Pretty Talks

Considering a career as a beauty influencer? Talk like one first.

如何成为百万美妆博主? 必备话术先学起来

Illustration by Li Si

How many lipsticks can you sell in five minutes? 15,000 was the record for Li Jiaqi, formerly one of China’s top 美妆博主 (měizhuāngbózhǔ), or beauty influencers.

Li, with 30 million followers on microblogging platform Weibo, became a household name soon after he started sharing creative makeup tutorials (美妆教程měizhuāngjiàochéng) and beauty product reviews (美妆测评měizhuāngcèpíng) in 2016. But he is not the only beauty influencer making waves. A makeup tutorial from last year, in which blogger Ruby Youxi recreates the look of actress Zhao Lusi in The Long Ballad, a 2021 TV show set in the Tang dynasty (618–907), has attracted almost 27 million views at the time of writing.

In 2021 alone, Chinese consumers spent over 400 billion yuan on cosmetics according to the National Bureau of Statistics, and China has become the second largest consumer market for cosmetics in the world. Li alone raked in 8 billion yuan in just one night on November 11 last year, during Alibaba’s annual “Singles’ Day” shopping festival.

Tempted to try your hand at selling some cosmetics? Anyone can set up accounts on Weibo, lifestyle app Xiaohongshu (or RED), or other social media platforms, and start sharing daily makeup looks, skincare tips, makeup techniques, and trendy cosmetic product insights, or even holler at viewers to click on the product purchase links embedded in posts or livestreaming sessions.

But before you rush to buy tripods or fancy spotlights, you might want to first get familiar with the lingo required to be successful in this highly competitive market.

Making your pitch

Skilled makeup influencers can transform their face into virtually anyone’s, winning them praise from followers: 一人就是半个娱乐圈 (yìrénjiùshìbàngèyúlèquān, one person can stand in for half of the celebrity world). And even if you don’t yet have the makeup skills, you can at least talk the talk:

Today we’re creating a Liu Yifei look that even she herself would be amazed to see.

JīntiānláifùkèyíxiàLiúYìfēi fǎngzhuāng, běnrénkànledōushuōjué.

今天来复刻一下刘亦菲仿妆，本人看了都说绝。（剩余6529字）