How does Xiaohongshu, a platform with super-high appearance, master content operation?

As a community that promotes beauty, fashion, and other content, Xiaohongshu can be said to be a leader in this field. So how does Xiaohongshu attract so many users to stay here and produce and spread content? This brings us to Xiaohongshu’s content operation methods.

Q: If you were a Chinese teacher, how would you improve your students' writing skills?

1. Instill a lot of writing skills in students
2. Grade essays and provide incentives to students
3. Read more excellent essays to students

If we switch this question to the content operation of Xiaohongshu, it is also worth thinking about. The question is equivalent to:

Q: If you were a content operator of Xiaohongshu, how would you improve the quality of user notes?

Using similar logic, we can roughly summarize the following methods:

1. Guide user operation
2. Design incentives
3. High-quality content guidance

1. Guide user operations

Xiaohongshu currently has multiple official accounts, like multiple "teachers", namely Captain Potato, Life Potato, Video Potato, Entertainment Potato, Beauty Potato, Fashion Potato, Foodie Potato, Campus Potato, Potato Butler, etc. Each "teacher" has different responsibilities:

• "Captain Shu" is equivalent to a class teacher, and is mainly responsible for guiding users on how to use the functions on Xiaohongshu, including how to shoot videos, how to use official templates to create content, etc.
• "Entertainment Potato", "Beauty Potato", "Fashion Potato", etc. are equivalent to teachers of different subjects such as Chinese, mathematics, and English. They select users' excellent works in these vertical fields, conduct secondary editing, and use them as demonstration samples to guide more users to create excellent notes.
• The "Potato Butler" is like a principal. He is the guardian of the community and is responsible for updating community norms.

With the joint collaboration of many teachers, Xiaohongshu users have a clearer understanding of how to create content, what is good content, and what regulations to follow.

For example, Captain Shu demonstrated how to use Xiaohongshu’s Valentine’s Day template to create your own customized Valentine’s Day Vlog.

LifePotato re-edits users’ food exploration notes and calls on everyone to record their food journeys with videos. Users who add “location tag + #周刊探店 + @生活薯” to their videos will have a chance to be featured on Life Potato.

Under official guidance, it is easier and clearer for users to post notes. Moreover, each "teachers" teaches step by step in the form of videos, greatly reducing the time cost for users to learn how to use Xiaohongshu.

2. Design Incentive Mechanism

The incentives given to users can be divided into material incentives and spiritual incentives.

Xiaohongshu has built a user growth system as a mechanism for user spiritual motivation - from diaper potato to golden crown potato, users need to go through a total of 10 levels. As the level increases, the appearance and name of the sweet potatoes will change. For example, the first level is a "diaper potato" wearing a diaper, the fifth level is a "cone potato" holding an ice cream cone, and the highest level is a "golden crown potato" sitting on a golden crown.

This is like a teacher giving our essays different grades, ABCD, except that the essay rating is based on quality first, while the user rating in Xiaohongshu is based on both the quantity and quality of content produced. If the little sweet potatoes want to level up, they have to post a certain number of notes and get likes and collections.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu encourages users to post video notes of participating in topic activities and gives certain rewards. For example, if you want to be promoted to Golden Crown Potato, if you post ordinary notes, you must post a total of 800 notes, and all notes must receive 10 collections or 50 likes; but if you post video notes participating in topic activities, you only need to post a total of 18 notes, and all of them must receive 10 collections or 50 likes.

3. High-quality content guidance

The class teacher "Captain Potato" has already popularized to everyone "How to write high-quality notes".

For example: when taking a single picture, find a place with bright and clear light, choose a simple (such as solid color) background, let the single product enter the picture clearly and completely, and the labels such as brand and price should be complete. It would be even better if you can share your purchase experience.

For example, when taking photos of delicious food, it is best to have bright lighting, a clean background, and exquisite colors. Don't forget to share the store name, address, and reason for the recommendation.

For example, if the scenery along the way is picturesque, you should find a good angle to record the scene when the sun is shining. Choosing a beautiful scene picture as the note cover will make it more popular.

In short, in the world of Xiaohongshu, the first requirement for excellent notes is good looks .

1. Good looks

On the homepage of Xiaohongshu, in addition to [Recommendations] and [Videos], there are three major columns: [Fashion], [Food], and [Travel].

They all belong to the group with strong colors and high appearance value, attracting many young women to share and interact. Add tags, user reviews and other content to create a high-quality note that is both beautiful and informative, not just a simple sharing of pictures.

2. High integration

In addition to its "good looks", Xiaohongshu also pays great attention to the richness of its content. Taking PGC as the lead, we publish "highly integrated" content, such as "The most complete list of trendy shoes in 2019" and "48 sets of early spring outfits". Such "grass-planting articles" are more comprehensive and more authentic, and usually receive higher collections, becoming popular notes on Xiaohongshu.

3. Strong grass

As a community-based e-commerce platform, Xiaohongshu also encourages users to tag more pictures to achieve the effect of "strong grass planting" .

For example, when sharing food, you can mark the store location; when sharing beauty experiences, you can mark the brand of skin care products or cosmetics... Through a large number of grass-planting notes, Xiaohongshu has effectively promoted products for various brands (especially niche brands) and created many popular products.

4. High topicality

In addition to daily PGC (Professionally-generated Content) and UGC (User-generated Content), Xiaohongshu will also combine different holiday hotspots to plan different topics and encourage the public to create high-quality content with "high topicality" .

For example, in the later period of the Spring Festival, "post-holiday weight loss" became a hot topic on social media. Around the theme of "post-holiday weight loss", Xiaohongshu planned topics such as #It's the right time to run# and #Fitness and fat-reducing meals#, and pushed them to hot searches, using PGC to drive UGC to generate a large number of notes.

The launch of hot topics can also be accompanied by competitions. During the National Day holiday, the official launched the #小红书十一月摄影大赛# to encourage users to share their holidays through videos on Xiaohongshu.

• Before the event, the class teacher "Captain Potato" issued a call for activities and attached a thoughtful video tutorial. At the same time, multiple topics will also be shared, such as travel landscape photography techniques, how to take great fashion photos while traveling, how to take a foodie video while traveling, etc., linking travel with photography, dressing, and food, providing users with multi-dimensional creative inspiration.
• During the event, "Captain Shu" selects high-quality works from users, edits them twice, and pushes them on the official account to increase the popularity of the event.
• At the end of the event, "Captain Potato" will draw prizes among users who provide high-quality works and conduct live video broadcasts, which is fun and interesting.

To summarize, a high-quality note on Xiaohongshu has the following standards: high appearance, high integration, strong recommendation, and high topicality. By pushing high-quality content, a demonstration effect is formed in the community, stimulating more exciting UGC content.

Back to the original question, if you were the content operator of Xiaohongshu, how would you improve the quality of user notes?

In summary, we can think about it from the following three aspects:

1. Guide users to operate and make it easier for them to use the APP
2. Design incentives to encourage users to share more notes
3. High-quality content guidance allows users to generate more high-quality notes

This enables users to advance from primary users, or pure browsing content consumers, to ordinary content producers, or even producers of high-quality content.

Now that Xiaohongshu has become a mature content community, the next step is to think about how to make full use of user-generated content to create value. For more thoughts on Xiaohongshu’s content operations, please leave a message to discuss together~

Author: Vinky

Source: Ding'er Little Bell