The Power of Branding Through Social Media in the Fashion Industry: How it Has Given Long Tail Designers a Platform for International Growth
Author
Mizobe, Eri
Abstract
Social media is a crucial aspect of public relations for brands and its benefits are
particularly applicable to smal1er brands. Promoting brand personality via Facebook,
Twitter and Instagram has allowed long tail fashion companies to reach audiences,
eliminating the need to have physical stores. Using social media also allows brands to
penetrate into international markets.
This thesis presents information gathered from analyzing data from social media
tracking for two long tail fashion brands: American scarf company, Donni Charm, and
Hong Kong-based handbag company, Mischa. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram content
for both brands were assessed for engagement levels. Monitoring over the period of a
month (Feb. 24,2014 to Mar. 24, 2014) revealed: best content categories; the
effectiveness of using Jinks and visual components (i.e., photos and videos); the effect
of promoting other organizations and individual through tags; the most effective groups
of hashtags; the effectiveness of using buzzwords; as well as the best times and days to
post content. The results of the one-month social media monitoring also revealed that
Instagram is 15 times more engaging than Facebook. The analysis from these findings
can be applied to other long tail fashion brands to increase engagement and
international reach.