How do short video creators use Xiaohongshu correctly?

Short videos carry more content density, achieve higher content matching, and bring more opportunities for brand marketing. How to really seize the opportunity?

When an industry, especially a content industry, grows and develops, the birth of some vulgar and low-quality content is always inevitable. A few days ago, Kas Data published an article about Xiaohongshu's "Brand Partner Platform Upgrade Instructions". The article mainly analyzed the impact on the content community after the announcement, and how KOL and MCN agencies should respond. To a certain extent, Xiaohongshu's move not only purified the environment of the content community, but also improved the user experience.

Since 2013, Xiaohongshu has gradually developed into one of the largest national grass-seeking platforms, with monthly active users reaching 49.89 million (data source: iResearch). Why has Xiaohongshu been able to gain a share in the fiercely competitive social and e-commerce fields and gradually become the largest content-sharing app? How should short video creators use Xiaohongshu correctly?

1. From dark horse to unicorn, Xiaohongshu’s path of community + e-commerce

Xiaohongshu was founded in June 2013. In January 2014, it transformed into a UGC (user-generated content) shopping and sharing community platform. In December of the same year, it went online on an e-commerce platform for monetization. Based on the community, with the help of massive users and data accumulation, it covers categories such as beauty, skin care, mother and baby, and home.

As of October 2018, Xiaohongshu has 150 million users, with 49.89 million monthly active users. Those born in the 1990s and 1995s are the most active user groups, of which female users account for 90%. This is one of the reasons why Xiaohongshu has developed rapidly in recent years. Because female users have stronger social genes, are willing to share and recommend things.

▲ Screenshot of Xiaohongshu’s monthly activity data

Xiaohongshu’s main barriers lie in its community building and powerful UGC functions. We all know that the basic needs of users going to Xiaohongshu are to find various guides and other Xiaohongshu users’ recommendations, etc. So why can Xiaohongshu build such a powerful content community? I think there are several reasons:

1. Xiaohongshu products have users' own sharing attributes

Among Xiaohongshu users, the number of female users is greater than that of male users, which means that Xiaohongshu is naturally endowed with dissemination properties, because female users are more willing to promote and share than male users, which increases the content output of the Xiaohongshu community.

▲Basic attributes of Xiaohongshu user portrait

1. Xiaohongshu has comprehensive and professional content producers

In the early cold start of the Xiaohongshu content community, it mainly attracted celebrity bloggers to join, such as Fan Bingbing, Di Ali Gerba, Zhao Liying and other first-line celebrity bloggers. These celebrities have their own fan effect and can bring fans' attention to Xiaohongshu. Currently, the content producers of Xiaohongshu are mainly composed of the following:

1) First-line celebrity bloggers (Fan Bingbing, Dilireba, Zhao Liying, etc.);

2) KOLs in various vertical fields (Li Jiaqi, Office Xiaoye, etc.);

3) Xiaohongshu’s official content production agencies (Video Potato, Campus Potato, etc.);

4) Ordinary users;

▲Xiaohongshu user hierarchy diagram

Such a layout of content creators can provide users with good content choices and meet users' demand for content in the Xiaohongshu community.

1. Xiaohongshu’s brand promotion strategy

Xiaohongshu is very clear about which users are using their products, so it chose to sponsor Produce 101 and Idol Producer for brand promotion. The user portraits of these two variety shows have a high degree of overlap with Xiaohongshu's main user groups, so it can accurately reach the target user groups. Therefore, under a certain budget, Xiaohongshu’s brand promotion effect can achieve the best results.

▲Xiaohongshu user portrait

1. Open offline experience stores and return to user experience

The disadvantage of online shopping is that the experience is poor, so many brands have opened offline experience stores. The purpose of the experience stores is not to sell, but to provide a scene to awaken consumers.

For example, the Three Squirrels brand has opened many offline experience stores, but encourages consumers to place orders on its e-commerce platform. Three Squirrels only provides a consumption scenario and gives users a full range of consumption experience.

On June 6, 2018, Xiaohongshu also opened an experience store in Shanghai Jing'an Joy City. No matter which product a user likes, he or she only needs to scan the code to see users' comments on the product and related notes, which also reflects the advantage of Xiaohongshu's unique note-taking function.

As a national grass-planting platform, Xiaohongshu also has certain problems. On April 16, 2019, Beijing Youth Daily published an article titled "95,000 tobacco-related soft articles found on Xiaohongshu APP", which attracted public attention. On the Xiaohongshu APP, enter the word "cigarette" to search, and the page prompts that there are 95,000 "notes". The second-ranked keyword is "lady" and the third-ranked keyword is "female cigarettes". On the afternoon of the 16th, Xiaohongshu had taken down all notes that mentioned tobacco.

Therefore, on the premise of ensuring the number of notes, Xiaohongshu should also control the quality of content. It should not only provide users with references, but also ensure the authority of the content. This is the only way to maintain a good user experience.

2. How do short video creators use Xiaohongshu correctly?

Short videos carry more content density, achieve higher content matching, and bring more opportunities for brand marketing. In the face of the short video trend, Xiaohongshu, whose brand slogan is "Mark my life", should also shift part of its operational focus to short videos in terms of content presentation to seek more opportunities. Among them, the vlog format is very consistent with the tone of Xiaohongshu. There are several ways to use vlog for brand promotion:

1. Theme story customization

Emotion is the fastest way to shorten consumer cognition. Brands can promote themselves by formulating relevant theme stories to arouse emotional resonance among users.

1. Brand Exhibition

For example, the sneaker con held in Shanghai these days, as the largest sneaker exhibition, this event not only attracted many well-known sneaker bloggers to visit, but also attracted many celebrities to participate.

1. Product Reviews

Many times, consumers do not believe in the brand’s self-promotion, and their purchasing decisions are more dependent on various authoritative organizations or well-known bloggers. For example, in terms of mobile phone performance evaluation, Zealer is a relatively authoritative evaluation organization. Every time a new mobile phone is released, Zealer will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the phone and provide consumers with reference opinions. Therefore, when relevant new products are released, you can find relevant bloggers to try out the products and publish evaluation videos.

1. Brand Experience

Jiang Cha Cha, a well-known self-media person in the advertising circle, once collaborated with Yi Er San to shoot an advertisement. The main plot of the advertisement is that Jiang Cha Cha visits Yi Er San's laundry factory and drinks Yi Er San's laundry water herself to prove the hygiene conditions of the entire factory. This is actually an effective way to experience the brand, allowing consumers to feel the quality and safety of the product through TVC.

The above provides some ideas for brand promotion with the help of vlogs, and Xiaohongshu has also started related promotion work. Its content account "Video Potato" contains vlogs about various columns. At the same time, Xiaohongshu has also started recruiting vloggers to enrich the community's UGC output of video notes.

So, what types of videos are suitable for playing on the Xiaohongshu platform?

Since most of its users are women, Xiaohongshu gives users the impression that its notes contain more content about beauty, food, and women's preferences. But in fact, as a UGC community platform, Xiaohongshu has gradually transformed into a diversified content platform, basically covering various daily needs of users. Therefore, Xiaohongshu cannot be simply defined as a platform for women to recommend products. It is actually a growing and diversified content platform.

Based on this, we can create video content on Xiaohongshu from the following directions:

1. Product review: Product review videos can narrow the distance between you and consumers, and also allow users to experience the product's effects in all aspects.

2. Food making: Food making on Xiaohongshu is mostly in the form of pictures and texts. It is difficult for users to learn the food making process, so it is more intuitive to record the food effect through videos.

3. Offline check-in: Xiaohongshu has a function that allows you to see what nearby users are doing. We can mark our lives by checking in at tourist attractions, restaurants, hotels and other places.

Xiaohongshu has begun to develop short videos, but it also faces some problems. For example, if a user wants to share a Xiaohongshu video on the WeChat platform, the video cannot be directly cached locally, but can only be spread through the WeChat mini-program. This has to some extent lost the traffic entrance of the Moments.

The fact that Xiaohongshu has been able to achieve success in the field of "social + e-commerce" and become a unicorn shows that its product positioning and operational strategy are correct. In an era when short videos are so popular, Xiaohongshu should also make arrangements as soon as possible and empower users through short videos to provide more comprehensive and authoritative content.

Related reading:

1. Do you know the operation and promotion strategy of Xiaohongshu?

2. There are 7 ways to promote on Xiaohongshu. Have you ever made a mistake?

3. For promotion on Xiaohongshu, just read this article.

4. Xiaohongshu promotion: Xiaohongshu user growth methodology!

5.How to promote on Xiaohongshu? 2 program steps!

6.4 major strategies + 7 major skills, a comprehensive interpretation of Xiaohongshu promotion strategy!

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8. Xiaohongshu promotion: Xiaohongshu’s growth path from 0 to 100-200 million users!

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10. Xiaohongshu promotion method | Is the grass-planting list still credible?

11. Xiaohongshu Promotion: After cleaning up the KOL, can we still “plant grass” well?

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)