What is Xiaohongshu?
Xiaohongshu, also known as the Little Red Book, is an innovative Chinese social media platform and e-commerce platform that allows users to share images, videos, and text posts about a range of themes, from product reviews to travel destinations and more. Seen as a cutting-edge way of connecting users, Xiaohongshu has also become a popular platform for Chinese customers to showcase their lifestyles.
Kantar’s China Digital Advertising Market Research Report (2020) highlighted Xiaohongshu as the digital media platform with the most significant advertising value in the Chinese market, illustrating its strong appeal to consumers and the potential benefits brands can generate. Boasting a monthly active user base of more than 200 million, Xiaohongshu has demonstrated its effectiveness in connecting brands with their target audience.
Xiaohongshu is a popular social media app in China that has gained immense popularity among young people. The app allows influencers to post product reviews and share their lifestyle with the audience. It is an ideal platform for those looking to build a following and earn commission as an influencer. This platform focuses on building trust and reliability between the influencers and consumers by enabling users to post suggestions and advice to their followers. Xiaohongshu has become an essential tool for brands who are looking to collaborate with influencers in order to promote their products or services.
User Portrait
By June 2022, XiaoHongshu has achieved a significant milestone of boasting over 200 million monthly active users and over 43 million content contributors – 70% female and 72% Generation Z, making Xiaohongshu a perfect channel to reach young female audiences.
Generally speaking, users of Xiaohongshu are relatively young, possess strong purchasing power, and are eager to share with others. This audience creates a vibrant online community built on shared interests and preferences.
Content Creator-Friendly Platform
Xiaohongshu integrates discovery, creation, sharing, store and search functions, has a plethora of genuine purchases and product reviews posted by users and provides an effective platform for word-of-mouth communication among users.
Initially, Xiaohongshu was positioned as a cross-border shopping information-sharing community. With time, it gradually expanded its user base and content categories covering many aspects of daily life. UGC (User-generated content ) became increasingly prominent, with users performing both the roles of creators and viewers, and this tendency has shaped the platform into how it is today.
Xiaohongshu Provides All Creators With an Equitable Content Creation Platform
When posting a new content (known as notes), the platform analyses the keywords of the content and matches them with the best suited the audience. This initial audience reach is known as the “initial traffic pool”. The platform rates the content based on the engagement, such as, clicks, likes and comments from the inital traffic pool. If the engagement rate is higher than the average, then the platform will widen the reach of the content and allow it to gain more impressions. This process continues until the content rating in the corresponding traffic pool is lower than the average level, at which point the platform will stop recommending the content.
The decentralised traffic distribution system on xiaohongshu offers equal opportunities for quality content to go viral. Even accounts with few followers can gain vast exposure, which benefits junior content creators when building up their online presence.
For professional content creators, Xiaohongshu offers content topic ideas weekly to encourage content creation. Moreover, the platform provides reward plans to stimulate more quality content. Creators may receive a free content boost, advertising vouchers, content optimisation guidance, etc.
The extensive content, accurate and relevant content recommendations and search function of Xiaohongshu have drawn in a sheer volume of users. It currently has over 200 million monthly active users and a daily usage time per capita of 55 minutes. The content’s diversity and quality also lead to changes in user search behaviour. More users turn to Xiaohongshu instead of search engines when seeking information online.
Xiaohongshu, as a UGC platform, provides comprehensive support and guidance to content creators and helps them create engaging quality content. Its algorithm-based recommendation system accurately delivers content users are interested in and guarantees that high-quality content can gain persistent and steady traffic. This benign mechanism has led to consistent content quality improvements, drawing in tens of thousands of creators and users who produce and appreciate the quality content, thus creating strong user loyalty.
If you want to engage with the Chinese audience online more creatively, why not give Xiaohongshu a go?
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