The Power of Branding Through Social Media in the Fashion Industry: How it Has Given Long Tail Designers a Platform for International Growth

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.