Little Red Book/Xiaohongshu (小紅書) is a Chinese social e-commerce app with more than 30 million monthly active users. On the 6th Anniversary in 2017, Little Red Book ranked 1st in the App Store’s Shopping category and sold 15 million USD worth of goods in two hours. However, it is more than just an e-commerce app, but really a platform for product discovery and recommendation. On top of the basics, we will introduce more details in this article.
User-Generated Content
As a platform constructed of User Generated Content (UGC), consumers view it as a reputable source for product reviews. Influencers produce articles and videos commenting on things they have tried and recommend it to their followers. Little Red Book covers a wide variety of topics, but content related to Cosmetics and Fashion still remain the top 2 popular subjects among consumers.
4 ways of accessing content on Little Red Book
Different from other platforms, Xiaohongshu has its own special expressions to describe the types of content, the behaviors of the KOLs and followers, and the types of followers. Instead of just referring to User Generated Content as “Post”, in Little Red Book they call it “Notes” (筆記Biji).
There are 4 ways to find these “Notes”.
1. Explore
Based on users’ interest, Little Red Book will recommend trendy “Notes”.
2. Nearby
Little Red Book can Geo-Target users and provide suggested “Notes” to them according to their location.
3. Follow
Users can also see “Notes” posted by the KOLs they follow.
4. Brand
If users are interested in specific brands, they can also type in and search with brand names.
Important Elements in a “Note”
1. Title
The title should be 10-15 words long which refine the key points of the “Note”. If the note is about product recommendation, put the unique selling points and function of the product in the title.
2. Photos
Each “Note” in Xiaohongshu can include up to 9 images, and ideally with no less than 5. The general rules is, the more images the better. On Little Red Book, the genuineness and authenticity of the images are important, so it is fine if they appeared a bit unpolished. The first image is the cover image that users will see when scrolling through their feed – it must be eye-catching and attractive. In addition, you can arrange the images to follow a certain logic, for example, comparing before to after, or starting from step 1 to step 4 etc.
3. Videos
As an alternative to images, users can post 1 video in each of the note. Keep in mind that Little Red Book always gives preference to video content.
4. Captions
Not only informative, detailed and useful content are fundamental to win followers’ heart and mind in Little Red Book, you should also pay attention to the caption’s character limit. Each caption contains a limit of 1,000 characters maximum, we observed that top notes generally contain at least 500 characters, but more commonly are in the 900s.
5. Hashtags
Like in Instagram, the use of hashtags helps to categorize the notes and make them more discoverable in the Xiaohongshu platform.
Typical Conversion Process of Little Red Book Marketing
So how does these hot topics ,ways of exploring “Notes”, and content strategies help brands on their conversions? Little Red Book marketing in essence, is shortening potential buyers’ time spent on every purchasing decision through highly persuasive product review and recommendation. Sometimes this even drive consumers to impulse buying, and in turn eases the customers’ path to purchase. Here are 4 steps describing how Users Generated Content on Xiaohongshu facilitates conversions.
1: Users receive product recommendations through the App’s Feed, Push Notifications and Shared Content on WeChat etc.
2: People interested in the recommended products will click in the product tag to view the details of the “Notes”.
3: They then start searching brand-related “Notes” in the app produced by other KOLs or amateurs to evaluate the quality of the product.
4: Users make the decision to purchase after comparing and pondering, and might even become the brand’s “ambassador” and promote it to their friends.
Topics that Capture Viewers’ Interest
In order to activate the conversion process mentioned above, it is important that brands and KOLs produce content that captures users’ interest, they should be relatable and credible. There are a few writing techniques to achieve this goal, use skincare/beauty products as an example, we suggest starting with 4 types of content:
If you want to know more about marketing on Little Red Book, Contact us now!
Read the full article in Zhihu.
