Uncovering the secrets of hundreds of new bloggers! An analysis of the three major trends in Xiaohongshu content creation

The rise of hundreds of new bloggers has pushed Xiaohongshu's content creation to a new climax. By analyzing these new stars, we found the trend of the fastest increase in followers on the platform. This article will deeply interpret the three eye-catching trends in Xiaohongshu's content track to provide creators with inspiration and direction for future creation. If you are active on the Xiaohongshu platform, don't miss these changes.

2023 is coming to an end. Yesterday, QuestMobile, a well-known business intelligence data service provider, released the "2023 China Mobile Internet Annual Report". The report shows that after more than ten years of continuous growth, China's mobile Internet usage stickiness has slightly declined in 2023. In December 2023, the average monthly mobile Internet usage time was 165.9 hours, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 12 hours, or about 7%; the average monthly usage times were 2559.6 times, a slight decrease of nearly 3% year-on-year; the average monthly number of APPs used continued to increase slightly year-on-year.

All signs indicate that the competition among major apps for user attention and usage time has become fierce, and content creators active on various platforms are bound to face more severe tests. At this juncture, short video practitioners need to look back, analyze the advantageous tracks on the platform, and make better plans for the development of the coming year based on their own actual conditions.

In this article, Kasi will discuss with you the following: What development trend will the entire Xiaohongshu content ecosystem present in 2023? What potential tracks and creative opportunities are worth our attention in 2024? What kind of creative inspiration can it bring to creators in the future? Let's take a look together.

In 2023, which tracks and bloggers are worth paying attention to?

In the past year, Kasi has been paying attention to the monthly fan growth list of Xiaohongshu. Combining these data, Kasi has compiled some information that has attracted much attention from creators. It should be noted that there are many active corporate accounts, media accounts and celebrity accounts on Xiaohongshu, and their fan growth paths are quite different from those of ordinary creators. In order to provide reference for more ordinary creators, the above-mentioned related account data have been excluded in this statistics.

First of all, in the past 12 months, the top 10 bloggers with the most followers in a single month are @公主是这是一个新鲜做的913,300, @煎饼果仔 512,900, @爱测评的雯子 466,500, @氮菊 442,700, @白日小熊 437,500, @晨晨 397,300, @姜峰真的负 393,900, @请托了汤圆 392,200, @李嗲Lydiaaa 389,400, and @蛋仔饭特稀 366,700.

Three of the ten bloggers are from the drama track : @煎饼果仔 became popular on the Internet because of the short film "Escape from the British Museum". The short film has no eye-catching special effects and no bloody and exciting reversals. It simply tells a story of "cultural relics becoming spirits and looking for a home". However, the moving lines and exquisite costumes and props of the work are far beyond the level of ordinary short videos. Not only did it make the audience intoxicated, but it also ignited the patriotism of many users.

@煎饼果仔Little Red Book screenshot

@晨晨 was originally a big V in the early days of Douyin platform. After entering Xiaohongshu, he stood out from the fiercely competitive drama track again with his "daily documentary" drama. Among them, "unlucky brother" Diandian, although young, has won the love of many short video users with his exquisite acting skills of pretending to be anything.

@晨晨LittleRedBook screenshot

@姜峰真的馋's biggest feature is his versatile voice. Although he is a boy, he can easily imitate the voices of a loli, a girl, a queen, etc. The "voice reversal" embedded in the plot not only adds humor to his works, but also becomes the blogger's most recognizable business card, helping him carve out his own niche in the plot track.

@姜峰真的Gou Xiaohongshu screenshot

In addition to the plot track, bloggers in the review track also demonstrated strong fan-attracting capabilities : the works of bloggers @爱测评的雯子 and @拜托了汤圆 both have strong "fan interactivity". They select their own review objects by accepting fan submissions, and boldly accept various alternative challenges proposed by fans, providing the audience with a "high sense of participation" that is not easy to experience in other bloggers, allowing them to quickly increase their fans.

@爱测评的雯子Little Red Book screenshot

@李嗲Lydiaaa is a top student at Renmin University of China, and her boyfriend is a student at Tsinghua University. The two people with high academic backgrounds became popular last year with hardcore evaluations. The biggest feature of their works is that they use scientific instruments to calculate the specific numbers of product efficacy. All conclusions are supported by visual data, making the originally subjective "blogger evaluation" objective, professional and scientific.

@李嗲Lydiaaa screenshot of Xiaohongshu video

Two of the above ten people are from the fashion area, which is Xiaohongshu's "old brand" advantage area. One of them is @氮菊, who became popular on the Internet at the beginning of last year for her high-end cross-dressing. After joining Xiaohongshu, in addition to continuously posting cross-dressing videos, she also shares her skin care experience and clothing matching with everyone, making the account content more "dry goods" and is loved by many Xiaohongshu users.

@氮菊Little Red Book video screenshot

The second is @白日小熊, who was the first person to lead the "dopamine dressing" craze last summer. The high-saturation color clothing matching style shared by the blogger gives people a strong visual impact, mobilizes the positive emotions of the viewers, and gives the viewers a sense of pleasure. It is very different from the temperament and simple style that have been common in the past two years, and is sought after by many people.

@白日小熊Little Red Book screenshot

It is worth noting that @公主是我由于花卉做 is the individual creator with the largest number of followers gaining in a single month on Xiaohongshu in 2023. The blogger's content focuses on topics of women's growth and emotional topics between the sexes. Through simple and plain words, she teaches the audience some "common sense" that they should know but are ashamed to talk about in daily life. This just-right "offense" fills the "knowledge blind spots" of many people and also helps the blogger successfully enter a promising niche track.

@Princess is made of flowers screenshot of Xiaohongshu

Finally, @蛋仔饭特稀 is a game blogger who focuses on recording the funny stories he experienced in the game world of "蛋仔派对". On the one hand, the popularity of the game has helped the blogger's self-media career development. On the other hand, in addition to short videos, the blogger also insists on live broadcasting, establishing a deep connection with fans.

@蛋仔饭特稀 Little Red Book screenshot

In short, compared with the previous years, the similarity between Xiaohongshu platform in 2023 is that the strongest performance tracks are still the three fields of plot, evaluation, and fashion. The difference is that the "cute baby" track that had performed well before has somewhat "disappeared". Even outside the TOP10, there are few cute baby bloggers.

In addition, although the types of strong tracks have not changed, the "faces" of representative bloggers are becoming newer and newer, which is in sharp contrast to the previous phenomenon of "old bloggers" dominating the screen. This situation will undoubtedly give more new entrants confidence.

Unfortunately, judging from the increase in the number of fans of bloggers, it can be clearly felt that

The speed at which Xiaohongshu bloggers gain followers has slowed down, and it has become increasingly difficult for accounts to gain followers. In fact, compared with other platforms, the speed at which Xiaohongshu creators gain followers has never been advantageous. In 2022, the average number of fans gained by the top 20 in the monthly fan growth list can be maintained at around 300,000, and the number of fans who gain the most in the month is generally around 500,000. Looking ahead to 2023, bloggers with an increase in fans in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 have become the mainstream on the fan growth list, and there are even bloggers whose monthly fan growth is less than 100,000 on the list. At the same time, the number of fans gained by the top bloggers has also obviously "shrunk", and most of the time it is only around 400,000.

In 2024, what opportunities are there in the Xiaohongshu content track?

At the beginning of each year, Xiaohongshu will release the top ten popular trends of the year and predict the popular content on the site in the coming year. The official has not yet released relevant information for 2024, but based on the observation of the content and bloggers that have become popular on the platform in the past period of time, Kas believes that there are several trends in Xiaohongshu in 2024 that are still worth everyone's attention.

First of all, from the perspective of creative form, pictures and texts will always be the "foundation" of the Xiaohongshu community, but the videoization of notes has become a general trend.

In fact, the bloggers who have made it onto Xiaohongshu’s fan-increasing list in the past year are either those who specialize in short videos or those who are proficient in both text, pictures, and videos . No bloggers who specialize in text and pictures made the list.

This is closely related to the changes in people's daily browsing habits. As early as 2021, the "2021 China Mobile Internet Annual Report" released by QuestMobile showed that short videos have surpassed instant messaging and become the industry that occupies the longest time of Internet users.

Compared with pictures and texts, short videos are more impactful and more vivid, and are easier to capture the hearts of users in the fast-paced information age. Whether out of consideration for user interest or to maintain the length of app usage, platforms are willing to allocate more resources to short videos.

However, as a UGC community, pictures and texts have always been an important carrier of Xiaohongshu's content. In particular, community users have high requirements for the practicality of content. Pictures and texts can help everyone save time in retrieving key content from the complex information in the video, so creators do not have to worry about the possibility of picture and text notes being "abandoned".

Secondly, in terms of creative style, from "volume refinement" to "volume segmentation", future content needs to be more focused and practical.

In many articles about Xiaohongshu in 2022, Kas mentioned the "refinement" of the platform's notes. Whether it is text or pictures, creators are happy to create more refined and gorgeous content for users to appreciate, in order to cater to the platform's tone.

But looking at the content that has become popular in the past year, Kas found that more and more creators are no longer pursuing refinement in form, but are turning their attention to the "precision" and "depth" of content. Many bloggers in niche tracks have found like-minded partners on Xiaohongshu, and have won more fans through professional and practical sharing.

For example, photography blogger @肉肉小学姐 shares with fans small topics such as "photographic poses" and "action techniques" during shooting. Moreover, unlike the general notes sharing "universal poses", her content is further refined, giving fans suggestions in very specific scenarios, and at the end, she attaches her actual photos, which greatly increases the operability of the content.

@肉肉小学姐Little Red Book screenshot

Finally, in terms of content direction, Kas believes that life, relaxation, and interactivity may be the keywords worthy of creators' attention in 2024.

Earlier, when Kas interviewed Lin Chen, the founder of Xiaohongshu's top MCN Qinchen Culture, he revealed that the home furnishing track has been the fastest growing track on the site in recent years. In the live broadcast benchmark cases that Xiaohongshu has recently strongly recommended, many home furnishing buyers have also appeared, from which it is not difficult to see the platform's ambition to develop home furnishing content on the site. Objectively speaking, the home furnishing track can indeed meet the needs of both creators and platforms in terms of content quality and monetization, and is a track worthy of key investment.

For this type of content, the atmosphere of life and a sense of relaxation are undoubtedly the most important footnotes. By showing their real life and sharing their own philosophy of life in their works, bloggers can easily attract like-minded fans. Last year's popular bloggers such as @董洁, @张小卉, @JLinn啊 and others all have such characteristics.

@JLinn ah Xiaohongshu screenshot

In addition to the home furnishing track, Kas believes that content with "high interactivity" characteristics is also promising in the future.

Last year, the content model of "fan submissions and blogger challenges" swept the entire Internet, and countless creators joined this "blind box" content creation process. People like @拜托了了汤圆, @爱测评的雯子, @怪小绮, @萧枭同学 and others have upgraded the "interactivity" of the content and achieved good results.

The reason why such content can become popular is that it can give users a greater sense of participation, narrow the distance between bloggers and fans, and arouse fans' curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Xiaohongshu's unique community atmosphere undoubtedly magnifies these advantages. When we browse Xiaohongshu daily, we can also see that words such as "listen to advice" and "seek help" frequently appear in user notes, which reflects the users' urgent need for interaction and mutual assistance, and also shows the vigorous vitality of such content on the platform.

Author: Jiangbei WeChat public account: Kas Data