Xiaohongshu traffic trends in 2022!

In Xiaohongshu, I think identity types can be roughly divided into three types:

1. Brand

2. Merchants

3. Blogger

Bloggers are one of them, there is nothing controversial about that.

But some people think that brands and businesses are the same, right? Why separate?

I think that merchants and brands overlap in some cases, but are completely inconsistent in some cases. However, if we want to make a distinction, it is obvious that brands focus on creating volume and exposure, using bloggers as a tool, and their purpose may be to increase brand sales or to increase brand influence.

But it is completely different for merchants. The purpose of merchants is to sell goods and they do not need volume, so they basically do not use bloggers. They only need to create good content to attract users and guide them to complete sales conversions.

However, under this approach, merchants have no brand effect (it is difficult for users to place orders spontaneously) and no large amount of exposure (the possibility of reach is low) . In order to maximize the sales conversion rate and user reuse rate, private domain becomes one of the inevitable choices for merchants. The goal can be achieved by sedimenting users in WeChat and repeatedly reaching users. Therefore, " Xiaohongshu traffic diversion " is the means of operation for a large number of merchants on Xiaohongshu.

How many businesses are attracting traffic from Xiaohongshu? It’s hard to say, but it’s really a lot. Judging from the membership situation of Zero Gram Club, merchants with traffic-generating needs and actions account for at least 1/3 of the number of merchants + brands.

Before 2022, merchants who used Xiaohongshu's corporate account to passively reply to users' WeChat in private messages would not be punished by the platform. Although the official has never had clear rules or announcements, this status has always been the default, and on the surface it seems that everyone is at peace.

But after the Spring Festival in 2022, all that changed.

99% of merchants should have received the prompt in the screenshot. If they ignore it and continue to divert traffic.

Then there should be some merchants who have received some notifications about account blocking, banning, and traffic restriction.

Why did the platform suddenly "change"? Don’t I love you anymore? What should we do to attract traffic on Xiaohongshu in the future? In today’s article, we will talk about the traffic generation of Xiaohongshu.

01 Why can’t Xiaohongshu attract traffic anymore?

The most recent ban on traffic diversion by Xiaohongshu should be traced back to October 2021 last year. At that time, Xiaohongshu notified some merchants involved in traffic diversion, but the proportion of notifications was not high and the penalties were not very severe, which seemed a bit like a "test".

The result of the penalty is that if the notified merchant does not stop the corresponding behavior, then the account flow limit will be triggered, but the flow limit will be automatically lifted after a certain period of time.

Since then, this kind of punishment of prohibiting traffic diversion has been intermittent, and the number of businesses affected each time is not particularly large. Overall, the impact is not too great.

Looking back now at Xiaohongshu’s attitude towards traffic generation at that time, we can see that it was relatively moderate or flexible.

Xiaohongshu’s goal at that time was also very clear. If you want to attract traffic, then you want to sell goods. If you want to sell goods, why not open a store on the Xiaohongshu platform?

Therefore, Xiaohongshu added a very strong guiding prompt in the notification, hoping that merchants would open stores.

After that, Xiaohongshu began formal and strict management of traffic diversion behavior, which I think is related to the following aspects.

1) Policy requirements

In December 2021, Xiaohongshu suddenly issued a special announcement on transaction diversion management.

The content clearly points out that traffic diversion is not acceptable and will be managed with very strict auditing methods. It also provides a transaction solution for merchants, although it is still the old solution, which is to open a store on Xiaohongshu.

Some people may think that Xiaohongshu is getting too arrogant. Can I learn from TikTok?

But this time, well, Douyin did the same thing. A few days before Xiaohongshu released the announcement, Douyin also issued a corresponding governance announcement.

The time also starts from December 23rd, so I think this is unlikely to be a coincidence, it should be a requirement of certain policies.

2) Platform closed loop

Every platform has its own way of playing, such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, so many people say: "Xiaohongshu, can't you just be a shopping guide?" "Xiaohongshu, if you want to monetize, can you stop being a two-timing company? Can't you just sell the traffic directly?"

But it is obvious that these people are "keyboard warriors" who only consider issues from the perspective of personal interests.

Assuming that you are the person in charge of platform operations at Xiaohongshu, you will definitely create a closed business loop and manage content and the community.

Because closed loop is the best and easiest business model that all short video or community platforms can imagine. It makes good use of the platform's ability to drive traffic with content, but does not harm user value. To some extent, the platform has even created new revenue sources for some users and merchants who are willing to cooperate with the platform.

In this matter, everyone's choices are so similar. If the profit today is 1, then naturally we hope that the profit will exceed 1 next year. Since we want to exceed it, there should always be some adjustments. Even as a keyboard warrior, don't I also hope that Xiaohongshu will open up its traffic so that my income can become a little more?

Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.

Secondly, the platform is both a self-sufficient and independent entity. I really don’t know where this statement comes from.

They hope that the platform will do nothing, just sell traffic directly and not manage the content. The result will be that after a year, no users will trust Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu’s traffic will decrease, and it will go bankrupt directly. Isn’t this killing the goose that lays the eggs?

The business bloggers in this wave certainly feel that they have made a profit, but in the long run, isn’t this a stupid approach? Because of a small amount of profit for keyboard warriors, all users and more practitioners are buried with them.

I have said countless times that the most difficult part of Xiaohongshu is balancing the relationship between content and advertising, but if it is not balanced, it will surely fail.

Back to the closed loop, this time's store opening is very different from the previous Xiaohongshu store opening. In the past, Xiaohongshu Mall only had Xiaohongshu self-operated and some brands settled in, but since Xiaohongshu "re-" announced the start of the closed loop, the current Xiaohongshu e-commerce is no longer opening its own stores. Instead, all users, all brands, and all merchants can open their own stores on Xiaohongshu. Everyone can publish content, and everyone can use content to drive traffic to their own stores. At the same time, some features of the platform are used to help merchants open stores, such as free commissions for payments below a certain amount, and traffic support for opening stores.

I call these "empowerment", which also means that Xiaohongshu has truly transformed from a "small individual business" into a "platform", establishing rules, maintaining rules, and providing possibilities for both BC ends.

The above two points combined are the reason why Xiaohongshu now has very strict management of traffic diversion. Of course, policy reasons definitely account for a small proportion, and improving the platform's business model is still the main reason.

However, when it comes to traffic management and guiding store opening, I think Xiaohongshu can do more, but it seems that it has not done it yet.

For example, if a platform wants to establish a new set of rules, what should it do?

1. Abolish the old

2. Launch new

Cracking down on traffic is considered blocking, while opening stores is considered clearing the channels.

There is nothing wrong with this logic, but there should be transition and guidance when the old is replaced by the new.

If I were the operator of the Xiaohongshu platform, I would take advantage of this stage to quickly launch multiple policies to support e-commerce store openings, and quickly create some case merchants.

Because it is obvious that merchants are profit-driven. They are unwilling to think about what kind of major events or feats the platform wants to accomplish, nor do they want to understand the platform's difficulties. They just want to make money through Xiaohongshu.

So what Xiaohongshu needs to do is to tell merchants that they can make money by opening a store on Xiaohongshu. By creating a few benchmarks, the benchmarks will spread themselves, and naturally many merchants will move in.

The most obvious example of a benchmark is Perfect Diary. Perfect Diary started from Xiaohongshu, but so many years have passed, and it is almost impossible to copy a Perfect Diary. The platform is different, and the times and environment are also different. However, there are still countless brands that believe that they have the potential to become the next Perfect Diary of Xiaohongshu.

Therefore, the most urgent task for Xiaohongshu at present should be to quickly support merchants and set benchmarks while blocking them, otherwise all previous work may go to waste.

02 How else can Xiaohongshu attract traffic?

The above are all analyses, but in the end, we still have to talk about what should the merchants who are already on Xiaohongshu do if the new system is not established? We can't just stop the business first, can we?

So now let’s talk about what are Xiaohongshu’s rules for prohibiting diversion? How does Xiaohongshu determine traffic? What else can merchants do if they need to attract traffic on Xiaohongshu?

1) Xiaohongshu prohibits traffic diversion rules

Many people think that Xiaohongshu’s ban on traffic diversion is a complete ban on any contact information, but this is not the case. Xiaohongshu has subdivided the behavior of leaving contact information, which means that it will specifically judge the scenario in which the contact information appears. What is actually prohibited this time is "off-platform transactions" ( brands are prohibited from contacting bloggers for private business cooperation. This is another governance. Although it is being carried out at the same time, it has nothing to do with the current ban on transaction diversion. This article will not go into details.) If two bloggers have a good chat, is it okay to add WeChat in the private message? This is fine because there is no "transaction" involved.

Therefore, the categories that are mainly affected by the ban on traffic diversion are those that can be traded online, such as consumer goods, handicrafts, clothing and other related categories. These categories can clearly open stores on Xiaohongshu.

But what about some offline stores? For example, if I’m a restaurant, I can’t deliver food online, right?

Xiaohongshu has also taken this scenario into consideration, so for categories that require strong offline transactions, it has implemented a certain degree of exemption and will not impose penalties on them.

But occasionally there may be accidental damage. For example, if you open a restaurant, but when you authenticate the professional account, you certify another category. At this time, Xiaohongshu does not know what kind of restaurant you are, so it will treat it as another category.

This illustrates a problem. When certifying a professional number, it is imperative to ensure that the category is accurate.

There are many channels that prohibit diversion monitoring:

Exposed: Personal signature, Xiaohongshu account, main text, moments, and comment area.

Private message

There are many forms of prohibition, which basically include all of them:

1. Spreading personal contact information or account information in any form (Is it okay to leave a Weibo name instead of WeChat? No.)

2. Post any other platform's links, passwords, screenshots, watermarks, QR codes, or graphics or texts containing the above information (directly, in a deformed form, or embedded). (Can I write WeChat or draw a QR code on the picture? No.)

3. Multiple accounts cooperate with each other to guide users to conduct transactions outside the platform through comments, favorites, etc. (Is it possible to open a small account to cooperate with the main account so that the main account is not damaged? No, because the account penalty will be linked to the punishment.)

4. When communicating with users, store customer service guides users to leave the platform or conduct private transactions. (Directing behavior in private messages)

2) How does Xiaohongshu determine traffic diversion?

After talking about some of Xiaohongshu's traffic judgment rules, I believe you have roughly understood the definition and monitoring measures of traffic diversion.

But how does Xiaohongshu specifically judge user behavior as “the blogger is good at chatting” or “transaction diversion”?

How do you tell if the jumbled stuff in a sentence is “contact information”?

To put it simply, it is: machine learning + semantic analysis . In other words, it can also be called "big data".

To give a simple example, many people think that if they just say: WeChat 123456, Xiaohongshu will definitely be able to find it.

Because I wrote it quite directly, the machine marked these two words in red.

But if I write: stomachx123456, won’t it be searchable on Xiaohongshu? Because the Xiaohongshu system doesn’t understand the meaning of “胃x”, right?

But have you noticed another problem? No matter whether the v+, 胃x, 心+, etc. in front are deformed, the numbers or letters behind them can be regularized. Therefore, when the combination of symbols + numbers or numbers + letters is formed, the system can determine that this is the drainage content, and the system does not need to understand the true meaning of 胃x.

But I am just giving a simple example. If you use homophones or emojis for the numbers 123456 at the end, the system will accurately capture them in the form of big data. Because there are thousands of people like you on Xiaohongshu, the machine has already learned it.

However, even if it is written like this, the machine cannot understand it, but the machine can still make judgments based on the behavior of the account, for example, if the user says: How to buy? The system will recognize that this is a shopping information, and then you reply with a string of content that cannot be semantically analyzed. The machine thinks it is an anomaly. This anomaly occurs frequently, so there is no problem in judging that you are diverting traffic, right?

Okay, let’s assume we don’t use homophones anymore and use pictures. Can’t you read words and behaviors on Xiaohongshu? I'll send you a picture, let's see what you do?

However, image recognition is a difficult issue. The image recognition rate is now very high. WeChat is equipped with OCR text recognition, and even the iPhone's native camera has built-in OCR. The recognition accuracy is already quite high. For a section with strict requirements like Xiaohongshu, the conversion rate of image recognition to text is not worse than that of the iPhone camera.

So if you try the iPhone camera recognition, you will know how ridiculous the recognition will be when you photoshop your WeChat ID onto a picture.

(I can’t be too sure. After all, it’s a machine. The recognition rate is very high, but not 100%. There will definitely be fish that slip through the net, but who can guarantee that they will always be the one that slips through? If you miss once, your account may be ruined.)

What I want to explain to you in this paragraph is that basically any means of traffic diversion that we can think of are vulnerable to machine learning.

Don’t ever assume that you have used homophones or there are no sensitive words, as Xiaohongshu cannot make the judgment.

3) How can merchants continue to attract traffic?

In such a difficult environment, what should we do if we still want to attract traffic?

I hope everyone can realize one thing: the platform belongs to Xiaohongshu, and the data is all on Xiaohongshu. As long as Xiaohongshu’s rules do not allow it, this thing cannot be done "safely". As long as the rules do not allow it, there will be no "efficient and convenient way to attract traffic."

The only way to have a chance to continue to pull users into the private domain is not to confront the platform bluntly, which would be too stupid, but to look for opportunities and "loopholes" within the scope allowed by the platform.

What the platform allows:

1. Enterprise account (regardless of whether you are a store with strong offline transactions, you must have an enterprise account in essence. Personal accounts are not accepted by platform rules)

2. Open a store (It is clear that for categories that can be traded online, you must open a store on Xiaohongshu. Fortunately, Xiaohongshu currently does not charge commissions for transactions within 10,000 yuan. You only need to pay a deposit to open a store. For most people, this is not a big problem)

3. Don’t force transactions (when someone asks you how to buy, you say + WeChat, when someone asks how long it will take to ship, you say + WeChat, you have to add WeChat for everything, Xiaohongshu hates this kind of behavior the most, so in the early stage of Xiaohongshu, you should try to maintain normal communication and exchanges with users. At the end, you can say I will let the staff contact you and give you a detailed explanation, or whether you can leave your contact information and we will give you a gift or something, or if that doesn’t work, you can add a traffic-generating item in the store, and when users buy the product, they will naturally have the contact information.)

Some people may think that if they don’t add WeChat in the early stage, and chat for a long time but the user leaves, then it would be a waste of time, right? But I want to ask one more question at this time, which one should you choose, safe but less, or sending yourself to death with zero chance of death?

It is not difficult to attract traffic to Xiaohongshu, and it sounds simple. Just follow the platform and look for some "small opportunities" in these links. For example, the store mentioned earlier sells some cheap traffic-generating products to persuade customers to place orders. This form of "corporate account + opening a store + weak traffic" cannot guarantee 100% safety, but most of the time, problems are unlikely to occur.

The rules have been introduced, the methods for judging traffic generation behaviors have been sorted out, and new traffic generation ideas have been given. Please use your imagination.

Please don’t come to me for step-by-step teaching on “how to attract traffic” and give specific implementation methods after I have said so much. First, I am also very tired. Second, if I say it will be blocked, no one will have fun. So cherish every moment you have.

To summarize:

Xiaohongshu only wants to prohibit traffic diversion in some scenarios. It does not exclude normal social interaction, nor is it a one-size-fits-all behavior. It does not have much impact on bloggers and users in essence.

Let me say it again: If you want to survive, you have to do what the platform allows, not go against the platform.

Author: Mr. Elksky

Source: Mr. Elksky