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The Drum | What Does The Growth Of Little Red Book Mean For Post-pandemic China?

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The Drum | What Does The Growth Of Little Red Book Mean For Post-pandemic China?

The shopping app proves that consumer confidence and community are key to a thriving business post-Covid, writes Michaela Zhu of Emerging Communications.

Little Red Book, aka Xiaohongshu, or more simply ‘Red’, is a leading Chinese social shopping app. With over 300 million users (and counting), western brands are taking notice – and with good reason.

Little Red Book first appeared in 2013. From modest beginnings focussing on female beauty products, the app expanded to help all kinds of global brands connect with Chinese consumers. Whether it’s holiday inspiration, university choices or luxury fashion, Little Red Book is now the go-to app for lifestyle content and shopping.

With a unique mix of social sharing, long-form articles, live-streaming and e-commerce, it’s a vital part of the Chinese social media landscape. What’s more: Little Red Book is the place for interacting with Chinese gen Z and millennial audiences. In July 2022, nearly 30% of Little Red Book’s active users were under 24 years. Another 40% of users fall into the 25-35 age bracket.

Discover how Little Red Book has transformed over the last few years, key trends, and how to integrate them into your China digital strategy.

How Little Red Book is changing post-Covid China

By 2019, Little Red Book attracted over 200 million users. Fast forward nearly four years, and the platform has maintained its grip on affluent Chinese consumers. It’s one of the few social media platforms where growth still exceeds 30% year-on-year. Little Red Book is here to stay, and in a big way.

This user growth has brought significant changes in content, especially as Chinese consumers adapt to post-pandemic life. Gone are the days when Little Red Book catered exclusively to beauty and fashion niches. Instead, people use the platform to make significant life decisions as well as day-to-day purchases. With content on entering high school, getting married and buying property (to name just a few), you’ll find almost every aspect of daily life up for discussion.

While the relaxing of Covid restrictions has brought drastic changes alongside feelings of liberation, there’s understandable uncertainty among Chinese Gen Z. Long-term lockdown life caused younger generations to pay close attention to their immediate environment. There’s a focus on simplifying their lives and recycling items, as well as yearning for distant places and global cuisines.

A related trend for Little Red Book is the growing Chinese travel industry. Unsurprisingly, the recent easing of travel restrictions resulted in a travel bonanza. For example, two billion trips are expected during this Lunar New Year period. These figures are nearly double the previous year’s and represent a 70% recovery on 2019 levels.

China branding: two essential trends

For content marketing in China, there are two major Little Red Book trends that any marketer needs to know. These are the recent surge in travel-related content and the shift toward new minimalism and ‘rational consumption’.

1. Exploring opportunities for the travel sector

With China’s international borders reopening, travel is no longer a far-away dream. Many Chinese visited their nation’s most popular cities during the pandemic years. Others opted for secluded opulence, spawning the growth of glamping as a trend. Indeed, this luxury camping culture saw ‘glamping’ searches on Little Red book increase by 746% during 2022.

In 2023, foreign countries are also a possibility. As a result, nearby destinations such as Tibet and Southeast Asia predict a strong rebound in the coming months.

Global brands such as Marriott Bonvoy are already capitalizing on these trends, hitting the mark with their China marketing campaigns. For instance, the 2021 Power of Travel campaign used 10 Chinese key opinion leaders to show how travel inspired their lives.

With influencers including Chinese gen Z creatives, families and business executives – the brand showed their relevance to the China market as well as inspiration for rediscovering ourselves through post-Covid travel.

2. Embracing minimalist and rational consumption

In the aftermath of an unprecedented pandemic and global economic downturns, people all over the world are simplifying and streamlining their daily lives.

China is no different, and its younger population has particularly embraced a minimalist mindset. This doesn’t mean stopping purchases completely, but instead shows a shift towards ‘rational consumption’.

Young people are especially shunning impulse purchase decisions, resulting in a decline in ‘hard selling’ and live broadcast sales events. This trend has worked in Little Red Book’s favor due to the platform’s focus on in-depth consumer reviews and trusted user-generated content. Put simply, it’s all about building confidence and community before purchases take place.

For more in-depth insights into Chinese social media trends, download our guide to getting started with Little Red Book.

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Twitter Expands ‘Verification for Organizations’ to More Regions

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Twitter Expands ‘Verification for Organizations’ to More Regions

Despite concerns over its radically high pricing, Twitter is pushing ahead with the rollout of its ‘Verification for Organizations’ offering, which enables brands to purchase a gold checkmark for their main account, and verify their employee profiles as affiliates.

Twitter first put out the call for selected businesses to sign up to the program back in January, as part of its broader revamp of verification, which aims to both democratize access to checkmarks in the app, while also establishing a new revenue stream for the business.

Now, more brands in more regions are being invited to register their interest, which could soon see a lot more gold checkmarks and square profile pictures appearing in your feed.

If they’re willing to pay up. Twitter’s currently looking to charge businesses $1,000 per month for the option, which seems like a high price to pay for a different colored tick – and really, not much else.

As per the communications being sent out to businesses, for your $1,000 monthly investment, Verification for Organizations will give you:

  • A gold checkmark on your brand account
  • A square profile picture on your brand profile
  • An affiliate badge, a smaller version of your brand profile image that’s added to approved accounts in the app
  • Affiliates display on the main brand page, which shows all the accounts linked to the main brand profile
Twitter Verification for Organizations
  • Twitter Blue access for all brand and affiliated accounts

So you do get access to all the Twitter Blue features, for your main account and any profiles that you approve as affiliates. But you do also have to pay for each affiliate you register – if you want to approve your staff, and get them both an affiliate marker and a blue tick, you’ll have to pay $50, per month, for each profile you add in.

That seems like a lot – especially considering you can just pay $8 per month to sign your brand profile up to Twitter Blue and get a regular blue checkmark in the app. Maybe Twitter will eventually look to cut off Twitter Blue access for brand entities, but right now, you’re really paying an extra $992 per month for a different colored tick.

Is that worth it?

I guess, Twitter’s hoping that it can reach a critical mass of brands that sign up for a gold checkmark, which will then make it the new gold standard in brand recognition, and in turn, raise questions about the legitimacy of other brand accounts that don’t have that gold tick endorsement. That could force more brands to sign-up to the program, in order to ensure that they’re seen as the official brand entity in the app.

I’m not sure that’s going to work, but that seems to be the principle that Twitter’s going with, effectively using the value of exclusivity that was once afforded to the regular blue checkmark to make the new gold tick more desirable, thus boosting interest.

But it’s a lot. $1000 a month is likely beyond the reach of most SMBs, and it’ll be hard for any brand to justify the expanse, for so little in return.

Some reports have also suggested that Twitter’s giving away the gold checkmark to approved ad partners, as another means to make it a bigger thing, and that could be another effort to further incentivize take-up, by using competitive sensibilities to prompt other brands to want one as well.

Again, I don’t know that it’s the right approach, but Twitter’s, at the least, going to kick the tires on the option, at its current price point.

And it’s coming to more regions – Verification for Organizations is now available in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the UK, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, India, Indonesia, and Brazil.

With a heap of advertisers still not coming back to Twitter, Elon and Co. definitely need the extra money – but do you need the ‘benefits’ that this program provides?



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How Automation Is Reshaping The Industry

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How Automation Is Reshaping The Industry

Krishan Arora is CEO & Founder at The Arora Project, a globally recognized leader in crowdfunding & scaling high-growth ventures.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the marketing industry. As an agency owner myself, I can see in real time how the landscape is shifting under our feet. As businesses seek to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve their marketing strategies, they are turning to AI-powered marketing tools to automate many of the tasks previously done manually.

One of the most significant areas is in the field of data analysis. AI-powered tools can analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately, providing insights into customer behavior and preferences that can inform marketing strategies. This includes analyzing customer data from social media, search engines and customer reviews. By automating this process, businesses can reduce the need for human staff to analyze data manually, saving time and money.

Chatbots—computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users—are also AI tools and can be programmed to respond to customer inquiries, provide product recommendations and even process orders. This tech is becoming a popular option for companies looking to expedite the handling of customer inquiries.

When it comes to marketing, there’s been an emergence of AI tools that can help automate processes around content generation. This includes developing social media posts, email marketing campaigns and even video content. AI-powered tools can generate content automatically, based on preset parameters, reducing the need for human staff to create each piece of content manually. This can help businesses save time and money while ensuring their marketing content is still high-quality and on-brand. In our agency specifically, we use AI tools to help create incredible marketing copy with just a small input of text and to help create strong brands, logos and presentation design files with ease and at scale. These have helped us boost productivity and results, and I highly encourage other teams to adapt to this revolution.

Aside from impacting tasks within the marketing role, AI tools are also affecting the workforce in terms of job skills. As businesses adopt more AI-powered marketing tools, I believe they will increasingly be looking for staff with skills in data analysis and machine learning. As a result, traditional marketing roles, such as copywriters and graphic designers, may become less in demand, while data analysts and machine learning experts become more sought after.

Marketing teams that adapt to using AI in their workflows will have a significant advantage over those that do not. I don’t think this technology will replace humans altogether. What I think will happen is that there will be two cohorts of marketers: one that uses AI to increase productivity and results, and one that does not. Those that do not will have a hard time keeping up with the AI-boosted marketing teams.

As businesses continue to adopt AI-powered marketing tools, it is likely that the trend of role restructuring and new opportunities will continue. However, it is also important to note that AI is not a silver bullet for all marketing tasks. There are still areas in each of these categories where human staff is essential, especially when it comes to developing creative concepts and building relationships with customers.

In conclusion, the use of AI in marketing is transforming the industry. As businesses seek to reduce costs and improve their marketing strategies, they are increasingly turning to AI-powered marketing tools to automate many of the tasks previously done fully by humans. This is leading to job losses in some areas but is also creating new opportunities for workers with skills in AI and machine learning. As AI-powered services continue to evolve, businesses and workers alike must adapt to these changes to stay competitive in the market.


Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?


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Twitter Will Begin Removing ‘Legacy’ Blue Checkmarks from Next Week

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Twitter Will Begin Removing ‘Legacy’ Blue Checkmarks from Next Week

Get ready for the next phase of Twitter 2.0’s subscription revenue push, with the platform announcing today that ‘legacy’ blue checkmarks will begin being revoked as of next week.

As per the above tweet, Twitter’s hoping to boost Twitter Blue and Verification for Business subscribers by prompting them to start paying for their blue tick instead.

Twitter’s also alerting blue tick account holders with this in-stream notification.

That could see some legacy verified accounts paying up, bringing in a few more Twitter Blue subscribers – though the amount that are going to revert to Verification for Business, which costs $1,000 per month, will be far less.

But if Twitter wants to reach its target of 50% of its revenue coming from subscriptions, it needs to take action, because right now, according to analysis, Twitter Blue has around 450k subscribers, which equates to only 0.12% of Twitter’s total user base.

In order to generate 50% of Twitter’s total income, Twitter needs around 24 million users to sign up to the program. So while Twitter Blue is set to bring in more money for Elon and Co. (around $11 million per quarter to be exact), it’s nowhere close to being half of the platform’s intake, which, based on its last revenue report, would be around $590 million every three months.

While it also dilutes the value of the thing that it’s aiming to sell. The problem with selling blue checkmarks, both on Twitter and Facebook, is that you’re charging users for the exclusivity, and the perceived reputational value of having a blue tick, but as soon as anyone can buy it, it’s no longer valuable in this respect.

And as more people sign up, it becomes even less valuable over time, and once Twitter removes the legacy blue ticks, that will mean that the only checkmarks left are those that are attached to accounts that are paying for it, which will make it completely worthless in this respect. At that stage, the blue check is only going to show others that you have enough money to afford it, and that you want to support Elon Musk’s mission to change how Twitter works.

Maybe that has some value in itself, and there are some aspects of Twitter Blue that some users will pay for. Though even then, Twitter’s experimenting with a new option that would enable subscribers to not show their blue tick, if they choose – because even Twitter is moving to acknowledge that it’s not the indicator of reputational or exclusivity that it once was.

And it’ll become less so from next week – while it’s also worth noting that even if every legacy checkmark holder were to sign on to pay $8 per month, and keep their blue tick, that would still only be another 420k extra subscribers, max.

And I suspect many won’t. I suspect, too, that removing the legacy checkmarks will have a negative impact, in that it will see some of those users tweet even less, because they won’t feel as aligned to the platform that has taken away that marker from their account.

This is why selling verification ticks is a flawed strategy, because its growth and expansion dilutes its own value, and undermines the concept of what it is. Sure, Meta’s trying the same thing, but even Meta staff raised this same concern (as did Twitter staff), and Meta at least offers a truly valuable aspect, in providing additional, in-person support for paying subscribers.

But even then, Meta’s approach is also flawed, because you can’t sell reputation, you can’t charge for authority or recognition.

Some will think that’s what they’re getting, but eventually, when they’re the only ones left, I think you’ll find that it’ll be much easier to dismiss blue checkmark accounts in-stream.

It’s a confused approach, which won’t become a significant revenue driver – at least not without some significant additions that are worth paying for. But Twitter’s pushing ahead either way.  

Prepare to pay up, or lose your blue tick, from next week.



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