A practical methodology for building a brand on Xiaohongshu

What she asked was: I have several brands operating Xiaohongshu, including corporate accounts and KOL cooperation. I mainly want to solve how to promote brands and products on Xiaohongshu and build brand awareness.

I replied: So, let’s talk about the thinking level of Xiaohongshu’s content marketing, all the way to methodology, and then to techniques. What do you think of this?

01 Xiaohongshu Marketing: Mind Occupation

I won’t give any old examples, such as Melatonin and Wong Lo Kat. Turning to Xiaohongshu content marketing, let’s talk about the relationship between new products and KOLs.

Although the KOL blogger’s persona provides us with trust endorsement, the blogger is only the point that pushes the traffic ripples. Ultimately, it is our brand, products, packaging and selling points that allow the target audience to reach their destination.

So, when we spread, what exactly are we spreading?

Only when the arrow of information is polished to be sharp enough and hits the center of the bull's eye, will it remain firmly on the target. So what needs to be polished?

Polish differentiation, polish value proposition, and polish the uniqueness of product selling points.

1) Is your packaging really good looking?

In the content of Xiaohongshu notes, in addition to the blogger's appearance at first glance, there is also the product packaging.

First, I said beauty products, ancient style, green,

Gold, lipstick, what brand do you think of?

The second one, I said, lipstick, black, bullet head,

Affordable, what brand do you think of?

The first brand is Huaxizi, which can be regarded as a brand that emerged from the content marketing of Xiaohongshu. The second brand is MAC. The lipstick packaging looks like a bullet and is black.

Among these packages, successful brands are pursuing unique packaging, hoping to be placed on a crowded shelf or in a collection of Xiaohongshu notes so that people can tell what brand the product is from a distance. Xiaohongshu has played an indispensable role in the spread of Huaxizi and MAC.

2) Is your product keyword easy to remember?

Little brown bottle, little black bottle, little aluminum tube, little black pen, bullet-shaped calcium, blue bottle of calcium, delicious calcium; what do you think of these words?

Yes, Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair.

The calcium in the blue bottle is delicious calcium and is an oral liquid of the Sanjing brand. People born in the 1990s are brainwashed by this advertisement every day. After so many years, when people mention the calcium in the blue bottle, the product packaging will come to their mind.

At this point, we understand that the core of marketing communication has never changed. So does our product have a unique product name?

Others have xxx essence, and you also have xxx essence, but we have not occupied the mindset of product words.

3) What is your differentiated selling point?

While others are talking about how shampoo can remove dandruff and make hair smooth, last year a shampoo brand said that hair loss and baldness are also related to the quality of tap water.

So we need to use a shampoo that removes residual chlorine. What is residual chlorine? The popular explanation is that tap water will be disinfected, and after disinfection, there will be disinfectant powder residue.

This is called residual chlorine. This causes water sensitivity, so it is necessary to remove residual chlorine, which will make your scalp much healthier.

Hair loss = disinfectant powder residue (chlorine residue) in water = XX brand

This is also a differentiation among many homogeneous selling points.

4) Are there scenario-based tags?

The life scenes shot by each blogger are reflected in food, clothing, housing and transportation, which can be divided into 7 categories: bedroom, kitchen, office, party, bathroom, gym and travel;

Among the 7 scenarios, how many does your product integrate into? In what scenarios does it appear? What brand products does it form associations with?

For example, a toothpaste brand may be associated with electric toothbrushes and toothbrush sterilizers, which are daily necessities found in the bathroom. In a scene, continuously strengthen the product and present a beautiful feeling in the scene.

5) What is the resulting screen of the product?

Continuing from the above content, why didn’t you mention the product efficacy? Because "I love you not only for who you are, but also for who I am when I am with you."

Because of the relationship with the platform, when soft-implanting grass-roots content, try to mention component words and efficacy words as little as possible, unless you report it. However, if every article needs to be reported, the cost will be much higher.

Therefore, you only need to present the final result so that users can see the final result and reduce sensitivity. This is also what users need.

6) What is the brand value proposition?

When doing marketing on Xiaohongshu, the first thing people see is the blogger’s notes and appearance, and the second thing they see is the product packaging. After remembering the product, they remember the brand.

After the target audience experiences the product, if your brand proposition is good, they will be loyal to the brand. Of course, many times it is because the brand’s tone attracts them.

It could also be due to social vanity, or it could be because the people serving are interesting and warm. Your brand only serves this group of people and makes them feel a sense of belonging.

7) Brand personification

Jiang Xiaobai, Xiao Wanzi, and Three Squirrels are all anthropomorphic characters. There are also anthropomorphic characters of Perfect Diary on Xiaohongshu.

We know that Jiang Xiaobai became popular in the Weibo era, while Perfect Diary’s Xiao Wanzi is more outstanding in maintaining customer relationships in the private domain traffic end. This part is also the key point that we can consider when advertising on Xiaohongshu.

Why is there no mention of the product itself? Because this is the foundation, which is the basic requirement for any brand to do well, but it is not the key to success. Although "good wine needs no bush", you are not the only one with good wine.

Because in China, copying a product is too fast. However, it is not so easy to erase memories by occupying the mind.

02 Xiaohongshu Marketing: Content Strategy

Content marketing and content accumulation can establish competitive barriers, also known as moats. In ancient times, the general practice of protecting a city was to dig a deep river at the foot of the city wall, mainly to increase the difficulty for the enemy to attack the city.

When it comes to content marketing on Xiaohongshu, the competition between brands is also the same. From the target audience of the brand to the brand packaging and selling points, they are spread through the content of notes. After they are deposited, they are basically pervasive.

Content can bring about a long-tail effect. Years later, when people search for brand or content keywords, they can still find relevant content about our brand.

When there is more content to support your thinking, it is relatively easy to close deals and break through potential consumers’ psychological defenses of purchasing. Therefore, the moat of content marketing and content strategy needs to be continuously strengthened and consolidated.

03 Xiaohongshu Marketing: Matrix Approach

A student was mentioned in my circle of friends. He ranked ninth in a certain category on Tmall on Double Eleven in 2020. He started to work on Xiaohongshu in 2018. As of this year, he has 100 Xiaohongshu accounts, of which about 40 are actually in operation. The cost of sending out posts is now around 80,000 to 100,000 yuan per month. He had never tried to cooperate with bloggers before, but started to consider cooperating with bloggers this year.

Let me expand on this. The 100 accounts mentioned above are all personal accounts, focusing on popular articles. If they are upgraded now, they will be paired with corporate accounts.

And they can incubate their own personal Xiaohongshu blogger accounts, which seem to have nothing to do with the official brand, but are interconnected. That is, after the personal blogger account posts a note, the official can leave a message in the comment section, such as thanking xx blogger for recognizing us, we are actually on the list, etc.

The main thing about self-operated Xiaohongshu account matrix is ​​that the content output must be streamlined. Where to collect content? Xiaohongshu, Douyin, WeChat public accounts, Weibo, Zhihu, Baidu, etc. Collect more useful content, and then process it again and make these processes into manuals.

Xiaohongshu has four types of accounts: personal account, corporate account, employee account, and traffic account.

It doesn’t mean that every brand needs to set up 100 accounts right away. It must be a small-scale test. For example, 5 accounts copy peers or similar brands, excellent brands in different categories, and imitate their popular articles.

The fastest way is to build on other people’s ideas and improve them to make them your own. Working in isolation and thinking hard will only waste a lot of useless energy.

04 Circle marketing, get feedback from bloggers

First, you need to contact the first batch of seed bloggers and KOLs, and then collect feedback from these bloggers, for example 30 bloggers to 100 bloggers, and then register them, continuously collect information, and continuously improve, so that you can sculpt a product that the target audience likes.

Another source of feedback is through the platform’s recommendation mechanism. Anyone who does marketing must understand themselves better than their users do, and obtain platform feedback from the content they produce, so they can know what kind of content users like.

Look at the comments, especially the comment section. As long as the notes and comments are not fake, you can still feel it even if it is fake.

The notes written by bloggers basically say good things about the brand, but asking the bloggers privately about their feelings may be more realistic.

05 Be kind to Xiaohongshu and bloggers

Why do I frequently encounter situations where my notes are not included or even blocked? Let's put aside the Woodpecker Project (false propaganda, heavy commercialization and exaggerated publicity),

The key point is that we have not really created content that users like. Content that they like is the long-term solution. Otherwise, the spread of notes will be affected over time.

For example, I write decoration guides and also embed lighting, murals, etc. Another example is to let bloggers write a lot of practical content and embed some content that users will not hate and will collect. This is the core of the platform - to record a beautiful life and mark my life.

Only this kind of content can be retained on Xiaohongshu for a long time. In comparison, the exposure of single product notes will not be high. It is only suitable for being used as a "customer testimony" on Tmall or a user testimony on Xiaohongshu.

But if the notes are so unforgettable that you can't help but collect them, or even print them out and post them in your room or put them in the office, why would the platform limit your traffic? You can find out the specific range of the gray lines on Xiaohongshu by doing more tests.

Xiaohongshu Content Strategy (Part 2): Approach

The underlying logic behind Xiaohongshu's rapid spread

01 The core of creating popular articles on Xiaohongshu

Don’t think too much. Collect all the excellent notes of your peers, analyze their titles, analyze their copywriting content, why they became popular articles, create an Excel spreadsheet file, collect 100 articles, and write the analysis of the reasons for the popular articles at the back.

Are there any title sentence patterns that can be copied directly and made into fill-in-the-blank questions? When you want to use them yourself, just fill in some keywords. To put it simply, it is just a template. Of course, some improvements are still needed. After all, blatant plagiarism is not good, but the overall picture remains unchanged.

For example, the title, Li Jiaqi didn’t lie to me! XXXX. XXX didn’t lie to me! The cake made in this way is so delicious! This sentence pattern can be listed out and filled in the blanks. When you have collected 100 popular article titles, you can analyze the similarities of these titles and finally imitate them.

The underlying logic of hot articles

1. Content Selection

1. Tutorial

2. Strategy

3. Collection

2. Method

1. Use celebrities

2. Target audience, e.g. female college students, Korean drama fans, age groups

3. Scenarios, e.g., what to wear when dancing during confinement or when the child has a cold

4. Time period, e.g. New Year gift package

Emotions

1. To introduce contradictions, e.g. show it to mother-in-law

2. Arouse resonance or reveal a secret, for example: Xiaohongshu hot mom is a liar

3. Private collection, please don't raise the price

4. The icing on the cake

1. Details, such as makeup tutorials with large pictures of eye makeup comparisons

2. Tempting pictures, such as food

Summarize:

1. If you have 2-3 of the above four points, you can explode; if you have all 4 points, it’s awesome, you will definitely explode!

2. It is better to write one popular article than to publish 100 mediocre notes.

3. Read more, think more, and copy more!

02 Xiaohongshu Marketing: “T+H Chain” Strategy

Xiaohongshu content＜Xiaohongshu exposure＜reading volume＜interaction volume＜Tmall visitor volume＜Tmall transaction volume

We can record, analyze and compare the data of each link in the above marketing assembly line to find out what affects them, whether the data is good or bad.

This horizontal assembly line is also a cause-and-effect cycle, forming a closed loop. The vertical influences include platform factors, competitor factors, blogger account factors, blogger note content factors, and own brand factors.

Before Xiaohongshu was launched, we first recorded the data on Tmall. Then after the launch, we looked at the number of visitors on Tmall, especially when a hot post was produced.

Generally, when a hot article appears, the data on the Tmall platform will change. If there is no change, then we need to pay attention to the direction of the note content and the messages in the comment section.

For important e-commerce festivals, Xiaohongshu needs to cooperate with Tmall's activities and gradually warm up two months in advance. Xiaohongshu platform will recommend content related to the festival.

Preheating for the festival is a must. If you want to know more about the hot keywords and trends of Xiaohongshu, you can follow the housekeeper, captain, related potatoes (such as beauty potatoes, maternal and infant potatoes, etc.), Xiaohongshu creator academy, etc., and check third-party data platforms.

For example, Rocket Big Data and Qiangua Data have the awareness of preparing for a rainy day, which means they have seized the initiative, but the details still need to be studied in depth.

03 Xiaohongshu blogger placement

1) Amateurs - free replacement

The general cost-saving approach is to do a free replacement. You can go to the WeChat search box and search for "notification platform", and you will see a lot of notification platforms for contacting bloggers and posting recruitment requirements. If you don’t know how to write recruitment content, just watch how others write it and imitate them.

In addition, let amateur bloggers recommend amateur bloggers. Bloggers also have their own circles. But don’t expect that the quality of bloggers who are replaced for free is very high.

The reason why we can exchange it for free is that our brand and products are well-known. If it is a new brand and new product, many bloggers may not be willing to do so. If the category is sensitive and the blogger wants to compile a collection or do soft implantation, agree to her request. It would be great if sensitive categories could be included.

If brand words are not included, then you can consider creating new product words. For details on creating new product words, please refer to the first part of this article: Xiaohongshu Content Strategy (Part 1) Mind, the second point of the first paragraph, are product words easy to remember?

2) Experts - Move towards hot articles

Not all expert bloggers can produce hit articles. Relatively speaking, collections, useful information, strategies, and tutorials are more likely to produce hit articles. Many brand partners may worry that their brand advertising is not well reinforced, so they can just mention the brand words in the comment section.

The most important thing is to be able to spread it. Only by crossing the fixed traffic pool can it be seen by more people and then see our brand.

3) Note Type

Single product notes: There is only one product, which introduces the experience of using the product and the content expresses the selling points of the product.

Multi-product collection: Multiple products are combined in one note, which can also be understood as sharing of multiple good things.

Insertion of useful information: If you share a lot of useful information or solutions at the beginning and then talk about the product at the end, the effect will be better.

Vertical collection: It is an upgraded version of the multi-product collection, such as the 10 must-have products for a travel backpack, and the 5 magic weapons for waterproof makeup when swimming.

Basically, there are five types.

4) Ratio of bloggers and note types

This part needs to be decided by the brand itself. In the early stage, the budget should be considered and the proportion should be adjusted according to the budget. The second thing is to see at which stage the brand is launched.

Finally, it also depends on how strict the platform's review is. If it is strict, there will be more collections, soft articles, and evaluation notes.

5) Brand registration

If you see a good-looking blogger who wants to present his/her works in the form of single product notes, then report it. For 100 notes per month, it is recommended to report 10-15 notes. After all, when doing marketing and commercial content on Xiaohongshu, it is safer to report it.

6) Performance advertising support: information flow, search advertising

The search advertising column is mainly used to enable our notes to rank high when users search for certain keywords. This is a paid ranking.

As the entry interception of demand words, as long as the keywords are selected correctly, the traffic will be relatively accurate. This is part of the Xiaohongshu delivery, and it needs to be used in combination. The money that should be spent must be spent...

7) French fries

When you see signs of a hit article in a blogger's notes, for example, after the article is published, the natural data increases by more than 200, and then you slowly watch the data change, there are two opinions here. Some say that as soon as you see signs of a hit article, you should immediately make some posts, while others say that you should wait until the natural traffic has almost gone before making some posts.

My personal suggestion is to take the middle value and test them separately at this time, and you will know which one is the more suitable operation method.

Xiaohongshu’s content strategy (Part 2): Illusion

Practical skills in attracting traffic to Xiaohongshu

01 Xiaohongshu attracts traffic from Tmall

All note contents are basically directed to Tmall (e-commerce platform), with a focus on the comment section.

Whether you operate your own Xiaohongshu account or post blogger notes, guiding messages in the comment area are crucial. When you find a popular article, don’t forget to let the blogger interact.

Author: Zhuang Jun

Source: Zhuang Jun