2022, 10 major trends in Xiaohongshu operations

2022 will be a very important year in the history of the Xiaohongshu platform, both in terms of operations and business.

In 2021, Xiaohongshu officially started its commercialization. 2022 is the second year of Xiaohongshu's official commercialization. After a year of preparation, the infrastructure has been basically completed. Just like a person reaching middle age, Xiaohongshu will go all out for commercialization in 2022.

At the same time, the user scale and creator ecology of Xiaohongshu have also begun to rise steadily. From the early wild growth to the current systematic and standardized growth, the increasing user scale and more and more content creators all reflect the infinite possibilities of the Xiaohongshu community in 2022.

Standing at this point in history, I would like to use my observations and experience over the past three years on the Xiaohongshu platform to make some predictions about what might happen and what trends might occur on Xiaohongshu in 2022, hoping to bring a little inspiration to bloggers and brands operating on this platform.

Blogger side

1Competition is getting bigger, but it is still friendly to new bloggers

The number of bloggers on Xiaohongshu is increasing very fast. It was revealed at the Xiaohongshu Business Conference some time ago that there are currently more than 43 million creators, which roughly means that 43 million people have posted notes on Xiaohongshu.

If you actually look at the Dandelion platform, you will find that there are more than 68,000 brand partners. You should know that this number means creators with more than 5,000 fans and who have actively applied for brand partner permissions. If I remember correctly, this number was around 20,000-30,000 at the beginning of 2021.

Ignoring the number of creators and only looking at the growth rate, the number of bloggers on Xiaohongshu with more than 5,000 followers has more than doubled in 2021. With more and more bloggers, is there still room for new bloggers to make a living? Are new bloggers having an easy time?

I think it will still be better. Xiaohongshu's underlying logic and system algorithms are different from other platforms. Take Weibo as an example. Weibo is a typical platform where big Vs occupy all the voice of the platform, but the problems are also very serious. Most Weibo users are spectators and will not contribute any content, which means that the content is not rich enough and there will not be too many new bloggers coming in. Without new bloggers and new content, the number of new users will also slow down, and it will gradually become stagnant.

Therefore, avoiding the monopoly of discourse power by top KOLs is the pursuit of most platforms, but currently only Xiaohongshu does the best. The content recommended on the homepage of Xiaohongshu is recommended based on user browsing habits, and will not be differentiated based on the number of fans of the blogger. At the same time, no matter how good the content created by the blogger is, there will be a certain degree of traffic cap. After the traffic is pushed out, only search traffic will remain, ensuring that the traffic can be distributed to more new bloggers.

Therefore, in 2022, there will be more and more new bloggers and existing bloggers, which has almost become inevitable. But there is no need to worry that the growth rate of new bloggers will decrease as a result. Xiaohongshu community will still distribute traffic to high-quality content and new bloggers.

However, for the KOLs who are already at the top of Xiaohongshu, they will indeed be under certain pressure. The natural traffic will not be tilted too much. In addition, as the number of fans increases, the proportion of commercial notes will increase. If the usual status is maintained, the data will probably decline to a certain extent. Therefore, the top KOLs need to work harder on the content, make higher-quality notes, and maintain their fans in order to continue to maintain rapid growth in the top stage.

2. Content model, polarization

If we classify the creative purposes of Xiaohongshu bloggers, I think they can be roughly divided into sharing type and professional type. Sharing type bloggers have the purpose of sharing, and it is up to fate whether to monetize or not. The complexity of content production is not too high (which does not mean that the content quality is poor). For example, I will just talk about my views on the iPhone. The content of professional bloggers is carefully prepared, with clear videos and detailed content, and the purpose is to monetize. For example, I specialize in analyzing iPhones, similar to the bloggers in our Zero Gram Club, who can actually be considered professional bloggers.

It is undeniable that these two groups of people have their own user audiences. Fans of the former prefer authenticity and pay more attention to mutual sharing among friends. The latter prefer professional opinions and popular science.

But have you ever thought about the bloggers in between? This type of blogger often oscillates between the two content models, neither going up nor down. They think they have absorbed the advantages of both, but in fact, for users, what they like is either black or white.

As time goes by, users' preferences for content will naturally divide into two groups: one group likes simple "user sharing" and the other group likes "professional content", which is a serious polarization.

The former is more likely to become a koc, and the latter is more likely to become a kol. Don't worry, both have audiences and can increase fans, but the content type in the middle may not please either side. In 2022, what content model are you going to use?

3. The store exploration category is experiencing an explosive growth period

The epidemic has existed for too long and has caused immeasurable damage to travel and the real economy. I often browse the opinions of some authoritative figures. The general view is that the winter of 2021 will be the last winter with the epidemic, which means that the epidemic may really disappear completely in 2022.

Once the epidemic disappears, both travel and the real economy will recover. 2020 and 2021 were two years of explosive growth for Xiaohongshu, but this explosion did not involve deep participation of the real industry, such as travel, restaurant visits, etc. Therefore, once catering, travel and other scenarios return to normal, Xiaohongshu's related categories will usher in rapid growth, because it is not that users do not have this demand, but it is indeed caused by restrictions.

Therefore, I predict that the Xiaohongshu store exploration category in 2022 (city tours and surrounding tours will be the first to explode in the early stage of epidemic recovery, rather than long-distance travel) will usher in very rapid development.

I have also written an article titled "There are no KOLs in store exploration on Xiaohongshu", in which I talked about how it is difficult for KOLs to appear in the store exploration industry due to geographical restrictions and audience user restrictions, but this does not prevent KOCs from monetizing. In a world without KOLs, KOCs are also "KOLs."

4. Empowering niche creators and making private domain monetization possible

Popular categories on Xiaohongshu include clothing, beauty, skin care, food, mother and baby, etc. But is life only about these contents?

Obviously not.

I like watching the making of handicrafts, and I also like watching military programs, but these things are not just my interests. I believe that many people have the same interests, and they belong to niche categories on Xiaohongshu or any other platform.

But you have to remember one thing: niche is not small in China, and it also has many audiences. Niche is only relative to the general public.

In the past, people were reluctant to work in niche categories simply because of low attention and inability to monetize. However, with the integration of Xiaohongshu’s account stores and the launch of products such as columns, niche categories do have monetization possibilities in addition to content-embedded advertising. At the same time, Xiaohongshu is also a particularly loving "community". Unlike Douyin, which is closed within 3 seconds if there is no explosive point, users will like to watch real and warm content.

So I predict that Xiaohongshu in 2022 will attract many creators in niche fields to join. Let us wait for the diversification of Xiaohongshu.

5. “Browse” and “Search”

There are two typical user usage scenarios on Xiaohongshu, one is "browsing" and the other is "searching". Browsing refers to blindly browsing the system-recommended content on the homepage of Xiaohongshu to kill time, while searching is to find target content with a clear purpose.

These two different usage scenarios are mainly aimed at different user needs. Of course, users will switch between the two different scenarios at any time.

In the past, Xiaohongshu was used more for search-type scenarios, where users would directly search for the product they wanted to buy and see what other people thought about it.

But with the growth of users and the enrichment of content on Xiaohongshu, people suddenly discovered that even if there is no clear purchasing demand, it is also a good choice to browse Xiaohongshu. Unlike the fake plot videos and beautiful dancing videos on Douyin, the content on Xiaohongshu obviously has a stronger real user style. Even if it is the same funny content, you will feel that the funny content on Xiaohongshu is a "real" personal experience, while the funny content on Douyin is an acted plot.

So I predict that in 2022, the proportion of users who "browse" Xiaohongshu will gradually increase. But this does not mean that the base number of "search" will decrease, because this is not a zero-sum game. Browsing is a new scene, not a scene that snatches away the "search" scene.

Brand side:

6The year with the most brands

Make a bold prediction and verify carefully that 2022 will be the year with the most brands entering Xiaohongshu (incremental).

I also talked about this logic in an article I published two days ago. Xiaohongshu officially started commercialization in 2021. The brands participating in the first year were only a small part of them. Most brands are still at the stage of "What is Xiaohongshu?" and "How to join Xiaohongshu?"

It’s similar to the year when Weibo was the most popular, but most brands didn’t use Weibo. Only when users started to leave did brands say that Weibo was a must-have channel… and only then did they start registering.

Therefore, 2022 will be the year when a large number of brands will rush in, and the number will be the highest in history, there is no suspense.

7 The cheapest year for data traffic

Traffic is becoming more and more expensive. I have repeatedly emphasized in many articles that traffic is becoming more and more expensive. Unless a new platform emerges, in the early stages of the platform, because the platform does not have a complete business model, it is basically free. Once the platform reacts and commercialization officially begins, traffic will definitely become more expensive every year.

Compared with Taobao, Douyin, etc., Xiaohongshu's current traffic is not expensive, and it still has considerable bonus advantages, but these advantages cannot exist permanently and will decline year by year, eventually reaching a state where the traffic prices of various platforms are similar.

So is Xiaohongshu still worth using now? When to do it? Just like the old saying goes, the best time to use Xiaohongshu is now.

Because today is cheaper than tomorrow, which is cheaper than the day after tomorrow, and so on.

Looking at Xiaohongshu's future from now, 2022 will definitely be the year with the cheapest traffic.

8 ways to make starting a personal brand easier

Xiaohongshu is a typical small and medium-sized enterprise-friendly platform. There are really too many small companies that rely entirely on Xiaohongshu's traffic to survive.

Friends around me who are in the jewelry, medical beauty, course sales, etc. often share with me that their traffic relies entirely on Xiaohongshu, and it is not a problem for them to realize tens of millions (turnover) a year, but in fact their brands are only in the early stages, in other words, they are in the start-up stage.

But as long as the content on Xiaohongshu is good, users will care very little about the brand.

So I have always believed that this is the difference brought by the Xiaohongshu community, trust first and then the transaction, rather than trusting after the transaction.

In 2021, Xiaohongshu launched a zero-threshold store opening policy, which is also an initiative to empower personal brands or niche brands.

From what I have observed, the integrated account and store is a major strategic product of Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu will still invest huge resources in 2022 to promote its implementation. This is also the best news for personal brands or niche brands.

After all, you can only get the meat if you follow the platform.

So I predict that Xiaohongshu in 2022 will be extremely friendly to small brands, and may even set a few benchmarks, but the premise of all this is: there must be a brand first.

9Creative collaboration begins

In the past, it has become an industry convention that Xiaohongshu only invests in vertical bloggers, but with the diversification of community content, traffic will definitely not be concentrated in the hands of vertical bloggers only.

Vertical bloggers are undoubtedly the most accurate and easiest group of people to become endorsers. There is nothing wrong with investing in vertical categories if you have money, but the problem is that vertical bloggers will become more and more expensive.

At this time, should we try bloggers with huge traffic who have a lower matching degree but a much lower price? For example, entertainment, comedy, two-dimensional, etc.?

I think some brands will be happy to make this attempt, which also represents the beginning of Xiaohongshu's creative advertising.

Regardless of whether the result is good or not, this is definitely a marketing method that will continue to exist in Xiaohongshu in the future. It just depends on who will try it first. Unstable marketing and risks also mean opportunities.

So this is also my prediction for Xiaohongshu in 2022.

10 A number of institutions will die

Xiaohongshu has basically bid farewell to its "wild growth" ecological model. Starting next year, all aspects are expected to be standardized. For example, Xiaohongshu will crack down on underwater placements and strictly investigate diversion behaviors.

Therefore, I predict that the model of most studio-type small companies or individual part-time brand placements will basically be said goodbye.

In 2021, I have heard of many small studio-type advertising companies going bankrupt, and I have also seen many "PRs" who used to recruit bloggers on WeChat Moments every day, but now their WeChat Moments are only visible for three days.

The more standardized the industry is, the greater the test for companies within the ecosystem. In other words, if a brand chooses a company to cooperate with, the cooperating company must have a special skill.

However, most companies do not have this "special skill", no advertising strategy, no blogger reserve, and most of them rely on "sales" behavior to support themselves, which means that they negotiate well to get the brand to pay, and then they cram to complete the deal after the negotiation. After cooperating once, the possibility of cooperating again is very small.

So I predict that starting from 2022, Xiaohongshu's third-party ecosystem will accelerate this process. Good third-party agencies will become better, and bad third-party agencies may go bankrupt directly, and the Matthew effect will become more and more obvious.

But this does not mean that the overall marketing expenses of brands on Xiaohongshu will be reduced. The overall marketing expenses of brands on Xiaohongshu will still be higher and increasing.

But the number of shares to be divided equally is smaller (there are fewer institutions).

If you want to start a business in the Xiaohongshu ecosystem now, I strongly recommend not to become a brand marketing service provider. First, you don’t have much competitive advantage, and second, you will die quickly without customers.

It is better to be an MCN. It does not mean to sign many bloggers right away and build a big MCN. Instead, you should start with a few accounts in small batches, and then monetize them through operating the accounts, and then continuously expand the account matrix.

This is a bit slower, but the success rate is still much higher.

This is also my opinion on Xiaohongshu’s third-party agencies in 2022.

Author: Mr. Elksky

Source: Mr. Elksky