How does Xiaohongshu do “community operations”?

This article will share from two aspects: Xiaohongshu ’s product positioning and community approach.

Content Operations :

From a macro perspective, what "content operation " needs to do is actually to continuously pay attention to the entire process of content from production to consumption to circulation and dissemination, and to better promote this process through a series of means such as self-writing, editing, organization and processing, external channel dissemination, etc. – Huang Youcan

Xiaohongshu is a content e-commerce platform. Let’s first take a brief look at the various e-commerce platforms currently available:

Search: Jingdong (Express Stick)

Wandering around: Taobao (the universal Taobao)

Compare prices: What is worth buying? (Breaking information asymmetry, price comparison)

Content e-commerce: Xiaohongshu (too many choices, what to buy?)

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Different e-commerce platforms have different characteristics. Today, I will mainly analyze the content e-commerce platform: Xiaohongshu.

1. Xiaohongshu’s product positioning

We all know that clarifying product positioning is a very important thing, so how should we sort out the product positioning of Xiaohongshu?

We can learn from Professor Han Xu ’s ideas: “User→user scenario→needs under the scenario→content to meet the needs”.

Let’s start with the users. Xiaohongshu was originally a website that provided users with overseas shopping guides, so the users it initially attracted were fashionable new middle-class people.

Note: Since it is difficult to collect past information, this article’s content operation analysis of Xiaohongshu is mainly based on the current content .

The official website introduces itself like this:

Xiaohongshu is a platform for sharing young people’s lifestyle .

As of October 2018, Xiaohongshu has more than 150 million users, among which those born in the 1990s and 1995s are the most active user groups . On Xiaohongshu, users record every bit of their life through short videos , pictures and texts.

The community generates billions of note exposures every day, covering various lifestyle areas such as fashion, skin care, makeup, food, travel, film and television, reading, fitness, etc.

Gender distribution of Xiaohongshu users (data from: talkingdata)

According to the introduction on Xiaohongshu’s official website and the above data, we know that nearly 70% of Xiaohongshu’s users are women born in the 1990s and 1995s, and these users have pursuits for their own lifestyles (that is, they yearn for a better life).

After understanding the users of Xiaohongshu, let’s analyze the user usage scenarios of Xiaohongshu . “Scene” includes: time and space, and “scene” includes scenario and interaction .

The following are possible usage scenarios:

1. Double Eleven is here, I want to buy skin care products , but I don’t know which one to buy

2. A newbie who lies in bed after work and wants to learn how to put on makeup to be more beautiful

3. When I see my colleagues wearing beautiful clothes at work, I want to learn from them.

4. I am interested in a product and am hesitating whether to place an order. I want to read reviews.

5. I saw someone posting a delicious breakfast on their social media and I wanted to learn from them.

6. I just want to take a look around and see if there is anything new.

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When we list scenarios, it is best to give examples according to certain classification standards so that there are no duplications or omissions. For example: becoming thinner, more beautiful, and more talented.

After clarifying the usage scenarios, we can explore user needs based on the scenarios listed above.

Category: After users come to Xiaohongshu, they hope to find solutions to their small doubts directly, such as skin care.

Topic: Solve a big problem, such as: How to become a goddess. The topics include skin care, makeup, dressing, etc.

Special topics of Xiaohongshu

After thinking about the needs of the scenario, we need to produce content that meets user needs.

Generally speaking, start-up companies have fewer users and data. At this time, content operations colleagues are needed to ensure content output through original content, cultivating seed users to produce content, and constantly adjust content based on data .

Here, we need to pay attention to one thing:

When creating content, you always need to pay attention to both the long and short lines.

In the short term, we should make every effort to promote the consumption of content.

The long-term approach is to use a series of long-term and continuous content as a carrier to establish a sense of recognition and trust among users.

In order to do the latter well, you must clearly define the boundaries of your content (such as what you can write and what you cannot write) and label your content with some kind of stylistic label .

Its importance lies in: once this tone is successfully established, you can firmly occupy a position in the minds of users, and thus greatly reduce the cost of building user awareness in the future.

– Huang Youcan

When a company grows to a certain level, the data available for content operations will increase, and at this point, there will be more dimensions available for content operations analysis.

I would like to remind everyone here : the role of data and the data of focus are different in different periods.

Introduction stage : Produce content based on positioning to verify whether user needs exist

Growth stage : When the data base is large enough, conduct multi-dimensional analysis to accelerate user growth

Mature stage : Optimize details based on data and conduct refined operations

Decline stage : Based on data feedback, try to slow down the rate of user loss and explore new user needs

2. Community operation of Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu positions itself as a community for sharing young lifestyles. The most important things for a community are: people and content.

The content production methods of Xiaohongshu community are mainly divided into two categories: one is Xiaohongshu’s own production, and the other is Xiaohongshu’s user production . See the figure below for details:

Xiaohongshu officially has a matrix of personal accounts . According to incomplete statistics, there are: Foodie Potato, Daily Potato, Sports Potato, etc. Different personal accounts operate different categories of content.

Official outputs are divided into two categories according to their functions:

Official publicity: event release, how to use Xiaohongshu, special content, etc.

Recommend high-quality content: Based on user submissions, edit the submissions and publish them to users

For example: The picture below is the official event of Xiaohongshu. The left picture is the event release, and the right picture is used to recommend high-quality content.

Little Red Book

Users who produce content can be divided into three categories: celebrities, KOLs , and ordinary users.

Celebrities, KOLs, and ordinary users

We might as well imagine the users of Xiaohongshu as a community , which is divided into: ordinary people, connectors, local opinion leaders, and global opinion leaders. (Classification reference: "Small Group Effect" - Xu Zhibin)

Small Group Effect – Xu Zhibin

The most influential people in a community are often global opinion leaders (KOLs), who can bring in a large number of users. Here are some examples:

Live broadcast industry : Huoshan Video spent 20 million to sign Tianyou

Content Industry : Toutiao signs more than 300 Zhihu influencers

Knowledge payment : Ximalaya signs Miwei Media

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Generally speaking, ordinary users have weak ability to produce content and they are content consumers. Maintaining KOLs who produce high-quality content and cultivating new KOLs are of paramount importance for content operations . Therefore, there will be star operation positions:

Xiaohongshu Celebrity Operation JD (Lagou.com)

For content-centric platforms, different things are emphasized at different times:

Introduction stage : Produce content based on positioning, optimize based on user feedback, test out the content that users like most, and lay a solid foundation for content.

Growth stage : Based on a solid content foundation and technical strength, carry out large-scale user growth activities, such as sponsoring popular variety shows and inviting celebrities to join Xiaohongshu.

Mature stage : Based on user portraits , conduct refined content operations and continue to plan activities to increase user growth while ensuring user retention .

Decline stage : Try to slow down the rate of user loss and look for the second growth curve.

For users, it is an extremely good user experience for the platform to provide users with KOL rankings in each category based on a certain classification method. So why don’t these platforms do this?

The reasons why Weibo and Xiaohongshu do not have KOL rankings:

If a KOL with a huge number of fans is cultivated, then this KOL will have a great influence on the platform, and may even restrict the platform. It is also possible that other platforms will spend high prices to poach KOLs with a large number of fans, causing huge losses to the platform.

Ordinary users can get the high-quality content they want from Xiaohongshu and satisfy their needs for content. KOLs can use Xiaohongshu to increase their popularity and achieve commercial monetization goals, and Xiaohongshu can also achieve its commercial monetization goals.

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Source: Operation Guide