Fashion and social media go hand in hand. The visual nature of the social networks combined with the aesthetic appeal of clothing and accessories blends together well. Many online fashion retailers are already making big use of social media to enhance their brand awareness, generate website traffic and close those all-important sales. Social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest, lend themselves particularly well for fashion brands due to having high visual appeal and a captive audience.

Here are six ways in which you can think about using social media to promote your eCommerce fashion brand and build the profitable business you imagined.

The rise of the influencer

If one thing has taken the social media world by storm these past few years, it’s the rise of the influencer. And now, with the rise of the micro-influencer, there’s no reason why smaller fashion retail brands can’t reap the benefits too. An influencer is a person who has built up a large online community of engaged fans and followers. On the other hand, a micro-influencer has a smaller engaged following; what counts as a good number of followers depends on your goals. The term influencer started life in the form of celebrity endorsements, but social media is where the term has really taken off. No longer do fashion brands need to focus their efforts on the expensive fees of celebrities, they can target real people living real lives and still make a large profit. In a first case scenario, many online fashion retail brands make the mistake of targeting fashion influencers with a large following. While this is often the first sign of a good influencer, what you really want to be focusing on is the level of engagement they have. It’s all well and good to have thousands if not millions of followers, but these statistics mean little if the influencer in question doesn’t actually have much actual influence over their community. Instead, work out their average likes, shares and comments a potential fashion influencer has. These are actionable metrics that you can then gage the likelihood of success if you are to make a commitment to working with a particular influencer. There is nothing stronger in the world of marketing than word of mouth. We all trust the opinions of our friends and families, and now this extends to people who we respect and follow online. Both you and your influencer will benefit from the exchange – you’ll extend your awareness and increase your sales and your influencer will bounce off your community too. It’s really important to go into influencer marketing with a planned strategy in front of you. You want this person to become a real advocate and to help your business to grow. Building a relationship for the long-term is key.

User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) and fashion go hand in hand. It acts as a word of mouth recommendation, with customers amplifying your brand by sharing photos of themselves wearing your items. One benefit of using a hashtag is that it provides a quick and easy way for a brand to filter photos that include their products, which can be necessary on social network sites as they tend to be saturated with millions of images. If you’re new to the fashion and social media scene, consider running a competition to get these user-generated snaps to use across your social networks, brighten up your newsfeeds and increase your overall online engagement. These tagged photos also serve as a means of social proof for potential buyers. If any customers are in doubt as to whether to make a purchase, they will be able to identify with real people wearing your products, increasing the likelihood of them making a purchase.

Consider your opportunities with Pinterest

As a visual search engine, Pinterest is centred on the pinning of striking visuals on virtual boards and is perfect for fashion brands to promote their products on. While you can’t buy products directly through Pinterest, you can create links for each of your images to link back to a specific product’s page. Think of Pinterest as being good for brand awareness more so than responsible for direct sales and website traffic.

Use Twitter and Facebook for customer service

Social media can be a great way to offer customer service for fashion brands. Specifically, we are talking about Twitter and Facebook here. Consider opening a separate Twitter account so that you can deal with customer complaints and monitor social media comments in a more direct fashion. This can also be a good way to limit negative social media brand mentions on your main brand’s Twitter account, which could potentially impact your sales count. If your online fashion brand is less well known and has a much smaller following, then consider how you can leverage a platform such as Facebook to respond to issues that your customers bring to light. As a business, you should try and provide an outstanding customer experience across all social media channels and respond to every brand mention that you receive across your active social networks. This is not only great for customer service, ensuring that both your existing and potential customers are satisfied with your service, but by being fun and casual, you avoid coming across as dull and corporate, and have the chance to showcase your brand’s personality.

Social shopping

While social media channels are still mostly used as a way to drive website traffic, some platforms now have the capabilities to enable social shopping. Social shopping allows social media users to make purchases directly from the social media platform rather than having to go to a retailer’s website, which in turn reduces the customer’s path to purchase. Although images are commonly used to enable this type of online shopping (such as through Facebook), many retailers are also using video as a direct sales channel, which sees shoppers purchasing directly from YouTube. Whether you go down the route of leveraging video, setting up a Facebook store or posting your products on Pinterest, there are huge opportunities to enhance your customer’s experience and to generate more sales for your retail business. Find out how to set up a Facebook store and take your business to the next level.

Diversify your content with video

Video is on the rise in every industry. For fashion retail brands, the opportunities that you have with the use of visual media are huge. For starters, you could look at using YouTube to promote your products or showcase your brand’s story. It doesn’t all have to be product-centric when it comes to fashion though.