As I mentioned in my previous post, Let’s Talks About Social Media and the Fashion Industry, that in the fashion industry choosing which social media platform to use, isn’t as complicated as almost all of the top platforms are fitting. The reason why is the fashion industry has, “…so much more colour, shapes, and glamour to work with than other industries (KeyHole Blog, 2015).”
Since there are so many social media applications that can be used to drive business services or products to consumers, I would like to focus on Twitter and how this tool has been such a great success for businesses and individuals within the fashion industry.
Twitter which is one of the most popular social media applications allows users to connect with friends, colleagues, and new people through simple post or tweets. “Tweets may contain photos, videos, links and up to 140 characters of text. These messages are posted to your profile, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search (Twitter).”
One example of how Twitter has been a success is it allows users to tweet in real-time. This works especially well for fashion shows or anything that is a trending topic. If businesses or individuals want to create traffic they can start a Twitter campaign and link that to a simple hashtag. As I noted in a previous post, hashtags are neat because you can create your own for your brand as there aren’t any specific guidelines. I would recommend keeping them relevant, short, and memorable.
A twitter campaign can work in many ways the simplest way for someone starting out is to decide what you are basing your campaign around and then create a hashtag. You can let your followers know in advance or if it’s a live event you can announce it before the event so guest know how they can connect with each other and your brand during or after the event.
A great example of this is Topshop, a multinational fashion retailer and Twitter teaming up during London Fashion Week in 2015. The companies joined forces and created a campaign known as #livetrends that allowed customers to shop trends as they were coming down the runway. They achieved this by, “…analysing real-time data on Twitter and picking out the trends as they happen on the catwalks (Independent, 2015).” Once the trends were picked they beamed directly to digital billboards that were stationed near select Topshop stores in major cities in the UK.
Picture Courtesy of: Independent
According to some data collected by KeyHole Blog, “3.8 + million customers engaged using the hashtag #livetrends; 75% sales uplift on the featured product; and 11:1 return on its investment (KeyHole Blog, 2015)”. In my opinion, the numbers speak for itself and it appears this single campaign was a great success.
While this is only one example, Twitter is definitely an excellent tool to leverage relationships and to create something new. Have you used Twitter to create a campaign? If not, do you think it can be beneficial?
Share your comments below
References
Akbareian, E. (2015, February 18). Topshop and Twitter team up to allow users to shop London Fashion Week trends live. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/news/topshop-and-twitter-team-up-to-allow-users-to-shop-london-fashion-week-trends-live-10054032.html
KeyHole Blog. (2015, December 14). 10 Best Fashion Social Media Campaigns – The Keyhole Blog. Retrieved from http://keyhole.co/blog/10-best-fashion-social-media-campaigns/
Twitter. (n.d.). New user FAQs. Retrieved from https://support.twitter.com/articles/13920
Sunsets and Sequins 
Great post this week. I agree Twitter is a fantastic social media channel for the fashion industry. And, it’s free! Bonus!! It’s especially useful during New York Fashion Week since a number of designers and editors will Tweet fashion details during shows giving followers a front row seat, so to speak. Here’s a link to a Huffingtonpost.com article where they listed 57 Twitter accounts to follow during NYFW. Might come in handy for you.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/twitter-fashion-week-_n_4718795.html
Mayer, M. (n.d.). 57 Twitter Accounts You Need To Follow This Fashion Week. Retrieved July 06, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/twitter-fashion-week-_n_4718795.html
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Great post! Topshop’s idea to use Twitter and a digital billboard together is actually pretty cool. Twitter is probably one of the main social media applications that I am least familiar with, but I definitely think this is a really innovative way to use the data from that site for an interesting campaign. I also think that it is a great example of how amazingly advanced technology has become. First off, digital billboards still wow me depending on the content, but to use real time data as a guide to what appears on the billboard is quite brilliant. Social sites and technology are bridging the gaps in time that it takes to produce marketing material and presenting it, so that is very exciting for this field!
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Twitter is one of those platforms that I believe “everyone does not really get”, if you know what I mean. I think a lot of people look at at think, “Why can I only post 140 characters?”, with them not thinking or realizing that sometimes that is all you need. I for one have always been a firm believer in the saying “Less is more” and a lot of people probably believe that doesn’t always hold true. Twitter’s 140-character cap-off was inspired SMS, or texting. They did this because they wanted there to be less hassle and took the idea that most SMS messages are 160 character so they took 20 characters for the name and wound up with leaving 140 for the actual message (Cheever,n.d.).
With people tweeting from live events and being able to respond in real-time it is a good way to increase and generate traffic as mentioned. I am glad you talked about Topshop! Topshop is one of my favorite brands. My brother had brought me back a bunch of clothing from London last year and I immediately felt enamored. Men’s fashion in the U.S is relatively boring and every season it’s the same old things. Brands like Topshop, Cole Hana, Sperry and Ralph Lauren are amongst my favorites and I enjoy following these brands on twitter and re-tweeting content that I find interesting or fashionably fit for my taste.
References
Cheever, Charlie. Why does Twitter limit the message length to 140 characters? Quora.com. N..d. Retrieved July 19th from https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Twitter-limit-the-message-length-to-140-characters.
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