Xiaohongshu "Star" Rise

In the live streaming boom, how can each platform make good use of the trump card of "celebrity" to increase traffic and avoid failure? This article objectively analyzes this issue from two aspects: the example of celebrities' increasing followers on Xiaohongshu and the celebrity strategy of the platform. Let's take a look!

"I can't even buy a pair of socks for 699 yuan."

On June 10, when actress @张雨绮 was live streaming on Douyin, this sentence blurted out caused public outrage. She was then scolded and became a hot topic on Weibo. Many netizens expressed their dissatisfaction with her consumption and value concepts.

Later, on the afternoon of June 11, Zhang Yuqi responded and apologized on Weibo, and issued a statement saying that her language expression (during the live broadcast) was incomplete, and her original intention was to say that wool was very expensive, and some wool socks could not be bought for 699 yuan.

@张雨绮 Weibo screenshot

However, netizens did not buy into this response and even became angrier. Some left messages in the comment section: "I know you are very valuable", "Unconscious arrogance", "You can fool your buddies, but just don't fool yourself".

Ultimately, what makes netizens most angry about this matter is that celebrities can easily create wealth myths in the live broadcast room, but some of them often unconsciously reveal " arrogance " and fail to give due respect to their "parents who provide them with food and clothing."

Since Li Xiang became a celebrity representative to enter the live broadcast room to sell goods, many celebrities have stepped into the "rich" track of live broadcasting to sell goods. However, in one carnival after another, accidents have occurred repeatedly, and there are fewer and fewer celebrities who can bring good reputations. However, it is worth noting that compared with other platforms, on Xiaohongshu, where the celebrity occupancy rate and activity are very high, the stories of celebrity bloggers' accidents are rarely heard. In fact, in the past six months, Xiaohongshu has "swum against the current" and successfully opened a new era in the field of live broadcasting with the help of celebrity live broadcast rooms represented by Dong Jie.

Why are more and more celebrities choosing to join Xiaohongshu? What are the differences in the strategies of each platform in terms of celebrity operations?

1. Celebrities live life to the fullest on Xiaohongshu

For a long time, celebrity bloggers have played a vital role in the Xiaohongshu ecosystem.

On the one hand, @范某冰, the first-generation top streamer of Xiaohongshu, is still the celebrity blogger with the largest number of fans on Xiaohongshu today, with a total of 15.998 million fans to date; on the other hand, last year @赵露思 became active in front of the public with the hit drama "星汉灿烂", and her fans on Xiaohongshu increased at a rapid speed. Third-party data shows that in 2022, @赵露思's Xiaohongshu account has gained more than 5 million fans in total, and the current number of fans has reached 15.985 million, and is still increasing. She is likely to grow into the new generation of Xiaohongshu's "No. 1 Sister".

@范某冰@赵露思Little Red Book screenshot

In addition to the above two female stars, according to incomplete statistics from Kas, in the past six months, dozens of stars including @Bai Jingting, @Jing Boran, @BIGBIG Zhang Dada, @Liu Genghong, @Luo Yunxi, @Yu Shuxin Esther, @Bai Lu, @Dong Jie, @Gao Ye ChLoe, @Shi Sun Zhenni, etc. have shown strong fan-attracting ability on Xiaohongshu, and have been on the TOP20 of the monthly fan-increasing list many times, becoming a new and cutting-edge force among Xiaohongshu celebrity bloggers that cannot be ignored.

What type of celebrity bloggers can quickly gain followers on Xiaohongshu?

Here, we must first point out that there is an extremely important external factor that affects the traffic of celebrities on Xiaohongshu: whether the celebrity blogger himself is a hot topic at the moment. For example, Zhang Dada, who became popular on Douyin at the beginning of the year for his role as a "customer service in the entertainment industry", also gained a lot of fans on Xiaohongshu in the first half of the year, and now has more than one million fans.

@Zhangda studio poster

In addition, it is also worth noting that hit dramas have greatly helped celebrity bloggers develop on Xiaohongshu. For example, the early 2018 drama “Kuang Biu” made @高叶ChLoe’s popularity on Xiaohongshu soar, with her account gaining more than 670,000 followers in two months. The April drama “Chang Yue Jin Ming” almost made the main creative team conduct a “team building” on Xiaohongshu, with @白鹿, @罗云熙, @是孙贞妮 and many other actors appearing on the monthly follower growth list, attracting a lot of attention.

Looking back, hit dramas such as "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and "The Legend of Chusen" have brought similar blessing effects to the actors who participated in them, which shows the power of the "hit drama effect" on Xiaohongshu.

In addition to external factors, whether celebrity bloggers publish "specific content" on Xiaohongshu has become the most important factor in attracting Xiaohongshu.

It is observed that most celebrities will maintain updates for a period of time after entering the platform, and almost all of them will synchronize their endorsement business, publicity materials and other relatively homogeneous content. However, if they want to maintain long-term popularity, they must have "special content" that cannot be seen on other platforms, and it is best if the themes of these contents are topics that have been discussed on the Xiaohongshu station itself.

For example, some celebrities pay attention to their fans' pursuit of "beauty and refinement" and often share their experiences in beauty and skin care on their accounts.

@朱珠ZhuZhu talked about her "minimalist" skin care experience on her account, and revealed that her biggest secret in skin care is to use a beauty instrument every morning before proceeding with the subsequent skin care steps; @林允Jelly is bold in being herself on Xiaohongshu. Not only does she often appear without makeup, she also openly shows off the condition of her skin after medical beauty treatments, hoping to provide a reference for fans.

@林允Jelly Xiaohongshu screenshot

@范某冰, who has achieved the ultimate in skin care and beauty, has made her own brand FAN BEAUTY famous through Xiaohongshu. She has "invisibly implanted" her products in daily skin care and hair care vlogs, and the product promotion effect is very good.

Some celebrities start from their daily lives and use their keen sense of fashion to give ordinary people more inspiration in dressing.

Sharing one's own outfits is a must-do topic for almost every celebrity blogger. @白鹿's "日日記鹿日常" series, which simply shows daily selfies, can attract a large number of fans to ask for links to the same style in the comment section; @虞书欣Esther's outfit selfies posted on Xiaohongshu are often popular outside the site, becoming the "sweet girl outfit" paradigm in the minds of many people.

Male celebrities are not far behind. After entering Xiaohongshu, @Jing Boran defined his account as a "circle of friends". His notes mainly publish photos of daily outfits, showing his handsome appearance while also providing more matching knowledge to male users.

@Jing Boran Xiaohongshu screenshot

Some celebrities face their body anxiety head-on and "show off their bodies" with their fans on the site.

@关晓彤's "Mom's Bento" has brought riceless sushi, vegetable sandwiches and other delicacies into the vision of countless people who are trying to lose weight; @尹正's "What to Eat Today Series" is regarded as a must-have "variety show to go with meals" during the weight control period; and many fans on Xiaohongshu have accompanied @马思纯 through the "weight loss cycle" of fitness, weight gain, then fitness again, and weight gain again.

@马思纯Little Red Book screenshot

In addition, recently more and more celebrity bloggers have achieved soul resonance with fans and won everyone's attention by sharing their own "lifestyles".

For example, the "Dong Life" series of the @董洁 account uses "food, clothing and daily necessities" as the entry point to show everyone the daily life of female celebrities. The real and tranquil atmosphere displayed in the video adds a lot to her personality and attracted many fans. The actress @姜妍小红姨儿 even transformed herself into a cook on Xiaohongshu and attracted highly sticky fans by recording her real cooking routine.

Overall, compared with carefully shot official materials, celebrities can more easily win the hearts of fans by casually sharing their "real and down-to-earth" daily lives and showing their flesh-and-blood side.

2. Traffic or monetization: Star strategies vary greatly across platforms

The traffic brought by celebrities is very attractive to any platform. For this reason, celebrity resources have always been the object of competition among multiple platforms, but different platforms have very different strategies for celebrity operations.

The first company to discover this "rich mine" was Taobao.

As early as the beginning of 2019, Taobao began to use celebrities to sell goods through live streaming. Li Xiang, Liu Yan and others became the first celebrity anchors to embrace live streaming. After that, many celebrities followed suit. According to media statistics, as of July 2019, in just over half a year, more than 100 celebrities have joined the Taobao live streaming sales ranks, and many sales myths have been born during this period.

@李湘Taobao live screenshot

Compared with e-commerce platforms like Taobao that "simple and crude" directly use celebrities to monetize, the initial attempt of the two major short video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, was to invite celebrities to join and post short videos, further narrowing the distance between users and celebrities.

However, with the continued popularity of short videos and more and more celebrities joining the platform, celebrity short videos on the platform are no longer "rare". Some artists are also unable to produce differentiated content due to their busy work, and many accounts have become another official distribution channel.

Of course, there are also many examples of continuous investment and hard work. For example, as one of the stars who has been on Kuaishou for the longest time, actor @黄渤 has always maintained the update of original content. In addition to sharing his real daily life of fitness, diving, and handicrafts, he has also participated in Kuaishou's official charity activities many times, giving full play to his influence and shouldering more social responsibilities. His humane account has also won the love of many fans, and currently has a total of 20.06W fans.

@Huang Bo Kuaishou screenshot

But it is obvious that more celebrities have turned their battlefield to the live broadcast room, especially Douyin, which has been mentioned by many people as the most important position.

The reason is easy to understand. After all, compared with short videos, live streaming is a track that is easier to get actual returns. To this day, @贾乃亮's live broadcast room is still the "ceiling" level of Douyin live streaming.

Of course, in the past few years, many celebrities have demonstrated their good ability to sell goods through live broadcasts, but since last year, we can also clearly feel that the popularity of Douyin's "Celebrity Live Broadcast Room" is cooling down. Specifically, not only has the number of new entrants decreased, but the achievements of the celebrities who have entered are not as good as before.

Stories of live broadcast room failures have occurred frequently. Before the Zhang Yuqi socks incident, controversies such as @戚薇's live broadcast room products being identified as fake by an agency had also become a hot topic on Weibo. Netizens' dissatisfaction with the Douyin celebrity live broadcast rooms has been accumulating.

Weibo screenshot

In sharp contrast to the "ebb" of celebrity live broadcasts on Douyin, many celebrities have recently gone to Xiaohongshu to start live streaming to sell goods, and the platform also hopes to use the influence of celebrities to attract more anchors to join the platform's live broadcasts.

According to statistics from Xiaohongshu users, in the first half month of the 618 promotion, Zhang Xiaohui, Dong Jie, Yang Tianzhen, Huang Yi, Liu Zi, Yang Rong, Dong Xuan, Zhang Li and others started live broadcasts, and the voice of Xiaohongshu's live e-commerce continued to expand.

In fact, as early as 2020, Xiaohongshu had vigorously promoted its live streaming e-commerce business, and celebrities were already active in it as an important role in expanding the territory and breaking the circle of the live streaming e-commerce business.

On July 25, 2020, Yang Tianzhen completed her first livestreaming show on Xiaohongshu. Data shows that Yang Tianzhen's first livestreaming show attracted more than 480,000 viewers, with a peak online audience of 110,000, and sales of more than 7.36 million. The plus-size women's clothing brand Plusmall, which was released for the first time during the livestream, sold more than 3,000 items in pre-sale.

But until 2022, there are still very few celebrities and big KOLs live streaming on Xiaohongshu. Among the celebrities, only Bao Wenjing is still live streaming on Xiaohongshu. Early top anchors such as Yang Tianzhen and Fu Peng have long left Xiaohongshu's live broadcast room.

Screenshot of Fu Peng's first live show on Xiaohongshu

Now it is 2023. Whether it is the entry of new anchors or the return of old anchors, it proves the improvement of Xiaohongshu's live e-commerce influence. Although there are still unresolved practical problems such as lack of supply, lack of personnel, and the formation of user consumption mentality, it is definitely a solid step forward for Xiaohongshu.

Finally, it is also worth mentioning that this is the video account that currently seems to have exploited the commercial value of celebrities to the least extent, but has best utilized their traffic value.

Looking back at 2022, the video account became popular due to the live broadcasts of concerts of many superstars such as Jay Chou, Li Jian, Mayday, and Westlife, successfully turning celebrities into the "traffic tool" of the platform, and the video account was able to enter the eyes of more people.

But after the concert, the video account did not handle the influx of traffic following the stars. In addition, as the epidemic ends, we don’t know whether the trump card of online concerts can still play a role.

@李健Video Live

For each platform, celebrities may still be a trump card that can attract traffic, but the "uncontrollability" of celebrities will also produce many unexpected risks. In the future, what kind of wonderful stories can each platform write with the celebrity card? Kas will continue to pay attention.

Author: Kas Data

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