3-step analysis | The user growth system behind Xiaohongshu’s massive content

High-quality product content is inseparable from reasonable product mechanisms and operation strategies. Today, we will start from a seemingly inconspicuous little cute creature - the "little sweet potato image" to disassemble the user image growth system of this product and see what its uses are.

Some time ago, it was the Double 11 Shopping Festival. My roommate and I talked about the things we were going to buy, but we ended up talking about the APP Xiaohongshu :

Roommate A: I want to buy a lipstick and I found it on Xiaohongshu.

Roommate B: I don’t think there’s anything in particular I want to buy.

Me: Just go to Xiaohongshu and you will find it.

Roommate C: Xiaohongshu has everything. If you want to buy something or go somewhere , you can find a lot of guides on Xiaohongshu by searching.

Unconsciously, people around me (mostly girls) have started using Xiaohongshu and regard it as a "universal" life guide, because we can find as many reviews as we want on it, including everything we want to eat, use, and play with. Moreover, these reviews come from real users, just like Taobao ’s buyer shows, which are more credible and more convincing for consumer decisions.

If you want users to think that a content community has "everything" and identify with the content, so that they will spontaneously search for the information they need and even be willing to browse the community without a specific goal, its content needs to achieve the following three points: large enough in quantity, high enough in quality, and rich enough in topics.

High-quality product content is inseparable from reasonable product mechanisms and operation strategies. Today, we will start from a seemingly inconspicuous little cute creature - the "little sweet potato image" to disassemble the user image growth system of this product and see what its uses are.

1. What is the image of sweet potato?

Anyone who has used Xiaohongshu knows that every user’s personal homepage has a very small image name.

(Picture – Account homepage)

Each name corresponds to a cute "sweet potato" baby. As they level up, their appearance and names will change. For example, the first level is a "Diaper Potato" wearing a diaper, the seventh level is a "Culture Potato" holding a book, and the highest level is a "Golden Crown Potato" holding a golden crown.

There are 10 levels in total, each level has different upgrade tasks, and users can upgrade as long as they complete the corresponding tasks.

(Figure – 10 levels of image)

2. Why do we need to build an image growth system?

Why does Xiaohongshu build such a system? Is it for product development considerations or to improve user experience ?

In fact, the answer can be found from the upgrade task.

When you click on each image icon, the corresponding upgrade task will pop up. I collected 4 levels of tasks and tabulated them as follows:

The following information can be summarized based on the table: If you want to upgrade, you must post notes and get likes and collections. Moreover, the higher the level of unlocking, the more notes the user needs to post and the more likes and collections he needs to get.

In addition, we can see that the authorities are deliberately guiding users to post topic notes and video notes. As long as they post topic notes and video notes, they only need to get fewer collections and likes to upgrade smoothly (see the upgrade tasks of Milk Bottle Potato and Golden Crown Potato).

Seeing this, it is very clear what this image growth system is used for.

It stimulates users to produce content.

As mentioned above, content products have requirements for the quantity, quality and topic richness of the content. Most of the content on Xiaohongshu is produced by users, so it is particularly important to stimulate users to contribute content.

Posting notes, getting likes and collections, and participating in topics in the upgrade task correspond to the content quantity, content quality, and topic richness in the content production indicators respectively.

Here I will single out the task of “participating in the topic” for discussion.

The reason for topic operation is that there will be times when users run out of inspiration or lose their motivation to produce, and at this time they need the help of official accounts.

The official account raises concrete topics and provides high-quality examples to guide users to share content. Doing so can reduce users' production costs, thereby stimulating users to produce content and increasing the richness of community content.

(Photo – Official account initiated the topic)

In addition, judging from the rise of short video products such as Douyin and Kuaishou , short videos have indeed brought about a wave of creative enthusiasm. Therefore, as a UGC community, Xiaohongshu has also increased its operations on short videos. Not only has it included it in the upgrade indicators of the image growth system, but the official account has also guided users to produce more and higher-quality video notes by recruiting original video creators.

(Photo – Recruitment activity for original video creators)

3. How to improve users’ willingness to participate

Let’s take a look at the benefits this system brings to users, which allows them to unlock tasks with great enthusiasm and continue to contribute content to the product.

1. Spiritual Rewards

The user’s personal homepage will have a small sweet potato image name. The external display of one's image is equivalent to telling visitors about one's contribution to the community and the degree of recognition one has received, which brings users a certain sense of honor.

Let’s take another simple example to explain this spiritual motivation: QQ also has a level system, which is divided into stars, moon, sun and crown, and the level is displayed under the nickname, which is very conspicuous. When people first started using QQ, most of them would use it for a long time, and even purchase memberships for accelerated upgrades. They wanted to upgrade their QQ level to the highest level, because the more "crowns" and "suns" they had, the more face they would have.

2. Material rewards

In addition to improving your image, upgrading also brings you privileged rewards, including personalized exclusive stickers and additional Xiaohongshu emoticon packs , which can help users edit more beautiful notes.

(Photo – Personalized stickers & sweet potato emojis)

3. Gamification

(1) Break down goals and provide growth paths

Imagine if you tell a new user that if he publishes 800 notes and gets a certain number of likes or collections, he can get the image of "Golden Crown Potato". Will the user be scared away by the number "800"?

Although the ultimate goal is the highest level "Golden Crown Potato", Xiaohongshu cleverly divides the levels into 10, and the difficulty of the upgrade tasks increases. Breaking down 0-800, starting from guiding users to publish the first note, gradually increasing the cumulative number of notes at each level, until finally completing the publication of 800 notes, seems to be a natural thing.

This level-upgrading mechanism, on the one hand, helps users reduce their psychological burden, and on the other hand, the unlocking rewards for each level provide motivation to persevere.

(2) Timely feedback

Timely feedback is very important to improve user experience. By letting users know where they are, what to do next, and why they should do it, you can motivate them to complete their goals.

Xiaohongshu’s timely feedback page consists of a progress bar and text guidance.

(Figure – Timely feedback page)

The progress bar displays all the avatar icons and lights up the unlocked avatars. Those images that have not yet been lit up serve as hints and guides, motivating users to proceed; the copy clearly informs the next task and the Xiaohongshu image that can be unlocked after completing the task.

In addition, user avatars, nicknames and length of time joining Xiaohongshu are added to enhance the user's sense of exclusivity and participation.

IV. Conclusion

The Little Red Shu image growth system was built by Xiaohongshu to stimulate users to produce content. The image upgrade tasks are set around indicators such as content quantity, content quality, and topic richness, and use spiritual and material incentives and gamification mechanisms such as upgrading and fighting monsters to guide user participation.

Source: Krebi