What is the difference between the eye-catching points of Zhihu and Xiaohongshu in the variety track？

Big data focuses on hot spots　

Zhihu new comprehensive attention to young people’s demands

Zhihu’s upcoming youth round-table talk series "Talks in the Wilderness" focuses on the stories, thoughts and cognition of young people. The program invited Li Xueqin, Xi Rui, Li Haoyuan, Zhang Ruonan, Jiang Xiangui, Li Songwei and Liu Boyang, outstanding respondents from Zhihu, as guests, and adopted the mode of four regular guests and one flying guest in each session to discuss the high fever in Zhihu Station. The program production team "Everyone Records" has produced high-profile humanities documentary programs such as Thirteen Invitations, Friends and Discretion. The recording scene of the program moves from the studio to the outdoors, avoiding scenic spots and popular routes, choosing wilderness, forest and river beach, and combining the space scene with the content theme under the concept of "spiritual wilderness", which is quite aware of the unique tonality of the community.

"The Career I yearn for" is a documentary observation program for young people in the workplace. In each issue, an outstanding post-90 s workplace person leads the audience to experience different careers in an immersive way. During the program, the audience can feel the daily work of programmers in Silicon Valley, walk into foreign companies and Internet giants, and get close to the lawyer industry … At the same time, the program sets up a second observation room to invite professionals to discuss topics, so that users can gain interesting and useful workplace skills. The regular guests of the program include Yang Tianzhen, Ming Chen and Ran Gaoming.

College entrance examination is the focus of the whole society. During the college entrance examination in 2022, there were 7.67 million questions related to the college entrance examination in Zhihu, and the number of related search words was 197 million times. Many college entrance examination "experienced people" share their knowledge, experience and opinions in Zhihu, and many candidates look for the "answers" they want in Zhihu. In this context, the college entrance examination documentary interview variety show "My College Entrance Examination Forgetting Book" came into being. The original script of the program comes from the college entrance examination topics that young users pay attention to and discuss hotly in Zhihu, and the user’s question-and-answer interaction. Respondents ranged in age from 20 to 40, covering a variety of occupations.

Jiang Mingxue, head of the pan-entertainment operation team in Zhihu, told the reporter of Variety Daily that there are a lot of professional discussions and high-quality contents in Zhihu in the fields of college entrance examination, workplace, life and emotion. "The upcoming three variety shows are an extension of Zhihu’s content ecology. The program invited many Zhihu hosts as guests, which will provide a broad development space for the creators. From the content point of view, these three variety shows not only have innovative breakthroughs in themes, but also conform to the current cultural and ideological trends of young users, and are an interpretation of the development direction of Zhihu as a question and answer community. "

Love women homemade variety show

Xiaohongshu focuses on young lifestyles.

The diversified little red book is also expanding the territory of entertainment products and joining the self-made variety track. In July last year, Xiaohongshu launched the travel reality show "Escape from the City Plan". Subsequently, the same type of "Two Days and One Night Camping Plan" was launched in Xiaohongshu, inviting bloggers to camp in various places. Xiaohongshu also launched a cultural program "Night in the Corner", in which Liang Wendao, the host, together with Chen Danqing, Chen Di, Liu Qing, Li Houchen, Huang Zhizhong, Jiang Sida and other guests, expressed their opinions on topics of concern or hot discussion among young people at present, such as love will, consumption concept and investment proposition.

At the end of 2021, Xiaohongshu’s self-made life program "I’m going to live like this" went online, and traveled around the city through "life home" and "experience officer", opening up lifestyles in different scenes such as sports, travel and art, and driving users to share their hobbies. In May of this year, the program started the second season of "camping season" with a new theme. Under the wave of reasoning variety sweeping across major platforms, Xiaohongshu recently launched a self-made variety "Let’s Reasoning Together", inviting bloggers at the head of the platform to participate and launch an immersive script killing.

Judging from the content and form, the variety show launched by Xiaohongshu has a short duration, and KOL and fashion stars in the station are invited as guests. These variety shows are quite platform-oriented, basically focusing on the lifestyle of young people, and the content also focuses on the common tourism, food and other sectors of the platform. Little Red Book’s self-made variety shows are biased towards female theme content. According to the "2021 Little Red Book Active User Portrait Trend Report", women account for 90.41% of the active users of Little Red Book. Taking female theme as the starting point is a major feature of its vertical marketing.

Variety enhances user stickiness　

Differentiated advantages produce "long tail"

"Compared with film and television content, variety shows have stronger social attributes and are easier to drive community fans." Bao Ran, a member of the Science and Technology Committee of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Network Audiovisual Professional Committee, told the reporter of Variety Daily that Zhihu and Xiaohongshu are both community platforms. In order to stimulate the stock and growth, they need to broadcast and share new stories, so as to increase the user’s stickiness and strengthen the connection between communities.

Bao Ran takes Xiaohongshu as an example. The advantage of UGC (user-generated content) in the station is that it is fast in quantity, but the disadvantage is that quality control is difficult to grasp. "At present, the regulatory authorities are more and more strict in the management of MCN institutions and online celebrity, and Xiaohongshu needs to constantly optimize and improve the community content ecology. Homemade variety shows are not only more formal, but also have a production threshold, which is conducive to the transfer of traffic to high-quality content. " Bao Ran bluntly said that many Internet platforms are now facing the bottleneck of the disappearance of user growth dividends. Both Xiaohongshu and Zhihu have been exploring new paths beyond their core business in recent years.

However, compared with Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker, bilibili and Watermelon Video, Zhihu and Xiaohongshu have not made such a big step, and a series of actions are just constantly strengthening their platform attributes. For example, several programs launched by Xiaohongshu are typical micro-variety shows, closely following social topics such as camping and travel; Zhihu’s upcoming program also focuses on issues of concern to youth groups based on its own characteristics of "professional discussion". "The cost of traditional variety shows is gradually rising, and the income depends solely on advertising sponsorship, and the shelf life is also short. Zhihu and Xiaohongshu exert their strength in variety shows. Naturally, they have to take a differentiated route to get a slice of the market. This small and beautiful strategy is a good choice. " Bao Wei said.

Talking about the expectation of self-made variety shows on the platform, Jiang Mingxue said that the layout of self-made variety shows is an attempt by Zhihu to extend high-quality content and an innovation of traditional variety shows. The production, dissemination, interaction and aggregation of the contents of the three programs are all completed in Zhihu. At the same time, the opinions and topics in the program will be widely discussed by users on Zhihu, which will precipitate and accumulate, resulting in the long tail effect. "We hope that Zhihu’s high-quality content can form a positive content closed loop and create a better community ecology."

Photo: Douban, program official micro

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