Read pure love on Xiaohongshu, and identify scumbags on Douyin

Follow the sweet pure love stories on Xiaohongshu, and watch the identification videos on Douyin to prevent scumbags. More and more emotional bloggers have attracted people's attention, and many ordinary people have become popular because of the emotional stories they share. Let's follow the author of this article and use objective traffic data to unfold the traffic codes behind these popular blogs.

On Xiaohongshu, @user6100442113 wrote a follow-up to her secret crush story with her high school friend.

Four years after they met, they finally had their confession. She recorded her confession on Xiaohongshu, confessing her feelings and hesitations, and the boy quickly responded, telling her about his secret crush. After a period of heart-to-heart talk, she announced to the Xiaohongshu users who followed her that "we are together."

In the notes, long passages of chat records made many users sigh, "It's so fun, but I'm not satisfied with the conversation."

Xiaohongshu@user6100442113

But not everyone is so lucky. Another Xiaohongshu user recorded her experience of ending up with a relationship that was "more than friends but less than a romantic relationship". After handwriting a 3,000-word love letter, she wrote on Xiaohongshu: "The story ends here."

Xiaohongshu, which loves "pure love", has started to popularize such love stories: the parties write down the entire process of their encounter, dating and extreme flirting with their crush, and seek advice from users from time to time. The latter, as the "witnesses" of love, tacitly wait for the follow-up of the story.

In the emotional section of Xiaohongshu, this type of content was once all the rage. Emotional experiences, whether bitter or overly sweet, often trigger empathy among countless people, and thus gain traffic far beyond expectations.

Emotions are a perennial topic, and they are the secret to traffic in both the era of pictures and texts and the era of short videos. In the early days, there was Mi Meng, a famous WeChat account influencer, and the TV show Love Defense War brought out the gold medal mentor Tu Lei. Even on radio, there was "Ye Wen has something to say" to scold the men and women on the line.

On new traffic platforms, emotional content is booming. A number of drama-based emotional accounts have quickly emerged, and there are emotional gurus on Douyin teaching online how to "identify scumbags"; Xiaohongshu carries the love of ordinary people, but has also been quietly invaded by emotional institutions... Is the emotional business easy to do?

1. Follow love stories on Xiaohongshu and identify bad men on Douyin

In 2019, an anonymous user wrote a story on Zhihu about breaking up with her boyfriend of eight years, which quickly became a hot topic. She was called "Library 30S" because of a famous passage in the post where the heroine asked, "Am I worried that she will be scared because of the power outage in the library, or do I hope that she can celebrate my birthday with me every year in the future?"

To this day, "Library 30S" is still regarded as the "Bible" that describes the wandering mentality of boys in love, and circulates in breakup advice posts on major content and social platforms.

During college, Xiao A had a similar experience. After accidentally looking through her boyfriend's phone, she realized that he had an ambiguous relationship with someone she didn't know about. Xiao A posted her experience on Xiaohongshu and received a lot of "breakup advice". Many people directly advised her not to "fall in love". After struggling for a while, she decided to confront her boyfriend and break up cleanly.

There are many similar contents on Xiaohongshu. In addition to the personal experiences posted by ordinary people, there are also many contents transferred from Weibo and Zhihu. In addition, horoscopes, tarot cards and other love fortune divinations that are closely related to emotions are also important contents of this section.

During the anxious period, Xiao A read a lot of Tarot cards to calculate the direction of her emotional life. In her notes, she also sent private messages to emotional accounts to provide consulting services.

In terms of traffic, emotional topics have a unique advantage. In 2023, the exploration of intimate relationships will still be an important topic for people. Shen Yifei, a professor at the School of Sociology of Fudan University, talked about emotional relationships on Bilibili and gained 1.58 million followers;

On Douban, emotion-related topics have split into countless groups, including "Watching the Love of Working Couples", "Mother-Single Mutual Aid Group", "Douban Persuading to Break Up Group", etc. Whether it is the "persuading to reconcile" or "persuading to break up" sections, the emotional anxieties of men and women are hidden.

On Douyin, #情感专题 received 1904.84 billion views, which shows how popular it is. The endless stream of emotional topics can always "make" experts famous to varying degrees. In 2021, the Internet female lecturer who "made a man spend 180,000 yuan on me with just three sentences" became the leader of the "ghost animal" trend.

In 2022, another person who made great strides in the live broadcast field was @龙飞律师, who taught women to focus on making money and mediate in the unbearable marriages. His videos were all over the Internet, but his live broadcast room was once banned.

Emotion is like a key to traffic and can be adapted to a variety of content models. After using "emotion" as the main seasoning, a group of drama masters such as @杯美式, @浩杰来了, @乔七月, etc. have emerged on Douyin. Focusing on various issues in the intimate relationship between men and women, these accounts have created a series of love sitcoms. Although the subject matter is not new, it is good at driving user empathy.

Tik Tok expert @Hao Jie is here

The "practical" posts also gained traffic by using various emotional problems in real life as a breakthrough point. Specific examples include "How to identify a scumbag", "How to control a boy", "What do men think when they are in love", etc. For example, @CARY Queen's "Creation Camp" starts with "If you want a man to love you all the time, you have to learn a skill: pretend to be pure."

The videos are labeled "women's growth" and "women's improvement". Male emotional bloggers often analyze the male psychological state from the perspective of women's needs, and gain a little persuasiveness due to their own biological gender.

This kind of fabricated emotional content is not uncommon on the platform. Of course, there are also emotional accounts that are more positive, answering specific problems in young people's emotional relationships and expressing their own values.

Regarding the problem of lack of security in love, there are sea kings like @尘男朋友 who share their own experiences and teach you how to "check your phone".

In one of his videos with the highest number of likes, he taught girls how to scientifically check their boyfriends' phones, and subsequently released more tutorials on how to check phones, such as downloading social apps like Soul and TanTan and logging in with the other person's phone number, searching for keywords like "baby", "good night", "like" in the WeChat search box, opening the Moments message list, locating takeout and map software, etc.

He concluded that these are all parts that can be deleted but are easy to forget to delete.

Tik Tok celebrity @尘男友

It is worth noting that, contrary to the popular belief that emotional consultation is mainly for women, men have also entered the emotional market as the other party in the operation of intimate relationships. Emotional accounts targeting men have emerged in large numbers, and the specific content is similar to a replica of female emotional accounts.

"Men have Hupu, women have Xiaohongshu." A senior user of Hupu, which has long been dominated by men, told Kas that the emotional section of Hupu does not account for a very high proportion, as men rarely share their emotional problems due to social discipline.

But recently, the popularity of the love area has increased significantly; on the other hand, unlike Xiaohongshu's female users who focus on details and emotions, male users are more concerned about economy, family conditions, etc., as well as problems caused by differences in thinking in love. Posts showing off girlfriends will be ridiculed as "science fiction films" by everyone.

2. Emotional mentor, talk about love and money

Where there is emotional appeal, there is emotional business. In essence, emotional accounts provide emotional consumption. When people encounter unsolvable problems or are stuck in a relationship or a state, it is common for them to place their self-consistency needs on the outside world.

With the continuous iteration of the media, emotional services have formed a fairly mature industry chain. So, how can emotional accounts attract money?

Kas observed that currently there are three modes for emotional experts to monetize: conventional window display and advertising placement; directing traffic to private domains to sell courses and emotional counseling services; live streaming or connecting with microphones to "teach and answer questions" for users.

@浩杰来了, who has 11.37 million followers on Douyin, is a short drama master under MCN Silver Land. His official partner is another top short drama master @乔七月 under the same company. The two have jointly created a series of love stories and are well aware of the pain points in intimate relationships.

@浩杰来了's profit comes from window display and ad placement, which is also the safe way of selling products usually chosen by drama experts. There are 66 items on display in his window, ranging from wet toilet paper with a unit price of 9.9 yuan to facial masks with a unit price of 1,488 yuan. Most of the products sold are daily necessities, beauty and skin care, which is consistent with the profile of his video fans, 90% of whom are women.

In an episode titled "The right lover will give you all the sense of security", the Philips shaver appeared just when the heroine's sensitive emotions were firmly grasped by the hero, making it easier for fans to accept.

On Xiaohongshu, there are also examples of ordinary people successfully selling goods by recording their love stories.

Blogger @个人做工, relies on daily chatting with his girlfriend to gain countless likes.

When complaining about the lack of mochi fillings, the girlfriend described it as "feeling like there's room for Tom and Jerry plus their respective older cousins." The cute language system always gets comments like "Does your girlfriend need a girlfriend?" After gradually accumulating a group of fans, the blogger began to promote products through this type of "chat records," including perfumes, razors, drinks, etc.

Xiaohongshu user @个人打工

In the field of live streaming, there is Tu Lei, a gold medal lecturer of the TV show "Love Defense War" which is popular among middle-aged and elderly people. In May 2018, Tu Lei joined Douyin and started live streaming in January 2021. The professional persona of "emotional expert" helped him quickly increase his voice, and his sharp insights accurately met the emotional needs of many people.

According to Chanmama data, in the past 30 days, Tu Lei’s live broadcasts had an average of 2.4 million viewers and average sales of 2.5 million to 5 million yuan.

For those who are not big enough in terms of fans and status, live broadcasting may be a better way. It is worth noting that it is not only young people who consume these emotional contents. Walking into the emotional live broadcast room of Douyin, you can witness a large-scale scene of marital suffering.

@Psychological Instructor Wang Wengang focuses on family and marriage issues, with an average of 22,000 viewers for his live broadcasts. In his profile, he describes himself as "a catcher of healing souls, a repair glue for family relationships, and a coach for personal growth." Marriage also occupies a considerable proportion of his short video content.

In the live broadcast room, the expert's words "You are also a woman with choices and can be independent" and "Men will only realize when they are at the end of their rope" can make the users connected to the microphone cry.

Tik Tok expert @Psychological mentor Wang Wengang

In @心理导师王文刚’s live broadcast room, a paid live broadcast lasts up to 15 minutes. Users need to follow him first and then pay 200 Douyin coins, which is 20 RMB. Currently, his fan group has 65,000 people, and the live broadcast room shows that he has been connected more than 6,500 times.

Both Xiaohongshu and Douyin have quietly invaded a large number of emotional consulting agencies and service accounts. Their names often contain keywords such as "emotion", "consultation" and "love", and are accompanied by their own practical results.

For example, @大博情感, in the introduction, introduces "2000+ successful cases of emotional recovery", specializes in marriage management, emotional repair, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship, etc., and endorses himself as a "second-level psychological counselor". Similar experts include Teacher He Lijuan and Heart-piercing Master Zheng Shi.

On Xiaohongshu, there are emotional mentors and institutions such as Youqingnian'ai, Auntie Lin, Zanan | Independent Consultant, and Songguo Qingshu. They usually continue to output their own love theories on the platform, which include the common pain points of young people's love.

For example, "emotional value" and "being firmly chosen" have been popular in recent years, and "relationship repair" and "breakup recovery" have been used as keywords to attract users with relevant needs.

Xiaohongshu emotional consultation account

Take the recently popular "disconnection" method as an example. If you open Xiaohongshu, you will see that some emotional masters say with certainty, "Letting go of each other starts with disconnection."

Some listed the situations in which disconnection is necessary and the situations in which disconnection is absolutely necessary in emotional disputes, and shared the correct use of the "disconnection method": establishing weak connections after breaking up, adjusting one's position through effective communication, etc. Some consulting agencies offer a limited-time free discount for the first order, and the subsequent consulting and service fees range from tens, hundreds to thousands of yuan.

The emotional business has a low entry barrier. Even a few emotional copywriting, some frozen pictures, and moving background music can attract fans. This has also led to a mixed bag of emotional markets.

It is worth mentioning that this track is not without worries. At a time when the public’s concept of emotional relationships is changing rapidly, emotional experts with millions of fans may lose fans and stop updating due to public opinion.

At the end of March this year, a college couple known as the "dark horse couple" caused heated discussions on the Internet. At that time, the emotional expert @直男不易直男癌, who had over 4.5 million fans, was accused of personal collapse due to his remarks that did not meet the audience's expectations. His account continued to lose fans, and the expert also stopped updating. His current fans have dropped to 3.54W.

For those who are engaged in emotional business, the scrutiny may be even stricter. After all, compared with those contents that meet entertainment and practical needs, emotional content closely revolves around emotional needs to deeply connect users. While users seek recognition and spiritual comfort from the content, they also place their emotions and trust on the experts.

Once the emotional experts who carry this trust have "deviations" in their behavior, users' sense of "betrayal" will be even stronger, and the consequences for the experts will be even more unpredictable.

By publishing emotional content, ordinary people can gain users' empathy and attention in a short period of time. However, once emotions are treated as a business, although emotional experts will not "walk on thin ice", they will need to go a long way if they want to make money.

Author: Chu Cheng

Source: WeChat public account "CaasData (ID: caasdata6)"