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Before the rise of the internet, people consumed fashion through glossy magazines and fashion shows. Today, everything is digitised and more fashion brands are realising the vital role that social media platforms play in our lives. In fact, the average social media user spends around 142 minutes a day scrolling through various social networking sites. Thus, it comes as no surprise that more and more people are getting the latest fashion news from their Instagram feeds and Twitter feeds, as opposed to fashion magazines and newspapers.
As the future of the fashion industry is rooted in digitalisation, there is a stronger emphasis on social media to drive traffic, growth and brand loyalty. This article will illuminate how the fashion industry can capitalise on the ever-increasing reach of social media. To start, here are some benefits of social media:
Leveraging social media allows you to cultivate your brand image in the fashion industry. Using platforms like Instagram and Facebook to convey your visual and written content gives your potential customers insight into your overall brand image and values.
In order to amplify your brand loyalty and thrive in social media, there are 3 factors to consider:
Whilst some brands are engaging their consumers through giveaways and responding to their comments, others have even gone to the extent of reposting their consumers’ posts. This helps in making the consumers feel more connected to your brand, which will in turn boost their loyalty and possibility of repeatedly purchasing your products. Check out how our graduate Elnadyah did a giveaway for her 4th anniversary to engage with her followers!
Beyond that, some fashion companies can also use social media platforms as a means to gather data on their consumer base, allowing them to better understand their purchasing habits and forecast trends more accurately.
The beauty of using social media is having the ability to gear ads towards a specific audience. Thanks to today’s social media monitoring tools, tracking user behaviour patterns has become far more straightforward. Learning these patterns allows you to target specific audience demographics: age, gender, location. With this information, you can easily create personalised social media ads, making it more effective in advertising your brand and products to the right people. Our graduate Sophia targets her brand, The Amber Loft, at a plus-sized audience.
Now that we’ve briefly covered the different ways in which social media platforms can benefit fashion business owners, let’s take a closer look at the different ways fashion businesses may utilise social media.
Your consumers are not a monolith - it is unlikely that they all use the same social media platforms. Thus, understanding the different categories of consumers that use different social media sites is vital in ensuring that the content you put out actually drives up user engagement. Putting out content across multiple social media channels also helps with enhancing brand awareness. Before going ahead with planning the overall social media marketing strategy, it’s important to know the platforms your target audience is using.
Whether it’s a static image, a moving GIF or a short video, it’s good to diversify your visual content across multiple platforms as it prevents your profiles from coming off as impersonal! Some of the ways in which you can create brand awareness is through posting curated look books, lighthearted shareable content, and user-generated content. Our graduate Fahmy, who started up Kerbside & Co., uses user-generated look books to engage his followers.
Social media has revolutionised the fashion industry, giving more opportunities for people to relate and participate with your brand. Apart from using it as a marketing tool, social media also serves as a great platform for customer service. Whether it’s dealing with customer complaints, or answering their queries, actively responding to them in a lighthearted and casual manner will enhance your brand personality.
Apart from using social media’s features to its full potential, building conversation around your brand is just as important. Today, most people view influencer marketing as a recommendation from a friend. Truth is, seeing the people we admire wearing a certain product entices us to purchase the same product or even interact with the brand. However, before choosing an influencer, make sure your brand's target demographic is compatible with the influencer's followers. On top of that, ensuring that the influencer’s values align with your brand is imperative too because if they don’t, one controversial post can quickly end up in a PR crisis.
In a nutshell, social media marketing is taking the world by storm and there is no time like the present to start using social media to make the most of your marketing potential and stay competitive in this ever-shifting industry.
Seeing how fashion and social media trends are constantly changing in this digital age can be quite daunting. In order for us to stay on the bleeding edge of the industry, it’s imperative to continuously upskill ourselves and deepen our understanding of social media marketing through various short courses. As a leading educational institute within the Textile & Fashion industry, TaF.tc ensures that our social media marketing courses provide our students with the fundamentals of the various digital marketing techniques - especially in terms of utilising different popular platforms to stay relevant in this competitive industry. To learn more about our course, click here.
