Over the years, there has been a phenomenal rise of Instagram and its use especially in the fashion industry which is extensively photo-based. The popularity of Instagram among different fashion brands and different fashion shows is far from any hype. The fact that it is the most useful platform is further established by the fact that last year the Council of Fashion Designers of America awarded the annual Media Award to Instagram. This made the mandate in favor of this visual sharing platform even clearer.
The platform helps the fashion brands in many ways right from democratizing the brands and products to making it more easily accessible for a larger section of the audience who cannot be present in a fashion event. Apart from that, the platforms help in facilitating crisp, result craven and smart brand promotion and marketing avenues. Growing Instagram likes monthly on user-generated content related to your fashion brand, such as customer photos featuring your products, can help you build a community around your brand. The end result of all these is to gain more traffic towards a fashion site.
Adds more value
In short, Instagram adds value to the fashion industry and its individual brands in more ways than one and results in more click and visits to a specific fashion website. Here are just six of them.
- Bridging the gap between offline and online events – Previously, when social media was not used so much by the fashion industry, most of the fashion events were held in closed-door venues primarily. It was restricted to a limited number of participants only. Matters were communicated with the larger audience through several media coverage after the event and most of these failed to reach to your target audience. With Instagram coming into the picture and being used, it became the most formidable media partner putting an end to that era. Fashion designers individually or large fashion brands are now actively promoting their products using proper and optimized hashtags that help them to encourage the live audiences to share their images. This, in turn, helps them to bolster their marketing efforts and have proved to be the best way of engaging a larger audience with a brand or a fashion event.
- Creating hype with photo stories and blogs–More information and perspectives can be shared by the fashion brands through the blogs. This is an effective way and is more preferable by the marketers to get in touch with their audience beyond the local demographics as well as the usual promotional content. However, with the proliferation and extensive use of handheld devices such as smartphones, this most favorable way of the web marketers failed to provide the desired results. This is because the attention spans of the users were continuously shrinking and therefore professional web marketers such as Gramista and others took on to Instagram as visuals are always preferred over text. Particularly in industries such as fashion and fitness, visual storytelling has proved to be more effective as compared to blogs. The eye-catching photo stories of different fashion events and shows have made it easier for fashion brands to create hype in the audience.
- Making a brand statement – It is very important for a fashion brand to make a brand statement to create a long-lasting impression and a brand personality. This is crucial because it helps in engaging the audience. A good photo or a video will enable the brand to portray the culture, work ethics, the lifestyle, and the range of products on offer readily and easily that will, in turn, help the brand to create an identity. This identity will help the users to associate with the brand easily. Make sure that the statement you make is fitting with your product and most importantly it relates to the tastes and preferences of the users. The Instagram images will help you to create a clear picture of its focus areas more vividly.
- Reaching your audience – It will be easier for you to reach to a larger audience through your community of existing customers and associates. They are the most valuable resource to a company and help a lot in reaching a greater audience. This will help you in a great way to spread the word about your brand. It all depends on the level of community engagement on Instagram as to how quickly and easily you can bank upon your community of active customers that will not only help you in brand promotion and selling but also to get more engaged new customers.
- Liberating fashion – social media platforms seem to be the most effective resource for the masses. This platform and especially Instagram have liberated fashion from the clutches of the elitists and has eliminated the line of demarcation between the people who have gathered at a fashion event and the larger section of your target audience that were not so privileged. With just a tap at the pictures on the Instagram Feed, they can come to know a lot about the particular product without having to rely on other media or for the fashion magazines. Moreover, in order to reach out to a larger audience and broaden their reach, most of the fashion designers, event organizers, and even the event attendees now share live images right from the venue itself.
- Invigorating monetization – It is due to the huge popularity of the Instagram platform and its fast evolving nature, it is the most active platform for monetizing by different fashion brands and manufacturers and selling different fashion products. The fashion industry as well as individual brands are doing extremely well using the Instagram platform and are earning several hundred million dollars in ad revenues. This platform has even become more productive and effective with the launch of Instagram slideshow ad feature last year. This feature is especially most popular among fashion brands and manufacturers.
To sum up, the use of Instagram in fashion is literally and actually very helpful and can be used in many different ways. However, there is still some room for growth but these are not the ones that you should necessarily imagine. Whatever it has to offer now is enough to grow more traffic considering the economic context of the modern fashion industry.
