Technology over the last decade has become extremely prominent all over the world. Fashion brands over ten years ago would be focusing on catwalks and magazines. A popular fashion magazine is vogue, focusing on latest trends and helping people stay up to date but is this still the case?
In the 21st century, it is rare you go out in public and not see someone with a mobile phone in hand. Phones are so easily accessible, whereas to go to the shop, spend money on a magazine will seem to be too much effort for some people. Therefore, for fashion brands social media is the platform to be focusing on.
Social media is free, unless you are paying for ads which can be tailored to how much you want to spend and who you want to target. It seems silly if fashion brands were spending excessive amount of money on magazines, as to produce the content and to get it all printed would cost a lot and be a waste of time for not many people to see.<iframe
Therefore, it would be cheaper to be focusing on marketing to your consumers through different social channels. Most brands will tend to push through Facebook, Facebook Ads, Instagram and Twitter. Having all three channels means you are keeping your brand in your consumers’ minds and they will start thinking about what it is you’re selling, even if it’s not intentionally.
It is important to know that some social media channels might bring more traffic and engagement than others. For fashion brands which are new, social media can be a big safety net, as you know once you start gaining followers, likes and shares you know you have potential customers.
Facebook lettering. A social media channel fashion brands will use. Photo from pexels
Creativity is key
Important to know you can never stop being creative, social media is where everyone expresses their differences and creativity will definitely put you in the spotlight. Although, this can be hard at times always thinking of the next best piece of clothing… Social media allows you to notice these trends and will influence you to come up with your own ideas.
A lot of luxury brands will post over their socials a new collection they are bringing out… You will see a common occurrence of smaller affordable brands trying to mock the same outfits but at a cheaper price. They do this because they notice the trend and want to meet their customers’ needs and wants.
Your audience will also notice if you are keeping up with the latest trends or not, staying up to date shows you care and are going the extra mile, which is leading to that unique selling point, differentiating you from competitors. Across all socials, if you have got them following then you have got them that one step closer to purchasing from your website.
A photo of icons that appear on the instagram page. Image is from pexels.
Audience
Before starting your social channels, you should identify who your audience is. This is key thing to do, as if you are a children’s clothing brand, although your main job is to produce clothing that will suit a child, for your socials you would be targeting to mothers. Therefore, you will have to make your content engaging enough that parents would want to follow you.
Mark Traphagen states “Finding and following accounts of real people and businesses who are relevant to your business is a first essential step to building your own following”. Important you keep this in mind, as following your audience is going to incline people to follow back. It’s quite straight forward, the more followers you have, the more people will be inclined to scroll through your feed and if you’re lucky enough gain new followers and likes.
Tagging
Tagging is one of the most powerful tools, that is merely not used enough. Once uploading a photo, you can tag where each clothing piece is from and who the model is. Celebrities will tag their pictures because they could have been paid to promote the brand. An example would be Emily Shak a popular blogger, in most of all her IG posts she will tag her pictures with where her followers can find the item of clothing she is wearing. This is great for a fashion brand as it will be driving traffic to their social media channels and even website for people to complete a purchase.
Lastly, another useful fact to know is using the same hashtags as other brands with the same audience you’re trying to attract will make it more noticeable for people. Hashtags can be followed so it’s incredible tool to use. Following the right accounts, making use of hashtags, tagging, and celebrity endorsement will definitely help you build a quick and beneficial profile while gaining a successful following. Engaging content, a nice-looking feed and making each post not sound like a sale pitch is key to keeping followers.
