As the holiday season approaches, fashion brands are looking to social media to develop better relationships with customers, distribute information about holiday deals, and ultimately increase sales.
But where should fashion brands start when it comes to social publishing, particularly on Facebook and Twitter? We had the same question, so we took to the data to provide insight for fashion brands.
The result is our latest data report, Facebook and Twitter Guide for the Fashion Industry, a Social Media Data Report, which analyzed dozens of Facebook Pages and Twitter handles from the world’s largest fashion brands over the course of three months in 2012. The goal? Determine how fashion brands are succeeding on two of the world’s largest social networks. Based on the results, here are tips your fashion brand can use for this holiday season and beyond.
Don’t Ignore the Weekends
When it comes to posting and Tweeting, it shouldn’t just be a Monday-Friday job. On Facebook, the interaction rate on weekend posts is 77.5% higher when compared to weekday posts, yet only 18% of fashion brands posts are sent on the weekend.
On Twitter, Sunday is a huge opportunity for fashion brands. Tweets sent on Sundays receive 41% higher interaction, which is significantly higher than other industries, which only show a 13% increase in interaction. But just as with Facebook, fashion brands are missing out on a big opportunity. Only 5% of Tweets are published on Sunday.
Holiday Takeaway: Your customers will have time off during the holiday season, and your office may be closed. But that doesn’t mean you should stop publishing to your social networks during this time; in fact, your customers may be spending more time on social networks over the holidays.
Don’t Overdo the Posting and Tweeting
More is not necessarily better. On Facebook, brands that post 1-2 times per day see interaction rates 2.3X higher than those who post three or more times per day. Most fashion brands already exercise this moderation.
The more a brand Tweets per day, the less interaction they typically receive. Over the span of 24 hours, 1-4 Tweets is ideal for fashion brands. Brands that Tweet within this frame generally receive 2.2X higher interaction than those Tweeting five or more times per day.
Holiday Takeaway: Don’t bombard your fans and followers with deals and offerings. Take the best of your content and find a way to condense it, perhaps in a blog post. Otherwise, you run the risk of alienating your social connections.
Strike a Pose: Be Visual
We know that the fashion industry is a visual industry. So use the image benefits provided by Facebook and Twitter to take advantage of this fact, particularly because images perform so well.
On Facebook, across the four major attachment types (text, photo, video and link), photo posts receive 2X higher interaction rates than average. Fans of fashion brands interact far more often with visual content than across other industries. The interaction rate for image posts is 39% above average for all industries, but is a stunning 120% above average for fashion brands.
On Twitter, Tweeting with a link to an image leads to a 52% higher interaction rate than Tweets containing non-picture links.
Holiday Takeaway: Pictures, pictures, pictures. Take lots of photos and plaster them across your social accounts. Whether it’s new items for the holiday season, photos of your stores decorated for the season or other holiday imagery, make it visual and watch your interaction rise.
Use Calls to Action to Increase Interaction
If you want fans and followers to do something, simply tell them what to do. Often times, it will lead to an increase in the desired action.
Facebook posts that ask fans to share content receive a 4.5X higher interaction rates than average, and 4.4X higher share rates than posts without a share CTA. The same applies to “like” and “comment” calls to action, which lead to significant jumps in those particular actions.
Don’t be bashful about asking for Retweets: fashion brands who do this get 4X higher Retweet rates than those who do not; yet, only 1% of fashion bands are actively asking followers to Retweet.
Holiday Takeaway: Determine what business objective you want to accomplish during your holiday campaign. Are you looking for your fans to share a holiday deal you are having? If so, be sure to ask them to share and Retweet your content. It’s the best way to see your content spread.
