My 4 stages of operating Xiaohongshu | From blogger to user

Have you ever been a blogger on Xiaohongshu? What was your mentality at that time? Today, the author will share with us his mental journey when he was a blogger on Xiaohongshu - from blogger to user. The author believes that Xiaohongshu is not a cold platform, and its beauty needs us to slowly understand it.

When merchants and bloggers on Xiaohongshu use Xiaohongshu, do they feel that others’ articles are all very popular, while their own traffic is abnormally poor?

The homepage of Xiaohongshu is full of various techniques for increasing followers and advertising sponsorship tags. The more I use Xiaohongshu, the more annoyed I feel. This situation makes me feel overwhelmed by Xiaohongshu's marketing thinking. Indirectly, I lose the fun of using Xiaohongshu.

I have also encountered a similar situation. Today I will tell you about the four operational stages of my use of Xiaohongshu.

1. Blogger stage: pure

In 2020, I started sharing brand marketing knowledge on Xiaohongshu, such as marketing book lists, tools, slogan writing skills, etc. The name of Xiaohongshu is Planning Mouse.

After get off work, I was thinking about what notes I would share today. The happiest thing was when I woke up and opened the Xiaohongshu backstage, and my fans had increased to 99+.

Due to the verticality of the category and the high level of content, the number of fans quickly exceeded 5,000. There was no so-called traffic anxiety and the company would just continue to post if the data was not good.

The operating mentality at that time was to simply regard the platform as a knowledge distribution platform, which I think is not much different from Zhihu.

But as the operation continued, I found that Xiaohongshu users had amazing spending power. By writing notes, I recruited paid brand planning members on Xiaohongshu and introduced a nearly 500,000 brand planning order to my former boss.

During the operation, I found that the traffic activity of Xiaohongshu was much higher than that of Zhihu. Looking back now, when I was a blogger, I was more pure. I just made good content and everything came naturally.

If you are a blogger now, I suggest you don’t be trapped by data anxiety. Just think about what users care about, and then write content based on your own knowledge structure. Skills and methods will come slowly.

2. Advertising Sales: Anxiety

Later, I joined Xiaohongshu and did advertising sales. The purpose of using Xiaohongshu is to acquire customers. The essence of acquiring customers is to treat customers as prey, see which merchants have the ability and opportunity to advertise, and use the art of language to get them to invest traffic.

It is undeniable that some customers have gained customers and sales by increasing traffic quickly. However, for many customers, due to problems with the strategy of note content production and the sustainability of notes, most of them have suspended advertising traffic.

During this stage, I spent almost 8 hours on Xiaohongshu. The more I used it, the more annoyed I became. The more annoyed I became, the more I wanted to find customers.

When you only see business, you will ignore the content and interesting activities in the community. If you are doing advertising sales, in addition to looking at the merchants, you might as well take a look at the interesting activities in the community and see what content you are interested in.

3. Blind Men and the Elephant: Learning

Starting a business in 2022 to operate the full-case brand of Xiaohongshu requires not only advertising traffic, but also a more comprehensive look at the operations of merchants on Xiaohongshu, and the platform's history, business structure, popular trends, operational skills, shopping malls and other content.

At this stage, it is like a blind man touching an elephant, because each piece is an independent knowledge structure, and it is easy to think that this is all there is to Xiaohongshu's operations.

For example, influencer agencies focus on promoting influencer resources, agency operation companies focus on promoting professional account operations, and advertising agencies promote advertising. As the brand operator of Xiaohongshu, we must reasonably allocate resources from all parties and then provide services to customers.

It was also during this stage that we set up paid communities and operated them on behalf of others. The first sentence a member would say was often “Teacher Jiang, XXXXXX.” I was scared when the teacher called me that because there were some questions that I didn’t understand!

At that time, I might have used the art of language, but now I basically answer honestly: I don’t know that either. People must admit that they are ordinary and that they don’t understand everything.

It was during this stage that we output a large number of Xiaohongshu operation ideas. The number of fans of the official account exceeded 10,000, we also had long-term cooperative operation clients, and gradually accumulated Xiaohongshu operation methodology.

On the Brand Launch Plan of Xiaohongshu

Panorama of Xiaohongshu reading

Four levels of operation of Xiaohongshu

The research on operational methodology has gradually become more and more mysterious. When you have been studying the so-called traffic, you will fall into a boring period. When you are flooded with words such as traffic, hot articles, and violations, you will also feel extremely boring.

At this point, it also made me think, why do I need to do Xiaohongshu? Can I use Xiaohongshu myself with only operational knowledge? I started to browse Xiaohongshu like a normal user.

4. User Stage: Calm

After three years of in-depth exposure to Xiaohongshu, I finally turned myself into a user and started enjoying the fun of browsing Xiaohongshu. It is no longer a tool to hunt; it is no longer a tool to label myself as an expert.

It is a platform that can provide you with reference and help you discover a better life.

After seeing a cycling note, I no longer look at the commercial data first, but instead go to the blogger’s homepage, search for different models of Decathlon bicycles, read the most authentic reviews from users, and look at the advantages and disadvantages of tents of different brands.

Read reviews of Ricoh cameras that can take photos with film texture, look at a series of new consumer trends, and treat yourself as the most authentic user, then you will discover the value of Xiaohongshu as a community.

It is not a cold platform for promoting products, but a recorder of the changes in China's consumption trends, just like a slowly unfolding painting of the Riverside Scene During the Qingming Festival, with all kinds of interesting people sharing the good things in life and recording a beautiful life.

The above is my own operation stage of Xiaohongshu. What stage are you currently in? What new thoughts do you have about the platform? Welcome to leave a message!

Author: Jianghe team

Source: WeChat public account "Jianghe Chat Marketing"