A few days ago, Xiaohongshu released a "Little Red Heart Awards" list.

When I first saw this news, I remembered Xiaohongshu’s previous “Global Awards” list. On the eve of Double 12 in 2015, Xiaohongshu launched a "Global Awards" list. At that time, there were no threshold restrictions for the selection and all users could participate.

The products on the list can be purchased directly from the Xiaohongshu Mall. From this perspective, this list is more like a collaboration with the Double 12 e-commerce event.

From current observations, the "Little Red Heart Awards" is even bigger than the "Global Awards" of that year, and we haven't seen any linkage between it and this year's "6.6 Anniversary Celebration".

However, when I sent this list to my best friend, her first reaction was: Are there really no advertisements?

So, why did Xiaohongshu launch the "Little Red Heart Award"? What can it bring to Xiaohongshu? How does Xiaohongshu ensure the authenticity of the list?

What is the Little Red Heart Awards List?

Opening the "Little Red Heart Awards" list, you can see that there are currently 3,108 items entering the Little Red Heart rating system, with about 500,000 producers scoring. There are a total of 93 sub-lists, with 656 items on the list.

The "Little Red Heart Awards" are divided into Excellence Awards, Comprehensive Lists and Special Lists.

The comprehensive list recommends some new products with potential, domestic products and affordable products;

The special list is divided into 26 sub-lists from three dimensions: skin care, makeup and personal care;

The “Excellence Awards” list brings together the first place in each special list.

I found that this list is very similar to Japan's Cosme Awards. Is Xiaohongshu going to be the Chinese version of Cosme Awards?

The Cosme Awards is Japan's most authoritative national list and a shopping guide in the minds of countless girls. It is announced in June and December every year and has become a hot spot that all major beauty and fashion accounts must visit.

Even the Cosme Awards has slowly become a brand endorsement. Many brands that have won the Cosme Awards will put this label on their products, especially those that took first place on the list.

Judging from the screening mechanism of the "Little Red Heart Awards", this list is more rigorous and professional than the "Global Awards" of that year, and even stricter than Japan's Cosme Awards. The most obvious manifestation is the selection of products and the screening of producers.

First of all, in terms of product selection, the products evaluated by the “Little Red Heart” were filtered in the early stage, and were screened based on the comprehensive ranking of the mall’s sales volume and the discussion of user notes in the community.

There is no preliminary screening for the products on the Cosme list. The evaluation model is very similar to the user evaluation module of Jumei Youpin. Users who have used the products evaluate them, and then Cosme generates scores based on the user evaluations.

Cosme User Reviews

Jumei Reviews

Therefore, the accuracy of the evaluation data is greatly affected by the number of evaluators. The higher the score of a product with fewer reviews, the more its ranking will be affected. For example, this product, even though it has a high score of 6, has only 33 reviews, which is not convincing at all.

The preliminary screening of products based on big data can, to some extent, solve this problem of Cosme. At least those that can make the list have a certain degree of public recognition.

Every user on the Cosme Awards platform can participate in the evaluation. When registering on the platform, you only need to fill in basic information such as name, occupation, address, skin type, etc.

Image source: Zhihu @NetEase Aesthetics

“Little Red Heart” calls these users who rate and review products producers. The producer must first have actually purchased the product to be reviewed, and must be an active user with certain e-commerce or community activities in the corresponding category.

This approach excludes users who have only made one purchase or are not familiar with the "corresponding category", thus ensuring the professionalism of product reviews.

What can the Little Red Heart Award bring to Xiaohongshu?

Last year, Xiaohongshu was still facing doubts:

Why does Xiaohongshu, loved by 70 million young ladies, have only 700 million in sales in half a year?

This year, Xiaohongshu was exposed again for the existence of a "gray industry of grass-planting notes" behind the App: ghostwriting services start at 50 yuan, and popular packages are provided.

In this dilemma of being attacked from both sides, what can the "Little Red Heart Rewards" bring to Xiaohongshu?

1) Respond to negative feedback and deepen the awareness

The exposure of the “grain-planting notes gray industry” has caused the UGC content that Xiaohongshu is proud of to fall into a credit crisis. If users feel that the authenticity of the grass-planting notes cannot be guaranteed, Xiaohongshu is likely to be abandoned by users.

In this case, it is indeed a wise move for Xiaohongshu to launch the "Little Red Heart Rewards". As long as the authenticity of the list can be guaranteed, its ability to promote content is very strong.

This is because users tend to believe that “products that can stand the test of the masses are good products” and “the masses have sharp eyes.” After seeing many of the products on the list, I suppressed the urge to buy for a long time.

Moreover, the previous grass-planting notes were all separate and independent, and the list is equivalent to thematicizing the high-quality content.

In this way, the needs of many users for "collection collection" can be met, further deepening the attraction.

Just like when people see "data packages" or "tool collections", they tend to develop a "loss aversion" mentality, thinking that they would lose out if they don't collect them, as they might need them in the future.

2) List + Notes, Double Guarantee

We found that "Little Red Heart Awards" placed all the notes about the product below the rating of the product on the list.

In this way, not only can the notes serve as additional explanations to the list, increasing the persuasiveness of the list, but the authenticity of the note content can also be improved through the list as evidence.

How to say it?

As mentioned in the previous article, Xiaohongshu currently relies mainly on the screening and limitation of "Little Red Heart Producers" to ensure the high quality and authenticity of the list.

In fact, in addition to limiting the evaluators, another effective but "laborious" way is to encourage evaluators to give evaluations in addition to giving scores.

Just like Douban’s movie and book lists, users will not only look at the ratings but also the text reviews below, so that the entire set of reviews is more convincing.

Douban Movie Page

Originally, it was a very difficult task to attach evaluation content to a new list, but Xiaohongshu has a huge amount of notes (although it was revealed that some of them were inflated), so in terms of rating + evaluation, it can be considered effortless.

3) Ranking list + mall to enhance conversion

In addition to the note content, some of the product pages on the list also have "purchase channels", and the product purchase page will also have list information. It seems that Xiaohongshu also wants to achieve conversions by connecting the mall and the list in both directions.

Indeed, using rankings for conversions is a very smart strategy.

For example, on Tmall’s Double 11 every year, there will be multiple category rankings, including store rankings and hot-selling brand rankings. The stores and products that can make the list are equivalent to obtaining a “hot-selling registration certificate”, and many people will buy based on the list.

For example, many products on JD.com have a list on the introduction page, which shows something like "Top 10 selected by xxx". After users click on the list and find that the product they want to buy is at the top of the list, they may decide to place an order immediately.

The list is equivalent to reducing the user's decision-making cost, making the user more decisive when making conversions, and even directly arousing the user's purchasing demand.

However, for Xiaohongshu, the conversion ability of the list is still questionable.

Because users’ main impression of Xiaohongshu is still that it is a grass-roots community rather than an e-commerce platform. They use you to make decisions but will not buy from you. In addition, Xiaohongshu Mall has also been facing questions about "rampant counterfeit goods". When it comes to cosmetics and skin care products, users will be more cautious in choosing purchasing channels.

In addition, as a grass-planting community, one of Xiaohongshu’s operational goals should be to allow users to visit the community as much as possible (increase user time). However, with the list, some users may go directly to the list and will not browse through various notes in the community, so the time spent by these users is likely to be shortened.

But at the same time, these users attracted by the list may "can't help" understanding the content on the list one by one, and take a look at the notes under the products on the list, which may increase user time.

We don’t know whether “Little Red Heart Rewards” can help Xiaohongshu solve the problem of user time consumption.

What challenges will Little Red Hearts face?

Although the evaluation mechanism, explanations and instructions of the "Little Red Heart Awards" constantly emphasize the objectivity, authenticity and authority of the list, can this rating system really solve Xiaohongshu's trust crisis?

After becoming an authoritative list, will the "Little Red Heart Awards" take the commercialization path? Even if it is not commercialized, how can we prevent the intervention of third-party platforms or gray industries?

1) Will the list take the commercial path?

Deng Chao, the product manager of "Little Red Heart Awards", talked about the future of Xiaohongshu and said that "Little Red Heart Awards" is based on the real-time ratings of purchasing users. Whether it is the list or the ratings, the collected data will be dynamically updated. It is hoped that this list can help users make consumption decisions.

Even though this is Xiaohongshu's original intention, it cannot be ruled out that it may take the path of commercialization when it is popular on the list.

Why do you say that? The commercialization of lists (or more accurately, "rankings") is a proven path that can generate huge value, even much greater than the user value brought by the lists themselves.

A typical example is Baidu's bidding promotion.

This is a pay-per-performance promotion method that allows companies that pay for advertising to improve their search rankings through keyword search optimization. (Searching for "Operation Research Society", the first ranking is actually an advertisement for a company that bought the keyword "Operation Research Society". exm?)

Baidu search page

There is also a similar Taobao version of Baidu: Taobao Express. Taobao Express provides services for merchants, enabling more accurate promotion of their products. (The products with the words "Hot sale by the shopkeeper" are products that have been optimized using the through train)

Taobao Express display format

In addition to this bidding ranking business model, there is also a business model that sets a certain position on the list as an advertising spot.

For example, the third place on Sina Weibo's hot search list is usually an advertisement with a blue word "Recommended" on it; the 10th place on Zhihu's hot search list will have a brand advertisement euphemistically called a "brand question", and after clicking on a question on Zhihu's hot search list, the third place answer is usually an advertisement.

Zhihu on the left, Sina Weibo on the right

Compared with bidding lists, setting up advertising slots on the lists can better balance the relationship between commercialization and user experience.

Perhaps the level of commercialization of Baidu, Taobao, Sina, and Zhihu is still acceptable, but the business of falsifying rankings and buying and selling awards can be said to be extremely outrageous.

The Internet finance company I worked for before was once invited by the organizer of a summit to purchase honorary awards and trophies, and to announce to the public that these were awards selected by real users. Fortunately, my boss rejected them at the time.

In fact, in the Internet finance industry, this practice of using the media to award "fake awards" is not uncommon. So there is a phenomenon that companies that seem to have a lot of impressive awards run away shortly afterwards.

I hope Xiaohongshu can control itself and not use "Little Red Heart Rewards" for commercialization. But what worries me is that even if Xiaohongshu controls itself from selling advertising space on the list, can it prevent the invasion of third-party platforms and gray industries?

2) Can it avoid intrusion from third parties and gray industries?

On the surface, "Little Red Heart Big Reward" seems to be a good strategy, but for those hungry third-party platforms and teams in the gray industrial chain, it may just be a "new opportunity."

Xiaohongshu is also aware that users may question this issue, and stated in an official tweet that it is impossible and absolutely not allowed for merchants to cheat on scores. Because they use a backend system for voting without human intervention...

Image source: Xiaohongshu

The product manager of Xiaohongshu may have underestimated the "counterfeiting" capabilities of third-party platforms and gray industries. As the saying goes, there are policies from the top and countermeasures from the bottom.

The original intention of Xiaohongshu is similar to the credibility ranking in Taobao, the product information flow in Dianping, and the travel guide in Mafengwo.

Taobao has had options for evaluation rankings and merchant reputation rankings from the beginning, but Taobao's practices of fake orders, cash back for positive reviews, and other uses of false user reviews to disrupt rankings have persisted despite repeated bans.

Dianping relies on the evaluation of each consumer to form a trustworthy product information flow on the platform. However, this seemingly perfect consumption platform cannot escape the suspicion of false orders and was once named by CCTV 315 for false orders.

The same thing happened to Mafengwo. Last year, it was revealed that out of 21 million so-called authentic reviews, 18 million were plagiarized from competitors such as Dianping and Ctrip.

Think about it, the list is a great opportunity to build brand and conversions. Will those businesses that are not on the list just wait patiently for users to rate them?

It turns out not to be. For example, before the iOS11 system, many product developers in the App Store would use methods such as machine brushing and point walls to brush up the rankings. Later, Apple strengthened its control and the environment became basically stable. However, it wasn’t long before a new way of cheating the charts emerged:

For example, by placing the registration link on major order-brushing platforms, users will receive 6 to 10 yuan in revenue after clicking on the registration link and completing real-name authentication. The revenue may be paid in cash or as a novice bonus from the App itself.

What is most terrifying is when the gray industry disguises itself as real users.

Just like after the major upgrade of iOS11 system, manual intervention in the rankings became fierce, and many new order-brushing platforms were born at this time (to avoid suspicion of advertising, I will not give examples). Tightening the review mechanism only increases the cost of fake orders. After all, where there is demand, there is a market.

Summarize

In today’s article, through our observation and analysis of the “Little Red Heart Award”, we found that Xiaohongshu has indeed made a lot of efforts in promoting products.

We boldly guessed the purpose of Xiaohongshu launching the "Little Red Heart Award":

① Respond to previous negative news and ensure your own strength in promoting the product;

② Combine a large number of notes to increase the persuasiveness of the recommendation;

③ Strengthen conversion by connecting with the mall in both directions.

But this strategy also brings some doubts:

① Xiaohongshu Mall faces positioning and credibility issues that may not be solved by rankings;

② The emergence of the list may conflict with Xiaohongshu’s operational goal of “increasing user time”;

③ The most critical question is whether the "Little Red Heart Reward" can resist the attraction of "commercialization" and whether it can truly and effectively prevent third parties and gray industries from entering?

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!

7. It only takes 3 steps to attract traffic and promote Xiaohongshu!

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

9. Complete Xiaohongshu traffic promotion plan!

Author: Routine Editorial Department

Source: Operation Research Society ( U_quan )