text

① The number of words should not be too few or too many. The recommended number of words should be between 400 and 500 , which is just the right amount of reading pressure for users.

② Adding emoticons can increase the readability of text. Xiaohongshu is different from other graphic and text platforms. Its text and pictures are separated. It will be boring for users to read a large amount of text. Using some emoticons can improve the readability of text.

③Originality. Most content platforms prefer original and high-quality content.

4. Topics

Based on the content theme, find a suitable topic that can increase the exposure of the note.

5. Release time

The platform push time is mainly concentrated in 8:00-10:00 in the morning, 11:30-14:00 in the afternoon, and 19:00-21:00 in the evening. The traffic will be larger during these times, but this does not mean that the notes released during these time periods will definitely go viral. The traffic may also be low, so it is recommended that each field explore its own release time , so that the platform will also like the staggered release.

3. Platform Mechanism

1. Recommendation mechanism

Xiaohongshu's recommendation mechanism is similar to that of other platforms. The only difference is that before recommending, it has an inclusion process. If the note is not included, it will not be included in the recommendation pool . The way to detect whether a note is included is to search for the note. If it can be found, it means it has been included, otherwise it is the opposite.

After the notes are included, they will enter the system recommendation pool. First, the notes will be recommended to the first-level traffic pool, which is about 200 exposures. If the note's click rate, like rate, collection volume, comment volume and other evaluation data are good and meet the conditions for entering the next-level traffic pool, the system will automatically recommend the notes to the next-level traffic pool, with about two thousand exposures, and so on. If the note's evaluation data does not meet the conditions for entering the next level, then it will stop being recommended.

Of course, during the recommendation period, if a note is reported, the number of recommendations will decrease . This is why many people say that a note that performed well before suddenly stopped gaining readers. It is very likely that it was reported.

2. Weighting mechanism

After Xiaohongshu was put back on the shelves, there was a lot of pressure on marketing accounts, so some adjustments were made to the account weight mechanism. If the weight is not high, the traffic pool for the recommended notes will be small .

① Newly registered accounts have a lower weight . If you post notes as soon as you register, there must be a problem. You are not familiar with the platform yet, but you know how to operate it. This makes it easy to be judged as a marketing account with ulterior motives. Therefore, new accounts still need to be "nurtured" for a period of time, and the weight will increase with the increase of normal active time.

②Violations will result in a reduction in authority . If there are violations in personal information, note content, comments, etc., the weight will be reduced, and the note recommendation and ranking will be affected.

③The weight is supported by multiple evaluation data , including registration time, level, number of fans, number of notes, number of collections/likes, etc., so try to make these data look better.

④ There are weighted accounts , such as some celebrity accounts and expert accounts. Accounts invited by the platform must be weighted. There are also accounts of some cooperative institutions. Therefore, it is recommended not to look for such accounts when benchmarking accounts, unless you are also a "cheating" account.

IV. Future Trends

Based on my analysis of Xiaohongshu’s users and my predictions for the product’s strategic planning, I have summarized the following three trends that are worth planning ahead of time.

1. Encourage the release of short videos/vlogs

Currently, the momentum of short videos is higher than that of pictures and texts, and with the development of 5G technology, short videos will be more convenient to display information in the future. As a UGC community, Xiaohongshu will focus on the construction of short videos in its future development. From the direction encouraged by the current platform, we also know that the official has planned multiple short video topics.

2. Further diversification of content

Xiaohongshu became popular by promoting products, so its content tends to be in the beauty field. However, as the number of users increases, the demand for content consumption will also increase. According to "New Knowledge on Generation Z Lifestyle", the demand for content in multiple fields such as work, study, and personal growth is constantly increasing. Therefore, in addition to the beauty field that already has top bloggers, we have been working hard to lay out these developing fields. This is also consistent with the view mentioned above that "it is better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix."

3. Target male users

Xiaohongshu's main users are women, with male users accounting for less than 20%. In the future, Xiaohongshu will continue to attract new users. In addition to women, male users are also a key area that it will focus on. Moreover, the platform has more content for female users, so in the future, the exploration of the needs and value of male users can be more in-depth.

4. Localization services

In addition to e-commerce and advertising, Xiaohongshu is also exploring new monetization models. Given that there are a lot of travel and store exploration content on the platform that is popular among users, localized services may be one direction for Xiaohongshu to monetize.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu's users are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, so when further increasing user growth, it will definitely consider sinking into the market and expanding to third- and fourth-tier cities and below.

Combining the above two points, we can predict that localized services in the future can also be an operational direction that can be planned in advance.

The above is what I shared today, I hope it will be helpful to you!

Author: Pond Digger

Source: Digging pond

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