You may have heard this expression before…
“Content is King!”
There’s a good reason for it too!
Content plays a huge role in the growth of your brand. It helps to attract brand awareness, engagement and ultimately sales. Without good engaging content that your audience grows to appreciate, you’ll find it difficult to brand yourself and attract customers to your store.
Content can be created once, and then published on various placements like your social media platforms (Facebook/Instagram/TikTok), your emails campaigns, your ads and website.
Your content can come in various formats such as –
- Video
- Image
- Audio
- Texts and the words you write
Basically any word you put out there is communication between your brand and your people. And that communication is the content you publish. Your sales and revenue depend on how you communicate and what message you put out there.
Your content turns cold prospects into customers and in some cases, brand advocates.
An example of this would be:
- Someone comes across your post on social media which is content and clicks through to your website
- They browse your website and your product pages which include images, videos, descriptions and even social proof from previous customers.
- They continue to warm up to your brand and decide to subscribe to your email list. Over time you follow up with email which is your content
- Your nurturing content and offers attract them to make a purchase and BOOM!… you have a new customer.
You can see how content guides your cold audiences who don’t know you from Adam, and nurtures them into customers. Content takes them on a journey by showing the value you have to offer as a brand and eventually wins people over into making a purchase.
Here’s the thing.
It sounds simple… but many brands make a few common mistakes with their content creation and management. The end result is they end up with inefficient results.
Let’s talk about these common mistakes so you can avoid them in future.
When Managing Content, You Don’t Want To…
Create Content Without a Strategy
You don’t want to post content just for the sake of posting. This will only drain your energy without any benefit or achieving an end goal in mind. You should have a content strategy in place that’s designed to create a certain outcome. If your goal is brand awareness, you should aim to create engaging content that also sparks curiosity which encourages your audiences to take the next step and discover more of your brand through the use of social media platforms and your website.
Every piece of content you put out there needs to have a specific goal such as building awareness, engagement or sales. Have a strategy in place that gets you from A to B and helps save your energy on creating mindless content.
Pro Tip: Use a content calendar to help you structure your strategy.
Post Content Inconsistently
Consistency is the key when publishing your content. There is no point in posting content willy nilly, ghost for a while and then you come back and post whenever you feel like. It doesn’t help to keep you top of mind with your target audience and the social platforms don’t like it either.
The reason why social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok etc don’t like this inconsistent content is because it doesn’t help when you don’t post good content to keep their users engaged. The more consistent you are with good content that engages the user base of a social media platform, the more they will show your posts in places like the news feed, stories, reels etc.
This in turn keeps your content in front of your followers and engagers and ultimately keeps you top of mind.
Post Too Much Content About Your Sale
If you are just posting your products and asking for a sale, What reason do people have to come to you? Do you avoid a salesperson from a shopping centerl or go stand near them? It’s perfectly fine to showcase your sales and offers you have to your audience, but balance is important here.
No one wants to see a brand hungry for a sale. It turns people off and thats the last thing you want to do. Mix things up with your content and add your promotions into the mix when it makes sense to do so.
Post Too Much About YOU!
There is no harm in sharing personal content about you specifically and your lifestyle… but pushing that content on a heavy basis starts to turn people off. It just doesn’t add value to people when they see this every day.
What any audience wants to see is something helpful for them or something that’s entertaining.
Find a healthy balance of content that engages them, entertains them, educates them and throws in a little personal touch every now and then. Your audience will appreciate this type of consistency over content that revolves around you all the time…
Focus On One Platform At A Time
The reasons for this are simple. You don’t want to feel burnt out trying to showcase yourself everywhere. At least in the beginning, focus on one platform and build your audience and engagement on that specific platform.
When you have a good following with healthy engagement, you can then test other resources to broaden your reach.
These are the common issues you need to avoid when you develop content for your clothing brand. Let’s talk about the type of content you should be addressing.
When Managing Content, You DO Want To…
Create Content That’s Shareable
Here are some of the different types of content that people love to like & share. Posts such as –
- Quotes related to your niche
- Giveaways
- Contests
- Fun amusing content
- Related trends in your niche
- Entertainment specific to your niche
- Games to generate engagement
- Fast transition videos related to your clothing & fashion items
Offer Value Based Content
One of my favourite pieces of content is being about to educate your audience based on the value they take away from what they observe with your content.
For example:
Showcase how your clothing/fashion items help your prospects to achieve a certain outcome that your brand can deliver on.
Few questions you might ask yourself…
- How do my products help to achieve a desired outcome for my customers?
- How can my customers look their best when attending a certain event?
i.e. Special occasion, party, date, job interview/work clothes, comfortable lounge/sleep wear or even how they can look on a casual basis.
Some of the ideas for content you can test out:
- FAQ’s on your clothing and fashion items
- Common Objections you can answer about your garments that help to alleviate friction of a sale from concerning prospects
- “How to” content that educates your audience
- Top 10 lists and resources to share further value
- Tips that help your prospects & customers get better results from your products
- Myths that you can combat to handle objections
- Care & Organising – How to care for your products so they last a long time
- Style content that creates imagination & future styling ideas with your audience
- Tutorials that help to get the most out of your clothing & fashion items
You want to lead with value that builds trust, authority and credibility. Value based content certainly helps to achieve these goals.
Create Branded Content
Branded content is based on building a connection between your brand and your target audience.
Here’s a few ideas you can test out:
- Your story and why you are in business (Think interview style format)
- Struggles you have encountered on your brands journey
- Wins that your brand has achieved since its inception
- Reviews / Testimonials from your customers (product demos, unboxing, before & after results)
- First Customer you acquired (story/announcement)
- 100 customer that you acquired (story/announcement)
- Customer spotlights – such as briefly interview brand advocates and how/why they love your brand
- Day in your life as a clothing/fashion brand
- Process of design / manufacturing / packaging within your brand
- Your workspace and the people involved that makes your brand what it is today
Create Content Around You, The Brand Owner
When done correctly, this type of content can be very effective at winning over your audience’s trust and helps to build your authority in your space. It’s not just your attractive collections & outfits that win people over, your prospects and customers love to see the person behind the brand. They want to see the relationship between you and your products.
It’s that whole story and dynamic on how you got started, why you felt the need to fill a gap in the market and your whole story up until this point.
I’ve consulted with brand owners in the past and they get a little intimidated about this type of content. The reality is you have full control over what you want to post and what you don’t want to. If you don’t want to be the face of the brand, you can always have a co-founder be the front person. Alternatively, you can have someone else that’s passionate about your brand become “the face”.
This type of content is such a good way to show off your personality. It doesn’t always have to be about your work. You can share little things that you love in your life and let people connect to those interests. It could be travel, your family, your hobbies outside of your work.
You get the picture right?
Here are a few ideas for YOU Content:
- Talk about your relationship with your product: Why did you choose that product to make or sell instead of all the other fashion/clothing products in the market? Share your interesting story, how you got started, talk about your love for what you do. Talk about your struggles and your wins. Be inspirational!
- The first product you ever made or used. Share your honest thoughts and feelings
- How you take care of your product
- Why do you Love what you do?
- What are your go to styles / products /materials / colours /designers
- Your must have items for your personal styling
- Your best Look – for certain events – Vacations, social events, casual wear
- Share your hobbies and interests. What are you doing this weekend? For Christmas? For your birthday celebrations?
Conclusion
That pretty much concludes the do’s and don’ts when creating content for your brand. I hope you found this helpful when creating content and managing it for your own clothing or fashion brand.
If you found this content helpful, please leave your biggest takeaway in the comments below.
