Little Red Book(Xiao Hong Shu), is the Chinese equivalent of Instagram. It’s a good platform to read about product reviews, share outfits of the day, learn about fashion tips, and discover high-quality brands. Since Little Red Book reviews could directly impact sales, it’s one of the most important social media channels for brand marketing.
Little Red Book’s design is very similar to Instagram. 3 to 6 pictures with text descriptions, usually between 20 to 200 characters. The content style on Little Red Book is usually persona, often with lots of emojis. The distribution of content is algorithm-driven. Users can engage with content via like, bookmark, share, private message, and comment.
The importance of Little Red Book marketing
Little Red Book plays an important role in the consumer purchasing process.
Awareness: Little Red Book is a great channel to discover new brands.
Interest & Desire: Little Red Book will continue to push relevant content based on users’ browsing habits. It’s a good channel to create multiple consumer touchpoints. Before users make a purchase, some users will open Little Red Book to read product reviews.
Action: When making a purchase, usually users will go to e-commerce platforms, such as Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo. Although Little Red Book has a native store system, the majority of brands choose to open stores on marketplaces where they could get more traffic.
Loyalty: After converting a user into a customer, WeChat Official Account and WeChat groups are the best channels to create a closer relationship with customers. And when you have a loyal customer who would like to share product reviews and advocate for your brand, they could post comments on Little Red Book.
4 Tips to guide you how to do Little Red Book marketing
1. Work with Key Opinion leaders
The celebrity of a KOL (or Chinese influencers) is the key to attracting people’s attention. KOLs can be a star, internet celebrities, or simple users. Hence, influencers on Little Red Book are much more powerful than those on other social media. If you’re willing to share your real and comprehensive experiences, you can also become a micro-influencer. KOLs often have a huge fan base, who are following closely their activities. The content generated greatly affects users purchasing decisions, as they are considered more trustworthy than reviews from other platforms or brands.
2. Create quality posts / Quality Photos
The quality post includes attractive Pictures, which can be live shots, showing the natural aspect of things. Putting a good-looking person on the featured image is a way to attract people’s eyeballs.
The contents talking about advice that people can take directly, they are quite popular on Little Red Book. For example, when a user is searching for an eyeliner, they will like to read the one that gathers a lot of products from different brands in one, to make a comparison. Even If they won’t buy directly on Little Red Book, the content viewed will influence their future purchase.
In Little Red Book, it isn’t really a place for a brand’s storytelling, it is a place more to provide useful information on products. Such as the price, the available range of colors, the place they can buy them, etc.
3. Add and use the ‘Hashtag’ function
If your account isn’t backed by the Redbook team, it can be quite difficult to be on the main page or viewed by a lot of people. When users open the platform for fun, most of them only check the posts on the “Explore” section, matching their latest research or their interests. If they already followed your account, you will figure it in their “following” section.
However, to reach more people, you need to use hashtags actively in your posts. Besides being found more easily by users, you will also figure on their main page (the “Explore” section) if they searched for a topic similar to yours.
4. Be reactive in the comment section
The number of likes, the profile of the author, the comment section,etc. All these things around the content are important to build a post’s credibility. As the Chinese are very active online, they may have questions about the product shared. It’s important to be reactive and provide answers. There is a lot of content created on the same topic, and to differentiate and catch their interest from them, the author needs to follow people’s comments.
It’s also a good occasion to introduce a channel for purchasing or your contact. Because when it is written in the content, sometimes it can be viewed as an ad post instead of a real review post.
Find out more about Little Red Book marketing
Have you learned about how to do Little Red Book Marketing in China? Deep Digital China works with Western brands from across all industries. We help them succeed with their Chinese digital marketing activities. From SMEs looking to enter the lucrative and highly attractive Chinese market, to established big name brands seeking to extend their brand presence. Deep Digital China possesses the skills, experience and hands-on expertise needed to deliver your goals. Contact us now for a no-obligation chat about how we might assist you.