How to Grow on Xiaohongshu (RedNote): A Creator's Guide

Maybe you were there in January 2025. TikTok was days from going dark, everyone was downloading a red app called RedNote, and your first post, a shaky "hi from Texas," got more warmth from strangers in Chengdu than your last ten TikToks combined. Then TikTok stayed online, the timeline moved on, and your RedNote account sat there with a handful of followers and no plan.

Or maybe you never posted at all. You just noticed that the app answers questions Google can't, that Chinese students and travellers trust it more than any review site, and that a few foreign creators are quietly building real audiences there. You want in, and this time you want to do it properly.

This guide shows you how to grow on Xiaohongshu (小红书) as an English-speaking creator. You'll learn when to post image notes or video, how to make covers and titles that earn the tap, why the app behaves like a search engine, how to handle tags and posting rhythm, what the TikTok-user influx changed, how brand deals work through Pugongying (蒲公英), and which community rules get accounts restricted. Wherever Xiaohongshu publishes its own rules, that's the source used here.

What Xiaohongshu is, and why it's also called RedNote

Xiaohongshu translates as "little red book." Its English app store name is RedNote, and both names refer to the same app. It launched in 2013 as a shopping guide for Chinese travellers buying abroad and grew into a lifestyle community where people post "notes" (笔记) about what they bought, cooked, wore, visited and learned.

The core culture is 种草 (zhòngcǎo), literally "planting grass": sharing something so convincingly that the reader wants it. Its opposite, 拔草 (bácǎo, "pulling grass"), means talking someone out of a purchase, and honest negative reviews are just as welcome. People open the app to make decisions, and that shapes everything about how you should post.

Xiaohongshu is privately held and doesn't file public results, so treat any headline user count you see as unaudited. What the company has published about behaviour is revealing anyway. Its August 2024 search report said 70% of users actively use the search function, that users average six searches a day, and that a third of new users search on their very first day. The same release said half its user base belongs to Gen Z. You're posting into a young, decision-hungry audience that types questions into a search bar.

If you're still comparing apps, our guide to Chinese social media platforms lines Xiaohongshu up against Douyin, Bilibili, Weibo and the rest.

Set up your account so it can grow

Sign-up and real-name verification

Overseas phone numbers register on Xiaohongshu, which is why it was the Chinese app foreigners could actually join in 2025. Browsing, posting and commenting work from there. Monetisation is a separate tier. Pugongying, the official brand-deal platform, requires real-name verification (实名认证), and several creator features depend on it. Foreign creators have documented completing verification with a passport, but the options you see depend on your account and region, so check inside the app before you build plans around it.

Upgrade to a professional account

A personal professional account (个人专业号) is free and gives you creator data plus the path to brand collaborations. Pugongying's help centre lists the upgrade as a requirement for creators, so do it early and pick the category that honestly matches your content. Changing niche later confuses both readers and the feed.

Write a bio that won't get flagged

Your bio is where new creators most often break a rule without knowing it. Xiaohongshu's Community Norms (社区规范) treat traffic diversion (导流) as a violation and name the specifics: personal contact details such as phone numbers, WeChat IDs, emails and addresses, plus links, QR codes and watermarks that point to other platforms. Your Instagram handle in the bio, or a TikTok watermark on a reposted video, can count as diversion. Use the space to say who you are, where you're based and what readers get from following you.

Your IP location (IP属地) will show your country on your profile and posts, and you can't turn it off. Treat it as a feature. "Nurse in Melbourne" or "engineering student in Toronto" is an angle a Chinese reader can't get from a local creator.

Notes vs video: choosing your format

Every post on Xiaohongshu is a note, and notes come in two main forms: image notes (图文, literally "picture and text") and video notes. In July 2025 the app also began testing a long-form writing mode (写长文), reported by Sina Tech at the time, which turns longer text into formatted image pages for posts that need more room.

A practical way to choose: if the value is information someone wants to save and come back to, make an image note. A carousel of "seven things I wish I'd packed for a Shanghai winter" is easy to skim, easy to save (收藏) and easy to find through search. If the value is personality, process or atmosphere, make a video. Your accent, your kitchen, the walk to your campus: that's where video earns its extra effort.

For video, take advantage of the bilingual tools Xiaohongshu added in January 2025. Its official creator assistant account promoted a bilingual subtitle feature that month, and translation for posts and comments rolled out alongside it. Auto-generated subtitles still need checking, because a mistranslated punchline lands badly in any language.

Many creators mix the two: image notes as the reliable search traffic and videos as the personality layer that turns readers into followers. If short video is your main strength and you hold the right documents, our Douyin growth guide covers China's pure short-video giant.

Covers and titles that earn the tap

The Xiaohongshu home feed is a two-column grid, so your note competes with its neighbour on a single thumbnail and a short title. The cover (封面) is your advert, and most of the click happens there.

• Go vertical. Portrait covers, commonly 3:4, fill the grid tile and stand out more than landscape shots.
• Put the promise on the cover. A short text overlay saying what the note delivers, such as "3 days in Chongqing: full route" or "UK student visa: what I wish I knew", tells a scrolling reader why to stop. Write it in Chinese if your target reader is Chinese.
• Make it legible on a small screen. Big type, high contrast, one idea. If it needs squinting, it's too busy.
• Build a recognisable look. Consistent fonts, colours and framing help returning readers spot you in a crowded grid.
• Show your face when it's relevant. Your perspective is the reason to follow you, so let people see whose perspective it is.

Titles are short. The title field is capped at 20 characters, so every character has to work. A reliable pattern is topic plus specific outcome plus who it's for, written the way someone would search it: 伦敦租房避坑 (London renting mistakes to avoid) beats a vague "My London life update."

Stay on the right side of the clickbait rules. Xiaohongshu's Community Convention 2.0, published in January 2026, asks creators to avoid exaggerated and sensational titles and covers and says the community will moderately regulate (适度调控) that kind of content. The older Community Norms list 标题党 (clickbait) and 图文不符 (images that don't match the text) as problem content. Promise exactly what the note delivers, then deliver it.

Xiaohongshu search works like a search engine

This is the biggest mindset shift if you're coming from TikTok. On TikTok, you mostly think about the For You feed. On Xiaohongshu, a lot of reading happens through search, so a note written around a real question can keep getting found long after you post it. The company's own numbers above, 70% of users using search and six searches a day on average, are why you should think like a blogger optimising for Google.

Find what people actually search

1. Type your topic into the search bar slowly and read the suggestions that drop down. Those phrases come from what real users type.
2. Open the top results for each phrase. Note the format, the cover style, how long the notes are and how recent they are.
3. Read the comment sections. Unanswered questions and "but what about..." replies are your next notes.
4. Search in both Chinese and English. English queries surface the bilingual corner of the app, while Chinese queries show you the much larger mainstream audience.

Put keywords where they count

Use the main search phrase in your title, repeat it naturally in the first lines of your caption, and put it on your cover text where it fits. Add related phrases further down, the way people actually talk about the topic. Keyword stuffing reads as spam to humans, and humans are the ones who save and share your note.

Write for the long tail

Broad topics like "Paris travel" are crowded. Narrow ones like "Paris with a wheelchair" or "cheap halal food near King's Cross" have fewer notes competing and readers with a specific need. Foreign creators have a natural edge here, because you can answer local questions about your city, school or job that Chinese creators can only answer second-hand.

Tags, topics and posting rhythm

Topics and tags

Xiaohongshu uses # topics (话题). As you type a hashtag, the app suggests existing topics, which is a quick way to see what the community already groups content under. Mix one or two broad topics with a few specific ones, and skip anything irrelevant: a tag that doesn't match the note sends it to readers who won't care. Add a location tag for travel, food and city content, and @mention a brand only when there's a genuine connection. The logic is similar on every platform, and our hashtag strategy guide goes deeper on mixing broad and niche tags.

Posting rhythm

Consistency matters more than volume. Pick a rhythm you can sustain for months, because notes keep earning through search while you build the back catalogue. Avoid the opposite extreme: Xiaohongshu's Community Norms list abnormal posting, described as batch posting, high-frequency posting and machine posting, under cheating behaviour. Dumping your entire TikTok archive in one afternoon is a bad idea for that reason alone.

Reply to comments, especially early ones. Xiaohongshu's comment sections are where much of the culture lives, and Community Convention 2.0 explicitly asks users to thank people who share useful experience. A creator who answers questions in the comments gets more of them.

Paid boosts through 薯条

Xiaohongshu has an official paid promotion tool, 薯条 (Shutiao), that buys extra exposure for a note. In October 2025 it added a feature called 为ta加热 ("heat it up for them") that lets users boost content they like, including fans boosting their favourite creators. Official paid promotion runs through Xiaohongshu itself and sits inside its rules, unlike third-party fake engagement. Use it sparingly, on notes that already perform well organically, since paying to push a weak note just buys more people ignoring it.

The January 2025 TikTok influx and what it changed

In mid-January 2025, with a US law threatening to shut TikTok down on January 19, American users went looking for an alternative and landed on Xiaohongshu. Reuters reported that more than 700,000 new users joined in two days, citing a person close to the company, and later that RedNote gained nearly 3 million US users in a single day, citing analytics firm Similarweb. The app climbed to the top of Apple's US App Store that week.

Xiaohongshu moved fast. According to a 2026 academic study of the rollout, it launched built-in translation for posts and comments on the evening of January 18, 2025, followed within days by translation for chat messages and tools for bilingual image posts and bilingual video subtitles. Reuters described Chinese and American users finding a rare space for candid exchanges about everyday life: rent, grocery bills, healthcare, homework.

TikTok stayed online in the US, and the rush faded. The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab later described Xiaohongshu's spell as "brief popularity." What stayed behind matters more for you:

• The tools. Translation and bilingual subtitles are now part of the app, which makes cross-language posting workable in a way it wasn't before 2025.
• The audience appetite. The influx showed how curious Chinese users are about ordinary life abroad. Everyday comparisons and honest answers travel well.
• The lesson about novelty. "Hi from America" posts got attention because they were new. Novelty wears off. Useful, specific notes keep getting found through search.

If you joined in that wave and stalled, your account is still usable. Clean up your bio, upgrade to a professional account, and start posting notes that answer real searches. Remember too that Xiaohongshu operates under Chinese content law, so topics that are routine on TikTok, especially political ones, can get notes removed here.

Brand deals through Pugongying (蒲公英)

Pugongying (蒲公英, "dandelion") is Xiaohongshu's official platform for brand collaborations, where brands find creators, place orders and pay through the platform.

Who can join

Pugongying's creator onboarding guide lists five conditions to become a collaborating creator:

• Completed real-name verification
• Aged 18 or over
• At least 1,000 followers
• Upgraded to a personal professional account
• No recent violations of Xiaohongshu's Community Norms or Community Convention

Older guides you'll find online quote a 5,000-follower bar, which was the earlier requirement. The current official guide says 1,000. To apply, open the app, tap the menu at the top left, go to 创作者中心 (Creator Center), then 全部服务 (All Services), then 博主合作 (Creator Collaboration). If you meet every condition, you can switch it on from that page.

How deals work

The same guide lists seven collaboration modes, including custom orders (定制商单), batch orders (批量商单), product testing campaigns (蒲公英众测) and store-visit deals (探店). You set a quoted price that brands see. Brands can negotiate within a band of 80% to 150% of your listed quote, according to the help centre, and the brand pays the platform a service fee on top. Once the brand confirms the collaboration is complete, the order goes into settlement and counts toward your earnings. Before you count on that income, check in the app which withdrawal methods your verified identity supports.

Why private deals are a risk

Brands sometimes offer to pay creators directly to skip the platform fee. Xiaohongshu has spent years discouraging this. In April 2022, Caixin reported that the platform introduced a brand violation points system (品牌违规分) that treats collaborations not reported through the platform as violating marketing, with penalties escalating from reminders to traffic limits to bans. Community Convention 2.0 asks businesses to disclose their commercial identity and bans posing as ordinary users (伪装素人) to market products. On top of platform rules, China's Internet Advertising Measures, in force since May 2023, require paid promotion to be identifiable as advertising. Routing deals through Pugongying protects you as well as the brand.

Community rules, fake engagement and account restrictions

Xiaohongshu built its reputation on trust, so it polices fake engagement harder than most platforms you've used. Know the rules before you test them by accident.

What counts as cheating

The Community Norms list cheating behaviour (作弊行为) in plain terms: batch-registering accounts, abusing multiple accounts, abnormal posting, and generating fake data such as followers, likes, saves and comments through programs, scripts, paid human clickers (人刷) or other abnormal methods. Violations can be found through manual review or when Xiaohongshu's algorithm detects abnormal data over a period of time.

What happens when you break the rules

The phrase creators call 限流 ("traffic limiting") maps to that official measure of limiting display range (限制展示范围). It's a real enforcement tool, so take it seriously, but plenty of view drops come from ordinary causes: a weak cover, a topic with fading search demand, or a note that doesn't match what readers expected. Check those first before assuming a penalty. If you receive a violation notice and disagree, Xiaohongshu's norms point to the in-app appeal route under 帮助与客服 (Help and Support), then 笔记/账号申诉 (note or account appeal).

The crackdowns are real

In December 2021, Xiaohongshu launched a special campaign against fake "seeding" content. By late January 2022 it told China News Service it had banned 57 brands and dealt with more than 172,000 fake notes and 53,600 accounts. In February 2022 it sued three agencies it said ran ghost-written fake note services (代写代发). In January 2026, Community Convention 2.0 added guidance on labelling AI-generated content, avoiding fake personas about wealth, education or income, and keeping transactions on-platform. The direction has been consistent for years: authenticity first.

That's why LitFame doesn't sell followers, likes or any other service for Xiaohongshu. Bought engagement is specifically listed as cheating, and the penalties land on your account. If you want a bigger audience somewhere you already post, keep growing your TikTok presence in parallel, and let your Xiaohongshu account grow on the strength of genuinely useful notes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Xiaohongshu the same app as RedNote?

Yes. Xiaohongshu (小红书, "little red book") is the Chinese name, and RedNote is the name it uses in English app stores. It's one app with one shared community, which is why American users who joined in January 2025 ended up in the same feeds as Chinese users.

How many followers do you need for Pugongying?

Pugongying's current creator onboarding guide requires at least 1,000 followers. You also need completed real-name verification, to be 18 or older, a personal professional account, and no recent violations of Xiaohongshu's Community Norms or Community Convention. Older articles quoting 5,000 followers describe an earlier rule.

Can foreigners make money on Xiaohongshu?

Potentially, through Pugongying brand deals, but it depends on completing real-name verification. Foreign creators have documented verifying with a passport, though the options shown vary by account and region. Check which verification and withdrawal methods your account supports before planning around brand income.

Should I post image notes or videos on Xiaohongshu?

Use image notes for information people want to save, such as guides, itineraries, comparisons and tips, because they're easy to skim and find through search. Use video when the value is your personality, a process or an atmosphere. Many creators combine the two, with image notes for search traffic and videos for connection.

Why did my Xiaohongshu views suddenly drop?

Check ordinary causes first: a weaker cover, a topic with less search demand, or a mismatch between title and content. Xiaohongshu can also limit how widely a note or account is shown when it detects violations such as traffic diversion or fake engagement, and you'll usually get a notice. You can appeal through Help and Support in the app.

Can I repost my TikTok videos on Xiaohongshu?

You can post your own content, but remove the TikTok watermark first, since Xiaohongshu's Community Norms treat other platforms' watermarks as traffic diversion. Re-edit for the audience too: add Chinese subtitles, a Chinese title and a vertical cover. Avoid uploading your whole archive at once, because batch posting is listed as abnormal behaviour.

Do I need to post in Chinese on Xiaohongshu?

You can start in English, and many foreign creators do, but most users search in Chinese, so Chinese titles and keywords decide how often you're found. A bilingual approach works well: Chinese title and cover text, with English in the caption or subtitles for readers who came for your perspective.

Can I buy followers or likes on Xiaohongshu?

LitFame doesn't sell any Xiaohongshu services, and we'd steer you away from anyone who does. The Community Norms list fake followers, likes, saves and comments as cheating, with penalties from removing the fake data to muting or banning the account, and the platform has run public crackdowns on fake engagement since 2021.