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

With the three major players in the industry and the focus on content, at a time when online traffic is becoming increasingly scarce and many startups are struggling, extremely popular e-commerce unicorns such as Pinduoduo and Xiaohongshu have emerged in the market in just a few years. Among them, Xiaohongshu has attracted countless traffic to "cheer" for it by virtue of its continuous efforts in UGC content, and has been ranked first in the free ranking of APP stop many times.

According to official reports, more than 200 million registered users are using Xiaohongshu.

As Xiaohongshu grows in size, my interest in it grows. This article will take a look at Xiaohongshu’s growth path from 0 to 100-200 million users.

Xiaohongshu was founded in 2013 and initially provided users with free, downloadable, comprehensive shopping guides for various overseas destinations. The users attracted are mainly female domestic users who have overseas shopping needs. Due to the high quality of their strategies, a group of precise seed users have been converted.

In 2014, the company completed a million-yuan Series A financing and a tens-million-dollar Series B financing. In the same year, the shopping function was officially launched. The product no longer just provides the most comprehensive shopping guides, but gradually transformed into direct ordering and purchasing according to the guides, upgrading from community to e-commerce and forming a closed business loop.

In 2015, with zero advertising, Xiaohongshu Welfare Club achieved sales of over 200 million in half a year; in June of the same year, Xiaohongshu APP ranked 4th in the Apple App Store's overall list and 2nd in the lifestyle list, with 15 million users.

In 2016, Xiaohongshu began to cooperate with Hu Ge and launched a series of videos. At the same time, we began to expand third-party platforms and brand merchants, and the skus of all product categories grew rapidly.

In 2017, Xiaohongshu planned a large number of e-commerce activities, including a large-scale promotion on Black Friday, which included offline promotion and online subsidies. After the event, Xiaohongshu once again ranked first in the shopping category downloads of Apple App Store. The number of Xiaohongshu users exceeded 70 million. In the same year, celebrities were invited to join, including well-known first-line stars such as Lin Yun and Fan Bingbing.

In 2018, Xiaohongshu sponsored "Idol Producer" and "Produce 101" at the brand level. Not only did it have voice-overs, interludes, and logos in the programs, it also invited trainees to post notes on Xiaohongshu and opened a voting channel in the app, attracting a large number of targeted new users.

From its establishment in 2013 to 2019, in just a few years, the entire product has undergone a major transformation. It has gradually changed from focusing on foreign strategies and the concept of finding good things abroad to "all small beautiful things are worth marking." This slogan positioning also changed the nature and destiny of Xiaohongshu products.

Xiaohongshu’s early growth model: UGC drives closed loop

The founder of Xiaohongshu defined Xiaohongshu as a guidebook/strategy for overseas travel shopping.

• The main user groups at this stage are female users who are interested in overseas travel and shopping.
• Core user needs at this stage: what is worth buying and where to buy it.
• Xiaohongshu’s business needs at this stage: attract shopping experts to share their shopping notes and achieve a cold start for the product.

Xiaohongshu APP started as an overseas shopping guide. After one year, it completed the cold start of users and tried to build an overseas shopping closed loop within the product and launched the "Welfare Club". The picture below is from the early version of Xiaohongshu.

In the 2013 version iteration, the main logic revolved around: social interaction, encouraging note sharing, and recommending good things. In subsequent versions, functions such as @ reminders, ## topics, and linking Sina Weibo friends were continuously added. As a UGC community, it itself has social attributes, and common communication reminders are used to further stimulate users' social and sharing behaviors .

In order to encourage users to share more, the product has made many improvements around the beautification of pictures, such as adding filters, stickers, homemade sweet potato emoticons, and improving clarity.

After the social nature of the product was realized, the number of Xiaohongshu users began to surge. Sharing generated by simple shopping could no longer meet the purchasing needs of many users, so Xiaohongshu launched the "Welfare Club" section and began to try to build an e-commerce system to complete the internal closed loop of the product. This business behavior is an important measure to change Xiaohongshu's overall model and growth hacking in the future. In the same year, Xiaohongshu completed a million-dollar A round and tens of millions of dollars in B round financing.

Products that started with UGC have obvious advantages, but disadvantages soon became apparent. The early Xiaohongshu team mainly relied on maintaining real sharing in the community and driving natural user growth through word of mouth from old users. However, the content was also mixed with various unhealthy factors. In order to avoid users from having the wrong "opinion value" about the platform, Xiaohongshu's operation team increased the traffic of real sharing notes through product recommendations, and gradually eliminated soft articles, marketing accounts, etc. This mode of operation also made sufficient preparations for the later operational practices of Xiaohongshu.

Growth hacking in the high-speed era: operation + brand growth

As more and more players engage in overseas shopping, competition becomes more intense, traffic becomes more expensive, and the threshold of the bonus period gradually narrows. Xiaohongshu also needs to seize traffic more quickly and gain user reputation.

• The main user groups at this stage: new generation girls born in the 1990s and 1995s.
• Product slogan for this stage: Find good things abroad
• Xiaohongshu's business needs at this stage: expand product SUV, open platform, increase more user traffic, and maximize user value
• Growth Hacking: Brand Star Events

1. The official organization #GlobalAwards# event.

At the end of 2014, Xiaohongshu held a voting activity for "2014 Xiaohongshu Global Awards" on both WeChat and the APP. In less than 20 days, 1.87 million people participated in the voting, thus forming the Xiaohongshu list. Due to the credibility of the platform, the results of the "2014 Xiaohongshu Global Awards" were used by major shopping malls and manufacturers to endorse their brands.

2. 66th Anniversary Celebration in 2015

On June 4, 2015, the official launched the "Young and Handsome Men Delivering Express" campaign to warm up for the anniversary celebration. By recruiting more than a dozen foreign male models, they delivered products to real purchasing users in the community, and used special packaging boxes for the event, which was very eye-catching and full of topics. During the event, Xiaohongshu added nearly 3 million new users and jumped to fourth place in the overall iOS free ranking.

Driven by this round of activities, Xiaohongshu's sales on its anniversary day on June 6 were equivalent to the sales for the entire month of May. Its sales in the first five months had reached more than 200 million yuan. It is roughly estimated that Xiaohongshu's sales on its anniversary day reached about 50 million yuan.

3. Hu Ge and Xiaohongshu in 2016

In April 2016, Xiaohongshu was about to celebrate its third anniversary, and a series of activities titled "Three Days and Three Nights with Hu Ge and Xiaohongshu" were planned. Xiaohongshu has created a very real and clear usage scenario by making Hu Ge an "ordinary user" who follows Xiaohongshu's notes to find good things, giving the user a strong sense of immersion.

Hu Ge is the dream man in the hearts of many girls, and the cooperation between Xiaohongshu and Hu Ge this time undoubtedly hits the soft spot of Xiaohongshu's female users. This multi-faceted cooperation also has a blowout effect on attracting and cooperating with Xiaohongshu's users.

In addition, a special column for Hu Ge was set up on the official WeChat account of Xiaohongshu, which included videos of the event, Hu Ge’s voice replies, and photos. The entire event was more vivid and humane, maximizing the celebrity’s influence and continuing the impact.

Xiaohongshu does not simply use a set of print ads or use celebrities to shoot rigid video ads. The biggest difference is that based on the tone of the product and the portrait of the audience, it plans the audience's daily stories to restore real life, so that everyone can feel it personally.

4. Co-sponsorship of "Idol Producer" and "Produce 101"

On January 19, 2018, "Idol Producer", China's first idol competition and development reality show co-sponsored by Xiaohongshu, premiered on the entire network. With the hot launch of the show, as a co-title sponsor, Xiaohongshu, in addition to the usual inserts, logos, oral announcements, and patches in the program, also invited idol trainees to post updates on Xiaohongshu, and at the same time, opened an official voting channel for fans to cheer for their favorite trainees.

This marketing strategy of collaborating with program organizers to spread the marketing effect to the periphery of the program and deeply linking it with its own products, although it cannot be considered innovative, will surely appear frequently in many subsequent programs.

On April 21, 2018, "Produce 101", China's first girl group youth growth program co-sponsored by Xiaohongshu, premiered on the entire network. After the training of "Idol Producer", the Xiaohongshu team has become more and more proficient in cooperating in such variety shows. They also invited the girls of Produce 101 to join the Xiaohongshu community and set up an official pick list.

Summary: As the saying goes, "It's good to be rich." We have previously analyzed the growth efforts of many products, and brands have always been a good growth channel. In terms of branding, Xiaohongshu has adopted the endorsement of Hu Ge, a change in its own positioning, offline advertising + online subsidies, and Black Friday activities, all of which have contributed to the continuous growth of the brand.

From the initial naming, cooperation, to collaboration, Xiaohongshu has always been very accurate in selecting celebrity partners, and these partners have also formed a way for users to stay in the product and not be lost. Xiaohongshu is an invisible knife in terms of brand growth, and it is Xiaohongshu's operating system that has been sharpening this knife.

Growth Hacker: Xiaohongshu’s Operating System

1. UGC content drives growth

From the above content, we know that 70% of Xiaohongshu users are women, and users aged 19-35 account for 80%, and those born after 1990 are the main force of the entire product system. Similarly, users in this category prefer operations that are challenging, fresh, and even interesting.

Xiaohongshu's user ecology is generally divided into two categories:

• The first category is avant-garde buyers who share their shopping experience and usage experience in the community after shopping. This type of people has strong consumption power and is willing to share. They are also the core mainstream driving force of Xiaohongshu's UGC content production;
• The other category is those who have a certain consumption capacity but face difficulties in shopping and do not know how to make choices such as purchasing and traveling.

Summary: In the early stages, UGC is often driven by the official, thus producing content passively, while Xiaohongshu's UGC is more like the remaining user reviews of Taobao. UGC is the king of content growth. Such climax-driven content comes from the endorsement of Xiaohongshu’s social value. The number of likes and followers of Xiaohongshu’s creative content is no longer centered around the product, but has formed an expert effect that spans the chain.

The star effect, value effect, and trend of the times have become the traffic effect of Xiaohongshu at this stage. Those who want to become famous and gain knowledge are constantly colliding here.

2. Operational growth strategy

Xiaohongshu’s operational growth system is the “most rogue and most cultured” operational system I have ever seen. Xiaohongshu's user registration mechanism, user sharing mechanism, user operation head group and data algorithm system are all mature killer features.

Growth Hacking: User Registration Mechanism

Xiaohongshu’s user registration system feels a bit overbearing. Users must register if they want to use the product, and this process is a great test of the user’s patience and threshold. I believe that many companies would not dare to try this approach so boldly. So, why is Xiaohongshu going against the trend so much?

We analyzed the entire registration process of Xiaohongshu. When you first register on Xiaohongshu, you are prompted to select categories, that is, to choose topics that interest you. Only after you check the interests you want to learn about and register, can the algorithm recommend the content you want to see. Only in this way can we retain users to the greatest extent.

Summary: You don’t have to register to browse, and being able to see the selected content is the key to retaining you. This is also the most user-friendly filtering and also the most confidence in the product.

Growth Hacker: Algorithms for Everyone

After we register and select our areas of interest, the content displayed by Xiaohongshu for the first time can retain more than 95% of users. First of all, the first content display is all carefully selected by Xiaohongshu, and on average every piece of content displayed is a hit, which happens to be the type of hit that suits most types of users.

Tags are a highlight of Xiaohongshu. By managing tags, it structures the content for easy searching. The purchase page categorizes products for easy viewing. The graphic editor has relatively complete functions and can assist users in producing higher-quality graphic notes. The community is managed in a standardized manner to avoid the influx of advertisements.

When we pull down the page to refresh, your last browsing record has been completely updated, and the latest displayed page is determined by your clicks, page content and time on the page. Once again, the recommended content will be what you are most interested in. As the recommendation algorithm becomes more mature, it also understands users better. I have fallen into the trap of Xiaohongshu's algorithm more than once. I once predicted that Xiaohongshu might be the one to defeat Douyin.

Summary: The deeper the user browses, the more similar content will be detected and recommended, and this algorithm is more similar to Taobao and even Toutiao. In Xiaohongshu, click on the recommendation/search content, and it will make recommendations of similar value based on the search content. After clicking on the content again, the content below will be recommended in more depth. Once you return to the homepage, the content displayed on the homepage will change according to your interests.

Growth Hacker: Top Account Operation System

The operation of Xiaohongshu's official account is also a very important measure. Various sweet potatoes are the key to supporting the entire head operation. These head accounts are vertical and active in various interest fields, and each account has millions of fans. These accounts will select high-quality content from tens of millions of pieces of content and publish them to promote within the account. This method can bring strong traffic and attention to the creators. The official calls this kind of luck "flipping".

This way of top accounts constantly collecting and "flipping cards" for promotion is a very virtuous cycle that promotes the overall content creation ecosystem. It is also a constant driving force for improving content quality and those who want to become Internet celebrities.

Summary: The power of the top account cannot be ignored, and its operation method is simple and crude. Suppose I work hard to share tips on Xiaohong, and suddenly a top account pushes me to become popular. With the instant huge user traffic, I may instantly become the internet celebrity of my dreams. This kind of uncertainty is enough to motivate everyone to continuously produce high-quality content to ensure that they can get the lucky flip and see the dawn of hope, which is the eternal driving force.

Growth Hacking: Sharing Mechanisms

Among many growth-oriented products, WeChat Reading is one of the products I have seen that has an excellent sharing function. Today's Xiaohongshu is also constantly optimizing the sharing experience. The importance attached to sharing is enough to show the importance attached to product growth. Xiaohongshu has adopted several methods for online distribution, and among them, sharing mini programs is one of the fastest ways to acquire users.

Each type of sharing is optimized in a delicate manner and upgraded enough to improve the product experience. Once the user enters the designated content through the shared link, he or she will be returned to the algorithm's recommendation page again, which is enough to create a stereotype of the user. This has laid a very good foundation for Xiaohongshu's user growth and influencer effect.

Summary: While satisfying the user experience and optimization of the product, we must not give up the sharing function. Sharing is the source of growth. WeChat Reading also has many styles of sharing. However, spontaneous sharing by users satisfies the experience that users need at a certain moment, while mandatory sharing is constantly undermining the user experience of the product. The sharing method of Xiaohongshu and mini programs is not only a good way to share, but also an invisible way of growth, allowing users to browse content beyond sharing in a wider range.

Everything starts with the users, and the users will definitely pay for you.

Growth Hacking: The Star Effect

Xiaohongshu has a large number of famous celebrities, whether it is Fan Bingbing or Dilraba Dilmurat. The entry of these celebrities will attract a large number of followers, who may be old fans or just fans who come to join in the fun. As long as they come in, Xiaohongshu can use algorithms to consume them.

In addition, in my opinion, many creators who contribute content on Xiaohongshu have become experts, or aim to become experts. The internet celebrities on Xiaohongshu focus on bringing products and endorsing products. Once you have a large number of fans, numerous advertisers will come to you. You can monetize your fans and use your voice to drive consumption growth, which can continuously enhance your sense of honor and status.

Looking back at the popular content in Xiaohongshu, they are definitely quite standardized, and the labels are used rigorously and professionally. The consideration of the copywriting of the shared content shows that they are quite professional, or even relatively professional individuals or organizations.

Summary: Xiaohongshu has become an internet celebrity platform, and building such a platform is to give users real social value. In this era of traffic dominance, once you become popular on any platform, traffic will always revolve around you. Douyin has brought up too many grassroots players, and Xiaohongshu is doing the same thing. With social value, growth is no longer a difficult task. A typical example is the incident some time ago where a homeless garbage collector was made into an Internet celebrity. Focusing on value rather than news attributes is the trend of future products.

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!

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Author: Post-95s Talking About Technology

Author: Post-95s Talking About Technology