Three secrets of brand promotion on Xiaohongshu

With over 100 million monthly active users and 10 billion notes exposed every day, Xiaohongshu has brought voice growth and profit conversion to many brands and bloggers through UGC. So, on the Xiaohongshu platform, which has more than 30 million creators, how can brands select the bloggers who are best at promoting products? How should bloggers operate their accounts to gain the favor of brands?

01 The truth about Xiaohongshu bloggers’ traffic

Xiaohongshu has very strict control over account data. Behaviors such as inflating the volume and falsifying information will be severely cracked down by the platform. At the mildest, the flow will be restricted and the notes will be deleted. At the worst, it will lead to banning and account blocking. Whether it is last year’s “Woodpecker” plan or the “Operation Zhenmei” not long ago, they all demonstrate the platform’s determination to create a sincere content ecosystem.

So how do Xiaohongshu bloggers get traffic recommendations from the platform? How much exposure and interaction does a single note need to generate to be considered a hit?

Based on the principle of authenticity, bloggers' notes will be published after being reviewed by the platform and labeled with a series of tags, recommending them to people who may be interested. The keywords and other information mentioned in the notes will become an important source of platform tags.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

After pushing notes to some users, the platform will score the notes based on the amount of interaction and decide whether to continue recommending them to other users. This scoring system is called CES within Xiaohongshu.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu bloggers need to continue to create high-quality note content. The higher the score, the more they will be recommended, gain more and longer-term traffic from the platform, and more users' attention and sharing.

We sorted out the top 100 bloggers with the highest business note interactions in the Xiaohongshu creator rankings in July. After combing through the data, we found the following characteristics:

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Among the TOP100, mid-level talents account for the highest proportion, reaching 39%, followed by junior talents, accounting for 28%. The two together account for 67%. Under the decentralized traffic logic of Xiaohongshu, the note interactions that can be generated by mid-level influencers are no less than those of top influencers. Their high fan stickiness is very beneficial for brands with limited budgets and pursuit of cost-effectiveness.

In addition, the average proportion of business note interactions among creators shows that creators with an average business note interaction of more than 5,000 account for as high as 61%, while those with 0-1,000 account for only 10%, and the lowest average note interaction is 449.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

In fact, users’ acceptance of business notes is lower than that of ordinary grass-planting notes. However, with the platform’s encouragement of sincere content, based on real usage scenarios and personal experiences, brands and bloggers can achieve a high degree of content co-creation, which is more conducive to improving user experience and harvesting accurate traffic.

02 High-level content co-creation, three secrets to harvesting accurate traffic

There are four ways for Xiaohongshu users to receive content information: the follow page, the discovery page, nearby recommended notes, and active search.

Among them, users who actively search have the strongest consumption intention, followed by those who follow pages. To capture these key traffics, the cooperation between brands and influencers is no longer a simple delivery action.

Figure｜User Consumption Intentions

1. Traffic keywords combined with search ads

When engaging bloggers, brands can use Xiaohongshu’s hot word data to formulate promotional content plans and give bloggers certain keyword suggestions. Only by hitting the hot words can you have the opportunity to be displayed on the user search page and discovery page, and the brand can gain exposure growth and conversion.

For example, @周泓都, a mid-level blogger ranked fifth in the TOP100 creators, collaborated with the maternal and infant brand Kangaroo Mom’s Business Notes, covering a total of 16 hot search terms and 5 content tags, obtaining a huge source of traffic for product exposure.

Figure｜Qiangua Data-Note Analysis

Through brand analysis, we can see that Kangaroo Mama’s hot search terms in Xiaohongshu’s search results are all related to “postpartum recovery” and “stretch marks”, combined with the expert notes to strongly promote the product in all aspects and capture the minds of users.

Figure｜Qiangua Data-Brand Analysis

2. Core selling points highlighted

When brands release product promotion notes, they should avoid trying to highlight all the benefits, otherwise it will easily backfire and fail to focus on user awareness.

A brand that understands user psychology and content creation will clearly indicate the promotion goals and core selling points of the product when conveying the brief to Xiaohongshu bloggers, thereby assisting bloggers in producing content and providing them with resources to a great extent, so as to better communicate with users.

Figure｜HFP Xiaohongshu Promotion Brief

Taking HFP’s Xiaohongshu promotion brief as an example, the brand in the content revolves around the core selling point of the product, “whitening”, and gives the blogger a certain choice of format and creative space.

3. Blogger’s personal creative integration

For experienced brands, the number of fans of a blogger is by no means the only criterion. Bloggers who can perfectly integrate their personal creative content with brand products are more likely to be recommended by users.

@我是不白用, a mid-level blogger on Xiaohongshu who ranked first among creators in July, used vivid and cute animations to promote brand products, which was well received by many users. Currently, the total number of interactions for his two business notes has reached over 140,000.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Brands make full use of Xiaohongshu KOLs to produce original content to attract users to immerse themselves in the scene, increase product exposure, and trigger their active searches, thereby achieving the conversion of Xiaohongshu promotion effects.

As more and more brand merchants join Xiaohongshu, it becomes increasingly difficult to seize traffic and promote brands. It has become a consensus to conduct refined operations based on data analysis.

Xiaohongshu creator rankings provide more high-quality influencers and references for related popular articles for brand promotion.

The co-creation of high-quality content by brands and influencers is an efficient shortcut to marketing in the current content ecosystem.