Image source @ Visual China
Text | Kaiboluocaijing, author | Wanqi, editor | Li Qiuhan
Internet giants have never given up the "planting grass" track.
According to media reports, the first-level entrance of the Douyin APP on the left side can replace "same city" with multiple classifications, and currently contains four options: same city, learning, planting grass, and hot spots. In fact, in October 2021, Douyin tested a similar graphic grass display page to Xiaohongshu, and the account can add relevant topics and hang product links to sell.
Major Internet platforms have successively developed "planting grass" products. The e-commerce platform moves neatly, Taobao launched "shopping", Pinduoduo has "spelling small circles", Jingdong has created "grass show", and other Internet factories are also in the layout, such as Tencent has developed "Youji", Zhihu has "CHAO", momo has "raspberry". There are also independent good selection platforms that rely on social fission, such as "what is worth buying" and "where to go on weekends".
After the rise of "planting grass" in China, although the big factories failed to create a super large grass planting APP, the content of this track has long been all over the Internet.
The fierce competition is not difficult to understand.
From the user's side, planting grass refers to "the process of recommending a thing to others, making them like it and generating a desire to buy/consume". This has stimulated more and more Internet celebrity shops, tourist attractions, And Internet celebrity goods to emerge, and the grass planting effect has been verified countless times. In terms of commercial transformation, take the typical grass planting community Xiaohongshu as an example, after media reports, its advertising revenue in 2020 reached 600-800 million US dollars, accounting for about 80% of the total revenue. Planting grass and advertising are close, and the advertising benefits are direct.
With the successive layout of the grass planting business by large factories, what this article tries to explore is that the large factories have spent efforts, why has not been able to grow a grass planting APP? Are the major apps, including Douyin, really attractive to grass bloggers and users? What will be the impact on the Little Red Book?
How does a big factory do weeds?
How are the big factories doing to grow grass?
The practice of the e-commerce platform is to open up a grass planting community on the original super APP.
They give a lot of weight to this function. In December 2020, Taobao Shopping was officially launched as the first-level entrance to the home page; Jingdong launched the "Shopping" entrance on the homepage, which can display the content of the "Grass Planting Show"; and the "Spelling Circle" on Pinduoduo was also placed at the top of the homepage.
Although they have different emphases, some interfaces are roughly similar to Xiaohongshu, such as Taobao's shopping, Jingdong's "shopping", and some try other ways of playing, such as "fighting small circles" on Pinduoduo, compared to planting grass, more like a friend's shopping list, you can see your and your friends' past shopping records, you can choose whether to block shopping information, social attributes are stronger, but there is a common point that you can bring product links under the grass content. Such an advantage is to let "planting grass" to "pulling grass" directly transform.
From left to right, they are: Pinduoduo's Pinduoduo's Pinduoduo's "Shopping", Jingdong's "Shopping", Taobao's "Shopping" Source / Pinduoduo, JD.com, Taobao APP screenshots
But it is also because of its e-commerce platform attributes, planting grass is only a subsidiary business, and the transaction attributes of the platform are too strong, which is not conducive to the spontaneous production of content by users. For example, some insiders told Kai Pineapple Finance that many bloggers who come to shop and share content are Taobao stores, with the purpose of draining their own goods.
Compared with the above-mentioned e-commerce platforms, Douyin has the advantages of content and consumption conversion. However, in the view of the former senior product manager judge, in the content ecology of Douyin, there are already a large number of accounts that recommend good things, open boxes, explore shops, etc. that play a role in planting grass, and at the same time can hang small yellow cars for trading. If a special grass planting column is also opened, it will not play a big role.
Douyin also faces the problem that at the content level, Douyin launched similar graphic content in October 2021, and a product manager mentioned that in the environment where video on social platforms has become mainstream, it is a step backward to support graphics itself, "In terms of the efficiency of planting grass, graphics and texts are not as good as videos, for users, graphics and texts are not as intuitive as videos, and the reading threshold is higher than videos."
Other large and small factories lay out grass in the form of launching independent apps. This type of APP has its own characteristics, Tencent's "youji" social attributes are more concentrated, similar to the Weibo version of "circle of friends", not only good things to share; the "CHAO" created by Zhihu is positioned as a "boys' grass planting community"; Momo, in July 2021, it was reported that raspberries will be launched, the UI design and the little red book are similar, but no new news has been exposed.
On the seven-wheat data, there is no ranking and specific download data for youji and CHAO, and the user volume is small.
There are also companies that specifically target grass planting tracks, launching "What is worth buying" and "where to go on weekends", which are more vertical than the content of the Little Red Book. "Where to Go on weekends" is positioned as an urban life app that provides weekend leisure activities, and the "what is worth buying" shopping guide has stronger attributes, and will directly mark the price of goods on the grass planting interface and provide jump links. At present, on the Seven-Wheat data, "what is worth buying" ranks 503rd in the free list, and "where to go on the weekend" has no ranking.
It is worth noting that the essence of planting grass is content consumption, first there is content, and then it brings consumption transformation. The judge mentioned that the planting of herbs is accompanied by content marketing and cannot exist alone. At present, some of the emerging grass planting platforms lack content attributes, such as the grass planting community under the e-commerce platform, some lack consumption conversion, such as Tencent's "Youji", which focuses more on content, and some directly lack user base, such as the "CHAO" created by Zhihu.
In other words, to plant grass, you have to do the content first. How to let users share content spontaneously is the difficulty of the grass planting platform.
Grass bloggers don't have a "home"
So, how do you make bloggers willing to come to the platform to share grass content? This requires sorting out the difference between the contents of the grass and other contents.
According to the exchanges between Kai Pineapple Finance and many bloggers, first, the production threshold of grass content is not high.
Xiao Fan, the operator of a large factory, told Kai Pineapple Finance that from June 2021, she aimed at planting grass content as a side business, and opened 5 grass account numbers around beauty, making money and reading in Douyin and Xiaohongshu in one go. She mentioned that each account does not take much time to operate, and after proficiency, it takes an hour a day to write a short article. In addition, the production cost is also very low, no real person is required to appear on camera, some basic picture materials are used, and even video mixing is not needed.
Second, some bloggers make grass account numbers, the purpose is to convert users to their own private domain for transactions.
Xiao Han, who previously did Japanese and Korean cosmetics purchasing, created accounts on Xiaohongshu, Taobao, and Douyin to distribute display products. She mentioned that because users naturally reject advertising, the way of planting grass and draining can enhance trust, and the purpose of doing accounts is to import the fans accumulated on major platforms into their Own WeChat groups for trading.
Such bloggers mentioned that although every platform jump will lose traffic, as long as the traffic can be "caught", it does not matter whether the final transaction occurs on the grass planting platform.
Moreover, the planting conversion transaction is not the only appeal of bloggers.
A blogger who works part-time on Douyin and Little Red Book to do Disney content said that if he also hangs grass products, he will be considered by fans not out of love for Disney. Therefore, in terms of commercial conversion, he aims at the advertising monetization brought to him by fans, and will pay more attention to content production and platform traffic plate size.
That is to say, the grass planting threshold is low, bloggers who come to advertise, where there is traffic to go, bloggers who come to e-commerce, the purpose is to import private domains, they will not stay for a single platform. A business person at a celebrity MCN organization told Kai Pineapple Finance that almost no grass blogger is limited to one platform to distribute content, as long as it is a popular platform, they will go to settle in.
In the past, the Internet industry built apps by playing in order to attract users who are willing to produce UGC content, and play traffic and funds to support. For example, when Watermelon Video competed for video content in UGC, it announced that it would spend 2 billion subsidies. In the exchange with Kai Pineapple Finance, B station, watermelon video, Weibo and many other waist bloggers with 500,000-1 million fans said that they would not sign an exclusive contract with a certain platform, and even had bloggers who had signed exclusive contracts in order to get more traffic support and cash, bluntly saying that they "regret it".
Compared with the production of videos, the threshold for planting grass content is lower, and bloggers tend to "multi-platform distribution", which also causes to a certain extent that the platform relies on spending money to recruit people to form a competitive advantage of "blogger monopoly", which becomes more difficult.
The Q&A community, which focuses on graphics and texts, has also tried to rely on funds to support quick success. When ByteDance created Wukong Q&A, it had announced two consecutive investment of 1 billion yuan in subsidies, that is, it spent 2 billion to dig up Q&A bloggers, and the results were not satisfactory, and now Wukong Q&A has announced that it will go offline.
"Planting grass is mutually generated content between bloggers and users, and once the platform is in operation, it becomes a business of accurate calculation." The judge said. Zhang Le, a product operator, also mentioned that "grass-growing content should allow users to produce their own content, and it is best for the platform to be less 'meddling' or even 'not meddling'." This is the difficulty of the big factories to build a grass planting platform.
Little Red Book panicked?
However, this does not mean that other platforms do not have opportunities.
The judge told Open Pineapple Finance that users' demand for grass content will not change, but the channels for consuming content will change. For example, a small kitchen user who wants to learn to cook, previously looked for recipes on Baidu, but now prefers to search on Douyin and Xiaohongshu.
The change is that users have changed from playing on the platform to coming to the platform to consuming on the platform. When users are searching for daily problems such as "how to cook dishes" and "what is better to change the oil", the more the platform is used and the more content is produced, the content of the corresponding platform will become richer and richer, and the demand that can be carried will be more and more abundant.
All in all, planting grass is more dependent on user spontaneity, complementary to each other, and requires the platform to be patient and "raise".
For now, on the one hand, Xiaohongshu is still the community with the strongest grass planting atmosphere, and it is not difficult for big factories to besiege Xiaohongshu. But on the other hand, the commercial dilemma faced by Xiaohongshu itself will also be an inevitable problem in the development of other grass planting platforms.
"The ultimate goal of developing grass is always to return to business." An industry insider said that at present, the entire grass planting platform can not earn money or commercial transformation is difficult, which will be a long-term problem. According to media reports, in 2020, about 80% of Xiaohongshu's total revenue will rely on advertising and about 20% on e-commerce.
The distance between planting grass and advertising is too close, if you do not hang up the product link, the brand places bloggers, just invest in an advertising display position, there is a conversion rate problem.
An industry insider mentioned that the core scene of Xiaohongshu is to find good things, and as a content sharing platform, it can win a brand, but its impact on directly facilitating transactions is limited.
At present, the advertising plate is divided by major Internet manufacturers, the growth space is limited, to open up new growth points, e-commerce is to gnaw the hard bones.
But another problem is that whether it is brand delivery or spontaneous content, bloggers hang product links under the content and carry out e-commerce conversion, the advertising flavor is too strong, users resist, and also affect the community planting atmosphere.
"Planting grass" is interspersed with all aspects of personal life, although it naturally has its own commercial attributes, but it only exists in the middle of the middle between e-commerce and content, and the transaction rate is not high. This is one of the reasons why many bloggers are not actively linking to trades. Some bloggers mentioned that on Douyin, the content of the small yellow car was hung, the completion rate was not good, and higher requirements were also put forward for content production.
At present, other large factories doing grass planting business have faced similar problems.
The judge gave an example to Kai Pineapple Finance that the development of zhihu good things will indeed bring some revenue to the platform. As a deep user, his perception is that the platform is still too deliberate in operation. Since the opening of Zhihu Good Things, some accounts have put several product links in the questions, from planting grass to shopping guides, implants and other forms, which have a great impact on the content.
The commercial value of planting grass content is sought after by many big manufacturers, in fact, it is difficult for the platform to rely on it to directly make a lot of money. This is even more intractable than the crisis brought about by the siege of the grass content of the big factories.
*At the request of the interviewees, Xiao Han, Xiao Fan and Zhang Le are pseudonyms.