In today’s world, social media is used for a plethora of purposes. Social platforms can be a great opportunity to reach new target markets and to build a solid brand identity.
The key to growing a brand using this strategy begins with knowing which platform to use and how to set your business apart from the competition.
Below are some ideas on how to grow a luxury brand by using social media as your catalyst.
Choose the Correct Networks
With so many social networks available, it is extremely important to find the right one for the brand being sold. At first, you should target sites that align with your goals and image, otherwise it will be a struggle to make headway.
For example, if the brand is something in the steel industry, you probably won’t have much luck on Instagram, which for the most part appeals to the teen and twenty-something crowd.
A better option might be to start with professional network-building platform LinkedIn, as this site attracts business owners. To find out which network might be a good fit for you, research social media demographics as a jumping off point.
Develop a Voice
Your unique brand should be reflected in every post you make on your socials. This means that a social media ‘voice’ needs to be developed. Simply put, this is how the brand communicates via Facebook posts, Snaps, and Tweets.
This is a step that takes practice and time to fine tune, but taking a look at these steps could help develop and bring out your voice:
- Think about your company culture and what your brand stands for; what makes it unique. In the case of luxury brands, you’ll be targeting elite consumers who love the finer things in life. Use decadent, descriptive vocabulary in your posts.
- The use of original hashtags is important for spreading brand awareness. For instance, for a company called Luxury Locks Hair Extensions, your hashtag could be #luxurylocks. Use this in all your posts and encourage customers to tag it when they post about you.
- Fine-tune who your audience is and how to connect with them. Keep up with current news and trends in your industry that are important to your market, and be sure to comment on it. Craft posts around these trends in order to engage your ideal customers. Going back to the hair extensions example, keep up with hair color trends and point out which of your products will help your customers achieve the look.
- However: make sure and be authentic to the brand. Don’t be so heavily imbibed in trends that the product or service gets lost; honesty is the number one trait that customers want from a brand on social media outlets. Don’t randomly start selling bright pink hair extensions when your brand has always been natural-based (although you CAN do this by saying you’ve picked up on a huge customer need and want to grow to fulfil it.)
Interact with Your Industry
Creating tons of original content can be hard – so don’t be afraid of basing posts on other people’s. This can mean finding blog posts and videos to share with the target audience that you think they’d love (while always crediting the original poster, by tagging them or adding a photo credit).
For example, on your Instagram account, you could re-post a beautiful photo of a woman’s hair on your page, tagging her in the caption and recommending that by shopping with Luxury Locks, this hair can be achieved. (You may want to ask before re-posting others’ photographs!)
Post Regularly and Grow Followers
Irregular posting is a good way to kill a product. Always post every few days and upload new pictures at least once a month, or the product may be forgotten. Rapidly growing networks and short attention spans have made publishing posts and pictures one of the most important steps in furthering a brand.
A good way to gain posts is by utilizing your hashtags. Ask customers to post their results with your product/service and use your tags to get a prize. This is a fail-safe social media marketing strategy employed by many brands.
Gaining followers on any site including Instagram followers goes hand-in-hand with frequent posting and uploading strategies. The more posts being uploaded, the more followers will be gained, leading to more publicity for the given product.
Promote Profiles
Building initial traction in the market is crucial to getting a brand off of the ground in the social media realm. Getting the first followers can seem like a daunting task, but as a business establishes with other amenities such as blogs, websites, and multiple network accounts, followers will come. Doing this with some paid advertising will reap big rewards for your initial investment.
When growing your luxury brand, always keep your ideal customer, goals, and aesthetics in mind. Be creative, and most importantly, have fun with it!
