CHRISTINE YEE

Content Marketing. Writing. Social Media. SEO. Digital PR

In February 2011, I was hired by Pinagency in Glendale to take the social media efforts of AMI Clubwear (their main client) to a new level. The brand had actually developed a very successful ecommerce site. They were a leading destination for affordable nightclub fashion. Cute and edgy casual wear comprised their secondary niche. 

Comparative brands might include Forever 21 and Misguided which sell trendy styles for young women in their teens, 20s and early 30s.

However, much of their merchandise includes fashionable day wear. Where would a hip, cost consciouos fashionista go to find the right outfit for a night out at a popular club?

A casual search in Google for the term, "clubwear" would result in AMI Clubwear's site at the very top. 

The Need for a More Engaging Social Media Presence

Due to their great job at finding the right price points for their merchandise, AMI had become a leading seller of fashionable clubwear dresses. Repeat customers would also be able to find cute day wear styles as well on the site. And over time, they cultivated large followings on Facebook and Twitter. Despite the sizeable numbers, however, there was still a lot of room for better engagement. 

Also, there was a strong need to showcase the brand in a more positive light. Their rapid growth and large sales volumes made it difficult for the company to process all details needed process deliveries  smoothly and flawlessly. This resulted in disgruntled customers who regularly voiced their frustrations on consumer complaint sites. 

The role of social media became quite important for improving their online reputation. 

While their in-house marketing and PR team regularly posted on AMI's social media accounts, the messaging was often in the form of news and events.  It was weak in terms of truly expressing the brand's coloful personality and even showcasing the hidden gem styles that remained latent on the site. 

Demonstrating The Power of Images in Social Media

Of all AMI's different social media sites, their customers and fans were most active on Facebook. Although the brand created regular posts, their organization lacked a dedicated specialist who would be able to spend time culling the site to carefully select the right material for creating an engaging content strategy. Initially, the majority of their posts were often in the form of quick updates on partnership events sponsored by the company and joint brands. 

I recognized that as a brand whose customers made purchase decisions based on photos, images would hold an extremely important role.There are countless studies in psychology which suggest that people are more receptive to images compared to written text. This is powerfully demonstrated with the success of Pinterest. 

In revitalizing AMI's socally media presence, I decided to make images a priority. One of the main challenges was that the brand developed a following of many different women whose tastes represented a wide range of fashion styles.

To me, it made sense to choose styles (in the form of dresses, tops, skirts and outfits) for social media that had a broad appeal. On the other hand, I felt that it was appropriate to share the brand's penchant for the colorful, the extreme and the eccentric in the form of edgy shoe styles (e.g. heel-less platforms, think Lada Gaga). 

Although the notion of using images seems simplistic, the outcome, in this particular situation was profoundly transformative. 

Here are a few sample screenshots of the types of posts I created. 

Here is a simple, brightly colored dress that I had selected for a post on April 27, 2012. Base on feedback that I saw from other content that I posted, I noticed that many of AMI's fans were resonating with the color orange.  Coupled with the classic lines of this dress and the bold color, I felt this would be well received. This specific post received 878 likes, 25 comments and 16 shares.  It was also common for many of these types of merchandise based posts to receive inquiries by fans, (like Brittany Price) shown below in the screenshot,  expressing interest in purchasing the item (despite the fact that the link to the specific item was included in the post:)) 

I was also

More People Started Talking About AMI Clubwear and Following Their Facebook Page

The admin section of Facebook page had a linear graph which showed an average engagement level of 5,000 people talking about the page. Following the shift to image driven posts, the engagement soared to over three times this baseline to over 18,000 people conversing about the page. This happened within the first month. The number of people talking about the page vacillated, but more or less remained within the range of 15,000 to about 23,000. 

The boosted engagement led to a broader reach of the sponsored story ads. And subsequently, AMI acquired 25.5K new followers between March (301K total followers) to May (326.5 total followers) of that year.

The following screenshot was taken on May 25, 2012. It shows that the page had 328,850 likes and 23,515 people talking about the page.