Embarrassment: Want profit, but also want fame
There are many things in the world that can achieve fame and fortune, but the Little Red Book thinks too much. For the live broadcast track, Xiaohongshu was late in entering, but despite this, Xiaohongshu is also worried that the live streaming with a strong marketing atmosphere will affect its own brand tone and positioning. In the end, Xiaohongshu has positioned itself as a pure grass planting platform.
However, in the era of doing business, especially gun traffic, it is important to shoot when it is time to shoot, rather than to cower at a critical moment.
Live broadcasting seems to have become a necessary condition for the monetization and development of community platforms. Therefore, Xiaohongshu has a good understanding of the urgency of live broadcasting, and live broadcasting in 2019 has proved its effectiveness in activating the community content ecology and expanding the monetization space. But having potential does not mean that it can be done, and Xiaohongshu has not even passed his own level.
Live streaming is likely to become a new tool for Xiaohongshu to change gears, but I just don't push, hey, just play!
Haitao and daigou were the models of Xiaohongshu's start, and at that time, Xiaohongshu was still fiercely niche. Nowadays, the overall positioning of Xiaohongshu has changed from haitao raiders and cross-border e-commerce to the model of community + content (pictures and texts, short videos) + e-commerce. It can be seen that Xiaohongshu has been seeking a breakthrough, but its development path is also very difficult, the stall is too large, it is easy to be unremarkable, and out of the characteristics, and have to face the niche, so how to keep their own characteristics and build an influential KOL has always been the top priority of Xiaohongshu's strategy, and this is also the bottleneck of Xiaohongshu live broadcast.
As a grass growing platform, it has the trump card for high-quality content. However, Xiaohongshu's estimation is that once the e-commerce live streaming is turned on, it will not become a Meituan Review, because everyone pays more attention to what the KOL says, and does not care about the "goods" of the KOL. "Consumers are more concerned about the consumption guidance that Xiaohongshu can make, which also makes Xiaohongshu unable to complete the transformation of direct commercialization."
Formally because of this idea, Xiaohongshu deliberately avoids its own consumption value. In the past year, the development of Little Red Book has undergone many changes. This includes stricter management of KOLs and removal from the app market. In addition, due to the epidemic, offline has become more difficult, and Xiaohongshu has recently closed all offline experience stores in Shanghai, "Little Red Book Home". In this way, Xiaohongshu really wants to go more and more steadily on the road of being a KOL, and likewise, it is getting farther and farther away from live streaming with goods.
Who doesn't want to make money?
There is no doubt that under multiple changes, with the increase in the number of platform users, how to commercialize has also become the main problem of Xiaohongshu. Bringing goods through online live broadcasting is now the standard for various industries to bring goods. For Xiaohongshu, live broadcasting can bring traffic to the platform, but not for profit. After all, planting grass is the core of Little Red Book's positioning.
At the beginning of June 2019, Xiaohongshu opened a live broadcast internal test, and now after many years, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room of Xiaohongshu is mostly two-digit and three-digit, and for an application that has already exceeded 100 million monthly activities, the current data is simply incredible.
Without an audience, it would be useless for Internet celebrities to toss and turn. Compared with Taobao, which began to lay out live broadcasts in 2016, the live broadcast of Xiaohongshu was more than 3 years late before it "began to come out with a thousand calls". Such a long delay, resulting in the entry of the Little Red Book, the cake of live streaming with goods has been divided up.
For The Little Red Book, the inherent grass planting human design seems to be hard-won, so it is not willing to break itself. In addition, the anchors with goods in the Little Red Book are mostly Internet celebrities, KOLs, compared to the anchors of Taobao Live, there is less of a promotional atmosphere that urges you to buy, that is, more rational, so I may not have the impulse to place an order after watching it, for the audience, entering these live broadcast rooms should be watched a video note.
Busy doesn't win
Liu Xi, a beautiful internet celebrity in Hangzhou, said: "I opened Taobao Live in 2017 to bring goods to Taobao women's clothing stores. I am not a head Internet celebrity, but due to the early start of the broadcast, the data with goods has been considerable. Little Red Book also played for 3 years, but when I heard that Little Red Book started live broadcasting, I had no desire to join. Taobao live broadcast is already very busy, where do you have the energy to open the Little Red Book live broadcast? ”
Indeed, if the platform itself does not support the anchors with goods, it is difficult to mobilize their enthusiasm. Even, Xiaohongshu does not even have a quick interface to enter the live broadcast, which shows that this road Xiaohongshu is still welded to death.
Xiaohongshu's revenue sources include information flow advertising, brand partner commissions and mall commissions. Among them, information flow advertising is the main source of revenue for Xiaohongshu, which is why Xiaohongshu does not pay special attention to e-commerce business. However, with the full outbreak of the live streaming war of Taobao, Kuaishou and Douyin in 2018, and rapid expansion, with increasingly strong drainage capabilities, mainly relying on the traditional graphic information flow advertising to drain the flow of the little red book, gradually being left behind.
It can be seen that by relying too much on the revenue of information flow advertising, Little Red Book will have nowhere to go. As a higher-dimensional form of grass planting, live streaming is a commercial path that Little Red Book must take. However, the drainage logic for video notes and live streaming is the opposite. Live streaming with goods is the anchor actively introduces the goods to the user, the user is in a passive position; video notes are mostly the user's active search and browsing, the user is in the active position.
Therefore, in the end, this kind of planting grass as the main purpose and enhancing the popularity and trust of the platform rather than the Internet celebrity has always been the death pit of the Little Red Book. Therefore, in the specific direction of live streaming with goods, Xiaohongshu has not done much management and planning. Xiaohongshu live broadcast, the quality of content is uneven, and the live broadcast style of the anchor is not clear and mature. It can be seen that Xiaohongshu has not yet carried out effective planning and screening of live broadcast content, and the overall ecology is like stocking, which is undoubtedly a stumbling block to the further development of Xiaohongshu live broadcast.
Under the outlet of live broadcasting with goods, the situation of Xiaohongshu live broadcast is undoubtedly embarrassing. The Little Red Book, which already has the attributes of planting grass and drainage, is overwhelmed in the face of the emerging thing of live streaming with goods that is similar to its own attributes, and has become a poor class student.