The Future of Fashion
Using fashion bloggers to promote your fashion brand
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ll have no doubt heard of at least a few of the biggest online fashion bloggers- Young women who earn a living from making videos and other online content all about the world of fashion, usually showing the latest trends or offering advice for followers on how to achieve certain looks.
Since the fashion blogging craze took off, there are now hundreds of bloggers online with varying audience reaches and follower counts. As such, it’s now easier than ever to reach out to bloggers that are relevant to your brand in order to maximise your own exposure and drive footfall to your shop or website.
To get you started, here are a few ways in which you can enlist fashion bloggers to help promote your business!
- Haul Videos
The premise of haul videos is that the blogger will make a large online order, or go on a spree in a retail store, and then unbox everything on camera, showing the viewers each item whilst discussing what makes it good or bad. Pretty simple, but also highly effective!
The ‘haul’ tag on Youtube is one of the top ranking, and even semi-popular bloggers can find their haul videos attracting thousands if not millions of views.
Consider reaching out to a number of bloggers with an offer of sending them haul items for free if they’re willing to make a video talking a bit about your brand and showing off your stuff. If the video is popular, it has the potential to expose your brand to thousands of potential new customers in one hit, so make sure the items that you send are great quality and on trend!
- #OOTD
Or in other words, Outfit Of The Day posts! Similar to haul videos, OOTD posts are just a way to bloggers to showcase what they’re wearing that day. These posts are usually a few different high quality lifestyle shots of the same outfit, posted in succession or collaged together on social media sites such as Instagram or Facebook. The blogger will usually give a description of each piece of the outfit, sometimes with a link directly to the retailer’s website.
If you don’t want to send an entire haul’s worth of stock to bloggers, this is a great alternative as you can send just a few statement pieces out, which the blogger can incorporate into their outfit- Just make sure that they agree to give your brand a shout out! - Limited Editions
Customers already love limited edition gear, even more so when it has a known name attached to it.
Consider inviting a local well-known blogger to collaborate with you on creating a limited edition range in your store- whether they help you to design the pieces or simply help you choose them from your favourite Manchester-based wholesaler, you can use their name to promote the line, and they’ll also proudly talk about the collaboration on all of their social media accounts to draw sales to you.
It’s a good idea to use the blogger as a model for the range so the customers associate the products with them, and the blogger has a greater incentive to share lots of additional branded content by sharing pics of themselves! - Events
It’s generally a good idea, as a fashion retailer, to host the occasional fashion event anyway, but it’s an even better idea to get local well-known bloggers onboard too!
By inviting multiple bloggers to your fashion event, you increase your exposure on social media as they simultaneously live blog about the event and fashion on show. Go the extra mile to make it fun and creative so that everything that they see (and therefore everything that their followers see!), is engaging and different so that your brand stands out in everyone’s minds when it comes to local fashion.
It’s cliché, but shower your blogger guests with champagne and special gifts so that they continue blogging about your event after they’ve gone home, and with any luck they could help to get your own hashtag trending!
It’s a fairly simple process to get bloggers onboard with your brand if you have a ready made plan for what you want them to do- after all, they’re seeking exposure as much as you are! You just need to make sure that your arrangement is mutually beneficial, and both parties are clear about the direction that the promotion will take.
It can be a massively rewarding experience for both of you, so definitely give it a try. You’ve everything to gain from such positive online exposure!