In the realm of short videos and social media, both TikTok and Xiaohongshu are highly influential platforms, but their operating mechanisms and content ecosystems differ significantly. As a content creator, understanding these differences is crucial for achieving success on the Xiaohongshu platform. This article will detail the unique aspects of Xiaohongshu to help you better adapt to this platform.
Point One: Emphasis on “Useful” Content
You might be surprised to learn that despite its young user base, Xiaohongshu is actually a somewhat “older” platform. The company behind it was founded in 2013, and initially, the founders tested their business model using a series of PDFs.
Xiaohongshu was initially positioned as a shopping-sharing community targeting women, which is why most of its users are female, and the platform’s content primarily focuses on fashion, beauty, and food.
However, Xiaohongshu has now undergone several content category upgrades. From its current slogan — “Your Life Guide” — it’s clear that Xiaohongshu aims to be more than just a shopping-sharing community; it wants to become a lifestyle-sharing platform.
Therefore, the platform’s main characteristic is its abundance of lifestyle recommendation guides, and these guides must be very “useful.” For example, when traveling in Japan, you might hear about “fuzoku” (adult entertainment) establishments as a local feature. While it might be difficult to find “authentic” information about such establishments on other platforms, you can find it on Xiaohongshu. For instance, this note:
Thus, compared to other platforms, Xiaohongshu’s core focus is on “planting grass” (recommendations) and experience sharing, emphasizing content utility and credibility.
Consequently, most notes are discovered through “search.” This means that if your content is valuable, it will be recommended to more people.
Point Two: Content is Predominantly “Useful” Image-Text Posts
Xiaohongshu’s content format primarily consists of image-text notes, with relatively fewer videos. This differs from TikTok’s pure video format.
Why is this the case?
This is because Xiaohongshu initially focused on providing overseas shopping guides and experience sharing, where text and images are more direct and efficient than videos for conveying such information.
Now, when you open your Xiaohongshu app, you’ll notice that a large portion of recommended content on the homepage still consists of mixed images and text. You can count how many image-text posts are on my homepage:
Since producing image-text content is less costly than video content, this aspect is more user-friendly for ordinary users. For example, if you want to explain how to fill out a tax form, most people can create an 80-point quality image-text post in five minutes using existing tools, but it’s much harder to create an 80-point quality video in the same time frame.
Due to this image-text-focused characteristic, Xiaohongshu has a unique feature that other platforms rarely possess: follower count is not the only standard.
Of course, with the rise of various video apps, Xiaohongshu also launched its video feature in 2020, but this hasn’t changed its primary focus on image-text content.
Point Three: Follower Count is Not the Only Standard
As mentioned earlier, Xiaohongshu’s content format is primarily image-text based, which leads to a special phenomenon: follower count is not the only standard.
Because of the image-text format, content on Xiaohongshu focuses more on solving users’ problems rather than pure entertainment. The platform recommends content that addresses user issues.
For example, on other video platforms like TikTok, using the platform feels more like watching TV, where only good TV shows (i.e., KOL content) get pushed to you by the platform.
However, when using Xiaohongshu, it’s more like stepping out of your home and chatting with neighbors about matters that concern you. In this process, you don’t care if the person you’re talking to is a celebrity; what matters is whether their information is helpful to you.
Therefore, when searching for content on Xiaohongshu, you’ll often find that the accounts creating the content don’t have particularly large follower counts, with some even having fewer than 100 followers.
There’s an unconfirmed theory that Xiaohongshu allocates over 50% of its daily traffic to ordinary users with less than 1,000 followers, while TikTok allocates over 80% of its traffic to KOLs with more than 10,000 followers. This partly explains why we generally see content from high-follower KOLs on TikTok, while on Xiaohongshu, we see many posts from accounts with lower follower counts.
Therefore, even if you have a high follower count, your notes might not get many likes; conversely, even with a low follower count, your notes could receive many likes. Here are two examples:
Compared to other platforms where only KOLs have a voice, Xiaohongshu is undoubtedly a more suitable platform for ordinary people to express themselves. So, if you’re interested in creating content that appeals to ordinary people, why not take action now and try posting some “useful” content on Xiaohongshu?
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