Back to Basics: How Brands Can Leverage Xiao Hong Shu, Instagram & TikTok – Setup, Differences, and Strategies for Maximum Impact

It’s easy to write 1,000 words—but crafting a clear, powerful 120-character bio is much harder. Instagram, TikTok, and RED all give extremely limited space, so every word needs to earn its place. Your bio must instantly communicate who you are, what you do, and why someone should follow you. Avoid vague statements and focus on one sharp, memorable message. Use keywords your audience is already searching for, and update your bio as your brand evolves. A well-written bio acts like a mini-homepage—small space, big impact—so write it with intention and precision.

Content Dimensions, Design for Mobile

Designing content with the correct mobile dimensions is crucial because most users consume platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Xiao Hong Shu on smartphones. Mobile-optimized content ensures key visuals—faces, products, and text—are fully visible, avoiding cropping or tiny fonts that reduce engagement. Properly formatted content also performs better in platform algorithms, which favor videos and images that display correctly, increasing reach and watch time. Beyond performance, mobile-first design reinforces professional branding, making content feel polished and trustworthy. In short, designing for mobile maximizes visibility, engagement, and credibility, ensuring your content resonates with audiences where they actually consume it.

Reels are 1080 × 1920px, but Instagram crops the cover photo to 1080 × 1350px on your profile grid. If your title, face, or key visuals sit outside this area, they’ll get cut off — making your grid look messy and lowering click-through.

To fix this, design your cover with a 1080 × 1350px safe zone in the center of the full Reel frame. Keep all important elements inside this box before uploading.

This small tweak dramatically improves clarity, branding, and overall grid aesthetics, making your content look more polished and professional.

If you need to sync post across all platforms? 

We are all effective and while we think that sync post across all platform are harmless, they are NOT. Why is this the case? Because this can hurt long-term engagement. Many followers subscribe to the same creator or brand on multiple apps—so seeing the same sponsored video repeatedly creates content fatigue. Audiences feel annoyed or overloaded, leading to lower engagement and even quiet unfollows.

Each platform also rewards different formats and hooks, so copy-pasting rarely performs well. If cross-posting is needed, let influencers tweak, trim, or re-angle the content so each version feels native.

Protecting the engagement protects your campaign results too. A healthy audience always performs better.

What to do instead:

1. Stagger your posts across platforms by a few days.

2. Change the cover photo, music, or background.

3. Adjust the hook at the start to grab attention.

4. Rewrite the caption for each platform.
   
   

This keeps content fresh, protects engagement, and improves overall performance.

To Summarize

In short, each platform—Xiao Hong Shu (RED), Instagram, and TikTok—has its own language, layout, and audience expectations. Understanding dimensions, aspect ratios, carousel limits, and video formats isn’t just technical; it’s about crafting content that looks great, tells your story clearly, and engages your audience where they spend the most time. By tailoring your posts to each platform’s strengths—whether it’s RED’s informative carousels, Instagram’s aesthetic Reels, or TikTok’s fast-paced vertical videos—you’ll maximize reach, engagement, and impact. Mastering these fundamentals gives you the freedom to focus on creativity while ensuring your content performs.

Now, Malaysian Brand: Between Xiao Hong Shu (RED), Instagram or TikTok, Which Platforms Should You Use for Your Campaigns?

The most straightforward way to look at this is whether you have an e-commerce business? If yes, see below: 

1. RED: Usually great for recommendations for places. It is very recommendation specific. No commerce tied to this at the moment for Malaysia. 

2. Instagram: Instagram feed can immediately showcase your catalogue from Shopify, so if you have a Shopify store, Instagram would be recommended. 

3. TikTok:  Great if you have a TikTok Shop, but also works well for restaurant recommendations, skincare routines and lifestyle general content. 

Who is the target audience for your brand? 

1. RED: Favoured by Chinese-speaking Malaysians, especially young urban consumers (25-35 years), with a strong preference for premium beauty, lifestyle, and fashion products. Users tend to have average income earners and are highly engaged in authentic product discovery and reviews. Also a good pool of China tourists or longer term Expats from China who is visiting or lives in Malaysia uses this. 

2. Instagram: Popular amongst all ethnicity but largely English-speaking users, spanning a broader age group with strong engagement in lifestyle, travel, food, and fashion content.

3. TikTok: Dominates among teenagers and young adults especially in the Malay speaking, non-urban category, especially for viral entertainment, trending challenges, and direct shopping via TikTok Shop. With the TikTok Shop feature, it also does extremely well with brands whose products attracting the B40, lower M40 category*. 

Beyond Likes and Views

RED, Instagram, and TikTok let you share stories, photos, and short videos but their audiences and features are quite different. Choosing the right platform depends on your brand goals and target customers.

When your content aligns with each platform’s strengths, your social media strategy doesn’t just grow followers it builds a loyal, engaged community that truly connects with your brand.

Social media has evolved far beyond just connecting with friends; it's now a powerful tool for brands to reach audiences, engage customers, and drive sales. In Malaysia, platforms like Xiao Hong Shu (RED), Instagram, and TikTok dominate the scene, each with its own unique strengths, audiences, and content formats.