7 core questions about Xiaohongshu’s community, growth, and people-oriented approach

This article takes the growth of Xiaohongshu as the starting point, analyzes the difference between content communities and content platforms, and conducts a thorough analysis of the development of Xiaohongshu. It has important reference value for the operation and development of content communities.

1. Where does Xiaohongshu’s growth in recent years come from?

Internally, there are two reasons. One is the increase in new users, and the other is the overall market. First, the increase in new users is due to the generalization of the population.

Population generalization is to extend the content categories with the same group as the center. There are connections between content categories.

For example, young girls like beauty makeup, like to wear clothes, like to take beautiful photos when traveling, like to eat delicious food, like to take photos in the gym...

These are different content categories, but they all revolve around "the beautiful life of young girls."

Secondly, the core of the market is user activity, retention and loyalty, which are brought by a people-oriented community.

If you do this well and have your own values ​​deep in your heart, you will be able to resist temptation and keep a steady pace.

There are many strategies that can quickly get short-term benefits, such as making up stories and writing serial novels in the Q&A section of Zhihu. Short-term benefits are definitely obtained, but they are harmful to the quality of community content and atmosphere, and undermine long-term value.

Faced with such temptation, Xiaohongshu's persistence is visible.

From an external perspective, Xiaohongshu has a monopoly on a user group + content track.

The user group refers to young women with purchasing power in first- and second-tier cities. Xiaohongshu has an absolute advantage in this group and has basically penetrated to the ceiling.

Content track refers to useful how-to content such as tutorials and experience sharing. Douyin, Kuaishou, and other platforms also have it, but they are not the best and do not have a strong user mind.

With such a user group + content track, Xiaohongshu is the most competitive among these platforms.

2. Xiaohongshu positions itself as a community. What is the core difference between a content community and a content platform?

The biggest difference between a community and a content platform is that they revolve around different centers.

The core of a content platform is content , and the core is to efficiently match content supply and consumption, and create commercial value in the process. The higher the efficiency, the better, it is a high-speed machine.

The center of the community is people, and the core is to enable people to better connect through content carriers to create interaction and community atmosphere.

If you want to do a good job in social interaction, you cannot pursue efficiency.

Just like offline socializing, you sit down to drink a cup of coffee or have a meal, from greetings to in-depth focus, and then reach a certain consensus. This step-by-step process cannot be skipped.

After exchanging a few pleasantries on the street, they can immediately move on to the next step. This is efficient, but it is not socializing, it is a transaction.

3. How can content communities maintain the presence of “people”?

Let's start with an abstract understanding. People have appearance, voice, opinions, feelings, sociality, etc. These are human characteristics. A good community also needs to have these.

So, the content of "people" is probably like this:

A person is someone who appears on screen as a real person or has his or her own voice, his or her own opinions, emotions such as joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, and who interacts and communicates with other people.

When it comes to execution strategy, there are three key points:

1) Setting up the scene

Just like cafes, restaurants, and senior activity centers, they provide users with a place where they can sit down, read content, and have in-depth conversations with others.

2) Create atmosphere

A friendly and accepting atmosphere will prevent the community from having a growth ceiling.

If friendliness is difficult to understand, the opposite side of it will be trolls, argumentative people, keyboard warriors, and lecherous and obscene men. Such users will drive away people who are willing to share.

To build such an atmosphere, we need clear values ​​and corresponding community management policies. Although we outsiders cannot see what they are and how to measure behavior, we can feel the degree of attention and determination.

3) Promote interaction

Compared with pure content consumption, interaction is a deeper behavior and is used by a smaller proportion of users. On the other hand, users who participate in interaction are heavy users of this product.

Guiding more interactions will increase the number of heavy users in the community and also generate social behavior.

4. Does Xiaohongshu need a role model to become the representative of the community?

Xiaohongshu has neither the intention nor the ability to do so.

In terms of intention, Xiaohongshu's values ​​are more focused on people, that is, individuals. Although the emergence of the head is a role model for individuals, it also has a negative impact.

When individuals see the head, they will feel that the platform is unfair.

There are many individual voices that are actually drowned out, not valued by the platform and invisible to the public. These voices are venting their dissatisfaction with the platform: why can he do it but I can’t; why do they give traffic to such works but no one watches mine.

As long as the platform promotes the top, there will be such dissatisfied voices, but we just can't hear them.

In terms of capabilities, Xiaohongshu probably has no say on whether a super-head will emerge, and intervention is rather difficult.

It is very difficult for the community to really promote someone.

If the platform promotes the program, it means interfering with normal traffic. However, even if this public traffic is given to someone, it may not be able to be received by them. If the CTR, completion and interaction are not good, the traffic will be wasted.

If the traffic is tilted too much, it may also affect the overall market data. From the perspective of the company, such a decision is difficult to implement.

5. What is the current style of selling products suitable for Xiaohongshu? What are the opportunities and shortcomings?

First of all, the popularity of Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui on Xiaohongshu’s live e-commerce was definitely not designed by the platform, but was created by itself.

But this is a very good case because:

1) These female stars have similar characteristics, such as rich life experience, cultural background, and gentle personality. They are also not the top stars at the moment.

2) The style of live broadcast and product selection is also similar, taking the route of buyer selection rather than the ultimate cost performance. Therefore, when promoting products, there will be no anxiety or roar.

These characteristics clearly distinguish it from the current live streaming e-commerce platforms and are in line with the overall tone of Xiaohongshu, so it is a very good case.

Then, this style of live broadcast is just the beginning, not the end.

Xiaohongshu’s live streaming e-commerce needs an entry point that can attract the attention of the entire industry and can also be understood and broken down.

However, this style is difficult to replicate on a large scale. I believe that there will be more live broadcast cases emerging in the future, representing different styles and types, and there is a lot of room for imagination.

6. If Xiaohongshu wants to continue to grow in the future, what should it do next?

Xiaohongshu can definitely become bigger, but it cannot be the biggest. This is determined by its community form.

This does not affect the fact that Xiaohongshu is a good product. It is not necessary for every product to pursue the largest and most profitable. The underlying logic of strategy and values ​​is trade-offs.

To continue pursuing growth, there are two directions to explore:

1) Expansion of user groups

Extending to third-tier and lower cities is not a simple "bulldozer-style" expansion, but rather following the laws of community development and focusing on existing community culture and content types.

Please elaborate on this.

From the perspective of population mobility, there is a trend of "decentralization", that is, a large number of people move from first- and second-tier cities to lower-tier towns to work and live.

This group of people have the aesthetic characteristics and information knowledge of first- and second-tier cities, and are themselves the audience of Xiaohongshu. As they move around, the product of Xiaohongshu can achieve "backward compatibility."

This backward compatibility process is actually a process of screening out the target audience and embracing them.

2) Expansion of content formats

Xiaohongshu currently only has two content formats: pictures and videos. There is a lot of room for expansion in areas like live streaming (non-e-commerce) and audio.

At present, the penetration rate of Xiaohongshu is definitely very low, but this form of content is valuable. Creators who can play Xiaohongshu well will definitely be different from Douyin, Kuaishou and B, and they can show their own characteristics.

Live streaming will become a new growth point, just like when we first made videos.

Let’s talk about audio.

Podcasts are still a niche content format. If they are made by Douyin or WeChat, they will not have much impact.

But it’s different on Xiaohongshu. The user groups of audio and Xiaohongshu have a high degree of overlap.

I saw a lot of content recommending my podcast on Xiaohongshu, and all of them were directed to the Xiaoyuzhou App. On Xiaoyuzhou, content related to Xiaohongshu is the most popular.

7. What are your expectations for the future development of Xiaohongshu?

It is said that online communities are like offline cities, but I believe there is a fundamental difference between the two: cities are separated by physical distance, but online communities are not.

In a city, a few kilometers or more than ten kilometers away, it is entirely possible that there is a completely different style and culture, which are separated from each other and have no impact on each other.

For example, I am in Beijing.

Outside the North Fifth Ring Road are Internet IT professionals like me, while the East Third Ring Road is where cultural creativity gathers. Apart from other hidden factors, their dress styles are completely different.

It is completely feasible to place different content, products, and activities on the North Fifth Ring Road and the East Third Ring Road respectively.

But in online communities, it is difficult to do.

The content distribution of the community is all on a small smartphone screen. After a few swipes, only dozens of pieces of content can be exposed, which is a very limited number.

You might say that by using recommendation algorithms to distribute content, different people see different content.

The current content recommendation algorithms can only achieve global optimization rather than local optimization, and their ability to predict unknown situations is relatively weak.

The needs of different people are local and difficult to distribute; the needs of most people are similar and easier to distribute.

For example, the algorithm will push today’s popular content in the community to more users. The better the data, the more users it will be pushed to, and perhaps half of the users will like it.

But I like vinyl records of classical music, and before I developed this interest, the probability of getting one was very small.

This is a bit confusing, let me summarize it.

Offline cities rely on physical distance to separate different users, and online communities can only rely on recommendation algorithms, but this is currently difficult to do.

Author: Han Xu

Source: WeChat official account: "Operation Dog Work Diary (ID: yunyingriji)"