Weeks of posting and no students: why the first month feels empty
Weeks of posting on RedNote and no students? What our first account taught us about the quiet first month and what it actually takes to get seen.
Hi, I’m Alice, and right now I’m the one running our RedNote accounts. I’ve started from zero several times, and every time I grew an account back up, the rules stayed exactly the same. I’m also the one who teaches RedNote to the teachers we help go solo, although most of them find their own style over time. I remember our very first beginning well, mostly because it was a little embarrassing.
Like most people on the internet, I started by looking for answers on YouTube. There were very few videos about what RedNote even is and how you’re supposed to run it, so I went in more or less blind. I made my first template in Canva and spent a whole day choosing the colour, the font and the avatar. Then I posted the first video, went to sleep and fully expected to wake up to ten thousand new requests.
I woke up to zero views and a strong feeling that something was wrong.
The rules we brought with us
Instagram, Facebook and TikTok all have well-known rules for content, blogs and personal brands, so I simply tried the same rules on RedNote. It turned out RedNote works like that and doesn’t, both at once. People really do come there to ask questions, and it’s a huge shop window with an enormous amount of traffic. At the same time it has its own rules you have to play by, and you only learn them from the inside.
So I started doing what any project should start with: looking at the market and at the competition. I spent time on the platform, watched what other teachers were posting and picked a few profiles that felt close to me. One teacher posted text every single day, nothing but text, and had barely thirty followers. Another posted a mix of videos, little tutorials, regular posts and even bits of her personal life, and she had over a thousand followers and plenty of likes. After a while of watching, I came to a simple conclusion: you have to try with whatever you’ve got.
Trying with what we had
At first I uploaded only my introduction video and pinned it to the top, so anyone landing on the profile would know straight away where they were. I played with the bio for ages, writing it in Chinese, then in English, then in both, then back again, and ended up with nothing but my name. I also stopped making a special cover for every video. There’s a huge amount of content and a lot of teachers posting very similar things, so whether a video takes off is partly luck and partly how present you are on the platform.
That second part is the one people underestimate. If you’re not planning to open Xiaohongshu for at least a few minutes every day and actually watch what’s there, your account will most likely stay stuck at tiny numbers. We’ve lost one big account that was one of our main sources of traffic and new families, and we’ve taken more than five accounts from zero to the same level since then, so we’ve seen this from both ends. (We wrote about losing an account in Your RedNote account got blocked. What now?)
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Why once a week isn’t enough
RedNote wants the same thing as Instagram, TikTok and every other social network: more people on the platform, staying there longer and watching more. For you that means content all the time, and it means consistency and persistence. Opening the app once a week isn’t enough to get a video into any recommendations at all, however pretty, green, red or spectacular that video is. The teachers who get somewhere use RedNote the way they use the messenger they open every day at home, whether that’s Discord or anything else.
So make time for a content plan, even a rough one, and get the content ready before you need it. Don’t stress too much over editing, because it really isn’t the part that matters most. Experiment with how you present things and with what you post: funny or serious, for everyone or for one particular family, for a very narrow niche or a wide audience. (We’re not fans of narrow niches, but now and then that kind of content is what makes you stand out from hundreds of other teachers.) And always know where you’re going to take a client once they write: how you’ll get them there, what you’ll say and where you’ll talk about terms. Bringing in your own clients is your job now, and nobody else is going to do it.
The first month is supposed to feel like this
Our first family came after about five weeks of using RedNote actively and posting at a moderate pace. At some point one video simply landed well in the feed, and the likes, views and comments started coming in. Reply to those comments, all of them, and don’t be shy about taking the first step yourself.
It probably won’t work the first time, and maybe not the second, but at some point it will. Especially if you’re new, you need to build the habit, keep hitting the same spot and be persistent, consistent and a little stubborn. I wish you luck with it, and I’m sure you’ll get there.