Xiaohongshu’s entry into micro-short dramas, an accelerated springboard or a dangerous single-plank bridge?

Xiaohongshu's entry into the micro-short drama market faces challenges but also opportunities. Its determination and investment show its desire for traffic growth and commercial monetization.

From the "Searchlight Project" of Bilibili to the "Shudi Drama Light Project" of Xiaohongshu, all of these lights are focused on short dramas. In 2024, short dramas are still a means for various platforms to compete for traffic.

As "latecomers", content and non-content platforms have seen the cost-effective and highly flexible business model of micro-short dramas, and are eager to take advantage of the increasingly mature micro-short dramas to boost another wave of traffic activity and commercial monetization.

But for these platforms, is "micro-drama" a springboard for accelerated growth? Or is it a difficult single-plank bridge? It depends not only on the platform's strategy, but also on the changes in the environment.

Of course, these uncertainties will not affect the platform's desire for micro-short dramas.

At the Shanghai Micro-Short Drama Conference on June 25, Xiaohongshu, a newcomer in the micro-short drama circle, announced that it will invest heavily in the micro-short drama business and will open up a new content ecosystem with high-quality short dramas as the core.
Xiaohongshu has actively shown its desire for micro-short dramas, which to a large extent also reflects Xiaohongshu's desire for growth in various dimensions such as traffic and commercial value conversion.

1. Violent collision

Is it too late for Xiaohongshu to enter the micro-short drama market?

No. 1 believes that although the start was later than the overall pace of the environment, it was not too late for Xiaohongshu itself.

Seeking to accelerate growth through vertical entertainment content and the implementation of the "Red Short Drama" support plan has officially become a definite development direction for Xiaohongshu in 2024.

Xiaohongshu entered the game because the time was ripe and the opportunity was clear, but it was also time for it to get out.

The time is ripe, in terms of the overall environment: in 2023, the domestic short drama market will reach 37.39 billion yuan. In terms of scale, both the market and production have reached a certain level of maturity.

In 2024, in addition to platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, which have been spending heavily on micro-short dramas, continuing to compete for micro-short dramas, many non-content platforms have also taken steps to enter the market: search engine platforms such as Baidu, Quark, and UC Browser have launched short drama rankings; knowledge reading platforms such as Zhihu and Yuewen have launched special areas such as "Miracle Short Dramas"; Taobao, Alipay, Meituan, and Pinduoduo have also successively embedded short dramas into secondary pages.

The entry of micro-short dramas from various non-content platforms has made the competition for micro-short drama content increasingly fierce and the track has become more fragmented. At the same time, it has also provided more reference paths for latecomers.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu entered the market at this time, seeing the opportunity and accelerating its start. It made a lot of preparations:

From all aspects, Xiaohongshu itself is constantly strengthening its transformation into "content + e-commerce" attributes.

It can be seen that Xiaohongshu has already accumulated a certain amount of content, and its breadth and richness have even pushed Xiaohongshu to develop in the direction of a search engine - searching for all kinds of information, life, entertainment, etc. on Xiaohongshu.

Last year, Xiaohongshu started to accelerate its transformation to e-commerce by investing in live streaming. On the basis of the original content seeding, Xiaohongshu has improved the efficiency of converting traffic into commercial value by directly adding e-commerce operations.

Micro-short dramas are actually also in the process of integrating the attributes of "content + e-commerce", which coincides with the overall progress of Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu has a firm belief in micro-short dramas.

At the Shanghai Micro-Short Drama Conference, Xiaohongshu released the "Red Short Drama" support plan, which introduced billion-level advertising support and advertising resource support. It can be said that it is a lavish investment in traffic and has a rapid momentum.

Xiaohongshu's "Shudi Drama Light Plan" rewards the TOP 20 notes with 10,000 traffic incentives. At the same time, it provides 5,000 traffic incentives to 10 high-quality notes every day, and gives 50,000 traffic coupons incentives every month to Xiaohongshu's exclusive short drama accounts.

In the early stages of paying to listen to music, Xiaohongshu made a bold start - it can be said that it was a fierce collision with micro-short dramas with quite a lot of volume.

But from some aspects, the collision between Xiaohongshu and micro-short dramas is not yet fully prepared, and there is a sense of haste that it "has to be".

Xiaohongshu is still exploring, and the most fundamental thing is to explore "what kind of micro-short drama I want".

Micro short dramas are entertaining and highly trafficked vertical content, which is clearly different from Xiaohongshu’s existing labels such as “grab-and-go” and “practical”. In addition, the existing user portraits of micro short dramas are also clearly different from Xiaohongshu’s user portraits that are mainly in the first- and second-tier cities.

So what kind of short drama does Xiaohongshu need? Or where does Xiaohongshu want to reach with the help of short drama? It is still exploring.

No. 1 believes that micro-short dramas are an opportunity for Xiaohongshu to break out of its original user portrait and circle, but this may undoubtedly be a huge shock to Xiaohongshu, so it is cautious and fully understands it.

Xiaohongshu has not yet determined the question of "what kind of short drama do I want", resulting in many noticeable "immaturity" performances and slow progress:

The page design of the short drama is not obvious: the short dramas on Xiaohongshu are presented in the form of "note collection", and the corresponding content cannot be found by searching the name of the short drama. Users can only find relevant content in the drop-down bar of the expert's notes.

This format limits the audience of micro-short dramas to the fan group of a certain expert, which undoubtedly makes it more difficult for the creators and the dramas to break out of the circle. Xiaohongshu has not yet placed micro-short dramas in a sufficiently prominent position, which is different from the straightforwardness of other video platforms. This approach probably comes from the hesitation of whether to break the ecological balance of the community.

As for the updating frequency of short dramas, Xiaohongshu has not yet kept up with the pace of the "circle" - the updates are slow.

The recent "Top 10 Short Drama Weekly Rankings" includes 2 episodes of "Reversal Little Theater", 4 episodes of "Don't Mess with the Intern", and 15 episodes of "Warm You and Heal Me". The overall update progress is slow compared to other platforms. Moreover, most of the content is distributed, not unique, and may not even be the highest priority update.

If Xiaohongshu cannot adapt to the fast-paced and fast-broadcasting rhythm of short dramas and has no way to own a unique supply of resources, it will be difficult to occupy the minds of users and cultivate their habit of watching dramas on the platform. This will also become a major obstacle for Xiaohongshu to get started.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu, which mainly focuses on seeding notes and is in the process of adapting to video, cannot directly copy the growth path of short dramas on video content platforms. Even though many non-content platforms have provided reference templates for short dramas, Xiaohongshu does not have a template that can be directly referenced for the operation of short dramas if we delve into the details of platform attributes and business models.

Xiaohongshu is currently in a stage of fierce collision with micro-short dramas. Fortunately, micro-short dramas are still in a plastic period, and their plasticity is strong, so there is still a lot of room for resonance and mutual assistance with Xiaohongshu.

2. Finding Echoes

Limitations from another perspective may lead to opportunities. As one of the few social platforms that still has room to break out of the circle, the limitations of Xiaohongshu in entering the micro-short drama are obvious: Xiaohongshu's user structure is relatively simple, and after years of development, it has become stable.

In addition to the aforementioned user profile being concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, another notable singularity is gender and age. Xiaohongshu, which has 300 million monthly active users, has over 70% female users and about 74% users under the age of 30. Although the proportion of male users who promote products on Xiaohongshu has increased significantly this year, young women are still the main force in maintaining Xiaohongshu's activity.

The characteristics of user portraits make Xiaohongshu have very high demands on content, which invisibly limits the categories of Xiaohongshu content that can be transformed into commercial content, increasing the difficulty.
There are natural barriers between social platforms and content platforms.

Taking the keyword recognition of search engines as an example, when searching for a drama title on a video content platform, the priority recommendation is the TV series, while when searching for a drama title on Xiaohongshu, even if it is a short drama included in Xiaohongshu, the priority recommendation is still the related notes content released by UGC.

If Xiaohongshu wants to make short dramas a springboard for attracting new users to the platform, it will have to give up some of its "unique community ecology" in order to break down barriers.

From the perspective of micro-short dramas, the number of micro-short dramas has surged in the past two years, the industry has been constantly rectifying, and content output has tended to be saturated.

It can be seen that some short drama creators on Xiaohongshu only use Xiaohongshu as a distribution platform. Their number of fans is far lower than that of Douyin, and their works are updated slightly later than Douyin. This is of no benefit to Xiaohongshu, which wants to attract new users with short dramas.

The propagation of sound often goes farther due to the openness of the environment; but the wonderful echo is able to appear because of the existence of barriers such as valleys and peaks in the terrain.

For Xiaohongshu today, it is time to find and create echoes.
The user structure is single, but there is an opportunity to create differentiated micro-short drama content to cater to user portraits.

Take the top players in Xiaohongshu's live streaming as an example - Dong Jie, Zhang Xiaohui and other "buyers" of women's products, not only stand out in the fiercely competitive live streaming market, but also allow Xiaohongshu to use this as a brand to establish its "live streaming brand".

Their biggest highlight is the differentiation they provide to meet the needs of Xiaohongshu users.

The practice of Xiaohongshu's variety shows also shows the possible route of Xiaohongshu's micro-short dramas - starting from the themes of women and life, focusing the target audience on young women in first- and second-tier cities, such as the initial trial of programs such as "This is How I Live".

Several creators who are currently ranked at the top of the weekly charts have also distributed short micro-drama themes on Xiaohongshu that are different from those on other platforms and actively adapt to the tone of Xiaohongshu.

For example, the creator @林动动 uses "life" and "girlfriends" as the main tags for her content on Xiaohongshu, which is different from tags such as "boss" and "love" on other platforms.

(Xiaohongshu and Douyin short drama page)

Both Xiaohongshu and content creators are well aware of this: first activate existing users, and then expand through differentiated means.

The concept of high-quality micro-short dramas is a cliché, but Xiaohongshu faces an audience that is different from other content platforms, and it may have the opportunity to truly recommend and encourage high-quality micro-short dramas, target the market, and allocate resources.

No. 1 believes that the process of creating high-quality products can start with providing value, which happens to be in line with the "grass-planting" attribute of Xiaohongshu.

Let the short drama not only be a fun drama, but also give people a sense of "gain" after watching it.

This is the case with creator @Pause in Conversation, which has women's issues that are adapted to the audience of Xiaohongshu. Through development, creators have transformed from simple output to discussions through situational and plot-based stories.

Starting with "Dear Baby Girl", the book talks about the problems that women may face in all aspects of their growth and the blind spots that are worth discussing.

Such plot accounts are more suitable for the "usefulness" tone of the Xiaohongshu community.

Based on past experience, brand-customized dramas also have fertile soil for growth on Xiaohongshu.

In the context of grass-planting content, the way brands enter Xiaohongshu can completely transition to video. Different from direct product marketing, brands can use Xiaohongshu as a platform for marketing brand concepts and brand stories, which is in line with the tone and crowd of the Xiaohongshu community. For Xiaohongshu, this may mean that the idea of ​​paid micro-short dramas is difficult to implement, but brand-customized dramas still have opportunities.

In addition, the content-seeking attribute of the Xiaohongshu social platform lays a user foundation for the micro-short dramas to be searched and accepted on the platform.

Searching for keywords such as "micro short drama" will provide a variety of useful resources, including recommendations for ranking works, micro short drama market reports, qualifications for shooting micro short dramas, and logic for short dramas going viral. This will also provide a platform for micro short dramas to take root and land on Xiaohongshu more quickly.

With the help of short dramas, Xiaohongshu, a "guide-type" content community, will have the opportunity to have stronger circle penetration and commercial value adaptability. In the increasingly mature mid-to-late stage of commercial value transformation, it will be smoother.

3. Conclusion No. 1

The tone of the community largely influences how the platform innovates.

For Xiaohongshu, short dramas are both a springboard to accelerate the transformation of commercial content and a single-plank bridge to transition to community attributes with trepidation. Xiaohongshu must first meet the needs of existing users before it can test the waters by using short dramas as "gifts" as attachments.

But in No.1's opinion, Xiaohongshu may really have the opportunity to become a potential stock in the new track of micro-short dramas. The collision between the two is an opportunity for both parties to start a new journey.

The clarion call for the micro-drama on Xiaohongshu, which is gaining momentum, has been sounded. What kind of content ecology will they present during the "running-in period"? What kind of format change will it bring? This is the fun of the Internet era - everything is full of unknowns, and everything is worth looking forward to.

Author: Di Fei

Source: Media No. 1 (ID: 1093893)