Xiaohongshu Promotion: After cleaning up KOLs, can we still “plant grass” well?

On May 10, Xiaohongshu announced the "Brand Partner Platform Upgrade Instructions", which significantly raised the entry threshold for official brand partners. The original 20,000-plus brand partners (KOLs) are now reduced to more than 5,000, and MCN agencies that meet the KOL standards need to be signed and certified, otherwise they will not be able to accept orders.

Regarding the Xiaohongshu incident, the editor has compiled some background and professional opinions for everyone to discuss and interpret with you.

01. Xiaohongshu’s powerful “spillover effect”

1. What is Xiaohongshu’s target user profile?

According to the data provided by iResearch App Index, we can see that the main users of Xiaohongshu are young girls born in the 1990s who come from first- and second-tier developed cities and love beauty and pursue a refined life.

What are the characteristics of these people? They like shopping, food, traveling and taking photos. They like to "recommend things" and "plant grass". They will check other people's experiences before shopping or traveling, and share their own experiences after shopping or traveling.

2. Comparison of the product model platform mechanism of "Xiaohongshu" with other platforms

Traditional online shopping process: users generate consumption needs and go to e-commerce platforms to search for target products. Users have more decision-making and rational factors, just like Taobao, which is positioned for sellers, and Pinduoduo, which is positioned for buyers. Xiaohongshu, as a social + e-commerce platform, perfectly combines the two. It uses social relationships as the entry point and guides users to consume (making decisions based on emotion) by sharing high-quality content. This not only increases the transaction rate, but also the repurchase rate and user trust, which is an extraordinary e-commerce shopping experience.

From Xiaohongshu analysis report

Through the analysis report, we can conclude that Xiaohongshu adopts a drawer-style navigation, placing attention, discovery, and purchase at the same level of view. It can be seen that the core function of Xiaohongshu is content community + shopping. The UGC community guides shopping and produces high-quality content resources to promote users' emotional thinking and induce purchasing behavior. The main task is to browse notes - discover products of interest - purchase - share experiences - other users browse notes. It is a closed-loop process with strong sustainability.

3. Xiaohongshu’s notes have a spillover effect

I have seen some products before, but they really cannot hit the user's pain points. No matter how high the actual value of the product is, no matter how brainwashing the copywriting and packaging are, they cannot make you "addicted" to the product.

Facts have proved that the user growth of Xiaohongshu is entirely driven by platform users "writing notes" and sharing shopping experiences, product usage experiences and other UGC content. If the traffic on social and information platforms is composed of ordinary users with "no motivation to consume", then Xiaohongshu is a product shopping guide based on "word-of-mouth publicity".

On the one hand, the circle of friends cannot be omnipotent, and the knowledge boundaries of semi-acquaintances are wider than those of acquaintances. Xiaohongshu previously concealed its commercial nature (so that users would not feel repulsed) and appeared only as a sharing community. After people's love for Xiaohongshu gradually deepened, they naturally came to trust it. The user becomes proactive.

Just as netizens said, reading Xiaohongshu has become a part of life. "Xiaohongshu is my best circle of friends, from offline to online, and also extends to the whole world. If you want to know what's new in the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Europe, you'd better go and have a look. Sometimes I buy love and want to share it, but my boyfriend won't understand."

02. Brand owners’ choice of KOLs on Xiaohongshu

1. Several factors that should be paid attention to when promoting Xiaohongshu

(1) Selection of KOLs

When choosing a KOL, we should not only look at the number of fans, but also consider his content and tone (appearance and category), because these tones are set by the KOL when he first registers his account. For example, for merchants that sell cosmetics, we need to choose KOLs who specialize in facial masks and skin care. This is in line with Xiaohongshu’s recommendation mechanism. Xiaohongshu will directly recommend such articles to users who are interested in such topics. In terms of content, we need influencers to conduct marketing based on the characteristics of the user groups on Xiaohongshu. In addition to providing sales pitches for customer pain points, we also need to have a portrait of the customer group in order to achieve the goal of precise operations.

(2) Focus on originality

Xiaohongshu attaches great importance to the originality of its content. On the one hand, original content has unique freshness and scarcity, and its rich pictures and texts can also gain the recommendation power of the platform. On the other hand, it helps advertisers quickly and accurately match appropriate promotional resources, solve the precise matching of brands and target groups, and find the right market.

(3) Don’t underestimate the power of amateurs

In addition to top KOLs, niche amateur KOLs are also worthy of brand attention because they have four major attributes.

1) From various vertical fields

The influence of these micro KOLs is generally based on their own natural abilities such as art, talent, knowledge, language, etc. They may come from various vertical fields, including ordinary workers, white-collar workers, painters, dancers, game players, etc.

2) Get closer to fans

They are closer to users. This group of people is not only the consumer group, but also the largest in number.

3) It can drive fans’ interaction

It has strong user stickiness, high user retention and long retention time.

4) Appears more realistic

In fact, this function is to take up place. When users search for related brand words, relevant introductions will appear, giving users a sense of trust. KOLs in particular from niche groups will become the focus of major brand marketing. As long as they find the right Internet celebrity, they will be able to find the corresponding customer base and better market to the target group.

2. Brand owner’s promotion strategy

"Step 1: Building the Xiaohongshu model"

Image source: Chengwaiquan

Establish the Xiaohongshu promotion model, celebrity recommendation + kol diffusion, and create popular celebrity products on the entire network. Although users have already gained some knowledge of the brand after being introduced to it on Xiaohongshu, the brand can now stimulate fans’ desire to buy by offering certain benefits or trial activities, establish emotional connections with users, and thus strengthen users’ loyalty to the brand.

Therefore, KOL+product is the carrier of the brand. Users gain a sense of "identity" and "sense of involvement" through their long-term attention and investment in KOLs, thereby creating a resonance of value and emotion. This sense of identity makes users willing to pay. The celebrity KOL recommendation strategy can not only help brands gain massive exposure, efficient traffic and good reputation, but also achieve real sales conversion.

"Step 2: Internet celebrity collaboration, fission growth"

Image source: Chengwaiquan

The official operation first relies on big data and peer competitors to explore and create hot topics, invite high-quality answerers to answer online, and trigger users to ask questions and watch discussions. Then, we promote the product through various internet celebrities, attracting various KOLs to create a specific UGC atmosphere. It also achieved the purpose of swiping the screen.

03

Xiaohongshu platform adjustment, how should merchants respond

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 May 10, Xiaohongshu turned its guns on the "chaotic" KOLs on the platform, and the long-simmering conflict broke out. This Xiaohongshu upgrade can be summarized in the following two points:

1. The entry threshold for brand partners has been raised. Bloggers with less than 5,000 followers and whose average exposure of their notes in the past month is less than 10,000 will be disqualified as brand partners and will not be able to accept advertising on the platform. (The previous requirements were more than 1,000 fans and an average of more than 1,000 exposures in the notes in the past month)

2. The penalties for taking orders privately have been increased, which can be summarized as “simple and crude” point deductions and termination of contracts. The initial score for a brand partner is 12 points. If you take orders privately, 12 points will be directly deducted and the contract will be terminated. You will not be able to become a brand partner again within one year.

Quotes provided by a platform

Although the purpose of Xiaohongshu's move this time is very clear, "to save the platform's trust crisis and promote the commercialization process of Xiaohongshu." But the impact is also huge. On the one hand, some of the fake orders and fans have become more rampant, and the surviving KOLs are also raising prices. At the same time, the price of promotion has doubled. Brand owners are suffering from this double squeeze.

On the other hand, due to the strictness of the rules, a one-size-fits-all dilemma arises. Achieving a delicate balance between content ecosystem building and commercialization has become a problem that plagues Xiaohongshu's management team.

At present, Xiaohongshu’s standards for determining “content authenticity” are not clear enough. For example, how to define illegal activities and how to define illegal advertisements, etc. If users want to share brand products they use, they may be rejected as advertisements.

After May 10, Xiaohongshu bloggers lost nearly three quarters of their

Lin Lin (pseudonym), a senior user of Xiaohongshu, said: "Sometimes, I can't post my own food exploration notes on Xiaohongshu, and they remind me that it is an advertisement violation, but I am just an ordinary user sharing, not an advertisement. If Xiaohongshu continues like this, all the pages you open will be soft-text advertisements, and the recommendations shared by real amateurs will be judged as commercial advertisements by the system. Who will read it?"

However, in the view of founder Qu Fang, Xiaohongshu's commercialization process has just begun. The Xiaohongshu platform has huge commercial potential that has not yet been tapped. Now that the number of Xiaohongshu users has reached a certain level, it can be used for advertising transactions and even to try more innovative models.

From the actual situation, the development of Xiaohongshu's self-operated e-commerce, one of its commercialization paths, has not been smooth. Xiaohongshu, which started out as a community content company, does not have an innate e-commerce gene. So like countless live streaming platforms and even photo editing tools that want to do e-commerce, it does not have advantages in supply chain, logistics, warehousing, product quality assurance, and other aspects. After the platform upgrade, enterprises should do a better job of dividing users into groups and scenarios, which can be summarized as follows:

1. Data insights: gain insights into multi-dimensional data reports through the brand account background, enhance content marketing, identify user pain points, and improve team efficiency. A mature brand operation team should have continuously updated content output, be familiar with platform rules and have practical experience to ensure efficient and high-quality input and output. Although the competition in Xiaohongshu's ecological environment is extremely fierce, returning to the essence of e-commerce, whoever can truly achieve the ultimate in the pursuit of efficiency will be able to go further and fly higher.

2. Build brand mindset, facilitate transactions, configure Xiaohongshu brand flagship store, and achieve efficient traffic conversion. What platform-based e-commerce companies need to pay most attention to and do most is attractiveness and stickiness, and in the process, build user trust in the platform, and use a variety of operational tools to promote more fan interaction. Independent brand e-commerce websites interweave sellers, platforms, products, and brands in an inseparable way. You must do your best in the entire timeline from user search to final use of the product, and brand premium lies in it.

3. We must focus on selecting excellent KOLs for cooperation and grasp the core strength. This is an era of talent scarcity. If there are enough talents, most other difficulties can be solved. However, there were two problems with this upgrade: one was that the threshold for KOLs was raised, and the other was that the mechanism was unclear. This may make it difficult for a large number of tail KOLs to cooperate. Therefore, it is necessary to create content that the platform will not identify as advertisements but at the same time meets the needs of merchants.

The atmosphere of Xiaohongshu not only comes from the professional analysis of the relatively top KOLs, but also from the support of the middle level and the practical experience of a large number of amateurs at the bottom. Only when the three types of people form a pyramid in proper proportions can a complete ecosystem be formed, allowing the audience to pay more convincingly. Therefore, in order to "cast a wide net to catch more fish", brand owners can increase their "waist strength" by writing down product information, advantages and disadvantages, usage experience and personal preferences in notes, allowing users to find some seemingly objective and fair practices to guide their consumption.

4. The traffic mechanism is not transparent, which guarantees the effectiveness of KOL’s delivery

1) Before the launch, we provide advertisers with a suitable KOL pre-selection list from three dimensions: source selection, fan overlap measurement, and water removal;

2) During the campaign, KOL data performance is updated and monitored in real time, and the KOL list is adjusted in a timely manner. In addition to relying on a professional team of agents, brands also pay more attention to the KOL trends on various platforms, collect KOL information and cooperation-related situations of each cooperation, and establish an internal information database of the company.

3) After the launch, weed out inappropriate KOLs and monitor the external links, judging by jumps, applications, counters, purchases and other dimensions. For platforms that cannot have external links, in addition to looking at basic data, we will also monitor the KOL’s comment keyword ratio, positive and negative comment ratio and other dimensions for evaluation. Help brand owners create exclusive and efficient KOL combinations.

In general, this year is the first year of Xiaohongshu's commercial promotion. There may be various attempts, which will have certain impacts and pains in the short term, but in the long run, Xiaohongshu will definitely produce more and more high-quality KOLs, and its grass-planting atmosphere will become more benign. In addition, the marketing value of Xiaohongshu depends on what kind of conversion and goals the brand hopes to achieve through Xiaohongshu.

There is no doubt that Xiaohongshu will remain one of the most attractive platforms for promoting products in the future.

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Author: Reliable

Source: Reliable