Fashion lives on social media and whether it be through influencer content or Owned Media, customers look to their Instagram feeds for outfit inspiration and new brands. However, because of this, the online market has now become saturated with brands trying to compete for consumer attention, and be at the front of mind (and screen) of their target audiences. One of the ways you can expand your reach as a fashion brand online is by using the right hashtags. In this article, we talk through the best brand hashtag strategy to implement.
The Best Hashtag Strategy if you Want to get Your Fashion Brand Noticed
Use branded hashtags
Branded hashtags are just that – a way of branding your owned content, as well as encouraging your customers to build buzz on their posts. Hashtags work as a form of content storage, so when you use a branded hashtag, you can later see all of the content posted within that hashtag at a later date – which should all be related to your brand. This is also a good asset for accumulating user generated content which you can later repurpose on your own channels in order to celebrate consumers and communicate authenticity. For example, fashion house Dolce & Gabbana use the hashtag #DGFamily on all of their posts, also using specific branded hashtags for each of their campaigns. When they run influencer campaigns, they encourage the influencers they partner with to also use the same hashtag, collating related content in one place. Often brands will also run giveaways, allowing consumers to win products by posting dedicated images using their branded or campaign hashtags.
Use specific hashtags that match your niche
Hashtags work for social media in a similar way that SEO does for blog articles and online content. You can rank on a hashtag and have your content shown to targeted groups potentially increasing your post reach by 14%-40%. Using the right hashtags as a fashion brand means using hashtags that are within your niche and are somewhat specific. For example, if you are a luxury brand, you are likely to see little results by using hashtags like #highstreet or #everydayfashion.
Another factor that affects your performance is the size and engagement of your current account. If you use hashtags that are too broad like #fashion, you’re less likely to rank. This is because it is a popular hashtag, meaning you are competing with other accounts to rank (accounts that could be larger than yours with higher engagement). So, it is important that you use hashtags that have low competitiveness and a high potential reach. By looking at your target consumer and speculating the types of hashtags they are likely to follow, you can start building up a list that will help you reach more audiences and create better-performing content.
Use hashtags for brand measurement
Hashtags can also be a great way of measuring how well your brand performed during a specific product launch or time period. You can track the number of times your brand was mentioned on certain hashtags as a measure of how much media impact you created from a campaign or event. This is an important measure because it indicates not only how many people are talking about your brand, but also how much awareness you generated. So, it’s important for most campaigns and events that you pick a specific hashtag to use, so you can track its performance later.
The do’s and don’ts of hashtag use
- DO pick hashtags that fit within your niche.
- DON'T use random hashtags that aren't related to your content.
- DO use hashtags that contain content that achieves similar average likes to your own content.
- DON'T use hashtags that are too competitive, banned or flagged.
- DO use branded, event and campaign hashtags, and encourage any influencers or partners you work with to do the same, so you can track them at a later date.
- DO implement a solid brand hashtag strategy in order to make sure you rank on hashtags and reach more people.
Take a deeper look into how you can find the perfect influencers to partner with on your upcoming campaigns:
By Launchmetrics Content Team
The Launchmetrics content team is always on the lookout for new trends in the fashion and technology sector. We are geeks with style and lovers of good stories!
