While Wechat public account is the most popular platform for businesses to promote to Chinese speaking audiences, many functions in particular vlog and livestreaming are restricted to Chinese domestic entities. For overseas businesses, it makes sense to use Xiaohongshu or (Little Red Book) to promote themselves.
What is Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book, or RED)
According to its corporate website in English: “With a mission to “inspire lives”, Xiaohongshu is a lifestyle platform that inspires people to discover and connect with a range of diverse lifestyles. Millions of users showcase their experiences on the platform daily, from cosmetics and beauty to fashion, food, travel, entertainment, fitness, and childcare, brought to life visually through a variety of formats including photos, text, videos and livestreaming. The innovative platform integrates the authentic content shared by its community with commerce, quickly becoming one of the most popular destinations for making lifestyle decisions.” That’s quite straightforward and thorough.
The difference between Xiaohongshu and Wechat
The key difference between Xiaohongshu and Wechat for overseas businesses is that, Xiaohongshu allows overseas businesses to register easily as a content creator just like an individual, or as an enterprise. A Chinese cellphone is not required. That flexibility is crucial because now you can tell the stories of your brand, open your store at Xiaohongshu, and do advertisements. All these do not require a Chinese cellphone, so you probably do not need a staff or agency in China to assist you.
Why Little Red Book makes sense for overseas business
The platform compared with those giants such as Wechat, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou etc. is much smaller, with 25 million registered users and probably 80% of them are female – among which 70% were born in 1990s and 60% of the users reside in the relatively affluent cosmopolitan cities.
The functionalities are quite simple for users. You can create your own “notes” that can be text, photos and videos. Videos can be created from existing photo/video albums using ready-made templates, or simply editing your own video clips and photos into one longer form video – essentially this is vlogging. You can also do live streaming too. Just like other social media platforms, you can follow other people’s “notes”, and other people can follow yours. The notes being followed will serve up in the followers Moments. However, unlike Wechat, Xiaohongshu also has “Discover” function quite prominent. This is where the platform based on users’ interests and locations to contents (in other words, where the advertisement dollars will go to). Under “nearby” users can check out other users’ contents in the defined geographical proximity. If a user is interested in someone’s “notes”, that notes can be saved as “favourite” too. However, you can’t share other people’s “notes” within Xiaohongshu’s “Moment”, but rather, that can be shared to other platforms such as Wechat, Weibo and via private messages.
Xiaohongshu is very popular among Chinese Canadian for its easy functionalities and perceived “real people” who share their notes, tips, images and videos. The emphasis on the visual component of this platform makes it a very convenient way to showcase anything that can appeal to people visually, for example: travel, cosmetics, fashion, food & drink, arts & craft and many more. The key draw to this platform is “sharing the tips” – people want real people’s authentic opinions on their experiences and with proof (photos, videos, live streaming). They follow other peoples (they can use “Search” function to discover what they need), and probably they are followed by others.
So, if you are a business with lots of images and videos to showcase the experiences, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) may help you capture audiences’ eyeballs. And what’s more, you can create and maintain an account as a content creator (individual), and then change that to a business account with proper application.
So, this is just another platform to consider if you are thinking of potential of getting to Chinese Canadian market segment here.