Little Redbook is all the rage and brands in beauty, fashion, hospitality are all looking to establish their presence there to reach the female-dominated Chinese social media platform. With over 300M users and over 80% of these being female, it seems like a no-brainer for brands to get on here.

If you have set up your account and are now working on your Little Redbook (aka RED) content strategy, there are 3 key mistakes you want to avoid that could hurt the performance of your posts.

1/ Using the same photos/videos as your other social media channels

Can you simply just use the same asset as what you were posting to Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or Pinterest? The answer is no. For Little Redbook the reason is that if you scroll through the discovery feed in Little Red Book, you will see that a lot of the photos actually have Chinese headlines and copy overlaid on them.

2 / Use Organic and Authentic Visuals

The second thing is, you will notice that a lot of the photos on Little Redbook are not edited perfectly as you would see on Instagram; in other words, they don’t look like an ad. This is another important lesson to produce for high-performing content — it has to look organic and authentic.

If you plan on using a rendering or if you have a hero product photo for your brand, you probably don’t want to use that photo because it won’t perform well on little red book. The Little Redbook algorithm somehow manages to catch all these inauthentic visuals to limit their reach; don’t ask us how, we have tested this with several accounts and see the same effect.

Users on RED expect that the influencers they are following are sharing real, unbiased content. In other words, if anything looks like it is sponsored content, the algorithm will immediately limit the reach of your post. Don’t even try mentioning a promo code, inserting an external link, or placing a QR code to direct traffic off of the Little Redbook platform. You will quickly learn that the RED algorithm polices this type of content very stringently. The platform tells you overly in their policies that if you have external links in your content, it WILL limit your reach.

In some very select cases, I have advised a KOL (Key Opinion Leader aka Influencer) to re-purpose her videos from YouTube, but it was only because her videos are already in Chinese, so she could easily re-purpose her YouTube videos by adding Chinese subtitles to re-post onto Little Redbook. Unless you are teaching English, which is content covered by a lot of Little Redbook accounts, you will want to create content tailored for RED.

Some people have asked me before, “well, Kim Kardashian has her own Little Redbook account and she speaks English.” Well, let’s talk when you are part of the Kardashian family, then you can speak any language and your fans will likely follow you anywhere.

Anywho, make sure to tailor your visuals for the Little Redbook, don’t just simply re-post photos from other English social media channels because this is not going to work.

3 / Using a Single Photo for Your Post

A lot of people would treat Little Redbook the same as Instagram. They would post a single photo that has been photoshopped to make it look perfect, and think that would do well on Little Redbook this is one of the key mistakes hurting the performance of your account.

Like I mentioned, users expect that you at least should have a photo carousel because you are documenting an experience. Most of the content a Little Redbook is a user review, so your followers expect several photos if you are visiting a restaurant or if you are travelling somewhere; Let’s say you visit Portugal, you would have a photo of your hotel, the interiors, the spa, the neighbourhood restaurant and waterfront views. The mindset you need to get into is that on Little Redbook, your followers are looking for authentic recommendations and reviews.

If you are able to take it one step further, then instead of having a photo carousel (which we recommend should have at least 6 to 9 photos) you should do a short video to convey the user experience.

The question we usually get would be: how long does a video have to be? If you are covering a dineout experience at a restaurant and trying a few dishes, you will want some close-ups of the dishes, commentary on each dish and a walkthrough of the restaurant to show the decor and ambiance. For something like this, it would be between a minute and a half to three minutes. It’s not a long long video but it’s enough to give your followers an overall sense of what they can expect if they were to follow your recommendation.

Bonus Tip: Skip the Marketing Speak.

A lot of people are still trying to figure out what kind of language should I use Little Redbook? Should I ‘speak’ like I’m on Instagram? Twitter? Or LinkedIn?

On Little Redbook, you should speak as if you are speaking to your best friend. How would you explain it to your friend if they asked you if a restaurant is any good? Don’t try to dress up your language or copywriting because users on Little Redbook will see right through that, and so will the algorithm, which means you will get limited reach and you won’t get as much engagement if the algorithm feels your content isn’t authentic.

In summary, you should have multiple photos as a photo carrousel or a short video to increase your chances of creating viral, high-performing content on Little Redbook. Looking to get your company or brand started on Little Redbook but don’t want to learn a new Chinese social media platform yourself? Our team of Multi-cultural Marketing Specialists is here to help! With a team of influencers experienced in creating viral content on Little Redbook, we are confident we can help you build your brand presence.

Get in touch with us at info@catalystagents.com for more info!