The fashion business has become huge across Nigeria and Africa as a whole. With so many brands popping up and fashion shows been organised, the industry is slowly becoming a top player in the country’s economy.
As is the case with any other business, there is a need to build and promote your brand and personal social media accounts, especially Instagram, which has since proven to be a great platform and a useful tool. A visual social platform that allows memes, gifs and lifestyle-focused posts, Instagram is where fashion industry pros live, collaborate and grow relationships. Not every fashion business however knows how best to utilize the platform to grow their business. Fortunately, Jumia travel has a few strategies and tactics that could help.
Follow your competitor’s followers
Competition is a huge part of every business. There are so many players in the fashion business on instagram and to stay relevant you need to be smart. Apart from checking out the followers of your competition, click through to their profiles, see if they seem like a desirable follower for your brand and start engaging — follow, or comment, or like a few of their photos. It can be a great way to build your followership and create awareness for your business.
Know when best to post your messages
The thing about social media is that you will have different peak times during the day based on the kind of following you have. These peak times are periods when your post will get the most views as your followers are most active at that time. Keep in mind the posting times that appear to work best for your audience, that way you won’t waste time and data on posts that won’t reach your audience and also you ensure you get your messages across to them quicker.
Use Notifications for important contacts
Not a lot of users regard the “turn on notifications!” posts on Instagram. However, as a budding fashion brand, it is important that you adapt it and turn on the notification for at least a select few/top people including top competitors, favorite editors or bloggers or podcasters, top complementary brands e.t.c. You get notified when they post a picture, get liked or receive a comment. This can help you with your customer research and allows you to know when best to include your own comments in the bid to foster a relationship.
Utilize the hashtags
Hashtags are fun and can make a post look trendy; but far from that, it has stronger functions that can benefit any fashion startup. Hashtags allow you to associate your Instagram posts with a category, an event, or a point of view, ensuring your posts are easily identified and viewed by new customers, editors and other media, collaborators and retailers. To stay on top of your hashtag game though, you will need to constantly search for hashtags being used by your competitors, potential collaborators, complementary brands and people who have already bought from you on Instagram; that way you are in the loop.
