[Beauty & Skincare] How Influencers and Brands can Avoid Getting Penalized for Brand Collaborations on Little Red Book
We recently wrote about an update in China’s regulations for medical beauty aesthetics ads, and how it impacts Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Little Red Book.
Little Red Book has released official guidelines on how influencers can avoid getting flagged by the platform when promoting skincare and beauty products. In our recent beauty and skincare Little Red Book influencer campaigns in the past 3 months, we’ve had influencer posts get flagged by the platform and their post reach was limited because the content violated Little Red Book’s content restrictions.
If you are an influencer on Little Red Book, or if you are a brand working with influencers on Little Red Book, you’ll want to pay attention to this blog post!
We share the 4 things to pay attention to so you limit your chances of having your content flagged.
1 - DO NOT EXAGGERATE PRODUCT CLAIMS
While this one should be self-explanatory, a lot of content creators on Little Red Book feel like they have to exaggerate their post headlines and cover photos in order to bait readers to click and read the post. Within the post, they also use photoshopped photos to exaggerate the results that could result from using the skincare products, and this is why the platform is flagging this type of misleading content. In the post writeup, the user may claim that their skin got 2 tones whiter in 2 weeks, which is a violation of Little Red Books platform rules (and also in violation of China’s regulations for beauty and medical aesthetic products).
2 - AVOID PROMOTING ‘SPECIAL USE’ SKINCARE
What is categorized as ‘special use’ skincare? Products that claim to remove dark spots, lighten/brighten the skin, or reduce pigmentation are all classified as special-use skincare products. There are other body and hair care product claims such as stimulating hair growth, preventing hair loss, and removing body odour that falls under special use. For a full list of rules and regulations of what you can and cannot claim regarding beauty and makeup products, you can visit the Chinese government’s National Medical Products Administration website.
3 - AVOID USING HIGH-RISK KEYWORDS
Some of the keywords that bear the highest risk of getting flagged on the platform include pigmentation, whitening, brightening, spot lightening, dark spot removal, hair loss prevention, hair growth, and other tangent keywords. Again, for a full list, refer to the website above.
4 - AVOID MESSAGES THAT GUARANTEE RESULTS
This is the one that gets more content creators because they want to appear as if they are promoting a miracle product. This way they get more views that show their astonishing results (most of which are photoshopped, which is another reason why their post content would get flagged — just leave the filters out of it guys, ok?)
We’ve mentioned before that Little Red Book’s algorithm actually favours photos and videos that are taken ‘naturally’ on your phone. We’ve tested this with our own accounts. While we take tons of photos for our clients using our DSLR cameras for sharp, crisp photos, the platform actually gives more views to posts where we use our phone photos and videos!
Back to the topic at hand…the key reason why most beauty and skincare posts get flagged is that they claim certainty in their results. Below is a list of potential headlines and claims that will get flagged. We also checked the most recent posts with hashtags #变白 (get whiter) and #牛奶肌 (direct translation: milky smooth skin and captured samples of posts that appeared to have their post reach limited. As you can see below, the skin colour is extremely exaggerated and some of the headlines make product claims that would get flagged by the system.
2 weeks to silky smooth skin!
Painless microneedling treatment with zero recovery time!
I used this and my skin turned 4 tones whiter in 4 weeks!
This body firming treatment helped me lose 10 pounds in 4 weeks!
All of the bold letterings above are sensitive keywords that could get flagged by Little Red Book’s platform because they are guaranteeing results.
If you follow the 4 rules above then you minimize your chances of having your content or account flagged. If you get numerous violations, you may have your account removed from the platform so it’s best to err on the side of caution.
Are you a skincare, beauty or makeup brand looking to establish your brand presence on the platform? Contact us today at info@catalystagents.com and our Little Red Book Specialists will help you get set up!