Looking Toward Fashion to Learn SEO December 28, 2009
What All Businesses Can Learn from the Fashion Industry About Using Social Media
Did you know that one of the most important tools for the fashion industry today is the tool of social media? More so than almost any other industry, the fashion industry has figured out how to make use of social media to promote events and collections, turning browsers into buyers by making them a part of the action through online connections. Any business could benefit from learning about how the fashion industry has been using social media to stay hot even during the economic recession.
The main thing that must be understood about all of this is that social media has drastically changed the way that trends are set in the fashion world today. It used to be that fashion designers had to get the attention of high-profile mainstream magazines, celebrities and television shows. These people promoted their fashions and consumers took an interest. Social media allows the fashion designers to skip those middlemen and to go straight to the consumers with their products.
The hottest fashion designers today are all making use of various social media tools to interact directly with their customers. They’re launching viral videos to announce their new collections. They’re encouraging bloggers to attend their shows and to live blog from their sites so that customers can feel like they’re at the event as well. They are sending out Tweets, Facebook updates and interactive online photo streams. This allows them to directly communicate to the customer. More importantly, it allows the customer to communicate back with them.
The fashion industry has started to really turn its attention to online social communication prior to big events like Fashion Week. They give their collections a trial run online and get immediate feedback from their fans about the work that they are putting out there. This allows them to tweak their stuff before it hits the runway. All businesses can learn something from this. Utilize social media not only to promote your products but also to get direct information from your customers about how to improve upon those products. This is not the future of your business; it’s the way that you should be running it right now.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/fashion/17iht-rsocial.html
Outstanding post, I couldn’t agree more.