Xiaohongshu, also known as 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, it become a popular platform for Chinese customers to showcase their lifestyles.
What is Xiaohongshu?
Xiaohongshu is one of the most significant advertising value platform in the Chinese market. It has strong appeal to consumers and the potential benefits brands can generate. Boasting a monthly active user base of more than 200 million, it has demonstrated its effectiveness in connecting brands with their target audience.
User Portrait
By June 2022, Xiaohongshu has achieved a significant milestone of boasting over 200 million monthly active users. It has over 43 million content contributors – 70% female and 72% Generation Z. These makes 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.
Xiaohongshu Content
Xiaohongshu integrates discovery, creation, sharing, store and search functions. It has a plethora of genuine purchases and product reviews posted by users. Besides, it also 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 became increasingly prominent, with users performing both the roles of creators and viewers. This tendency has shaped the platform into how it is today.
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 initial 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.
Content Algorithm
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 capital 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.
As a UGC platform, it 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?
