How To Create Content? Secret Social Business Platform Xiao Hong Book

There are many digital channels for brand selection in China, so deciding which channels to focus on can become a top priority for marketing experts. Nowadays, apart from micro-blog and WeChat, the power of Xiaohong, a social commerce platform, can not be ignored.

Founded in 2013, the little red book combines Instagram's addictive picture page and Amazon's in-depth user reviews, accumulating a large number of fans, and now has 80 million active users per month. Although this figure is relatively small compared with other social platforms, users of Xiaohong book have greater influence on purchasing decision making ability, which is why luxury brands like LouisVuitton launch official accounts on the platform.

In July 10th, executives of luxury brands and digital institutions gathered in New York to participate in the seminar on Xiaohong. The moderator was Yiling Pan, senior editor of Jing Daily; she participated in the discussion of Kim Leitzes, chief executive officer of KOL marketing platform Parklu; meanwhile, KOL Kristina Li (pear pill), who had over 1 million small red books in Xiao Hong book, also shared her content strategy and the way to screen fake fans.

Now we summarize all the questions about the little red book that the brand wants to know:

What is the cost of using Xiaohong book?

"A year ago, it was about 1000 yuan to work with a small KOL with less than ten thousand fans," recalls Parklu's Leitzes. "But now the price is faster than 10 thousand yuan." Kristina revealed that each of her posts charges between forty thousand and fifty-five thousand. However, it is more common for KOL to report different prices to different brands, such as when they cooperate with the brand they prefer.

The sharp rise in price is partly related to the popularity of the platform. Kristina began posting on Xiaohong book in 2017 and received Estee Lauder's sponsorship opportunity in a year. But with the development of platform and more KOL entry, advertising competition is becoming more and more intense. In order to maintain the reliability and authenticity of the content, Xiao Hong has become strict with the overall environment of the platform and has formulated a set of rules.

For example, KOL must now reach a certain number of watchers and monthly traffic before accepting advertisements. For each sponsored post, KOL must create 4 original posts, which makes them tend to choose advertisers who pay more when they receive advertisements. The quality of content on the platform is also higher, for example, mentioning the short videos and posts of multiple brands can get a higher exposure rate. These changes restrict the increasing price of sponsorship posts, but the quality is also getting higher and higher.

What is the return on investment in KOLs on Xiao Hong book?

In actual sales, brands can link their little red pages to Tmall. But it is still hard to track where users place orders. Many marketing budgets are balanced between brand awareness and sales creation. A good way to measure brand awareness is to see the brand and other competitors' reference in the little red book, and the number of fans attracted by sponsorship content vs. real content.

How to distinguish fake fans?

According to Kristina, it is easy to distinguish fake fans. If there is little comment on one article, but there is much praise, it may be fake powder. Similarly, if all points are from other KOL, there are also problems. Like other social platforms, there are hundreds of WeChat groups in Xiaohong, who earn their popularity through mutual praise.

User generated video is king, but what does the brand need to pay attention to?

Short videos may be the most popular way to attract users' attention. Kristina revealed that 70% of her content is now based on video and has seen a marked increase in traffic. But for luxury brands that distribute high value video, controlling user generated video content can be difficult. "In fact, if user generated content is favored by brands, then no brand supervision is needed," Leitzes said. "As a brand, you always have to ask what kind of opportunities you can create for KOL."

Luxury brands have many opportunities to create content in the little red book. According to Parklu data, the top 20 luxury brands in 2018 focused a lot of small red books on online activities such as fashion week, flash events and product launches. But the brand also needs to decide what they want to create in the little red book, and more importantly, whether the platform is suitable as part of the digital strategy.