The underlying logic of the growth of Xiaohongshu brands and bloggers - categories

Introduction: Through the analysis of past experience, the author proposes that grasping the "category" is the way to cultivate bloggers on a certain platform. Through a series of introductions, this article draws out some experience and practices, bringing new operational ideas to junior operators.

Hello, everyone. I am Jiang He. I focus on helping brands and bloggers avoid detours on Xiaohongshu. I have written category articles before. Today, I will add some new thoughts on the original basis to form this article.

Recently, I have been thinking about why there are millions of bloggers in the beauty category of Xiaohongshu, such as Cheng Shian, Luo Wangyu, and Aiya Ai Ya? Why are there so many brands in the skin care industry? What is the reason behind it? The core underlying logic behind it is category. A strong category means a strong brand, and a weak category means a weak brand.

01 What is a category?

The simplest and crudest expression is the consumer's classification of information, which is the first-level unit of consumer memory, understanding and demand. When we enter a room, we will classify the items in the room into categories such as beds, curtains, and cups.

Consumers think in terms of categories and express themselves with brands. When consumers want to drink milk tea, brands such as Yidiandian, Heytea, Lelecha, and Mixue Bingcheng come to mind.

By giving this example, everyone can understand that brands are parasitic on categories, and the ceiling of a brand is determined by its category.

Why do many beauty bloggers on Xiaohongshu have over one million fans? The core reason is that the platform started with beauty and fashion, with a large source of people and a high degree of brand commercialization. Why do book bloggers have few fans? Because in the Xiaohongshu category, this market is small.

Knowing that big categories give birth to "big" bloggers and small categories give birth to "small" bloggers , if we want to be bloggers or brands, how should we choose the category that suits us? We can combine the current situation of Xiaohongshu's categories.

02 Current status of Xiaohongshu categories

Xiaohongshu mainly covers 15 categories: beauty and skin care, fashion and wear, jewelry and accessories, food and beverages, home furnishings, maternal and child early education, fitness and fat loss, cute pets, travel and accommodation, education/career growth, psychology and emotions, business and finance, art and design, technology and digital, photography and shooting, etc.

Food, beauty, and fashion are also the topics that users pay the most attention to. Brands and bloggers have the opportunity to gain more user attention in these categories.

Figure 1: Current status of Xiaohongshu categories

There are also sub-sectors under different categories, as well as different content formats and different monetization methods.

Figure 2: Pick out Xie Wudi’s track selection

Taking the beauty and skin care products category as an example, it is divided into skin care, makeup, body care, manicure and medical plastic surgery.

If you are a blogger and choose the first-level category of skin care, you will face huge competition. For new bloggers, it is recommended to choose the second-level categories under skin care, such as facial skin care, eye skin care, lips, sunscreen, beauty equipment, and skin care tools as the core direction first;

In terms of content format, the skin care field already has beauty strategies, good product recommendations, good product reviews, and other forms.

We still need to think about which form to choose, because for tertiary categories like product recommendations and reviews, since many people have already done these, the competition we will naturally face will be greater if we enter the field. At this time, it is recommended to move into the new skin care category.

For example, the blogger Baozichibubao, who has 34,000 followers, chose to share lipsticks from the skin care category. When you open his sharing page, he does not make a blunt recommendation on lipsticks, but directly applies lip color and keeps applying it in this way. This gives him a chance to survive in the super competitive lipstick market.

Figure 3: The super popular article about eating steamed buns but not being full

The above mainly analyzes how personal bloggers choose brand categories. Assuming that we are making anti-aging masks, we can do it through the following methods.

Step 1: Read the industry report released by Xiaohongshu

Through the research report, it was found that skin care is the largest category, and facial masks are the largest section of skin care on Xiaohongshu, with a large industry market size.

Figure 4: Xiaohongshu Cosmetics & Skincare Industry Report

The second step is to look at the industry competition

Through the keyword planning tool in the background of Xiaohongshu advertising, the keywords are mainly concentrated on brand words and product words, with many brand-related words, and the degree of facial mask branding is high.

On the one hand, it shows that the competition is quite fierce, and the competition in facial masks has expanded from brands to brand series. On the other hand, it shows that for new brands to enter the market, either your technology is strong enough or your brand is super strong.

Figure 5: Keywords of Xiaohongshu film data

The third step is to look at consumer demand

Searching for mask keywords in the search box, we found that the notes focus on whitening, hydrating, refining, acne-prone skin, anti-aging and other demands. Whitening and hydrating are almost standard features in the mask industry. Users' demand for functionality is gradually increasing, and firming and anti-aging have also become users' concerns.

This shows that as an anti-aging product, the goal is not to seize the low-price hydration market, but to gain access to the anti-aging market.

Figure 6: Consumer demand for facial masks

When it comes to anti-aging, we also need to use category thinking to clarify consumers’ anti-aging needs.

For example, in the official skin care report, anti-aging products will be further refined, such as antioxidant, firming, anti-wrinkle and other needs. The more detailed the category division, the more accurate the control of user needs.

Figure 7: Skin care product segments

After talking about categories, let’s talk about the relationship between brands and categories. In my opinion, whether it is personal IP or brand, the final destination is equivalent to category.

That is, think of herbal tea = Wanglaoji. Specifically for the operation of Xiaohongshu, it is the number of notes you post, the number of interactions, and whether you can get more positions when users search. When searching for category words, the more pages the brand appears, the higher the category share, and you can also get more user demand.

For example, for the term “skin care training”, AYAKO skin care training accounts for 3 of the first 4 search results. Excluding its advertisements, it is estimated that the brand accounts for more than 50% of the category words. According to the first 12 search results, 5 brands are related, basically achieving category dominance.

Figure 8: Search results for "skin management training"

For brands, how to increase their share in the category?

I think quality and quantity are equally important. Quality is what we often call creating explosive articles. I have mentioned in many notes before that the most direct feedback on quantity is the number of your new notes under the category.

For example, if there are 100 notes collected every day for the term "Hefei nanny", and we send 50 notes from multiple accounts, then the category share is 50%. No matter how users search for nanny, they can find your notes. For regional merchants, this matrix category strategy must be used.

Summarize:

The deeper you explore the categories on Xiaohongshu, the more you can discover the development status of the entire category. For bloggers, to succeed on Xiaohongshu, they must first choose a small category that suits them and is highly competitive, then continue to dig deep, form their own advantages, and ultimately make themselves a brand in the category.

For brands, it is important to discover the current situation of their own categories, find strong brands in the category, gain a firm foothold in the category, and seize the differentiated market.

Author: Jianghe team

Source: WeChat public account "Jianghe Chat Marketing"