KOL Marketing: Xiaohongshu’s High-Quality Short Video Influencer Screening Guide

At present, short videos, as a dark horse in traffic, are active on various platforms in various forms. Xiaohongshu, a UGC platform with the highest proportion of female users, has also seen the emergence of many high-quality short video bloggers . This article will provide you with useful practical content on how brands can select high-quality short video influencers, promote popular videos, and achieve high ROI.

01 Short video trend is rising

According to the "2021 China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report" released at the 9th China Internet Audiovisual Conference, the scale of short video users has reached 873 million , and the usage rate is currently close to 90% . The continued upward trend has become the underlying application of the Internet.

Figure｜"2021 China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report"

Let’s take a look at the group of people who watch short videos. The time users spend watching short videos has been rising, with the average daily usage time exceeding two hours , making them stand out among a host of live broadcasts, audio, comprehensive videos, and comprehensive e-commerce. The report also shows that among the people who watch short videos, those born in the 1980s and 1990s account for the majority. Whether it is the number of people, viewing habits, loyalty, or participation, there is a continuous upward trend.

Figure｜"2021 China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report"

With the support of the short video trend and the Xiaohongshu platform, Xiaohongshu's video notes have always shown a good traffic trend. Taking Estee Lauder as an example, in the past six months, the total number of notes related to Estee Lauder is 178,900 . Although video notes only account for 12.86% of them, the average interaction volume far exceeds the average interaction volume of picture and text notes.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Let’s take a look at the distribution of Estee Lauder’s business notes. Qiangua data shows that in the past 7 months, depending on the different times of marketing nodes, the proportion of brand investment in video notes has remained around 30% . It can be seen that brands have seen the high ROI potential of video notes, and will increase the proportion of delivery at major marketing nodes to promote high conversions.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Short videos are a trend, and Xiaohongshu’s support for video notes can bring more traffic growth possibilities to brands. For brands, how to select such short video influencers is of paramount importance.

02 Advantages of short video delivery

The current user trend is to pursue more short, frequent, and fragmented information. Short videos can greatly satisfy users' desire to quickly obtain information. Compared with picture and text notes, video notes can present more comprehensive content and are more scenario-based . The difference between picture and text notes and video notes is that picture and text notes can only publish up to 9 pictures. If there are too many words or the content is too professional, users will lose their patience to read on. Video notes are presented with more detailed subtitles or screen displays, which successfully solves the drawbacks of picture and text notes.

Taking the expert Doudou_Babe as an example, the amount of video notes released every month reaches more than 60% , and most of the content presented in the video notes is: beauty and skin care collection, makeup tutorials, and makeup reviews. He has won the favor of many fans with his sincere recommendations and humorous commentary style.

Picture｜Xiaohongshu

Pick out a note with high interaction volume, and check the comments of the expert's note on Qiangua Data. The top 10 hot words in the comments are concentrated on the brands recommended by the experts. "艾遇" and "AKF" appear frequently, followed by many words such as "好用", "適合", and "喜欢" . The comments with the highest number of likes also show support for the brand.

Figure｜Qiangua Data-Expert Analysis

Let’s take a look at Doudou_Bebe ’s video notes. The title of the video is “Summer Affordable Lotion and Milk Recommendation | Quick Look for Students with Dry & Oily Skin”. It proposes five keywords “summer” , “affordable” , “ dry skin” , “oily skin” and “students” and uses two products to solve the problems, directly hitting the user’s pain points. The video content is shared sincerely, using the author's own actual experience to tell users the texture of the lotion, the feeling of using it, etc., plus the analysis of the ingredients, it is more convincing.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Looking at the current short videos, both the number of releases and the number of views are continuing to increase, which has further raised the threshold for short video production, and put higher requirements on the quality of videos released by short video experts. When choosing high-quality short video influencers, brands should pay more attention to the quality and originality of the content to lay the foundation for creating popular videos.

03 How to select short video talents

The basic elements of a high-quality short video blogger

As a high-quality short video account, the brand must consider the potential of the influencer from many aspects, and video quality is the primary consideration. In addition to basic requirements such as video cover ratio and clear picture quality, you can use Qiangua data to check how often experts update their notes .

Taking Cheng Shian as an example, the note data of the past 30 days show that the expert has published a total of 16 notes, 10 of which are video notes, and the average total interaction of the note data in the past 30 days is 32081 . The frequency of note updates is basically 3 to 4 times a week, maintaining a relatively high update frequency. But in fact, the high frequency of video notes released does not mean that the video quality can keep up, so brands should also pay attention to identifying the content quality of influencers when selecting, which plays an important role in user stickiness and traffic stability.

Figure｜Qiangua Data-Expert Analysis

Through Qiangua data, we can screen out experts with higher user stickiness. From "Sister Cheng" , "Sister" and "Shi'an", we can see that most fans have been following the influencers for a long time and have established strong links. The long-term trust established between influencers and users helps with subsequent conversions.

Figure｜Qiangua Big Data-Note Analysis

Develop in the direction of circles and focus on differentiation

Xiaohongshu is a social platform with attributes of multiple circles of people. Choosing an expert means choosing a circle. While screening short video influencers, brands can accurately radiate the fan groups covered by the influencers, which will help brands penetrate the circle and deepen the category track .

Select short video experts with clear classification labels. Taking the short video influencer Jiayan Yan as an example, looking at the note classification of the past 30 days, makeup accounts for 75% , which is consistent with her certified label as a beauty blogger . Investing in this type of influencer can cover the fan group under the makeup category.

Figure｜Qiangua Data-Expert Analysis

In addition, brands need to focus on differentiation when selecting influencers with similar tags. Select experts with different styles to present the product value from diverse perspectives.

Grasp the user's pain points

The process of users watching video notes is actually a process of planting seeds. Each note has a logical structure, which is generally: arouse interest - explore pain points - demonstrate value - solve problems - promote transactions . Therefore, when screening short video experts, more attention should be paid to differentiation. Whether the expert's video notes can grasp the user's pain points from the beginning should be presented in the cover and title of the video notes.

Taking Cheng Shian and Luo Wangyu as examples, the cover of each of their video notes can directly hit the user's pain points. "How to draw eyebrows" , "Breaking the misunderstanding of after-sun repair" , "How to remove makeup correctly" , "The correct way to use eye cream" , each issue is full of practical information, which is very useful to fans.

Picture｜Xiaohongshu

However, if the pain points are based on your own imagination and feeling, it is far from accurate. Therefore, the way to grasp the pain points is to find the place closest to the users, which is the comment area . Through Qiangua Data’s public opinion monitoring , we can extract user pain points from the comments and actually solve user problems through video content.

Figure｜Qiangua Data-Public Opinion Monitoring

Content Co-creation

We have been talking about content co-creation, which is actually about how to better integrate the product with the videos of short video influencers, continue the content style of the influencers , and achieve "smooth and seamless" throughout the process.

Take the short video expert Hu Zha Girl as an example. Her video content tells some daily stories in the form of hand-drawn animation. The humorous and interesting content can easily resonate with users. Even the electric toothbrush advertisements are implanted very naturally, which makes users unexpectedly attracted to it.

Figure｜Qiangua Data-Note Analysis

To achieve co-creation with influencers, brands need to try their best to find influencers who match the tone of their products when screening influencers, and respect the personal style of influencers when they are creating, which will help better implant products.

04 Conclusion

As short videos become more popular and content is king, the key to short video influencer screening for brands is to find influencers who can better present product value with high-quality content, and use the high traffic and high interaction of short videos to capture the minds of users and achieve high ROI . The main screening methods are as follows:

• Pay attention to the video quality and video note update frequency of short video experts to ensure stable traffic and a sticky user base;
• Penetrate the circle, output product value with differentiated content, accurately acquire potential users, and achieve high ROI;
• Grasp the user's pain points, deeply explore user needs, solve user problems with high-quality content, and stimulate seeding behavior;
• Co-create content with influencers, integrate their video styles, soft-implant products, highlight brand value, and capture users' minds.