Instagram – Lessons from 2014 for emerging fashion designers
Simply Measured recently released their 2014 Q4 Instagram Study. The study included over 6,000 posts from 82 brands active on Instagram (from Interbrand 2014 top 100 brands), and over 129,000,000 likes. Basically – think of it as a study of the most successful brands on Instagram. In this post I will summarize their key findings and how they relate to you, the emerging fashion designer.
If you are a fashion brand, should you care about yet another social media platform?
YES, and here is why Instagram is important:
- Over 300,000,000 monthly active users
- Over 2.5 Billion likes per day
- 86% of brands are already on Instagram
- Brands have a very high engagement rate on Instagram
From SimplyMeasured.com
Some of the most interesting findings of this study:
- The brands in this study are posting more and more on a regular basis
- Post engagements are steadily growing for these brands
- The average caption length is 141 characters long – including hashtags
- But they couldn’t find any direct correlation between caption length and engagement rates
- Posts that mention another user in the caption get 37% more engagement
- Top brands have on average 3 hashtags per post
- Geo-located posts see 50% more engagement
What should you do?
- Post consistently (Experiment and find the right balance for you: maybe it is once a day, maybe it is once a week, but be consistent)
- @Mention other users in your posts ( you can do this to show appreciation to partners such as MUA or to your clients)
- Tag the location of your posts (for example if you are at a fashion event)
- Focus on content not length of the caption
- Filters don’t have a correlation with engagement rates, in fact most brands post with no filters
- Don’t go overboard with hashtags; stick to 2-3 per post
Instagram is a very powerful social media platform, remember an image is more than a thousand words! This is why you should use good quality images, use the right hashtags, engage with your fans and just be creative and have fun with it! If you have any questions about Instagram or your social media strategy, let us help you!
This article was written by our co-founder Ana Cara, marketing consultant and social media professor.
