Xiaohongshu Hot Item Guide: The Secret to Achieving One Million in Monthly Sales from 0 in 3 Months!

As of May 2019, the number of registered users on the Xiaohongshu platform has exceeded 250 million; the number of monthly active users is approaching 50 million, and the number of daily note exposures is as high as 2 billion times.

Monthly Activity of Xiaohongshu

The huge number of users represents huge commercial value. While people are still obsessed with or marveling at the magic of Xiaohongshu, some people have been secretly tapping into the dividends of Xiaohongshu and making their first pot of gold. Nowadays, the cost of acquiring customers is getting higher and higher, and we don’t want to miss any traffic depression.

To this end, we invited @刘影, a fast-moving consumer goods brand operator with 5 years of experience in the Internet industry, to share how she created a popular product on Xiaohongshu with monthly sales of one million from scratch in just 3 months.

She has also published more than 100 notes on Xiaohongshu with over 100,000 exposures, and has distributed a lot of grass-planting articles through Xiaohongshu influencers, with the highest single article reading volume reaching over 28 million.

How did she do it?

Next, @刘颖 will reveal to us the secret to creating a hit product with monthly sales of one million, break down the low-cost and reusable Xiaohongshu operation method for us, and share the complete strategy for writing notes that create a hit product.

1. Five dimensions to help you see through Xiaohongshu

1) What kind of platform is Xiaohongshu?

Xiaohongshu is a lifestyle platform. Nowadays, many young people like to share content about clothing matching, beauty tutorials, travel guides, food reviews, household pets, etc. on Xiaohongshu. When they have purchasing needs, they will also go to Xiaohongshu to search for product reputation and reviews and make comparisons.

Xiaohongshu mainly engages in word-of-mouth marketing and is an important entry point for shoppers to make consumption decisions.

For brands, especially niche brands, Xiaohongshu is a platform with a relatively high input-output ratio because it is very suitable for small brands to build word-of-mouth and content.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu can be said to be a pure content, community-based e-commerce platform. To do well on Xiaohongshu, you need to have certain content production capabilities.

2) What are the characteristics of Xiaohongshu users?

80% of Xiaohongshu users were born after 1990, and 50% were born after 1995. That is to say, half of Xiaohongshu’s 200 million users are born after 1995. Moreover, 80% of users are female.

Geographically, Xiaohongshu's users are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities.

It is worth noting that Xiaohongshu is a very young and feminine community, and they tend to pursue high-quality and good-looking things.

Image source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu official video

In addition, Xiaohongshu users have stronger consumption demands on the spiritual level. They care more about whether they like the thing and whether it is what they want, rather than considering whether the thing is practical for them.

Therefore, when selling products on Xiaohongshu, the packaging must be designed to look good.

On average, Xiaohongshu users make purchases on Xiaohongshu twice a month, so the potential of the Xiaohongshu platform is very large.

3) Where does Xiaohongshu have the most traffic?

The traffic entrances of Xiaohongshu are mainly "Follow", "Discover", "Nearby", the search box, and the "Mall" below.

After we open the platform, the "Discover" entrance appears by default, so the "Discover" entrance has the largest traffic, followed by the "Search Box", while the traffic of other entrances is relatively small.

If we search for some keywords in the search box, such as "whitening", all notes related to whitening will appear, so we will optimize the keyword search based on the selling points of our own brand.

In addition, the main source of visitors to the Xiaohongshu store backend is community notes, accounting for about 60 to 70%. Therefore, if you want to attract more traffic to the store, you need to work hard on community notes.

4) What type of accounts are most beneficial for promotion?

Xiaohongshu’s account types are divided into amateur accounts, brand accounts and expert accounts.

Generally, accounts with less than 1,000 fans are amateur accounts; expert accounts are KOL accounts with a certain number of fans and influence; brand accounts are accounts officially certified by Xiaohongshu.

KOL expert accounts can be segmented according to the number of followers.

The tail influencers with 5,000 to 20,000 fans have a certain ability to create hits, but the number of readers is not stable enough;

Mid-level influencers with 100,000 followers are more capable of creating hits than those at the bottom, but their readership is not stable.

The reading volume of top KOLs with millions of fans is very stable, which is very beneficial for increasing brand awareness.

Brand accounts will be more advantageous when promoting products.

First of all, the brand number has an exclusive logo with official and authoritative certification. It has more display entrances and is easier to reach users. For example, when we search for a brand, the corresponding brand number can be directly displayed.

Secondly, brand accounts can initiate activities, interact with users, and invite influencers to promote products together.

In addition, brand accounts have some data analysis functions in the background. For example, ordinary accounts can only see the number of article readings, while brand accounts can not only see the data of their own accounts, but also the data of their partner accounts.

The brand account can also be directly bound to the store, and users can enter the store directly from the brand account. Brand accounts can also post some product promotional pictures and related knowledge, and generally they are not subject to traffic restrictions.

5) What type of store is suitable for your products?

The types of stores on Xiaohongshu are mainly official flagship stores, brand stores, and collection stores.

Generally speaking, the stores opened by ordinary merchants on Xiaohongshu are all brand stores.

Official flagship stores are generally well-known brands, and ordinary stores must meet certain sales standards before they can apply to be upgraded to official flagship stores.

A collection store is similar to Tmall’s specialty store, that is, one store can sell products from multiple brands.

There is also the Xiaohongshu Welfare Club, which selects some excellent suppliers to provide well-known products, similar to JD.com’s own operation.

2. Low-cost and reusable Xiaohongshu operation tips

1) Brand product brief

Before a company or brand starts using Xiaohongshu, it is best to first make a product selling point brief, list the product's selling points that can be explored, then sort out the possible writing directions and types based on the selling points, and finally write in accordance with the direction and focus required by the company's copywriter or influencer.

For example, our product is a silk sanitary napkin with selling points such as whitening, natural non-allergenic, uterine warming chip, and menstrual gift. Then we can write about it from the aspects of gynecological health, good product recommendations, and product evaluation.

It is recommended that the company hold a brainstorming meeting at the stage of product selling points and direction extension, record all the ideas that can be thought of, and then break them down one by one to see if you can write a hot spot. After trying out the hot spot, continue to update and strengthen similar notes and articles.

Product selling points and hot article highlights are generated through constant brainstorming and testing. One rule is that the most promoted selling point on the Xiaohongshu platform is "white, thin and beautiful", so everyone can rely on these aspects.

After selecting products and listing selling points in a brief, you can start working on a promotion plan.

2) Matrix of advertising experts

Once we have selected the products to promote and listed the Brief, we can make a promotion plan and take notes on the placement.

When making note placements, we must first understand the rules that govern the popularity of products. When posting notes, it is best to first find an amateur account to promote it, and then find a mid-level expert to distribute it. After the article becomes popular, immediately increase the intensity of note distribution, focusing on both amateurs and experts at the same time.

According to our experience, it is better to publish 50-100 notes by amateurs and 10-20 notes by experts in the first month. For experts with better data performance, one or two notes are enough. Then you can increase it step by step.

3) Prepare more than 20 amateur accounts

It should be noted that if the company does not have sufficient marketing funds, it will need to maintain some amateur accounts of its own. An operator of Xiaohongshu usually has to register dozens of amateur accounts.

These accounts are very helpful for companies to test product selling points, post reviews, and promote new products.

If a company creates its own amateur account, it can control the content itself and the cost is low. The platform will provide traffic support for new amateur accounts.

Moreover, if the quality of the note content is high, the probability of an amateur account producing a hit article is no less than that of an expert account. Experts at each level have their own traffic ceiling, and it is easier for amateur accounts to break through the traffic ceiling.

3. A comprehensive guide to creating popular seeding articles

1) What are the common types of notes on Xiaohongshu?

When we write notes, we should choose the appropriate writing type based on the characteristics of our products and industry. There are usually several types of notes, such as review collections, product recommendations, tutorial sharing, problem solving, DIY production guides, etc.

Review collections are written for specific groups of people to describe usage details and experience; product recommendation notes need to highlight the advantages of the product and analyze the reasons;

Tutorial sharing focuses on steps, processes and methods; problem solving requires providing solutions based on user pain points; and strategy making requires combining your own products with other products to solve a type of pain point.

2) How to make your notes more popular?

If we want to make our notes more popular, we need to put more effort into titles, pictures and content arrangement.

Title:

① Focus on the target users’ concerns when writing titles. For example, if our product is sanitary napkins that can relieve menstrual cramps, then we can write some notes on how to relieve menstrual cramps for the ladies to read.

② Add easily searchable keywords to your notes.

③ Add appropriate numbers and emoticons to the title to catch people's attention.

④ Directly highlight the solution elements in the title, such as "Five ways to quickly whiten your skin after tanning."

⑤ Flexibly use modal particles to stimulate demand points and attract user attention.

⑥ Create suspense and arouse users’ curiosity.

⑦ Put the title on the first picture and make it a contrasting main picture.

Use fewer words to express information that can be expressed with pictures. It is best to use 3:4 high-definition original vertical images that are suitable for the screen size, and put at least 3 pictures without watermarks. It is recommended that the number of words in the text be controlled between 500 and 700, and emoticons be used to divide the layout into sections.

3) Tags, topics, and posting time

The labels inserted on the pictures can include selling points, product links, landmarks, etc.; adding hot topics can help increase traffic.

At the same time, attention should be paid to the operation of comments.

After our notes are published, we should immediately use the amateur accounts maintained by our company as mentioned above to interact, post posts, and comment, and let other amateur accounts in our hands push these comments to the top.

Make sure the first two comments under the note are helpful for conversion, because if the note is forwarded to other platforms such as WeChat, all that can be seen after it is clicked is the note content and the first two comments.

Of course, all we do is provide appropriate guidance rather than inflate the volume.

Since the main users of Xiaohongshu are young working women, the time for posting can be chosen at lunch, after get off work, before going to bed, etc.

4) How to improve note conversion rate

The key to improving note conversion rates is to write more high-value professional content that can hit and solve user pain points.

It is best for you to experience the product yourself and know it thoroughly. No matter what field you are writing notes on, you should first learn the professional knowledge of that field. This way, what you write will have a sense of reality and will be more convincing to readers.

At the same time, you need to study readers' concerns, pain points and problems. Only by understanding both the product and the users can you hit the users’ pain points.

After the note is published, you should also pay attention to comment marketing. Just use the multiple amateur accounts you have to do comment maintenance.

As soon as the note is published, use your own amateur account to post comments as soon as possible, and make sure the first two comments are helpful for the conversion of your product. For comments that have conversion effects, you can use some amateur accounts to give them likes and build posts.

When appropriate, you can delete some comments that are detrimental to your brand.

5) How to write a hit article?

Hot articles play a big role in product promotion, and there are skills in writing hot articles:

① Imitate the writing ideas of popular articles in the same category.

② Follow hot topics. For example, we can follow some official hot topics and write our notes.

③ In the end, it all comes down to writing valuable original notes.

6) How to make notes easier to recommend?

① Our content should be vertical, the tags should be well selected, and the first picture and title should be well done, so that we can get more official traffic and increase the search click-through rate.

② Interact more with articles in the same field.

③ Optimizing the content and republishing it can increase the possibility of getting recommended. For example, optimize the first picture, title and text keywords.

④ Remind users to interact with us, for example, you can say something like "Those who like this post are fairies" at the end of the article.

⑤ Actions such as likes, favorites, comments, reposts, and follows have a great impact on the weight of the article, especially following. As the weight of the article increases, the chances of the official recommending it to you will be greater.

7) What should I do if the flow is restricted?

The main manifestation of current limiting is that your original note content or data disappears, and the newly released note data is extremely poor.

The Xiaohongshu platform actually has very strict control over advertisements posted by ordinary people. In the past, ordinary people could insert a small advertisement, but now only brand partners can post advertisements. Unless your advertisement is written very softly, it will not be detected by the platform.

If our account frequently posts advertisements, it will be defined as a marketing account, and then there will be no traffic for about half a month to a month.

When encountering this situation, we must first check whether our account has been restricted, and see whether there are any illegal words in the note content, etc. If not, we should optimize the article and post it again.

If your traffic is really restricted, keep your account for about half a month, and then post notes after it is released again. Remember to control the ratio of advertisements to non-advertisements within 1:4.

Of course, if you can apply to be a brand partner, you don’t need to worry about the above.

In general, the key recommendation is to recommend operators to create more amateur accounts and learn more about the platform rules. Notes must be written carefully, and rules must be summarized as much as possible to provide the little sweet potatoes with truly good content.

Summarize

Xiaohongshu is a natural content-planting platform. Its users are mainly young working women in first- and second-tier cities. The traffic bonus period is a good time for us to plant content and promote products on Xiaohongshu.

When operating Xiaohongshu, we first need to sort out the brand product brief, clarify the direction of content production, then rhythmically deploy the influencer matrix, and then use our own amateur accounts to add fuel to the fire. This series of operations can help us sell goods efficiently.

In terms of content production and operation, the key is to output valuable information for users, and then optimize the title, pictures, text layout, etc., both inside and outside, and supplement it with comment marketing to attract users to click and read.

As long as you use the right method, going from zero to a monthly sales of one million is not a dream. I hope everyone can become a sales expert on Xiaohongshu!

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author: Routine Editorial Department

source: Operations Research Society