Is it still possible to increase the volume of Xiaohongshu?

As a content-driven social platform, Xiaohongshu is a fertile ground for brand marketing, especially through the method of spreading the volume through a large number of amateur notes, which has helped many new consumer brands rise rapidly. However, with the adjustment of platform rules and changes in the market environment, whether this method of spreading the volume is still effective has become the focus of attention of many brands and marketers. This article will deeply explore the current situation and challenges of Xiaohongshu's method of spreading the volume, as well as new marketing strategies for brands on Xiaohongshu.

The three most popular brand marketing tactics:

• First, 5,000 reviews on Xiaohongshu
• Publish 2,000 more questions and answers on Zhihu
• Then they got Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, and took advantage of the opportunity to build channels and reap profits from mid-level anchors.

This method has also helped to promote a number of new consumer brands that are now in full swing. Most of the "5,000 reviews on Xiaohongshupu" were also completed by amateurs.

1. Why was the strategy of expanding volume popular in the past few years?

Because in fact, the initial gameplay of Xiaohongshu platform was relatively limited. There was no dandelion, no good product experience station, and it could only gain exposure through the method of spreading the volume by ordinary people.

Another thing is that the spread of volume did work. In the past few years, the spread of volume could increase brand-related notes on the one hand, and on the other hand, it could get more notes displayed for target keywords. It was indeed easier to do keyword layout before.

In the past few years, Xiaohongshu has had no related notes for many long-tail keywords, except for some keywords with relatively large search volumes. The platform also needs some notes to fill the gaps, so the platform has turned a blind eye to the issue of volume expansion.

The platform and the brand took advantage of each other, each taking what they needed, until April 21, when Xiaohongshu launched the [Brand Points Deduction Violation Rules]

Under the long-term governance of this rule, the method of amateurs spreading the volume is almost ineffective. There are two reasons for this:

• Under the mechanism of thousands of search terms, it is difficult to gain exposure under a specified keyword by relying solely on the number of notes. The ranking under a keyword combines indicators such as click-through rate, interaction rate, and real-time performance, and the scope for human intervention is relatively small.
• The risk is high, but the return is low. If the number of brand-related notes increases sharply, but the notes are not reported, the platform may assess it as soft advertising and malicious marketing, and deduct points for violations. The deduction may result in traffic restrictions or brand blocking.

2. Under the deduction mechanism, how should brands change their approach to gaming on Xiaohongshu?

1. Use [Talent Recruitment] to publish product replacement tasks to replace amateur marketing

If you want to have a certain number of notes but are worried about the risk of being sold by amateurs, you can open the [Goods Experience Station] to launch a product replacement task. There will be qualified accounts to apply. Compared with being sold by amateurs, it has lower costs, better quality, and is safer. You can also publish [Talent Recruitment] on Dandelion to cooperate with more low-level experts.

2. Soft advertising is still allowed, but attention should be paid to the reporting ratio and delivery rhythm

Even today, soft advertising notes are not completely restricted. As long as the ratio between reporting and not reporting is within 4:6 (voice ratio) , it is relatively safe.

Many brands we work with also follow this ratio. So far, no one has been found to have violated the rules for making soft advertising notes.

In terms of the delivery rhythm, avoid a surge in the number of soft-ad notes, and deliver them in batches in accordance with the reported notes; if it involves marketing nodes, it is inevitable that the volume will surge in the short term, so please increase the reporting ratio

3. Quality is more important than quantity. Make creating popular articles the core goal of your campaign

Hot articles play an extremely important role in advertising. Hot articles can enhance user trust and increase the recovery rate of notes. Hot articles have been proven to significantly improve keyword searches on Taobao and Tmall.

It is not recommended to launch large-scale campaigns before good content and good topics are launched. Split product communication points and conduct topic combination tests until some high-quality topics have been accumulated and formed into topics before launching large-scale campaigns.

After publishing good content, don’t be stingy with information flow. Recharge when necessary and invest in traffic when necessary. Invest notes with potential to become hits. This operation is more cost-effective than buying exposure from influencers.

4. Xiaohongshu is a reverse funnel crowd model, first targeting the core crowd, then breaking the circle

Douyin is a promotional business, which is to harvest at low prices in a big exposure, but Xiaohongshu is a buyer store business, which finds the core group of people with needs and uses differentiated communication points to convert them, and then gradually expands the group

Don’t choose influencers right away! Make a strategy first, find the right audience, and then match influencers based on the strategy and audience. Influencers are just media, and the goal is to reach the right audience with the right communication touch. If you don’t understand this, no matter how much you invest, it will all go to waste.

3. Summary

Soft advertising on Xiaohongshu will be like fake orders on Taobao, which cannot be eliminated, but the platform’s attitude must be to suppress it. At the appropriate stage, as long as it is not excessive and as long as a large number of low-difference notes are not made, soft advertising can still be done. At the same time, the ratio of soft advertising and reporting should be controlled, and risks should be controlled. As the number of notes increases, the focus should be gradually shifted from quantity to quality. After all, soft advertising cannot be scaled and the effect is limited. It still depends more on high-quality notes to attract more users.

Author: Vic's Marketing Thoughts

Source: WeChat public account "Vic's Marketing Thinking"