Operational strategies of Xiaohongshu, Weibo and Bilibili

This article mainly focuses on the four "hottest" content marketing platforms, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Bilibili, and systematically sorts out the logical guidelines for content delivery of these popular new consumer products:

The platform roles of these platforms

What is the corresponding brand marketing scenario?

· The core marketing methods and cooperation forms of the platform

· Path and effect evaluation method with e-commerce platforms

【Weibo】

The role of Weibo is becoming increasingly clear. To sum it up, it is a large-scale "melon-eating" site and an amplifier of public opinion.

It is suitable for brands to use when they are working on some gimmicky topics, such as brand topic dissemination related to celebrities, eye-catching PR events, official follow-up and other marketing scenarios.

The most common application modes are:

Step 1: Weibo hot search list/hot topic banner to expand horizontal influence

Step 2: Brand official microblog/celebrity microblog takes over the topic and outputs core content materials

Step 3: Various KOL/KOC spread from multiple angles to create vertical penetration

For example, the Angry Bobo launched by KELLYONE some time ago and endorsed by Wang Yibo fully utilized the role of Weibo as a public opinion amplifier and is also a standard example of celebrity marketing.

About e-commerce:

Whether it is hard advertising or content publishing, you can directly link to the e-commerce platform (Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, etc.).

In addition, by adopting the "UV" plan jointly launched by Weibo and Alibaba's unidesk, user interaction data on Weibo outside the site can be deposited into the data bank and secondary reach can be made within the site.

In addition to link jumps, Weibo can also be embedded through search topics (the most common ones are topics associated with celebrities. Users can go to a designated e-commerce platform to search and then enter the relevant celebrity interaction experience)

【Little Red Book】

Xiaohongshu is, in the eyes of marketers, the largest platform for promoting high-value and exquisite lifestyles.

It is suitable for the promotion of new products with mainly female consumers, such as beauty, daily chemicals, food, small appliances, etc., and can produce a high image completion rate.

The most common application model is: large-scale promotion of expert content.

Please note that I put a key adjective in front of “content seeding” here, called “scalability”, which is the key to content marketing on Xiaohongshu.

The so-called "scaling" does not mean that some brands just invest in a few influencers and call it a day. Instead, the number of content should be increased to at least hundreds.

Why scale?

This starts with the principle of how content seeding works. I have summarized the principles of content seeding into two types:

One is "push" and the other is "pull"

The so-called "push" means that consumers are pushed by grass-planting content to understand and purchase your products.

Think about when this effect will occur: when users find the same product on Xiaohongshu, it seems that all the influencers are recommending it. Even if they scroll through the screen twice, they will see several expert recommendations for this product.

At this time, it will arouse users' curiosity to learn about this product, otherwise they may worry that they are out of date.

The so-called "pull" means that consumers actively search for a potential demand keyword and happen to see content recommendations for a certain product.

Nowadays, Xiaohongshu is more like a search browser for good things in life.

For example, a young lady discovered that milk tea-colored makeup is very popular and wanted to know how to apply it, so she searched for "milk tea-colored makeup" on Xiaohongshu, and then she happened to see an eye shadow brand's content on how to apply milk tea-colored makeup, teaching you step by step.

Finally, I would like to recommend one of their indispensable eye shadow products. As you can imagine, this young lady will most likely be drawn into the store by this content.

Of course, the most critical and necessary condition for creating this kind of "pulling" effect when promoting content is to achieve scale.

The scale here does not necessarily mean the number of influencers, but more about the scale of product content based on keywords, so as to maximize the coverage of users' potential search needs.

Taking the eye shadow product promotion mentioned above as an example, in addition to makeup keywords such as "milk tea color makeup", can we also mass-produce content from long-tail keywords in the dimensions of life scene words, category words, and population dimensions?

Ultimately, if you want content to be effective, whether it is the "push" principle or the "pull" principle, you can't escape the need for mass-scale output.

Therefore, for those who want to place ads on Xiaohongshu, here is a rough SOP suggestion:

Step 1: First, check whether your product matches the style of Xiaohongshu. This is the premise for everything that follows.

Step 2: Based on the core selling point of the product, combine it with different scenarios and groups as much as possible to extend different "buying points" as different content planting angles.

Step 3: Based on the popularity of keywords in the search rankings on Xiaohongshu in terms of categories, brands, demand scenarios, etc., embed these keywords with built-in search popularity into the corresponding content.

Step 4: According to different content angles, find the corresponding Xiaohongshu influencer to do the delivery. At the beginning, it is more about increasing the number of fans, so the scale of the influencer does not need to be too large, and the number of fans is basically concentrated between 50,000 and 200,000.

But a very important point is that the materials produced by these experts must be good-looking and have good tone. Because this directly determines the first impression the product brings to the audience on Xiaohongshu.

Step 5: After a period of time, look at the effects of different content directions and influencers, and then increase investment in the categories with the best results.

At this time, when looking for an expert, we should consider the scale of his influence more. You can find a few top influencers, or even celebrities on Xiaohongshu, to collaborate with and endorse subsequent PR promotions.

About e-commerce:

Unfortunately, the content on Xiaohongshu cannot directly attract traffic, and cannot even mention the names of any related e-commerce platforms.

Therefore, if a brand wants to see, or must bear, instant search traffic or even transaction-related KPIs, this platform is not so suitable, because when the delivery does not reach a certain threshold, these data will be very ugly.

Therefore, when doing content marketing on Xiaohongshu, it is more about whether the content itself produced by the influencer about the product touches the audience's pain points/itch points/satisfaction points and wins their trust.

If a closed loop is created at these mental levels, they will naturally take the initiative to search and purchase on e-commerce platforms. On the contrary, even if you put an e-commerce link there, it cannot form a so-called closed loop.

If you really want to invest in Xiaohongshu and want to jump directly to e-commerce, you can launch some hard advertising products of Xiaohongshu, such as opening screen, carousel banner, etc. However, even hard advertising cannot support the use of Unidesk to deliver and return crowd data.

【Tik Tok】

First of all, let me explain:

Tik Tok is now a platform that integrates content media and e-commerce.

However, because this article is written more from the perspective of marketing and promotion, we will temporarily focus on Douyin as a content media.

Tik Tok is famous for its brainwashing, dramatic and eye-catching short video content.

Under this large content framework, if a brand wants to do a good job of marketing here, the key is to follow the native style above.

Instead of just treating it as a video dissemination channel, move the brand's various TVCs and event PR videos here for distribution.

Brand marketing on Douyin can be divided into two main marketing models:

One is a "high-profile" campaign;

The other type is the “ground-low flying” type of conventional product promotion.

Let’s first talk about the “flying close to the ground” type of conventional product promotion.

As a platform dominated by short videos, the biggest advantage of Douyin for product promotion is the video interpretation, which can make the product more situational and three-dimensional to arouse the audience's interest.

But at the same time, as most platforms rely on the quality of content as an algorithm recommendation indicator, this is also a challenge.

Therefore, when promoting a product on Douyin, the key is to find several dramatic “buying points” corresponding to different groups of people and scenarios to interpret the selling points of the product and thus attract the attention of users from different interest circles.

Regarding how to make short videos on Douyin products attract more people's attention and thus obtain a larger traffic pool, here is a universal "demand triangle model".

They are:

First, establish a sense of lack and create a gap between your ideal and reality;

Then we will launch our [target object] and provide a solution to fill this gap;

The last point is to tell users the [ability] required to obtain this thing, usually by rendering a very low threshold cost, making you feel that you need this thing more.

After mastering this model, we can initially preset many different short video content angles based on different groups of people and scenarios.

Then, by matching the corresponding KOL original short videos and conducting delivery tests, we can select several videos with better results, increase the information flow delivery, and maximize the delivery effect.

Let’s talk about the second common marketing model of brands on Douyin:

A "high-profile" campaign-style collaboration.

"Strike high and strike hard", as the literal meaning suggests, this obviously requires a large amount of resources.

It is more suitable for high-level brand marketing campaigns to narrow the distance between the brand and the target audience.

The most common application mode is a bit like Weibo:

Step 1: Use Douyin official resources (challenges/filters) to initiate topic interactions

Step 2: Participate in the interaction on the brand’s official Douyin account and output core content materials

Step 3: Celebrities/KOLs take up the topic and participate in interactive communication

For example, when the popular small appliance brand Morphy officially announced Wang Junkai as its spokesperson at the beginning of this year, in order to promote its new manual sparkling water cup, it launched the official Douyin challenge #2021Cheer Together# on Douyin.

About e-commerce:

As a content media, Douyin’s soft content (experts, official Douyin) and hard advertisements (information flow, opening screen, etc.) can be redirected to third-party e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD through links.

In addition, by using Unidesk for delivery, the crowd data can be fed back to Alibaba Data Bank.

For Douyin officials, they hope to directly divert traffic to Douyin stores and build their own closed ecological loop.

Therefore, if you jump to Douyin e-commerce, short videos can be purchased directly through the "Little Yellow Car" link.

【Bilibili】

Many netizens jokingly call Bilibili a "learning platform" for young people, which is actually not without reason.

Because compared to short video platforms like Tik Tok that focus on "killing time", Bilibili is more focused on medium and long videos that focus on "save time".

For example, there are many very professional and informative 3C digital science popularization + evaluation videos, videos of making various delicacies with heart, and videos of watching a movie in 5 minutes...

All of these are works that the up-hosts have presented very carefully, so users are very understanding of why these up-hosts want to make a living by taking commercial advertisements, and some will even help them make better meals.

Therefore, if a brand wants to do good marketing on Bilibili, the most critical principle is "sincerity".

Let the up-hosts follow their established personalities, focus on creating high-quality content as the primary premise, and then generously integrate the product role on this basis, instead of requiring them to talk about the product right from the start and make the whole article dominated by advertisements. This approach will make B station's fans very disgusted.

The cooperation model of brands on Bilibili is mainly based on cooperation with up-masters, and most of the marketing scenarios are product-based marketing promotions, such as new product launches and product promotions.

About e-commerce:

When cooperating with up-masters on Bilibili, there is no banner or direct e-commerce link to redirect you to the e-commerce site. But there are some soft ways to drain traffic:

-The up master inserts a welfare announcement in the video, such as "Please note my name xxx when placing an order, and you can receive a coupon worth xx yuan." Of course, the premise for doing this is that the brand needs to negotiate the rights and interests of the offer with the up-host in advance.

-The up master places the product name and product coupon in the "Class Representative Summary" in the comment area, and guides fans to go to the corresponding e-commerce platform to collect it according to the instructions

- The brand's official account on Bilibili can send benefits in the comment area, making the brand's implanted traffic information more natural and also increasing the number of fans for its own brand account

Summarize

Finally, let’s make a summary of these four platforms.

We can first draw a horizontal axis, with "horizontal radiation" and "vertical penetration" on the left and right sides respectively.

The so-called "horizontal radiation" is more about the breadth of public opinion, which can be understood as something that the public can see;

The so-called "vertical penetration" is more because the algorithm divides people into different "information cocoons", and everyone can only see the content in the area they are interested in.

Let’s draw another vertical axis, with “long-acting delayed effect” and “short-acting immediate effect” on the upper and lower sides respectively.

The so-called "long-term delay" is more inclined towards the dimension of brand building, relying on regular content construction to work, and is not so eager for quick success and instant benefits in attracting e-commerce traffic; the so-called "short-term immediate" corresponds to it.

The four platforms each focus on different roles and application scenarios, as shown in the quadrant diagram above.

Author: Pulang

Source: Pulangne