Xiaohongshu Operation: How to operate the content community on Xiaohongshu?

For many community products, they will encounter such troubles in the middle and late stages of development: due to the increase in users, the content becomes watered down, and the uneven levels of users lead to the loss of high-quality users, which destroys the original good community atmosphere.

Xiaohongshu, as a product with community attributes, has been around for 6 years since its launch in 2013. The boundaries of the community content have also expanded from sharing overseas shopping content such as beauty and skin care to sharing consumer experiences and lifestyles in various categories such as food, travel, clothing, and digital products.

(New slogan)

In the past, the content was mainly focused on women, but now it has gradually begun to add tabs with male themes. Xiaohongshu is constantly trying to expand the boundaries of content. The community atmosphere has not been destroyed, and the community tone has not been lowered. On the contrary, the rich content input has continuously empowered the platform and brought new vitality to the platform.

In the past, I have had some experience in community operations. I once thought that "hodgepodge" content would destroy the community ecology, lower the community's tone, and slowly drain away community users. Now the case of Xiaohongshu has made me rethink some of my past understandings of community operations. Through a brief summary of the community content of Xiaohongshu, I have some new thoughts, which I would like to share with you here.

In the past, when we were building communities, we often encountered the following difficulties or problems:

1. Seed user acquisition

2. Create a community atmosphere

3. Definition of community content boundaries

4. PGC drives UGC content

…

When we build a community platform, there are relatively few creators, and in order to create a high-end community atmosphere, we will look for users who can produce high-quality works. These users are at the top of the pyramid and are very small in size, so usually this small group of creators will be "exploited" by multiple platforms for their creativity.

However, although these top users play a role as experts, KOLs and other benchmarks in the community, due to the difficulty in creating content, PGC's ability to educate and train ordinary UGC is limited, and the conversion effect from the top to the bottom of the tower is minimal.

(This is a common pyramid diagram. The models are almost the same. Here we extract the more popular model on the Internet)

Everyone knows that the control and screening of community content is very important, but in the operation process, you will find that the supply of high-quality content is really limited. If you want to provide enough content for ordinary users to browse, the control of quality will have to be reduced.

These were scenarios that we often encountered in the past, but the current situation is that there are more and more content creation platforms. From e-commerce shopping guides to technology sharing, there is no shortage of creators of various contents. There are many channels to tap into seed users. For any new platform, the difficulty and time cost of acquiring seed users have been greatly reduced.

With sufficient funds, we can even quickly achieve mass production of early community content and output of high-quality content through cooperation with MCN agencies and brokerage companies. In the red ocean of content communities, new challenges arise:

1. How to lower the threshold for content creation and expand the number of users who share and create content

2. How to create a unique community atmosphere and differentiate it from other communities

3. How to create hot topics and activities to trigger secondary creation and empower the community

4. With the increasing number of creators, how to distribute traffic without reducing the enthusiasm of creators

5. With the increasing amount of content, how can we reduce the labor cost of screening and controlling content?

…

We can also see that the content community is slowly undergoing these changes over the years:

1. In the past, the classification of UGC platforms focused on circles and sections, and the boundaries were relatively closed (Douban’s groups and forum sections);
2. Now the boundaries of following, recommending, and nearby content are blurred;
3. UGC users’ diverse label identities (food, skin care);
4. Changes in user browsing habits Information flow-style strolling is gradually in line with the psychological characteristics of women's aimless shopping

The following mainly looks at the community operation characteristics of Xiaohongshu from three aspects: publishing tools = content rules; content operation topic guidance; details determine the experience.

1. Templated publishing tools: standardized guidance for content production

Compared with other e-commerce content communities, Xiaohongshu's product design in publishing tools has, to a large extent, provided strong guidance for content production. It can be said that the publishing tools are equivalent to the tone rules of the content.

The ease of use of the publishing editor has greatly lowered the threshold for creation. Everyone can quickly edit a sharing note without having to use professional equipment and professional tools to create it.

For content publishing and editing, users can operate four main types of tools: filters, basic photo editing, labels, and stickers. There are not too many functions added, and creation can be completed in just a few steps. The functional structure is simple but very efficient.

The label attributes of Xiaohongshu pictures are probably the most distinctive . Users have also formed a strong community awareness of this. Relevant label descriptions are added to the pictures, forming the unique style of Xiaohongshu. It is very friendly to novice creators by browsing the content of other creators on the platform and imitating their creative style.

Stickers have strong IP attributes. Although stickers are used as a tool, a lot of thought has been put into their operation selection, and the variety selection is also very restrained: national flags, Xiaohongshu mascots, and emojis .

Among them, stickers with national flag features combined with current World Cup hot spots and Xiaohongshu's image stickers are conducive to building an IP brand. Not blindly incorporating too many rich sticker elements is equivalent to filtering out certain content noise in the content publishing process.

The community can basically be viewed as a picture-based community in terms of display. Therefore, if the numerous pictures are not screened and processed properly, it is easy to cause a poor user experience visually. The selection and quantity restrictions of filter styles in the publishing tool can effectively control the visual image of the picture style.

In addition, the names of the filters are all based on city geography: Chiang Mai, Kamakura, Morocco, etc. This operational detail is worth learning. On the one hand, the naming of overseas city geography is in line with the characteristics of Xiaohongshu's overseas shopping. On the other hand, the selection of these cities all has obvious color characteristics, and users have a strong sense of recognition.

Xiaohongshu's publishing tool design effectively lowers the threshold for UGC creation from the source of content creation. The operation of labels, stickers and filter materials is equivalent to formulating standards or templates for content creation, encouraging many non-professional users to create high-quality experience sharing notes.

2. Content categories and topic guidance

There are three major categories in the first-level classification: follow, discover, and nearby . It combines the dimensions of people, content, and geographic location, with content as the main focus and people and geography as the supplement, to build a community "field".

Under the secondary classification of "Discovery", if we simply compare Xiaohongshu with Koala in terms of content labels, first of all, the copywriting characteristics. Xiaohongshu's TAB copywriting is relatively conventional, depending on the specific category nouns, while Koala's copywriting has a layer of packaging.

Secondly, the content of Xiaohongshu's labels is more vertical, more segmented, and more targeted. Take skin care and cosmetics as examples. These two categories are quite large, and sharing experiences in makeup and skin care belong to different fields at the user level. For example, Koala integrates books, movies, and audio-visuals, while Xiaohongshu splits them up.

On the one hand, the classification of tags reflects the direction of content operation. On the other hand, it will be split and integrated due to the volume of content, and will be formulated in combination with the actual situation of community content. Taking books, movies and music as an example, if there is little relevant content in the entire community and it is split, then the user experience will decline when browsing by tab.

Generally speaking, the operations of community content in different categories will also be very different, because there are differences from planting grass to influencing users' purchasing decisions. For example, food may be about new discoveries, and for fashion bags, people pay more attention to the prices of popular items, etc. For example, since celebrities have a unique star effect, the operation can be processed by splitting the tabs separately, or integrating the content produced by celebrities into specific categories.

Therefore, in the operation of content classification, it is necessary to grasp the pain points of users under different categories. Community operators must have a deep understanding of the characteristics of categories or scenarios in guiding and controlling content, and develop a distinctive content form in combination with products .

Regarding topic guidance, I personally like the search box on the homepage of Xiaohongshu that guides the entry for setting topics and encourages users to discover new content. For sales reasons, as an important source of traffic, search box operations in other e-commerce scenarios usually point to product shopping guides or promotions. The search copy of Xiaohongshu Mall and the homepage content search guide copy are separate.

Many traditional communities usually guide topics by pinning them to the top, exposing them with banners, and packaging them into activities. This guidance method using a search box is a bit like the hot topics on Weibo.

I captured some of their recent topic settings, which are also very interesting: for example, in the topic of Amway’s mini-game, almost all the games uploaded by community users are mini-games played by female prostitutes, and they are relatively niche or foreign games, which is very consistent with the community tone of Xiaohongshu.

The new fat house happy water, contrary to the greasy image of cola and pizza, opens up new ideas. The new homemade lemon soda happy water not only encourages a healthy lifestyle, but also combines with hot topics without any negative emotions. There is also sticker operation of the publishing tool combined with the World Cup hot spots, and this wave of operations has guided users to output new content.

The topic setting and content classification of community content require careful consideration and deliberation.

3. Details determine the experience

Content community products: pictures, texts, and videos are the core of the platform. The more detailed the packaging and operation of the content, the more effort will be put into polishing the tone and atmosphere.

(1) The content is packaged in the form of notes and albums, which meets the psychological needs of female users in pursuit of literature and art and their desire to record their daily lives.

(2) The interactive design of content sharing generates a cover or long picture structure, which provides a comfortable visual experience and satisfies the psychological needs of female users to share and pursue beauty.

(3) Use special copy in the comment box to create a friendly feeling in the communication.

(For example, "It's okay to be reserved and like, it's hard to find a soulmate to chat with", "Say something so that he or she can get to know you who is reading the notes")

There are many more details that can be used as examples, so I will not elaborate on them. Every detail of the community is a process of creating atmosphere and ecology.

In addition, content recommendations also rely on personalized recommendations based on multiple factors such as user tags, shopping behaviors, interests, etc. to improve traffic distribution and conversion, which will not be discussed in depth here.

In the new market of community operation, we may need to explore more:

1. Relying on product functions, build publishing tools that are more suitable for ordinary users, making creation simpler, with the goal of "everyone can create";

2. Differentiation of core content interactions, such as the special interaction of cover image + tag on Xiaohongshu, and the vertical video on Douyin. When the form of content becomes uncontrollable, we can combine the content to strengthen a certain element to form a special interaction and build community content.

3. The creation and operation of community topics should be combined with hot topics and community atmosphere, and thinking about how to embed them into different product function scenarios may lead to new user experiences;

4. Continuously improve and enrich the user tag dimensions, use algorithms to make personalized recommendations, and continuously reduce the negative impact of unbalanced content traffic distribution;

5. Users are shifting their focus from focusing on influencers to focusing on high-quality content and authors. In addition to the popular spiritual incentives such as likes, comments, and fans, the incentives for community creators can also be provided through templated content guidance and cross-border content exploration. The expansion of content boundaries can drive the improvement of creators' creative capabilities, thus forming an incentive for learning and growth.

Source: Slash Progress Notes