Xinba Makes a Comeback: Gains 15M Followers in His First Livestream Since the Scandal
Top Kuaishou live streamer Xinba is a legend. Why? After a massive product quality scandal resulting in a fine and a 60-day temporary ban from live streaming, Xinba is back and better than ever. On March 27, in his first livestream since the scandal, Xinba gained 15 million new followers, bringing his total followers to 84 million. This is a number that many top celebrities in China cannot even reach. In the 12 hour live stream he sold more than $300 million USD worth of goods, a Kuaishou record.
How did Xinba develop his strong personal brand and maintain such loyal followers, even after the scandal?
The Xinba Livestream Scandal – A Quick Backstory
In case you haven’t heard of the scandal. Last fall we talked about Xinba’s ambition to earn 8 billion RMB during the Double 11 shopping festival in 2020, and he made it!
But not long after, he was caught selling fake products. There were rumors saying he might be sentenced to 15 years in prison. But in the end, he was fined 900k RMB and he and his team were suspended from livestreaming for up to 60 days.
And this is no small incident. Trust is everything when it comes to ecommerce live streaming. If Xinba lost the trust of his followers, that could be the end of his livestream career. It could also affect Kuaishou. According to a ranking of top e-commerce live streamers in China published by Jinri Wanghong (今日网红), Xinba and his team took up 4 of the TOP10 positions.
But he seems to have maintained his followers’ loyalty. How did he do it?
His Down-to-Earth Image
Xinba has crafted his image since the beginning. He is the spokesperson of farmers and everything he does is for the public, for the ordinary people. Though in reality, Xinba has fancy cars and mansions and he has huge property, he doesn’t position himself as a wealthy person standing above the public. That would alienate his followers and make him unapproachable.
Xinba will do everything to please his followers. For example, we mentioned he was once involved in a scandal where he yelled at a security guard and hotel workers in public because he felt they mistreated his followers.
During his livestream, Xinba also makes sure his followers get the lowest price and best deal on the Internet. He stopped his collaborations with HONOR (荣耀), a domestic mobile phone brand, and asked his teams to do the same thing, simply because the brand wouldn’t allow him to give away earphones for free. Xinba even asked all of his followers who had purchased the phone from his livestream to return the product.
Other examples
A down-to-earth image is really important if you want to reach the masses. There is another example of KOLs in the auto industry. There are two well-known Douyin accounts, one is HuGe Shuoche (虎哥说车) and the other is HouGe Shuoche (猴哥说车).
Huge is a forerunner in the industry and he tended to introduce cars in a very formal way. Houge is a late-comer, but within 6 months he surpassed Huge because he had a video series where he provides suggestions for followers who want to buy a car. This kind of content is more relatable to followers and it generates more interactions with them as well. Spotting this, at the beginning of 2021, Huge launched a new series giving car advice to followers.
Even in the entertainment industry, you often find celebrities who begin their careers as an ordinary person but after they became famous, their popularity decreased. This is because their image changed and they became less relatable.
The Ultimate Objective For Content
When many people first start creating content, they often focus a lot on the content and not on how to get it to spread. To get it to spread, your content must resonate with the audience, either make them happy, sad, or angry, etc.
Xinba expands the reach his content by his personal image. In public, he is a loving husband who cares for his wife so much. He is a strict boss for his teams or apprentices. He is also a caring KOL and spokesperson for his followers. All of these characters attach charm to Xinba and that’s why his followers are so loyal to him.
Xinba is also very popular among many mothers from lower tier cities as he often gives the lowest price on the Internet. There are funny sayings about this, such as “I don’t worry about my wife not coming back home but she watching Xinba’s livestream” or “I earn money for my wife and my wife earn money for Xinba”.
Xinba Created His Own Holiday
We have big shopping festivals every year such as 618 and Double 11. Well, at some point, KOLs are commodities as well and they need big days to promote themselves. For Xinba, his big day every year falls on August 18 (818). In Chinese, the pronunciation of this date is similar to “Xinba”.
On August 18, 2019, Xinba held a concert for his followers in the National Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing. This is the huge stadium where the opening ceremony of 2008 Summer Olympics was held. To hold a concert here, you have to go through lots of processes and the price to rent the place for a day is around 3.6 million RMB. But a concert usually needs more than one day as you have to decorate it.
Source: WeChat official account: 谦行公子.
Second, to please followers and create buzz for the concert, Xinba invited many top celebrities in China, including Jackie Chan (成龙), G.E.M (邓紫棋) and Wang Leehom (王力宏).
This is the scale not many companies are able to create. This location and number of celebrities could rival the 11.11 Gala that Alibaba holds!
For his comeback in March, Xinba promoted the livestream on many social media platforms and on huge LED screens across 9 major cities. For Xinba’s loyal followers, this concert or seeing him on LED screens would make them proud to see their “friend” or their idol that they support becoming well-known.
And for someone who had never heard of Xinba before, hearing about the event or seeing the ads would leave impressions in their minds. If they happen to search for Xinba and watch his livestream, they may become one of his followers.
Source: WeChat official account: 谦行公子.
Copy-and-Paste Followers Are Loyal
What does copy-and-paste followers mean? They are people who follow multiple accounts from the same person across different platforms. For example, they follow the influencer or celebrity on Weibo, Xiaohongshu, WeChat official account, etc. For the influencer, this is great because they will have many ways to reach this follower, which is useful as it is increasingly harder to get traffic these days.
To boost this effect, Xinba leads his fans to follow other accounts from his team and family.
How does Xinba introduce or guide traffic for his team?
It’s by dashang (打赏). In the livestream industry, besides selling products, dashang or giving virtual gifts is one of the important ways to monetize. On most live streaming platforms, there is a ranking board for each influencer showing who contributed the most gifts in this livestream.
Back when he was first starting out, Xinba actually gave a lot of gifts to other streamers. This way, viewers began to notice him on these ranking boards, and then would come to watch his livestream.
So now, his team members are doing the same thing to grow their fan bases. You will often find that the Top 10 on the contribution ranking board are his team members. If other people keep sending gifts aggressively, Xinba will ask the person to stop. If they don’t, he will actually kick the person out of the livestream. That’s how much he wants his family and team to appear on that ranking board.
He did this on his comeback livestream on March 27. He had over 5 million viewers, so even if he can just funnel a small amount of those viewers to other accounts it would help them.
Other than this, Xinba also officially introduces his team members in his livestream. He once introduced his team member Lu (鹿) and in just one minute she gained nearly 400K followers.
Source: WeChat official account: 谦行公子.
Xinba is a controversial person and that’s what gains him buzz. But one thing we have to admit is that he is very good at personal branding and marketing himself.
Read more:
Kuaishou Live Streamer Xinba Aims to Earn 8 Billion RMB During This Year’s 11.11
Top Kuaishou Live Streamer Xinba Caught Selling Fake Products
Top Live Streamer Xinba’s Massive Scandal Barely Affected Kuaishou’s IPO
