Will the video notes watched by millions of fans bring new traffic dividends to Xiaohongshu?

In today's era of social media, video content has become one of the important ways to attract user attention and traffic. Some video creators with millions of fans have successfully attracted a large number of users through their wonderful content and unique style. Let's take a look at how they are carrying the new trend of Xiaohongshu's traffic dividend.

"Xiaohongshu may be the last blue ocean of traffic for video creators." Recently, more than one content practitioner expressed a similar view to us.

"Xinhong", the Xiaohongshu data platform under Xinbang, shows that in the past six months, the top 100 most popular works each month were all video notes, and the top 50 creators with the fastest fan growth were mostly video creators.

Screenshot from Xinhong

For example, "Wenzi who loves reviews" has gained nearly 820,000 followers in the past six months, and has continued to rank among the top five in terms of monthly follower growth on Xiaohongshu. At its peak, it gained nearly 500,000 followers in a month.

She was originally a video creator who distributed content on all platforms. She started releasing videos in 2020, but was always tepid until September, when she saw a surge in traffic by randomly reading fan comments and conducting challenges.

There are many cases like "Wenzi who loves to test and evaluate". "Shanbai" , which is well-known among netizens for its reproduction of ancient Chinese techniques, has gained 750,000 followers since it joined Xiaohongshu at the end of September; "Pause in Dialogue" , which shoots a public welfare short play around women's issues, has gained 470,000 followers in a month, and the most popular video has received 549,000 likes.

There are also some overseas creators, many of whom have already gained some fame on overseas platforms or other domestic platforms, but they have really achieved rapid growth in traffic after joining Xiaohongshu. For example, "CoachShane" , who teaches English, gained 500,000 followers in one month after joining Xiaohongshu in July, and now has 1.33 million followers.

The popular video content on Xiaohongshu is also different from that on other platforms. It focuses more on authenticity and usefulness to others. This also requires unique ideas and methods to operate videos on Xiaohongshu.

Recently, Xinbang talked to several video creators who have rapidly increased their followers on Xiaohongshu, and talked about how they achieved a surge in traffic and what other video content opportunities are there on Xiaohongshu?

1. One video gained 130,000 followers. Has the video creator found a "second spring" on Xiaohongshu?

"Jenniexuu" is not a new blogger. She has been sharing her daily outfits in the form of pictures and texts on Xiaohongshu since 2021. However, as of July 2023, the account had only more than 50,000 followers. Although her picture and text notes had some popular items with thousands or tens of thousands of likes, the conversion rate to fans was mediocre.

The turning point came in August this year, when she released a video showing her daily outfits, with Japanese filters, natural switching between near and far shots, and fast-paced expression. Although there were no lines, it attracted a large number of netizens to watch, and has received more than 110,000 likes so far.

Since then, "Jenniexuu" has started to post videos more frequently. Xinhong data shows that her Xiaohongshu account gained 680,000 followers in 80 days, and many popular videos with tens of thousands of likes have appeared one after another.

One of them was posted on August 26. The video is about 30 seconds long, has more than 150,000 likes, and has been played 2.1 million times.

"My content is more healing, with some atmosphere that I like, and the video style is more in line with Xiaohongshu's audience ," "Jenniexuu" concluded.

As of the end of last year, Xiaohongshu had 260 million monthly active users, of which 70% were female users, most of whom were young people under the age of 30. Its core users were concentrated in first-tier and new first-tier cities. They have high requirements for quality of life, love to watch real and high-quality lifestyle sharing, and also care about their sense of self-achievement.

"Jenniexuu" just happens to meet the needs of these users. Its high-profile, high-quality lifestyle vlogs not only bring aesthetic appreciation, but also give viewers dressing inspiration.

In addition to the traffic surge of Xiaohongshu's graphic and text creators who switched to the video track, mature video creators who joined Xiaohongshu from outside have also ushered in a "second spring" of traffic.

For example, "CoachShane". He has been engaged in English education for more than 30 years. His original "Coach Shane Daily Dictation" daily dictation course has become popular all over the world, with more than one million fans on the Internet.

90% of these fans are female and concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, which is highly consistent with the demographic profile of Xiaohongshu. In addition, most Xiaohongshu users have a bachelor's degree or above, which also means that they are more likely to accept professional content on deep learning.

Based on this, "CoachShane" started to operate his own Xiaohongshu account. His English teaching is well-known for being easy to understand, humorous and vivid. He takes 4-5 minutes to break down an English dictation and explain it in detail. In addition to grammar knowledge, he also adds interpretations of life scenes, making boring English learning interesting.

Coupled with the video cover and text that are in line with the style of Xiaohongshu, they catch the eye. For example, the video title would use expressions such as "I have never seen a teacher who can speak English so well" and "I suggest netizens to investigate this teacher strictly." Xinhong data shows that the "CoachShane" Xiaohongshu account gained 500,000 followers in one month.

Screenshot from Xinhong

Bob, the Chinese head of the "CoachShane" account, believes that the cover and title of the note account for 50% of the video traffic . The videos on Xiaohongshu are presented in the form of notes. When browsing, users will scroll up and down. From the title, you need to set a hook to create curiosity and attract users to click. At the same time, the content can retain people to increase the conversion rate.

He cited the most popular video, titled "Your hearing will be so good that you won't recognize your relatives", which received nearly 140,000 likes, more than 50,000 favorites, and more than 1.55 million views. Bob revealed that this video brought in 132,000 new fans, "which is equivalent to one follower for every 10 people who watched it, far exceeding the market level."

2. Videos are three times more efficient at increasing followers than pictures and texts. How did Xiaohongshu become a video blue ocean?

The emergence of many popular cases further proves that Xiaohongshu is a "video blue ocean".

In the eyes of these creators, compared with other content platforms, Xiaohongshu has three advantages that are suitable for video content to take root and grow:

First, Xiaohongshu’s video content is in the incremental stage and still has traffic dividends.

The overall Internet traffic has entered the stock era. The "2023 China Mobile Internet Half-Year Report" released by QuestMobile shows that the growth rate of the short video industry has slowed down and the user penetration rate of the entire network has remained basically stable.

In this context, Xiaohongshu has become the "special" one. Public data shows that between 2019 and 2022, Xiaohongshu's monthly active users increased nearly three times , breaking the stable pattern of the top platforms with its individual high-speed growth in the stock era.

The rapid increase in platform traffic has brought many benefits to creators. In the past two years, the number of video creators on Xiaohongshu has continued to increase. Whether they have a few hundred fans or hundreds of thousands or even millions of KOLs, they are increasingly accustomed to using videos to express themselves. Therefore, Xiaohongshu, which started out as a graphic and text platform, has emerged as a dark horse in the video field.

At the same time, the number of core users who have developed a habit of watching videos on Xiaohongshu is also increasing. Xiaohongshu official data shows that the efficiency of increasing followers through high-quality video content can be more than three times that of graphic content.

Xinhong data shows that most of the "low-fan hot-selling" works in the past 7 days are video notes

This is why Jenniexuu gained nearly 700,000 followers on Xiaohongshu in just three months, which is 5.83 times the number of followers in the past two years. "The ratio of video playback volume to fan conversion rate is 20:1," she told us.

A statistical data obtained by Xinbang shows that in 2023, there are nearly 100 video authors whose annual followers increased by 1 million, and more than 300 video authors whose followers increased by 500,000.

Secondly, Xiaohongshu struck while the iron was hot and provided support subsidies to high-quality video creators.

Many Xiaohongshu creators mentioned that the surge in video content traffic in the second half of this year was inseparable from Xiaohongshu’s official promotion of high-quality content and operational suggestions on content.

Bob pointed out that Xiaohongshu is very willing to promote some benchmark creators. As long as the creators' content is supportive and the data exposure is good, the platform will have more recommendations.

He was referring to the benchmark video creator support program launched by Xiaohongshu, in which the platform provides exclusive content guaranteed exposure, plus cash incentives, professional content coaching, and creation services.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu also encourages more creators from external platforms to join , such as launching video author support activities. High-quality video accounts that already have an audience base on other platforms and have less than 10,000 fans on Xiaohongshu have the opportunity to receive traffic exposure support during the cold start phase.

Third, Xiaohongshu’s strong grass-planting gene provides video creators with more opportunities for commercialization and monetization.

Take "CoachShane" as an example. Previously, it has always been a problem for overseas creators to realize commercial value in China. After "CoachShane" established IP influence on Xiaohongshu, it took the opportunity to launch paid knowledge courses and successfully monetized.

"Xiaohongshu users have a strong desire to promote content, and they are prepared to be promoted when reading content," many creators have similar feelings. This also means that the path from content to commercialization is completely accessible on Xiaohongshu, and since most of the population is concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, they have higher spending power and higher average order value.

"Wenzi, who loves to test reviews" mainly relies on business cooperation to realize her income. More than 20 videos a month are cooperative content. She naturally combines advertisements with the challenge test in the video, without any conflict, and can also maintain a high-speed increase in fans. "Xiaohongshu fans are very purposeful in planting grass. Once they find content that fans like, the video will become more and more popular."

As a platform, Xiaohongshu is also creating more monetization opportunities for video creators. Relevant insiders revealed that the platform will give priority to reporting video creators with better data performance to commercial platforms and then recommend them to customers. "Wenzi, who loves to test reviews," said that the platform has connected her with a lot of brand cooperation resources in the past month.

In addition, this year Xiaohongshu has vigorously developed e-commerce transactions featuring buyers, and the monetization path for creators from videos to live broadcasts has become smoother. Not only did Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui have live broadcast rooms with a single GMV of over 100 million, but the cumulative GMV of "Yike KK", a home buyer with 425,000 fans on Xiaohongshu, during the Double Eleven period also exceeded 100 million yuan .

At the same time, Xiaohongshu's buyer live broadcast room has produced a group of buyers whose transactions have exceeded 10 million, as well as a group of buyers whose single live broadcast revenue exceeded 1 million yuan in less than three months.

Many creators like "Dong Jie", "Zhang Xiaohui" and "Yike KK" have successfully transformed into buyer anchors on Xiaohongshu, leaving more room for imagination for the commercialization of video creators.

3. Xiaohongshu continues to increase its video investment, whose opportunity is coming?

The videoization of Xiaohongshu is an irreversible trend.

The "2023 Content Video and Commercialization Insights Report" shows that as of May 2023, the user scale of the mobile video industry has reached 1.076 billion, an increase of 108 million from May 2019. The user usage time has increased year by year, with the average monthly usage time reaching 64.2 hours per person.

Since Xiaohongshu launched the "Video Account" in August 2020, Xiaohongshu's video content has gone through an early stage of pure distribution and homogeneous wild growth. It is now developing towards refined operations, gradually getting rid of the labels of other platforms, and a group of video creators who truly belong to Xiaohongshu have grown up.

The Xinbang editorial department learned that video content is Xiaohongshu's next key long-term development sector. In 2024, the platform may have greater iterative upgrades to the video product presentation. In the future, the three content forms of video, text and pictures, and live broadcast will surely run in parallel.

So, what kind of video content has a better chance of seizing this wave of Xiaohongshu’s traffic dividend?

The content on the Internet is nothing more than "entertainment" and "useful". "LatePost" reported that Xiaohongshu's internal choice is "useful" and "hopes to provide more value to users' lives."

This kind of value can be general knowledge content , like "CoachShane" outputs professional knowledge; it can be general interest content , like "Wenzi who loves to review" helps fans review new things; it can also be general life content , like "Jenniexuu" shares one's own lifestyle and good outfits.

There are also some overseas creators who can bring another lifestyle perspective to Xiaohongshu users. The editorial department of Xinbang observed that in addition to "CoachShane", there are also overseas creators such as "Learn English with Giovana" and "ChrisJames" who have released many popular videos and are gaining followers rapidly.

The organization behind Bob, Youtujia, specializes in introducing overseas creators. It has signed contracts with more than 300 overseas bloggers, and Xiaohongshu has become their preferred platform for introducing overseas creators.

“We believe that videos that go viral on Xiaohongshu are altruistic in nature,” Bob said.

More than one creator mentioned this point. "He Xiaoketang", a Tsinghua graduate who gained 250,000 followers on Xiaohongshu in three months by disassembling famous paintings, also believed that good content should be able to strike a balance between altruism and resonance.

As long as you can make Xiaohongshu users feel a real sense of gain, you have a chance to be favored. This is the common choice of the platform and users. Looking back at the video creators who have continued to gain fans in the past few months, all of them have provided useful value.

It is foreseeable that Xiaohongshu is building its own video content ecosystem, gradually getting rid of the homogeneous video labels of other platforms and instead adopting the real, altruistic and useful Xiaohongshu style.

We don’t know yet what form Xiaohongshu’s video content will eventually take, but one thing is certain: the current stage of rapid development of traffic dividends is the best time for video creators to enter the market.

Author: Truffle; Editor: Zhang Jie

WeChat public account: Newrank (ID: newrankcn)