Top 3 Women’s Apparel And Fashion Brands On Instagram

Young Adult (YA) Women Apparel and Fashion brands hold some of the most successful profiles on Instagram. Alongside sports brands and musicians, fashion and clothing businesses do seem to perform better than most other industries.

In fact, some of these businesses fall within the top 100 of the most followed accounts on the platform. But do they receive enough engagement? And what makes their social media strategies so successful? That’s what we want to know.

Enthralled by the possibility to learn something new and with inspiration in mind, we decided to dissect the analytics and content strategies of some of the most popular brands in this category.

And what we found is not as surprising as it is obvious.

Fashion brands have the unique opportunity to check all of the boxes of what makes a brand profile successful on Instagram. First and foremost, those companies have access to quality content and celebrity endorsement and appeal. What’s more, they are able to achieve better audience interaction. And last, but not least, they are able to post timely and relevant content within their industry that also allows them to achieve a visual flow consistency.

Yet, let’s break those categories down and give you a few examples to help you better understand what makes women’s apparel and fashion brands some of the most successful ones on Instagram. Without further adieu, let’s analyze!

Quality Content and Visual Flow Consistency

One of the biggest benefits that YA fashion brands have is direct access to quality content. For a luxury tech brand on Instagram it might be difficult to come up with a photoshoot idea of their product for social media. But when it comes to fashion, quality visual content has been on the forefront of the marketing campaigns in the industry for years.

Even though all the brands mentioned here can serve as an example of great quality content, we decided to take H&M as the example of choice. Having over 23 million followers, the clothing brand is famous throughout the globe. But that doesn’t stop it from running a tight and rigorous Instagram marketing campaign.

While we won’t go into much detail in the analysis of the H&M Instagram profile as most of what we are about to mention about the other brands is true for H&M as well, we do have to take into account the visual flow consistency of the brand.

While with other fashion companies you’d be easily blasted with colorful photos and videos, H&M relies heavily on a strong visual flow. As it can be seen from the example above, the brand tends to post photos within the same color spectrum that then translate to one another through brightness interaction, scene similarity and more.

Small details, such as the fact that their posts relate in multiple ways to one another, can be crucial in the overall feel of a brand on Instagram. Note the hue and saturation, the similarity of the scenes of the middle posts and even details such as the transition of color between the lower left and right and the upper left and right photos.

And the analytics show that this type of strategy does work to a certain extent.

What we found interesting is that out of the top 12 most engaged posts of the brand in September, 10 are images and 2 are carousels. This is rather surprising when considering that video tends to grow in popularity on Instagram, yet considering the industry the brand is in, it gives an interesting insight into what the audience is interested in.

Timing is of the Essence and Celebrity Endorsements (and Appeal)

Timing is crucial on social media both in terms of consistency and relevancy. Both the aforementioned H&M and Forever 21 (about which we are going to talk in a bit) have daily posting schedules.

And relevancy is also relatively easy to achieve within the fashion industry. First and foremost, you have annual fashion shows, plus fashion is a key factor in many celebrity events throughout the year. But what’s even better is that brands can often rely on seasons and their seasonal clothing and accessories options to push for timely marketing strategies on social media.

Louis Vuitton is a great example of a fashion brand that takes advantage of relevancy to boost its social media marketing campaign. The brand manages to boost its Instagram profile via the use of its annual clothing events.

A nice note would be that due to the inherent nature of fashion to be timely and relevant, you’d receive such posts as the top middle above in which you have a model with a Stranger Things T-Shirt on.

In addition, clothing and fashion brands are easily able to incorporate celebrity endorsements (and appeal) throughout their social media marketing strategies. Taking a look at the most recent posts from Louis Vuitton you’d not only be able to notice a nice consistent visual flow, but also that it is strictly based on celebrity endorsement.

What’s surprising is that for the size of the brand, Louis Vuitton receives a rather low ER especially compared to other YA women clothing and fashion brands.

Looking at their top posts you’d see that celebrity endorsement and specific products receive the most engagement which speaks volumes about the fact that the brand should do something to adapt. Probably a bit more humanizing and relevant content similar to H&M won’t hurt them

Audience Interaction

Another opportunity that fashion and YA women apparel brands can take advantage of is audience interaction. People who are invested in a certain brand generally want to express their commitment on social media. But this is especially easy for clothing brands. This results in a ton of fresh and unique audience content for clothing companies.

Forever 21 is a great example of how to take advantage of such a passionate audience. The brand always shares content from its followers resulting in a rigorous daily posting schedule which is rarely achieved through other means.

What’s more, the brand is further able to directly connect with its audience and receive instant feedback on new lines of clothing and other products the company is promoting. The same stands true for any other marketing campaign they try. Having a daily content strategy translates to easy and quick review and adapt process.

And the analytics show the results. The clothing and fashion business manages to show off impressive engagement and audience growth numbers on a daily basis. What’s more, Forever 21 manages to achieve a consistent positive sentiment which is a relatively difficult task even for a fashion brand.

One item that we found interesting in the analysis of the social media marketing campaign of Forever 21 is the fact that the brand focuses on a diverse range of relatable content. Instead of going for a strict fashion-only content policy, the Forever 21 Instagram profile often posts other relatable imagery that is popular on the platform including food, animals, offbeat content and scenery. And this does seem to work as out of the 12 most engaging posts of the brand in the month of September, five are not related to clothing, fashion or something else in the industry.

The Underlying Value

Taking a look at the top YA women apparel and fashion brands on Instagram, you’d be able to truly take a look at what makes a great social media marketing campaign on the platform.

Celebrity endorsements help with engagement while audience involvement can allow you to post on a rigorous schedule. In addition to the follower content, you’d be able to easily incorporate quality content from other marketing campaigns. Not to mention, time and relevance are key in any campaign.

But you’d also be able to note some mistakes even the biggest brands do. Nike, for example, is one of the biggest brand profiles on Instagram. Yet, its irregular posting schedule hurts the engagement rate of the brand to a near zero.

Without a proper posting schedule, the brand simply doesn’t manage to take full advantage of the social networking platform. Compare that with Forever 21 and H&M, and you’d be able to easily see how much posting at the right time and the right amount of posts can mean for your brand.

Visual flow consistency is another factor to keep in mind. Sometimes we stare at awe scrolling through the brand profile of a company not knowing what makes everything seem so perfect.

Yet, the truth is simple and obvious once seen from a different angle. Having transitions in visual style posts can help you achieve a more professional looking profile. And this helps with the analytics as well as shown above.

And if you need help getting analytics from your profiles or the profiles of your competitors, look no further than Locowise and sign up for a 7-day free trial today!