▪ Female-oriented: 70% of the users on LRB are female, but that gap is closing in recent years. The trend of diversity has led to the rapid development of neutral content such as movies and travel, as well as male-oriented content such as technology and sports events, bringing in more male users.

▪ Youthfulness: A majority of LRB users are Gen Z and Millenials, with 72% of the age bracket aged under 30.

▪ Developed cities and overseas: More than half of all Instagram users are from more developed cities in China. With 16.5% of the users located abroad, it also has a high amount of usage among overseas Chinese, especially in the USA, UK, Australia and Canada.

Little Red Book user interests

Brands related to luxury shopping have the best bet of being successful on RED. High-end jewelry, shoes, clothing, purses, cosmetics and perfume are all hot topics on the app. Luxury travel is also a growing area of interest.

▪ The top 6 interests on LRB are beauty (7%), food and drink (9%), baby care, home, fashion, pets and fitness.

▪ Beauty: Being the very top interest on LRB, skincare is slightly more focused than makeup under the beauty category. Skincare is the most discussed topic on LRB, and there are more and more customers who care about the ingredients used in skincare products. 

▪ Baby care: Sophisticated mothers, as most active users of this category, are choosing baby products with high standards. Brands with high quality and good reputation are their first choice. The rise of feminism has led to a greater focus on postnatal recovery and pregnancy fashion.

▪ Food and drink: The top 2 tags for food category are cheap eats (13.3%) and fine food (10%). The most popular topic is food tutorials and recipes (8.93%), as well as bakery and food guides.

The current stage of the internet has evolved into Web 3.0, when customer demand has been increasingly segmented and personalized. Through the credibility of customer recommendations, LRB has led to an incredible amount of traffic to the brand and direct sales. With the platform tilting towards brands and giving brands more favourable policies, content marketing and influencer marketing is now the future. 

Because brand posts and advertisements are not permitted, hence the success on this channel really relies on having people posting about your product. That’s why many top brands like Channel, Gucci, and Dior pay big money to have Chinese Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) endorse their product on the site. However, as more and more influencers are used on the site to promote products, more complaints come in from users who feel the site is losing credibility. It’s a fine line to walk and one that RED will need to be mindful of as it continues its growth trajectory.