There are these problems with Xiaohongshu, 90% of them fail

Xiaohongshu is an APP that everyone knows, but why some people can't make it? This article will help you summarize common mistakes and avoid detours. It will provide some ideas and directions for those who have made Xiaohongshu accounts but can't make them or those who want to make Xiaohongshu accounts, so as to create high-quality Xiaohongshu accounts.

Why is your Xiaohongshu account always failing to gain popularity?

Most business leaders will think about this question.

Last week I went to interview a student. There were 50+ mobile phones operating in one office at the same time, and 50 more phones were on the way. For sincere entrepreneurs, I felt embarrassed if I didn’t find a way to make them run faster.

When you manage 30+ accounts at the same time, you won't ask me why your account is always failing.

Of course, content and gameplay are equally important and complement each other.

Recently, I summarized some problems encountered by some business friends around me. I was very touched, but these are also some misunderstandings that most companies often make when using Xiaohongshu.

Today, I have compiled some questions, hoping to help business friends who are experiencing one or several of these problems, so that they can avoid detours and waste less money when doing business on Xiaohongshu.

Below are 14 misunderstandings that companies on Xiaohongshu have about Xiaohongshu. I hope it can help you who are anxious about profits.

1. Why can’t I do well on Xiaohongshu even though I write 100 notes a month?

I made a lot of notes and found many bloggers, but the sales and exposure still did not increase; even if I put the spotlight on it, there was no good growth.

The reason may be that the product's selling point and content format do not match the needs of users. It is necessary to have both exquisite content and traffic-grabbing content. In fact, the content of the note can be divided into several forms.

One type is called weighted notes: it is for greater exposure, which can be understood as large-circle traffic, focusing on topic points, such as whether there are relevant holiday topics recently, and how relevant they are to the product.

The second type is called mid-circle quasi-traffic: this type of content can be uploaded or downloaded, and has both precise and general audiences. However, the topic must also be of interest to everyone. This type of content is commonly found in large topics such as "Mom's Travel Guide", "New Mom", and "Growth Diary".

The third type is a form of promotion specifically for one’s own products: doing reviews is one way to clearly promote the selling points of one’s own products. The placement is usually hard and the data is average.

Therefore, it is crucial to clarify the purpose and mission of each note and the ultimate goal to be achieved.

2. Xiaohongshu builds its own group or outsources its operation

There is no problem in doing both at the same time. Just think clearly whether you want to use Xiaohongshu as the main channel for traffic dissemination or as the main channel for acquiring customers. With the focus, there will be different action countermeasures. If you focus on it, you need to make a layout. While finding someone to operate it for you, you can build your own team, compare them, and judge the labor cost and results.

Many people have a misunderstanding when looking for an agent to operate; that is, they completely hand over the task to a third-party operation team, and never think that they can also participate in solving the problem. Compared with big brands, it is also necessary to consider the differences. In order to achieve better results, large-scale companies can do in-depth research on Xiaohongshu. They can ask the agent operation team to help in the first three months or six months, or they can send their own people to take over slowly while following up on the project.

If you think the labor cost is relatively high, you can ask for agency operation in the early stage to reduce the cost of trial and error. It is recommended that someone start doing it on both ends.

3. Misunderstandings and pitfalls of bloggers in Xiaohongshu

In 2024, those who want to join Xiaohongshu must be aware of one reality: blogger traffic is not as much as before. How to solve this problem?

That is, when you invest in bloggers, you should think clearly about what your investment goals are. Bloggers can solve the problem of trust endorsement for brands. If you just want to get customers immediately, don't blindly invest in Xiaohongshu. Because when investing in Xiaohongshu bloggers, our focus is still on traffic, and bloggers only exist as a medium.

At this point, whether the content you create, the selling points of the product, and even the appearance of the product can impress users is more important than placing a blogger. We cannot expect bloggers to bring us sales immediately, but we should pay attention to our own content and look inward rather than outward. Use the content in the corporate account and video account public account to match the blogger account, and then promote it, so that the product content can impress users.

4. Misunderstandings and pitfalls of analyzing explosive articles

90% of merchants make the wrong analysis when analyzing hot articles.

The average order value and the crowd of the product must be analyzed clearly. For example, if the average order value is 2,000 yuan or close to 1,000 yuan, but the popular style you analyzed is actually 100 to 200 yuan, 300 to 400 yuan, it is not appropriate. For example, shoes and clothes can cost as low as a few dozen yuan or as high as tens of thousands of yuan. If the crowd you analyze and imitate does not have enough consumption power for the product, it is bound to increase the decision-making cost. At this time, we must analyze whether the content is useful after it is released for exposure. It does not mean whether the customer will buy it immediately, but it must be reached multiple times. Until one day, the customer may bite the bullet and buy it.

Therefore, when analyzing a hot article, we need to analyze and disassemble the hot articles of the same level, rather than those with a large gap in the ranking. The second thing is that when disassembling a hot article, we need to analyze clearly whether this note has paid traffic. For example, let's say we find that the reading volume of this note is relatively high, but the likes and collections do not match. For example, the exposure volume is 80,000, the reading volume is 80,000, but the likes are only 2,000 or more than 1,000. The gap is too large, which is actually very abnormal. Therefore, we need to analyze whether the note is natural flow or paid flow.

5. What are the misunderstandings about Xiaohongshu’s focus on traffic?

When doing focused traffic, we can first test on a small scale to test whether the sales power of each note is good, the click-through rate is also acceptable, and the audience obtained is effective. But this is still divided into two dimensions. One dimension is: traffic is for e-commerce store transactions; the other is: to get leads, and to judge whether the results are OK. If you find that there is no problem with the material, you can do it in large quantities. Customize content according to the channels that people search, check content, and check keywords.

Therefore, many people ignore the seizure of traffic in the "search" section and only work on personalized recommendation information flow. In fact, it is very accurate. If you change your thinking, the traffic will be much more accurate.

6. What are the misunderstandings about Xiaohongshu live streaming?

Many people who do Xiaohongshu live broadcast will first look at the sales volume, and if the data is not good, they will give up. In fact, there are two dimensions here:

The first dimension: whether the product category is suitable for Xiaohongshu; we can refer to some live broadcast rooms of anchors who can sell goods, for example, what Dong Jie generally sells and what Zhang Xiaohui sells.

The second dimension is: we need to think about the product’s reach and purchase cycle. If the customer unit price is several thousand yuan, then live streaming should not be able to bring it. Xiaohongshu live streaming is different from other platforms. It is more inclined to a quiet and peaceful way of telling stories. Many people give up when they think it can’t sell goods. In fact, at this time, we should insist on doing it. Whether to do product promotion or directly eliminate inventory has different definitions in essence. There is such a situation. For example, when a blogger does a live broadcast, he says that the sales volume is not high, but how many people watch and listen to him carefully? In fact, Xiaohongshu does not advocate the use of low prices to increase sales.

7. What are the misunderstandings about selling products on Xiaohongshu?

Many people think that as long as they find a lot of bloggers to do the placement in their own way, the exposure is large enough, and the sales volume must be high. In fact, this is just the tip of the iceberg of other people's results. The deeper logic behind it is whether the product can impress users. It is believed that selling goods means having enough exposure, but this is not the case. For example, a case we talked about in the grass-growing study before is called BeBeBus. It found 12 bloggers to do research and practice, and extracted the communication perspectives and selling points that users care about.

Therefore, the biggest misunderstanding is to think that if the exposure is large enough, the reading volume is large enough, and there are more bloggers, the goods will definitely be sold well. When many traditional factories and traditional e-commerce companies enter Xiaohongshu, they will find it difficult to get the desired results without upgrading. In fact, the key step is whether your product, crowd, selling point, and communication scene are right. If you don’t find them right, you will definitely not be able to do this thing or will give up halfway. So how to solve this problem? We have the opportunity to communicate in depth privately.

8. Misunderstandings of Xiaohongshu’s Holiday Advertising

This is also a very common problem. Many merchants and brands only want to match the traffic of a certain cat, and only advertise on Xiaohongshu during "Double 11", "Double 12" and "618". In fact, some brands that get great results on Xiaohongshu are not like this at all.

They will focus on analyzing Xiaohongshu and analyze what kind of searches people on the platform use: what keywords people search for and what kind of results they get. Instead of only placing ads at a specific time when they reach a certain key node, their content is varied and they look for a variety of accounts during the period of seeding or layout, and they will not stick to one blogger account.

Following the trend is inevitable, but there are many choices, and of course you have to weigh the personnel situation within your company and make your own choice. I have mentioned before that there is a PCAT horse racing model called Xiaohongshu, which talks about product placement, product horse racing, crowd horse racing, content horse racing, account horse racing, team personnel horse racing, service provider horse racing, and a whole set of horse racing, and then choose the more correct choice.

9. Marketing Misconceptions in the Comment Section of Xiaohongshu

Judging from the players of Xiaohongshu, old players are generally familiar with it, while new players may not understand the importance of marketing in the comment area. Here we will discuss it in two points.

Old players may think about answering something, but will ignore the marketing highlights of other comment areas.

New players may not be fully aware of the role they need to play as consumers. For example, I have used this product before and found a few minor flaws: the packaging is too ugly and the paper box may be a little difficult to open, but the effect is still quite good. Then, they will talk about a lot of good reasons for its effect. In this way, it may seem like a bad review, but it is actually a good review, which can inspire more trust from consumers.

In fact, the comments and notes of Xiaohongshu are integrated into one. When creating notes and producing content, we need to think clearly about what kind of marketing to do in the comment area and how to interact.

10. Misunderstandings of Xiaohongshu’s Content Production

[Content with Sales Power] Many brands or businesses place all their hopes for content creation on bloggers, but this is actually wrong.

Because bloggers only create content according to their own creative ideas, it is not certain whether their content can focus on sales or bring goods. Therefore, every company must master the two sets of logic of content sales and content exposure.

If you are a sales person, you must think clearly about what kind of content has sales attributes. For example, when we see some notes published, some people ask in the comments section how to buy and where to buy, this kind of content has sales power.

Building a set of content production methods and processes is the key for any company to remain competitive in this industry in the next three to five years. Building your own Xiaohongshu content factory (a complete set from scenarios, crowds, pain points to the final scenario implantation, expression techniques, etc.) cannot be replaced by bloggers. Instead, placing your hopes on bloggers will waste a lot of money.

【Content Copying】Seeing that others are buying good content, just copy it blindly. Xiaohongshu management should be done within one's means, with insight into the product, segmenting the population, shooting 10 product releases from various angles, paying attention to user feedback, and understanding whether the reason for poor traffic is the account or the content, and running out of the model.

【Low-cost content】Think about the input cost and what kind of content can make a short-term profit. The quality of the content is not always proportional to the input cost. The key lies in how we accurately grasp user needs and how to skillfully use platform rules and characteristics. It is clear that low-cost content does not mean low-quality content. On the contrary, it emphasizes the practicality and resonance of the content.

11. Misunderstandings about Xiaohongshu Product Pricing

Traffic is getting more and more expensive, products are constantly upgrading, but the consumption power is still the same group of people. When production and quality coexist, people are generally caught in the "dilemma" of expensive customer acquisition and low-price coupons. Business friends, "failure to achieve volume is a waste of manpower", or "returns and orders kill profits", back and forth, lowering the precarious profit line. Some small and medium-sized enterprises may feel the same way. There are more and more business matters, but the actual profits are not high, and they can only maintain the current working environment.

There are too many products with high average order value on Xiaohongshu now, but they are selling very well through channels such as buyers, live broadcasts, and store openings. There are many such cases on Xiaohongshu, where 3 million products were sold in 3 months. The lower the average order value, the more products are sold, but the profit is low. Merchants and brands can set the average order value of products higher to improve the replicability of the content. The longer the cycle, the better. Xiaohongshu management should focus on mass production of content and efficient production, especially for those who use IP. The result of a blind price war is: no one makes money.

12. Misunderstandings about the Cost Output of Xiaohongshu

Consider the overall cost, investment, choose categories with less competition, maximize exposure, and segment groups/demands/scenarios/keywords. Many companies invest a lot of resources in Xiaohongshu to pursue high exposure, but ignore the precise positioning of the target audience. They spend money but only get a conversion rate of 0.01%. Not only do they lose time, but they also lose labor costs and budget.

High exposure can certainly bring a certain amount of traffic, but if this traffic does not match the brand's target audience, the conversion rate will be greatly reduced, resulting in a disproportionate investment and output. Content marketing is a long-term process that requires long-term planning and strategic vision.

Only focusing on short-term benefits and lacking long-term planning and strategic vision will lead to poor marketing results on Xiaohongshu. Be clear about the project investment costs and investment flow profits, which is what we often call the return on investment ratio - ROI.

13. Misunderstandings in Building a Xiaohongshu Team

Clarify the team's time cost, manpower, venue, storage and talent costs, find reliable team partners, and don't ignore SOP, which can quickly replicate team capabilities and save tutorial costs under the premise of a process. When building a team, you must fully consider the time cost. Leave enough time for team members to get familiar with the work, understand each other, and establish an effective communication mechanism.

At the same time, formulate clear performance appraisals, periodic tables and goals to ensure that the team can complete the work tasks within the specified time. And what I have been impressed with recently is the care and praise among the team. Don't be stingy with praise, and express recognition to team members to different degrees. He/she will be more passionate when he/she receives your recognition.

Before, some students would say to me: Teacher Zhuang, you should rest early in the next two days. As a relatively sensitive person, he would think that this is to let you stay in a good state to face the next course tomorrow, but in fact it is just a way for her to care about you.

Therefore, correctly interpreting the well-intentioned concern of others can also promote relationships within the team.

14. Misunderstandings about using Xiaohongshu’s efficient tools

Efficient teamwork requires the support of tools. Choose tools/AI to operate Xiaohongshu, seize the platform bonus period, and follow the platform trend. Last time in the grass-growing school, a student recommended me a relatively easy-to-use AI software. Yes, we are also learning how to use tools that can improve our work efficiency. Below I will also recommend some of the tools I use to you.

【Xinhong Data】 is a data software about the Xiaohongshu platform, a product of Xinbang, which can meet my daily needs for data, including industry trends, finding experts, finding benchmarks, finding hot search terms/hot topics, etc.

【Wenxinyiyan】It is an AI software, which can reduce a certain burden for us in daily use for writing notes, copywriting, etc. Of course, its content output cannot be used directly, and you need to "train" it to achieve the content you want and make adjustments.

【ChatGPT】 is also an AI software. Compared with Wenxinyiyan, it is more complicated. You need to climb the wall and find a channel to buy an account before you can use it normally. The usage method is similar to Wenxinyiyan. I wrote about how to use AI software to write in my previous article "chatGPT+Xiaohongshu Hot Article, Mass Production of 100 Notes in 1 Day". Of course, there are more useful software that can improve efficiency. Just find the right tool according to your daily needs.

Above, I have shown you some common misunderstandings about Xiaohongshu from 14 perspectives, from placement, traffic, content production to team building, to show you some common mistakes that Xiaohongshu merchants often make. If you are in one or several of these stages, you can send the basic information of your project/brand strategy to the Content Villa coaches, and they will help you diagnose your project/brand strategy. I hope the above content can help you.

Author: Zhuang Jun; WeChat public account: Zhuang Jun (ID: zhuangjunweixin)