Xiaohongshu community operation logic!

There is a famous saying in martial arts novels: Where there are people, there is the martial arts world, and where there is the martial arts world, there are disputes. Now that we have entered the Internet age, people are defined as traffic and concentrated in Internet content communities, which have become the new era's rivers and lakes, performing one magical drama after another.

Recently, Xiaohongshu, a content community that has been promoting "grass planting", apologized because the creators' "grass planting" level was too high. The filters of some scenic spot notes are too full, causing users to feel cheated when they "pull out the weeds", just like encountering "photo fraud" when meeting an online lover in person.

In addition to the Pink Sand Beach, there are many other Internet celebrity attractions such as the Sanya Qingshui Bay Blue House and the Inner Mongolia Internet celebrity tent camp, which have become the target of netizens' complaints. Amid widespread ridicule online, Xiaohongshu posted an apology on its WeChat public account for the "Filter Attractions" and proposed to try to launch a "Pitfall List."

After the apology was issued, some bloggers felt aggrieved, saying that they had the photography skills to take good photos, but it was the netizens who did not know how to take photos; Xiaohongshu might also feel aggrieved, as it was clearly the blogger's fault, but Xiaohongshu was made to bear the blame.

"Mark my life" is the slogan of Xiaohongshu. When bloggers use filters to mark their lives, Xiaohongshu gains something and loses something. Perhaps these losses are the reason why Xiaohongshu took the initiative to apologize.

1. Born to "grow grass", "isolated island" becomes "fertile soil"

According to Tianyancha APP, Xiaohongshu was founded in August 2013 and has now completed five rounds of financing. The investors behind it include Tencent, Alibaba, ZhenFund, etc. It is one of the few companies in China jointly invested by Tencent and Alibaba.

At the beginning of its establishment, Xiaohongshu launched the "Xiaohongshu Overseas Shopping Guide" PDF in September 2013, which solved the difficulties of many people in outbound travel. The number of downloads exceeded 500,000. It can be said that Xiaohongshu's initial reputation was built by helping users make decisions. Xiaohongshu later took advantage of the opportunity to enter the cross-border e-commerce market, and after failing in e-commerce, it turned to focus on content communities.

As Xiaohongshu develops into a content community, the label of "planting grass" has also been engraved in the public's inherent impression of it. "Planting grass" on the Internet means sharing and recommending a certain product or thing to other people, making them want to buy it or like it. To a certain extent, it is also helping users make decisions.

The origin of the "planting grass" label on Xiaohongshu can perhaps be considered from the following perspectives.

In the era of mobile Internet, each application has become a separate traffic entrance, breaking the control of search engines over traffic entrances in the PC Internet era. The decentralization of traffic by independent applications makes each application an "island", in which the content becomes more vertical, and content and traffic with the same tags will attract each other.

For example, Zhihu’s questions and answers and the highly educated crowd, Weibo’s public opinion and the general public, Douban’s film reviews and literary youth, Bilibili’s anime and the second dimension... Each content community has unique content and traffic labels.

The origin of the "planting grass" label on Xiaohongshu is also the result of the mutual attraction between unique content and traffic groups.

The content on Xiaohongshu is mostly picture and text notes, and the entry threshold for UGC creators is low, making the content supply of Xiaohongshu unlimited. According to official data from Xiaohongshu, as of the end of March 2021, there were more than 43 million content creators on the platform and more than 300 million notes published.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu has more than 100 million monthly active users, and a large number of users are female. Female users have strong desires to express themselves, share, consume, and have strong spending power. This leads to the fact that most of the content shared on Xiaohongshu are experience posts, such as recipes, user experiences, travel guides, etc., which are a good solution for users who have related problems.

Rich content attracts users, and Xiaohongshu uses the content and traffic on this "isolated island" to become a "fertile ground" for "planting grass".

And "planting grass" is essentially a form of advertising. In my opinion, the "grass planting" notes on Xiaohongshu are between the brand advertisements of the splash screen display type and the performance advertisements of the live streaming sales type. They form the word-of-mouth conversion and sales conversion of a certain brand, a certain product, or a certain thing through a large amount of content promotion.

For example, brands such as Perfect Diary, which have grown up with the help of Xiaohongshu KOC, are attracted by the commercial value of Xiaohongshu. Alibaba invested in Xiaohongshu because it saw its role in attracting traffic.

"Planting grass" is the source of Xiaohongshu's commercial value and the foundation of Xiaohongshu.

2. “Photo Fraud”: Mismatch between Supply and Demand

A content community is actually a platform for communication between people through content. Xiaohongshu can also be seen as a content platform, connecting content providers (bloggers) and content demanders (users). At the same time, users can also publish content and become content providers for Xiaohongshu.

One of the key points of the existence of a multilateral platform is to make all connected parties profitable, to meet the needs of the demand side, to meet the interests of the supply side, and at the same time to match the content provided by the supplier with the needs of the demand side.

The fundamental reason for the emergence of "photo fraud" such as "filter attractions" is the mismatch between supply and demand.

For suppliers, they will produce content based on their own interests. We can roughly divide the content they supply into the following three levels:

First-level supply: Content produced to gain praise and recognition from others and to satisfy one’s own desire to share and vanity;

Secondary supply: In order to attract traffic, build a personal image, or really want to help others, hardcore strategy content that can really help users make decisions is produced;

Level 3 supply: fake guide content produced to attract traffic, shape personal image, and promote business.

For the demand side, we can also simply divide user needs into two levels:

First-level needs: the need to appreciate beautiful things and the need for entertainment. You can enjoy the beautiful scenery and handsome men and beautiful women in the distance without leaving home.

Secondary demand: the need to make decisions before taking actions such as traveling, cooking, and dressing.

If supply and demand match, both parties will naturally be happy. However, "filter attractions" are when users' decision-making needs are matched with the blogger's primary and tertiary supply content. The supply content fails to help users make decisions, and they even make decisions based on the content provided by the blogger, which creates a huge sense of gap and makes users feel defrauded.

It's just like when you see a photo of a handsome man or a beautiful woman on the Internet, you won't worry about whether he (she) has been beautified or retouched. However, if it is an online romance or a blind date, the occurrence of "photo fraud" will also make people feel defrauded.

It is worth mentioning that since Xiaohongshu provides users with public domain traffic and has community attributes, users have different sharing habits, and much of the primary supply content created is not the same as the content shared in private spaces such as Moments.

People might only post nice-looking photos on Moments as a simple record, but what they post on Xiaohongshu are things like how to make this dish, how to get to this place, and whether this thing is useful. Unconsciously, these posts will include some "grass-planting" content.

This is also why some bloggers of filtered tourist attractions took out the original photos to respond, stating that it was just a problem of shooting skills and weather, but some netizens still did not buy it. The content originally published by it is of a "grass-planting" nature and can easily mislead users.

In addition, the tertiary supply creates content for commercial purposes, which is itself intended to mislead users.

The result is that the blogger's motivation for creation is misaligned with the actual content, and the supplied content is mismatched with the needs of the demand side, causing users to feel cheated.

3. “Fake grass” everywhere, a long way to go

It is human nature to check in at tourist attractions and share beautiful photos. Filter attractions have indeed brought a lot of beautiful content to Xiaohongshu and are one of the components of Xiaohongshu's content ecosystem. According to Xiaohongshu notes, there are at least 63 cities in China that have "Little Santorini", 62 cities that have "Little Kyoto", and 80 cities that have "Little Kamakura". Thanks to its rich picture and text notes, Xiaohongshu is even called the Instagram of China.

However, just after the apology incident of the filter scenic spot, the topic of "Xiaohongshu grass-planting notes for 4 yuan per piece" once again became a hot search, and the black industry existing on Xiaohongshu once again attracted people's attention. Professional counterfeiter Wang Hai once commented on the incident involving pornographic notes on Xiaohongshu: A large number of so-called notes on Xiaohongshu are actually false advertisements.

Looking through Xiaohongshu’s administrative penalty records, it can also be found that Xiaohongshu has been subject to multiple administrative penalties for false propaganda, false medical consumption advertisements, etc. The problem of fake notes on Xiaohongshu has been reported many times since March 15, 2019.

The filtered attractions and false advertisements on the platform have caused Xiaohongshu to lose the trust of users and created a crisis of trust. The "planting grass" label of Xiaohongshu itself requires the involvement of user decision-making and even more so the trust of users. Allowing filter attractions and false advertising incidents to ferment will only damage the image of planting grass and consume user trust.

Recently, Xiaohongshu apologized for its filter attractions and planned to launch a "avoid pitfall list". In response to the "4 yuan per note" incident, it expressed its determination to crack down on all kinds of ghostwriting and posting cheating. These measures are aimed at saving its own grass-planting imagination and regaining user trust, but they are only temporary solutions.

The avoidance list can indeed integrate multiple contents, allowing users to look at things from multiple perspectives and providing certain help for user decision-making. Cracking down on all kinds of cheating activities in the gray and black industries such as ghostwriting and posting can also reduce some false notes to a certain extent. However, judging from bloggers’ responses to filter attractions and the frequently reported black industries, Xiaohongshu has not fundamentally solved the problem.

The fundamental problem with filter attractions is a platform problem, where the supply content and demand content are mismatched; and the problem of gray and black industries is essentially a community problem. It fails to provide a suitable monetization path for the majority of KOCs. Whether it is a platform or a community, Xiaohongshu has not yet done it well.

As for platform issues, in order to attract new users and break the circle, Xiaohongshu has introduced many fitness bloggers, knowledge bloggers, celebrities, etc. However, with the influx of new content and new traffic, the supply and demand sides of the platform have become more complicated. In order to efficiently match content with user needs, one is to improve its own algorithm recommendations, and the other is to fine-tune the management of platform content, such as refining hardcore strategy content and improving content review mechanisms.

As far as community issues are concerned, Xiaohongshu needs to provide upward channels and monetization channels for the majority of creators. Although Xiaohongshu has set up a creator center and connected with MCN agencies, it is not friendly to creators. In addition to requiring creators to report to Xiaohongshu before accepting advertisements, they also have to pay extra money to obtain more traffic, and the entry threshold for KOLs is also increasing.

Perhaps, on the one hand, Xiaohongshu needs to provide incentives for the creation of high-quality content to ensure that creators can obtain certain income through good works, and to a certain extent, guarantee the high-quality content ecology of the community; on the other hand, Xiaohongshu also needs to form a win-win cooperative relationship with creators on the platform and provide creators with an upward channel. Nowadays, there are no well-known top KOLs when it comes to Xiaohongshu. They are all stars introduced by Xiaohongshu to attract traffic.

However, whether from the perspective of the platform or the community, Xiaohongshu's monetization method is advertising and e-commerce, and the core of attracting traffic is content, most of which is "grass-planting" content. "Grass-planting" content is inherently close to business and has high commercial value, but it can also easily breed gray and black industries.

In general, the appearance of "photo scams" such as filtered tourist attractions and "fake grass" from gray and black industries on Xiaohongshu shows that Xiaohongshu, as a content platform and content community, still has some problems. Earlier, there were reports that Xiaohongshu was seeking to go public. If Xiaohongshu truly solves its problems, it will definitely get a good valuation.

Author: Blueberry Finance

Source: Blueberry Finance