Xiaohongshu-a marvel of Internet community

In China, the internet community initially appeared in the form of forums. With the development of information technology, APPs that integrate multiple forms of expression such as audio and video, pictures, etc. have emerged. Among these APPs, online communities constructed by contents featuring hobbies, lifestyles and aesthetic tendencies have attracted a large number of users, such as Douban (a Chinese social networking service website that allows registered users to record information and create content related to film, books, music, recent events, and activities.), Zhihu, Himalaya (a content app, featuring short audio courses and motivational stories.), Bilibili, Xiaohongshu and other APPs, which have become an important space for people to build social relationships with other internet users.

With the development of network technology, new features have emerged in online communities, especially in Xiaohongshu, for example, timely interactive communication, abundant information flow, and massive opportunities for businesses in the community.

Some features of Xiaohongshu

Algorithm-enhanced accurate notification delivery

Compared with ordinary online platforms, online communities emphasize the relationship between people. The official data of Xiaohongshu reveals that in 2019, official accounts in Xiaohongshu has exceeded 300 million, making it a super big blogging community. Users produce and exchange information in the community, and provide each other with consumption decisions and consumption opinions. Xiaohongshu incorporates users’ interests, preferences and other data into its operation and management, and attaches importance to the human relationship. This appears to be full of humanistic care on the surface, but actually hides the monitoring of users by algorithms.

In the notification delivery design of Xiaohongshu, the information content is dynamic and unstructured. The content of the Xiaohongshu community is not structured into fashion, food, travel and other rigid sections, but revolves around the needs of users’ lives, and the content posted by each user can cover all aspects of life scenarios.

In the form of information presentation, Xiaohongshu adopts the form of single column, only presenting extremely limited content in a fixed page. This means that users need to make a choice to open or ignore the content presented at the moment of scrolling down the page. The algorithm receives explicit user feedback as the user navigates the page, slides down the page, and completes the selection process, and then accurately captures and calculates the user’s preferences. Next, the platform recommends content that is of interest to the user, thus allowing the user to continue to spend more time and provide more traffic in the community.

Irreplaceable content

Xiaohongshu’s community slogan is “Mark your life”, which encourages users to produce contents spanning diverse life scenarios. For example,some hashtags like “dinner for one”, “outfit for 155cm” and “methods to clean silverware”, etc. The topics not only reflect the activities of users in specific scenarios, but also meet the needs of the majority of users for specific scenario activities. More and more people take the content on Xiaohongshu as reference when making consumption decisions, or develop the habit of observing and browsing life experiences on Xiaohongshu, and then get acquainted with KOC and KOL on Xiaohongshu and build emotional connections.

Apparently, users are utilizing the community to get the information they need and expand their relationships because Xiaohongshu provides many specific scenario-based suggestions that many online platforms or communities do not have. Because of the richness of UGC content, users are able to meet their information needs more efficiently in Xiaohongshu.

When users establish a certain relationship with KOC and KOL, they will regularly browse the content posted by KOC and KOL, comment or like their content, and maintain the relationship between users with whom they have a close relationship.

Incentive mechanism for users

Xiaohongshu claim to use technology to empower the masses and provide equal opportunities for every user to express themselves. The Xiaohongshu community attaches great importance to the sharing of detailed and scenario-based lifestyles and life experiences. There is no professional threshold for such sharing, and the content is open, fragmented and simple to start. The empowerment of technology provides a window for every user who finds any information gap, fun and tips in life to show themselves. This content model not only stimulates users to produce content, but also promotes the rapid growth of Xiaohongshu’s content. Based on the exquisite and petty attributes and positioning of the Xiaohongshu community, users have to focus on the beauty of the content and the cultural values embedded in it when sharing it.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu designs a set of hierarchical model to distinguish users, that is, to encourage users to produce content in the mode of grading “small red potatoes”. Users of Xiaohongshu are divided into ten grades and each grade corresponds to a different task. Only after completing the tasks of browsing, commenting and posting notes of that grade, can users continue to upgrade. Account upgrading then mean increased account weight and exposure, and with that comes platform rewards and advertising opportunities.

Oriented and patterned content production

At present, Xiaohongshu users that produce content can be divided into two categories: one is users who produce contingent content out of momentary interest; the other is users who position themselves as self-media workers, whose content production is influenced by community game rules, commercial interests and other factors, with a certain degree of planning and inevitability. Among these two types of users, the latter’s content production has an obvious tendency to be organized and patterned. In an interview with Southern Weekend, a blogger summarized his success model as “imitating hot spots rather than creating them” . In addition, bloggers who sign up with MCN agencies receive training on persona and style, as well as photo-taking, retouching, and copywriting so that their content production shows a planned organization. When searching for “Xiaohongshu hot notes” on major Internet platforms, there will be a large number of search results showing summarized note templates that can be directly applied.

Some insights

A study by KANTAR, a leading global consumer insights and strategy consulting firm, concluded that Xiaohongshu is the digital media platform with the highest advertising value in the Chinese market. Because KOL marketing content is particularly popular among consumers in the Chinese market, the advertising value of Xiaohongshu, a content sharing community, was ranked first in the evaluation, tied with Tmall and Taobao.

As a content marketing community, Xiaohongshu uses advertising as a key channel to monetize traffic. At present, there are two forms of cooperation between Xiaohongshu and advertisers: one is to directly sell open screen ads, and the other is to sell advertising space in the community, where users can directly see ads when browsing community content and click on the attached links to jump to the mall.