99% of Xiaohongshu merchants fall into these three misunderstandings

As a popular content seeding platform, Xiaohongshu has attracted countless businesses, but 99% of them frequently make mistakes during operation. From a practical perspective, this article reveals the three common misunderstandings of Xiaohongshu merchants: blindly pursuing explosive articles, equating seeding with "soft advertising bombing", and ignoring the importance of the search battlefield, for your reference.

Share some shocking data:

• 76% of brands lost money in the first year of using Xiaohongshu, with an average ROI of only 0.8
• 91% of popular notes fail to bring effective search growth
• Reports of amateur content increased by 68% year-on-year

Behind these shocking statistics is the influx of a large number of merchants into Xiaohongshu, a cruel manifestation of the accelerated commercialization of the platform.

When the platform's commercialization process reversely affects algorithm distribution, traditional cognition and strategies are becoming ineffective. This article will reveal three fatal misunderstandings. Please check if you have fallen into these typical misunderstandings.

Misconception 1: Blindly pursuing hot articles, interaction volume ≠ purchasing power

Many brands are complacent about working with bloggers who have a high tone and whom they like very much. In the end, they find that the note data is very high, but the store entry and conversion data are very poor.

Last year, we served as a consultant for a domestic skincare brand and found that this brand had created a "myth" of 500,000 likes on a single post on Xiaohongshu, but the conversion rate of its Tmall store was only 0.3%. After observation, we found that the comment area was full of doubts such as "the filter is too heavy" and "the blogger is just making money", and users liked and collected more posts to learn photo editing skills rather than to buy products.

Although the data in the note is very good, it is just a standard "ineffective hot article". The reason is nothing more than the false prosperity of data and the mismatch between users. This situation will occur when people over-pursue data and ignore the real user needs.

It is difficult for product placement to be more outstanding than the content. In a topic with weak relevance, the effect of product placement will only get worse and worse. The topic must be centered around the product, even if it means sacrificing some data, it is much better than the false prosperity of data.

Effective explosive article = (demand scenario + pain point restoration + real use) × solution

Misconception 2: Treating seeding as “soft advertising bombing”

Going back five years, Xiaohongshu’s advertising methodology can be summarized in six words:

In 2025, it is obvious that the placement of Xiaohongshu is not so simple. Whether it is soft advertising or mass advertising, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages at this stage.

On the one hand, the traffic distribution rules are changing. Soft advertisement notes with too high a proportion of commercial content will affect the traffic of notes. However, if the proportion of commercial content is reduced, the notes will be too soft, the implantation will not be obvious, and the effect will not be good.

On the other hand, Xiaohongshu's brand deduction rules and policies have been tightened. Both soft advertising and volume will result in brand points being deducted. Not only will the brand face a "one-size-fits-all" cut in terms of traffic, but it may even be "found to be a non-existent brand"

Therefore, if you are still using soft advertising to expand the market on Xiaohongshu, the recognition will be too different. If merchants want to do well on Xiaohongshu now, they must return to the "water" to build "content assets", attribute crowd assets through note reporting, and accumulate delivery materials. If the brand binds SPU through the reporting note, then this note will attribute the SPU to the number of people who clicked on the note, that is, the number of A1 people; how many people interacted with the note, that is, the number of A2 people; how many people searched for the product again, that is, the number of A3 people. This data will help SKU build a crowd model and let the algorithm know what kind of people will be interested in your product.

When there are enough people, it will be easier for the algorithm to find the right people. If the right people are found, the effect of the flow will naturally be better.

Misconception 3: Ignoring the search battlefield, notes are not the only traffic entrance

Xiaohongshu has an average daily search volume of over 300 million times, but most businesses only focus on attracting new users and ignore the layout of keywords.

Xiaohongshu has a structural advantage in search. Other platforms are powerless in this regard. Only on Xiaohongshu can you see the "real experiences" posted by "living people"

Although its size is not as good as Baidu and Meituan, users who have been hurt, exploited, received a bad experience, and left for various reasons will never come back, just like the users who moved from portals to Toutiao and never came back.

Xiaohongshu is a dimensionality reduction attack for them

Therefore, I have always emphasized that search-based, real reputation management is the basic skill for merchants on Xiaohongshu and the most important defensive battle!

Many businesses do not pay attention to search scenarios, not because they do not know the importance of search, but because they do not know how to layout and how to choose words. After blindly choosing some big words, they found that the cost was too high and gave up the search layout. Take the milk powder brand Biostime as an example. The initial strategy was to blindly bid for big words such as "infant milk powder". As a result, the cost remained high, with CPC as high as 15 yuan and a conversion rate of only 0.8%. Even brands with sufficient budgets find it difficult to cope with such high costs and poor conversions. Fortunately, the subsequent adjustment strategy turned to long-tail scenario words such as "premature baby milk powder" and "Caesarean section baby nutrition". CPC dropped to 6 yuan, and the conversion rate also increased to 4.5%. The transaction volume of Tmall stores increased by 230%.

When doing search layout, don’t just focus on big words, but build a five-layer keyword matrix model. Here’s an example:

1) Brand words: defensive layout (such as "Is XX brand safe?")

2) Category words: occupying industry traffic (such as "essence oil recommendation")

3) Scenario words: Bind to user pain points (such as "first aid for dry skin in winter")

4) Efficacy words: Strengthen the value of the product (such as "anti-aging + wrinkle reduction")

5) Competitive keywords: intercepting alternative demands (such as "XX alternative")

In terms of priority, you can use the keyword planning tool of Juguang to prioritize the budget for words with high search index but weak competition. Merchants with Lingxi authority can also use the search insight tool to determine which words are opportunity words and trend words. Search is the "last mile" of Xiaohongshu user decision-making. Without search, there will be no conversion. You must pay attention to the search layout.

Final Thoughts

Although in 2025, Xiaohongshu's advertising methodology cannot be simply summarized in a few words

But when you find that you are no longer pursuing "false prosperity", the delivery starts to be "precisely targeted", and the layout of the search notes becomes the "standard answer" in the minds of users, Xiaohongshu will change from a "money-burning black hole" to a "growth engine"

The dividends of Xiaohongshu will only be distributed to merchants who have a correct understanding of Xiaohongshu