Tips on how to limit the flow of Xiaohongshu notes and strategies for making them popular!

The Difficulties and Opportunities of Xiaohongshu’s Traffic Limitation

The joke "The rooftop is full of KOLs" comes from the incident in which Xiaohongshu completely cleansed KOLs and deleted a large number of notes. It also caused confusion among brand owners, "The traffic is not good now, should we still put in ads?" In Xiaozhi's opinion, this is a "heroic" move that Xiaohongshu has made up its mind to take.

Xiaohongshu previously had a trust crisis, which was undoubtedly very serious for a platform whose core purpose is to "provide users with valuable information." Xiaohongshu uses social relationships as an entry point and high-quality content as a product shopping guide, which determines that it has higher user trust and repeat purchase probability than ordinary e-commerce platforms. However, a large amount of false and low-quality advertisements/commercial content has become a problem that Xiaohongshu cannot avoid.

In this light, Xiaohongshu's promulgation of a series of "new regulations" is actually a game that it will inevitably go through in the process of gradually deepening its own content ecosystem and commercialization construction.

For brands, the difficulty of advertising in the short term seems to have increased a lot, and the advertising they spent their own money on may be deleted or restricted.

But there are actually at least two benefits hidden behind this:

1. It is more beneficial to the long-term healthy development of brand communication, and more effective content will be deposited as the long-tail traffic entrance of the product.
2. This is a great opportunity for new brands that started late on Xiaohongshu to overtake others.

The first point is easy to understand, so I won’t go into details here. The principle of "overtaking on a curve" is very similar to a story we have all heard: two people are hiking in the forest, and suddenly a bear appears and chases them. In a hurry, one person immediately squatted down and tied his shoelaces. Another person shouted anxiously: What's the point of tying your shoelaces? You can't outrun the bear! The man tying his shoelaces replied: I can't outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.

Similarly, brands do not need to compete with Xiaohongshu, they only need to outperform their rivals to be successful. For example, Zhongyin Communication conducted a grass-roots advertising campaign for Karicare on Xiaohongshu. After experiencing traffic restrictions and note deletions, as of September 1, Karicare was more than 500 notes ahead of a leading goat milk powder competitor, an increase of 16% compared to before the campaign, and its total share in goat milk powder notes increased by more than 5%. The new goat milk note was successfully pinned to the top of the goat milk powder search home screen. (Sheep milk was only launched in Australia in July and first launched on JD.com in August).

How to achieve overtaking on a curve?

How can we seize the opportunity like Karicare and overtake others in Xiaohongshu’s product recommendation? To make the notes become high-quality content, they need to have the opportunity to be exposed, and finally achieve effective promotion and even become a hit. This requires planning the entire content-planting idea from a strategic level.

The three-hit strategy

These days, product promotion on Xiaohongshu has almost become a standard for product dissemination. The most popular lipstick category has more than 1.18 million notes on Xiaohongshu, covering various brands. The entire milk powder category also has more than 180,000 notes on Xiaohongshu, including more than 10,000 notes on goat milk powder. How can you make your brand stand out from the thousands of messages, gain visibility, and be remembered and purchased by consumers? Karicare promoted the product through the three-part strategy of "a down-to-earth nickname, a clear and direct selling point, and a distinctive story" on Xiaohongshu, achieving the pinning of the keyword "goat milk powder" note on the first screen and an explosion in sales.

A down-to-earth nickname

If you have ever made a summary, it is not difficult to find that those beauty products that are sold out have one thing in common - they have a "down-to-earth" nickname. The most typical example is the "magic water" that is widely known. In comparison, its real name "SK-II Facial Treatment Essence" is rarely mentioned. Having a nice and memorable nickname can not only reduce the user's memory cost of the product and generate associations with functions and features, but a successful nickname can also easily become a search keyword. We gave Karicare the nickname "Yuanqi Can", which originally came from the Chinese Taoist philosophical term "yuanqi", and now means "lively and energetic". The product image of the imported brand Karicare has a strong connection with traditional Chinese imagery, giving consumers a sense of familiarity.

A direct and tangible selling point

The selling point of the product is obviously exclusive. If your competitors are all focusing on "natural nutrition", then there is no point in you focusing on "natural nutrition". If a brand wants to be competitive, it must communicate differentiated selling points to consumers and let consumers understand your unique value. Karicare’s main claim in its promotional materials is “the most comprehensive breast milk-grade substitute”, which allows users to immediately distinguish it from other similar products.

Another strategy you need to know is to seize the keyword position on Xiaohongshu, which is similar to the keyword strategy of Baidu SEO. "Nickname" and "selling point" can be directly used as the brand's precise associated words and long-tail words, which will have a long-term impact on product traffic.

A distinctive story

Today’s consumers’ shopping mentality and habits are different from the past. In addition to considering the functions of products, they also make purchases based on emotional factors such as preferences, trends, and values. At this time, telling your product a unique story can easily trigger consumers’ emotional resonance and ultimately achieve the goal of stimulating consumption. Karicare uses the story of "New Zealand's rare sheep milk that only 10% of babies can enjoy" to tell the unique source of milk and communicate with Xiaohongshu users who pursue high quality.

Grasp the trend and follow the platform distribution logic

Creating a product story for three consecutive hits is the first step. Xiaohongshu is a content platform that builds volume and reputation. It must not only be based on a core product story, but also produce multi-angle and user-friendly communication content in order to attract customers. This requires brands, service providers, and influencers to have insight into the platform distribution logic and use some techniques to avoid being restricted or having their posts deleted.

Conclusion

Looking back, we find that Xiaohongshu's stricter policies can actually help brands and KOLs explore more unique and real product selling points, which is more conducive to the widespread dissemination of brands and further iteration and upgrading.

Author: Zhongyinzhixing Salon

Source: Zhongyin Zhixing Salon