Xiaohongshu search guide: How to layout your brand?

In the tide of the digital age, Xiaohongshu is rising as a powerful content social platform. This article will explore for you how to make your brand stand out on Xiaohongshu in this vast ocean of content and become the focus of user attention. It will also deeply analyze the brand's layout strategy on this platform to help you find your own position in the fierce competition.

Recently, I have started to use Xiaohongshu more and more for searches, such as home improvement tips, city travel tips, and laptop comparisons. More and more friends around me have also started to use Xiaohongshu to search for content. When we talked about the reasons, we all agreed that there are two very important points.

First, as a platform that focuses on note content, Xiaohongshu provides more intuitive and richer content, and you can quickly get the information you want. Second, most of the content on Xiaohongshu is created by real people, so the content you search for is more trustworthy.

For example, if you search for how to cook a dish, what you will get on Xiaohongshu are pictures, texts or short videos provided by real people. It is like someone is teaching you how to cook step by step. However, when you search for the same content on a search engine, you will get more text information, which is more like someone giving you a piece of text and letting you taste it yourself.

This trend not only marks a change in the way people obtain information, but also indicates a change in the consumer decision-making process. Therefore, brands also need to re-examine and adjust their search-based marketing strategies. This article will discuss the following issues in conjunction with Xiaohongshu search:

1. The unique features of Xiaohongshu search.
2. How have consumption paths changed on Xiaohongshu?
3. How can brands effectively take advantage of this change and develop more effective marketing strategies?

1. Characteristics of Xiaohongshu search: Stimulating demand and authentic trust

As a new way of searching, the content presented by Xiaohongshu search is fast, convenient and intuitive. From a business perspective, it has completely different characteristics from traditional search in terms of stimulating search demand and content trust basis.

1. Plant seeds in search and stimulate new demands

"Is a Tesla car easy to drive?", "What about Huawei Mate60?", when we want to know the answer to a question, we will be motivated to search.

In the PC Internet era, the basic path for users to use search engines is as follows: seeing a piece of information in life, becoming interested in it, and then opening a search engine (such as Baidu or Google) to search for more detailed information. For example, if a user sees a cool Tesla on the road, he or she will search for Tesla. If a user hears that Huawei Mate60 is far ahead on the Internet, he or she will also search for Mate60.

Here, the driving force behind user searches comes from channels such as daily life, print media, and websites, so its main function is to meet user search needs rather than create demand.

Let's look at the situation of Xiaohongshu. First of all, you may not expect that many people use Xiaohongshu as a search engine. According to official data, 60% of daily active users will actively search on Xiaohongshu, and the average daily search query volume exceeds 300 million times. In many consumer categories, such as travel and furniture, Xiaohongshu has become the preferred platform for many users to search for information.

On Xiaohongshu, the search experience is better because the notes are richer in form and contain more information. More importantly, search can bring new information increments to users. From a business perspective, it stimulates new demand for planting grass.

Let’s take Tesla as an example. A user wanted to know more about Tesla, so he searched on Xiaohongshu. He saw a note titled “The Entrepreneurial Story Behind Tesla”, from which he learned about the experience of its founder Elon Musk. Then he searched for Musk again. After becoming interested in Musk, he happened to see the newly published “The Biography of Elon Musk”, so he became interested in this book.

Here, the rich content of the notes stimulates the user's new needs and encourages him to purchase related products.

2. Real trust, emotional decision making

Trust in search results is one of the decisive factors for users to use search.

When users use search engines, most of the results they get are integrated information, which can be said to be "cold text". They do not know the provider behind the information, especially when there are more and more advertisements, the trust basis is even lower.

When users obtain content on Xiaohongshu, most of the information they get is provided by real people. They can not only see the information of the current search needs, but also the historical information of the creator. Because of this feature, users will feel it is more authentic, and will trust the same creator more next time they see information from him.

Especially when the author's experience and knowledge system are similar to our own, we will resonate with his content more emotionally. This is just like in our daily life, we always trust the information provided by friends more.

Pringle and Feld conducted a study in which they compared the difference in profit growth created by communication activities that took the emotional route and the rational route . The results showed that the average growth created by the emotional route was 31%, which was almost double the 16% of the rational route.

The reasons behind this are that, first, the human brain can receive emotional information without cognitive processing, and second, the human brain is particularly susceptible to strong emotional stimulation and remembers such stimulation.

Compared with "cold words", the information provided by "flesh and blood people" is more emotional and more trustworthy.

On Xiaohongshu, the advantage of real people providing information is that it is personalized and interesting, and can provide consumers with more inspiration and surprises. In terms of consumption behavior, it will also allow users to make choices more quickly.

3. Long-term grass-planting field

I have observed a phenomenon that during the big promotion period, many brands will do seeding marketing on major platforms, because during this stage, users' search behavior is also relatively high, and brands do this to take over the search traffic during the big promotion period. However, after the big promotion is over, the search traffic quickly declines and the brand investment is also greatly reduced.

But it is special on Xiaohongshu. Although the search traffic for products reaches its peak during the promotion period, it does not drop significantly after the promotion ends. This reflects the long-term value of Xiaohongshu search.

The reason lies in the continuous demand for search and content by Xiaohongshu users. Users are not only looking for immediate promotional information on this platform, but also looking for inspiration, knowledge and experience sharing in the long term.

Therefore, on Xiaohongshu, brands should create high-quality content based on search needs over the long term, allowing searches to form a long-tail effect and continue to attract and maintain user interest even outside of promotional seasons.

2. Faster consumer decision making

As mentioned above, when users search for information on Xiaohongshu, their consumption decision-making process also changes. Overall, the whole process has become more intuitive and faster.

There are two core paths for searching on Xiaohongshu: planting grass-search, search-planting grass.

Let’s talk about planting grass first - search: This process starts when users see the products they are interested in outside the site or in Xiaohongshu. Before deciding whether to buy it, they will search for related notes in Xiaohongshu. These search results help users make "life decisions."

For example, a user saw an experience sharing article about Huawei Mate 60, which detailed its photography features and design highlights, which aroused the user's curiosity about the phone. Subsequently, the user explored in depth through the search function of Xiaohongshu, searching for "Huawei Mate 60" to find more detailed information about the phone, and searching for "Which is better, Huawei Mate 60 or iPhone 14" to obtain comparative information. Finally, through multiple rounds of searches, the user strengthened the seeding mentality and promoted conversion.

In this process, users' initial interest is transformed into specific search behavior.

Let’s talk about search - seeding: This path starts with the user’s active search. The user does not have a specific goal at first, but searches out of some need or curiosity, such as “the latest smartphone”.

During this process, the user accidentally discovered a Huawei Mate 60 product review and other users' satisfactory comments. These contents provided detailed information and positive user feedback, which gradually aroused the user's interest in Huawei Mate 60, made the user interested in the product, and ultimately promoted conversion.

In this process, users' searches triggered new grass-planting behaviors.

In general, the user decision path on Xiaohongshu is a cycle from interest stimulation to information search, and then from search to new interest. After completing the purchase, users will come back here to share. This consumption decision path is significantly faster than the traditional AISAS model.

3. How do brands plan their search on Xiaohongshu?

As mentioned earlier, on Xiaohongshu, 60% of daily active users actively search, with an average daily search volume of more than 300 million times. Therefore, it should also become an important marketing location for marketers.

In the search environment of Xiaohongshu, users' search behavior is not only an immediate demand for information, but also a continuous and dynamic process. Every user's search represents an important contact opportunity between the brand and the user. By doing a good job of search marketing and presenting highly relevant and valuable content in the search, the brand can continuously influence consumers' minds about the brand and promote users' consumption decisions.

The most critical action is to secure the search keyword position.

To do a good job of positioning search keywords means that brands need to fully cover the keywords related to them on Xiaohongshu, including brand words, efficacy words, category words, scene words and crowd words. The purpose of this is to ensure that no matter what keywords consumers use to search, they can find relevant content of the brand.

For example, a beauty brand must not only plan content based on the brand name (brand word) of its products, but also consider the efficacy of the products (such as "moisturizing" and "anti-aging"), related product categories (such as "skin care products" and "makeup"), usage scenarios (such as "daily skin care" and "party makeup"), and target groups (such as "teenage skin care" and "sensitive skin").

The cases of Estee Lauder and L’Occitane show how to effectively use the search function of Xiaohongshu to promote products. These two brands not only focus on brand words, but also cover efficacy words, category words, scene words and crowd words, ensuring that the brand has a strong presence in various search scenarios.

Estee Lauder has effectively increased the brand’s visibility in specific product categories by combining its iconic products with relevant search keywords, such as high-energy little brown bottle and repair barrier to remove redness.

L'Occitane, on the other hand, links the brand with a specific lifestyle by focusing on specific usage scenarios and target groups. For example, in the search direction of nail art, it uses high-click scenario words such as nail art recommendations and popular nail art in autumn and winter; in the search direction of gifts, it uses scenario words such as hand cream gift boxes/sets and gift guides; in the search direction of office goods, it uses blue ocean words such as workplace commuting/white-collar workers.

This comprehensive search matrix layout enables these brands to reach their target consumers more effectively, ensuring that relevant brand content appears in search results regardless of how consumers’ search motivations and interests change, thereby increasing brand exposure and conversion rates.

IV. Conclusion

More and more people are using Xiaohongshu to search, which has led to a rapid change in the way users obtain information and make consumption decisions.

First, Xiaohongshu search strengthens the intuitiveness and emotional connection of the user experience. On platforms like Xiaohongshu, images and videos not only simplify the process of obtaining information, but the content created by real people also makes the information more vivid, trustworthy, and easy to resonate with.

Secondly, users’ decision-making process is faster and more direct. They can quickly transform from searching for brand information to becoming interested in it, thereby promoting conversions more quickly.

For brands, Xiaohongshu provides a unique opportunity to layout search, and every brand should pay attention to the marketing opportunities brought by Xiaohongshu search.

Author: Xunkong

WeChat Official Account: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation