Overcoming the "male" barrier, Xiaohongshu's content boundaries are becoming more generalized

This article first points out that the number of male users of Xiaohongshu has increased, and brands have begun to pay attention to the "male economy" of Xiaohongshu, and then analyzes the content browsed by male users on Xiaohongshu. This article is suitable for brands with male users to read and analyze whether it is worth placing brand advertisements on Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu has always been labeled as "female-oriented", but this label is quietly changing with the content preferences of male users. Recently, it has been found that the number of male users of Xiaohongshu is gradually increasing, and more and more male users are beginning to pay attention to popular vertical content such as fashion, food, and travel. According to Xiaohongshu's public data, as of the end of 2022, Xiaohongshu has nearly 300 million monthly active users and nearly 20 million monthly active creators, and the proportion of male users has reached 30%.

With the increase in the number of male users and the development of related content, many brands have begun to pay attention to the "male economy" contained in Xiaohongshu and have begun to increase their efforts in content delivery. As a result, Xiaohongshu's content ecology and business ecology have become more generalized.

What do male users actually read on Xiaohongshu? What kind of content are male creators on Xiaohongshu creating? Can the male economy create new marketing opportunities for brands?

1. What do boys read on Xiaohongshu?

Nowadays, loving beauty is not just a girl's nature. According to data released by the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, the average annual compound growth rate of China's men's skin care products market size from 2021 to 2026 is 15.88%, and the overall market size is expected to reach 20.7 billion yuan in 2026.

"Exquisite boys" continue to increase their investment in appearance, and begin to search and browse content related to "beauty" such as skin care, makeup, and dressing. These contents can not only provide them with practical shopping suggestions and dressing inspiration, but also meet their needs for improving their self-image.

Crawley interviewed several loyal male users of Xiaohongshu, and more than half of the interviewees regarded "improving their image" as the core purpose of using Xiaohongshu. Dayu (pseudonym) told Crawley: "I use Xiaohongshu to learn how fashion bloggers match clothes. I think beauty is gender-neutral, and there are relatively more fashion bloggers on Xiaohongshu."

In addition to improving their image, the most common reason they mentioned was "sending gifts to girls." Xiaobu (pseudonym) is a college graduate. He said: "At first, I used Xiaohongshu to choose birthday gifts for my girlfriend. I thought Xiaohongshu might understand girls better. Later, I gradually found that there were many contents that I was interested in, so I kept using it."

It is not difficult to find that male users have begun to actively search for and understand content oriented towards women. The growth of originally neutral content such as food, travel, and pets, as well as male-oriented content such as 3C digital products and sports, has gradually eliminated the "prejudice" of users against Xiaohongshu, bringing about an increase in male users.

According to the "Commercial Value Analysis Report of Male Creators on the Four Major Platforms" by Crawley, male creators on Xiaohongshu are good at using anthropomorphic interactive forms to attract fans in the field of cute pets, and cute pet content has become one of the vertical categories with outstanding performance on Xiaohongshu. Asen (pseudonym) is a cat owner who focuses on browsing pet content on Xiaohongshu. He said: "Cat raising secrets, cute pet interactions, tool reviews, these are the contents I read the most, which can easily meet my needs. Occasionally, I will see some other content, but I don't pay much attention to it."

Regarding sports content for men, Xiaohongshu became CCTV's strategic partner during the Olympic Games, and received intensive exposure from CCTV's integrated media matrix. The Chinese women's football team also joined Xiaohongshu. After the Beijing Winter Olympics, Xiaohongshu vigorously supported skiing, short track speed skating and other content, and invited star athletes such as Han Tianyu and Xu Mengtao to join, attracting more male users through sports content.

The survey results of Crawley show a microcosm of Xiaohongshu's male users to a certain extent. Nowadays, boys are also beginning to pay attention to traditional female-oriented content, and the audience of this type of content is beginning to generalize. The content verticals that originally favored men are also moving forward at a rapid pace. With the combination of the two, Xiaohongshu's platform label has begun to loosen, allowing high-quality male content to be seen by more people.

2. Diversified and verticalized "male content power"

Influenced by the platform characteristics and content style, Xiaohongshu still has a large number of male creators in the fields of fashion, beauty, and lifestyle, and the user interaction rate and social stickiness are also on the rise. Vlog records, OOTD sharing, and matching recommendations are the most popular content forms for male fashion creators. Male content creators are good at creating their own personalities and establishing in-depth communication with users through their personalities.

According to Crawley, on Xiaohongshu, there are more than 3.81 million notes about "Men's Outfits" and more than 2.96 million products. There are more than 360,000 notes about "Men's Skin Care". In the past year, the number of men's skin care creators increased by 82% year-on-year, and the number of men's beauty brands entering Xiaohongshu increased by 20.5% year-on-year.

At the same time, more and more male consumers have gradually increased their investment in "beauty", and male beauty brands have also begun to actively deploy content delivery, and male skin care products have begun to be favored by users on Xiaohongshu. "Xiaohongshu's Four Major Trends in Men's Beauty and Care in 2022" pointed out that the search volume for "Men's facial cleanser for acne and oil control" increased by 732% month-on-month in the first half of the year, the search volume for "Men's sunscreen" increased by 96% month-on-month in the first half of the year, and the search volume for "Men's hand cream" increased by 1645% month-on-month in the first half of the year.

Overall, Xiaohongshu's men's fashion and skin care content is relatively hardcore and vertical, and the creators are better at outputting more professional opinions in entertaining content.

Similarly, the characteristics of specialization and verticalization also appear in "neutral" content such as sports and outdoor activities.

Taking camping as an example, male creators on Xiaohongshu mainly publish "must-have camping equipment recommendations" and "camping site and technique recommendations" based on personal experience. Male creators prefer hardcore camping knowledge, such as practical equipment, difficult camping challenges, and even the modification of camping RVs by themselves, while female creators prefer matching, taking photos, and VLOG content.

In the sports field, emerging extreme sports such as wing suit flying, kite surfing, and skydiving are rapidly gaining popularity on Xiaohongshu. At first, most of the creators who posted this type of content were professional male extreme sports enthusiasts and practitioners. However, as this type of content broke through the circle, more and more female users began to pay attention to it, and the audience boundaries of niche sports began to be broken.

An interesting phenomenon is that more and more male celebrities have begun to post their daily lives on Xiaohongshu, and they have also led the wave of male creators posting content on Xiaohongshu.

"Well-known weight loss blogger" Yin Zheng shares his weight loss package on Xiaohongshu, Bai Jingting and Jing Boran share their daily outfits and VLOGs, and Kenny Kwan, who loves surfing, often shares videos of surfing at the beach... Male stars with different styles share completely different content, allowing users to see Xiaohongshu's tolerance of male content, which to a certain extent has boosted the enthusiasm of male creators on Xiaohongshu.

3. Trend Insights Based on Content Characteristics

Overall, the number of male users of beauty, makeup, and fashion, which used to be female-oriented, is increasing, and the consumer market for related categories is expanding rapidly. At the same time, niche vertical categories are rising, and the niche interests and hobbies preferred by men are gradually attracting users' attention, and more and more female users are also beginning to pay attention to male content.

The content boundaries of Xiaohongshu have begun to generalize, which has given male content creators the opportunity to overtake others.

In a female-dominated field, male creators analyze and convey their own views from a male perspective, providing female users with a new content perspective, allowing for more comprehensive analysis and recommendations, and presenting content comparisons and contrasts. This is also an important direction for male content creators to try in the future.

At the same time, as the number of male users paying attention to this type of content gradually increases, creators have greater opportunities to increase their fans and improve fan stickiness. It is easier for new creators to "overtake on a curve" at this time, find the right vertical category, and gain more traffic and fans.

As mentioned above, the content published by male creators in some niche fields on Xiaohongshu requires professional experience and research. The continuous participation of male creators in sea-hunting, fishing, mecha models, nostalgic toys, etc. can not only enrich the ecology of future content platforms, but also provide more new directions for content creation.

Qu Fang, the founder of Xiaohongshu, once compared "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" to the most ideal state of Xiaohongshu: "When a picture scroll slowly unfolds in front of you, everyone's life is colorful and interesting, but so different." In order to form this picture scroll, we need both colorful content and users with different styles.

Today, many years have passed since Xiaohongshu first shouted out the slogan of "attracting male users". At this moment, Xiaohongshu cannot be said to have completely conquered the "male" barrier, but the increase in the "male content" has made the development trend of male users and creators noticed by the industry.

Crawley looks forward to seeing more male creators being able to express themselves and achieve comprehensive advancement in content value and commercial value through in-depth research in the content field.

Author: Dake WeChat public account: TopKlout