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In a world as elitist as the luxury market, the question of how to use social media presents a real conundrum. Social media success is defined by the quality of the conversations, followers and fans for a brand and ultimately the spread of content. Meanwhile, luxury brands by their very definition are about exclusivity. The two don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand.

The ubiquitous nature of social media, however, means that in order for luxury brands to remain relevant to their existing consumers, it is essential that they have a presence on new digital platforms.  To create a successful online presence, luxury brands must develop adaptable communication strategies with content that works well across both traditional and digital platforms. By adopting this approach at a strategic level, luxury brands are more likely to create social media content that will be relevant to existing fans and followers and at the same time attract desirable new consumers to the brand.

Luxury brands have long been built on their reputation to tell a story, and social media offers a unique opportunity to tell their brand stories in a multi-visual way. Twitter and Facebook content has a shorter lifecycle, compared to Pinterest and Tumblr, which are driven by searches for specific interests and topics. This means that content that was posted six months ago can suddenly find a raft of new repins, reblogs, likes and comments. During their Autumn/Winter 2012 digital campaign, Gucci unveiled a banner ad with a small ‘Pin it’ button on the bottom left-hand corner. Clicking on this brought up two images to share on Pinterest: a full-size image of the ad, and a product shot of the shoes being advertised. On Pinterest, both pins linked directly to Gucci’s e-commerce site. This proactive use of the social content sharing website helped to boost the brand’s mentions on the network to 9,000 (up 166%) during the last quarter of 2012.

Conversely, the real time nature of Twitter offers luxury brands a way to share real-time events, such as fashion shows and product launches. This year’s London Fashion Week (LFW) saw the British Fashion Council (BFC) partnering with YouTube to live-stream 21 catwalk shows via the LFW channel. The BFC also worked closely with Twitter to promote conversation around London Fashion Week using the #LFW and by mentioning the official YouTube channel. Social media has transformed LFW into a global event and plays a central role for luxury marketers looking to engage their audience with the shows. Now regarded as one of the key components of the shows production, social media extends these offline events into digital campaigns.

Luxury brands must be mindful of ensuring they use social in a way that fits with their communication strategy. If, for example, their approach has previously been to avoid having direct conversations with their consumers in public forums, then they should apply this principle to how they communicate on social platforms. Just because brands can have a two-way conversation with consumers doesn’t necessarily mean that they should. According to a report by Unmetric, only three out of nine luxury brands examined (Burberry, Ralph Lauren and Dolce & Gabbana) allowed fans to post on their Facebook page. And none of the brands publicly replied to a Facebook post during the time period of the report.

A further consideration for luxury brands is how their communities on these owned platforms will grow. On the whole, they have rich archives of content, some of it never seen before by the public. This content is built into an editorial schedule with a good cadence and is optimised based on what people respond to, then a community will grow organically and the brand should never have to pay to acquire fans or followers. In 2010 luxury French firm LVMH launched an online magazine, ‘Nowness,’ to inspire its audience. The editorial platform offers a daily multimedia story in a stylish minimalist way and has blurred the lines between editorial and promotional content. A Chinese-language version of the ‘Nowness’ is also available to reach the rapidly-expanding Chinese market.

A luxury brand can quickly damage its reputation by being inauthentic and not staying true to the image it has carefully crafted over the lifetime of the brand. Consistency is key. By staying true to a brands’ existing communication strategy and principles, potential opportunities to damage the brand are minimised.  In today’s digital world, social has become an intricate part of people’s lives and luxury brands need to respond in kind.

This video has a great summary of what they did:

I love the digital and real-world integration – Google Hangouts online to find out more about the clothes, make-up and the models and a Google+ video booth at the show.

What’s also interesting is a quote from Justin Cooke, Topshop’s CMO about this partnership – after the Facebook partnership last year this is something that is built in Topshop’s DNA – we’re going to be seeing more great stuff them in future shows:

“We already have a great reputation, it’s not like we need to change anything. It’s all about protecting that position of always being an innovator. You’ve got to keep moving. You can’t stop.”

This is something that many luxury brands would do well to keep in mind. Innovation for the sake of it is pointless, but experimentation with clear KPIs and objectives that is balanced with the ultimate goal of preserving the brand’s equity will keep brands moving forward.

What Topshop and Burberry are doing is the future of luxury and fashion marketing  – they are harnessing the behaviours of the under 25s in a interesting way.  As a luxury brand, if you’re not already doing this or developing a strategy on how these platforms and digital content can integrate into your wider strategy, you’re missing a trick.

According to Vine, video posts on the platform are “about abbreviation…they’re little windows into the people, settings & objects that make up your life”. In other words, as Twitter is about short & sharp text (and images to some degree) updates, Vine is about applying the same principle to video.

The thing is, what we’ve seen so far is that it’s actually quite hard to make a good 6 second video. Having a trawl through the app and on Brands on Vine, it’s clear that the results are quite mixed. Bacardi UK and Cadbury UK have both created fun films around drink and chocolate recipes, respectively. Malibu have also produced a cute video for a refreshing looking Malibu & pineapple cocktail.

What Luxury Brands & Publishers Are On The Vine Platform? 

Luxury Fashion Brands: The Armani family are using the platform as Armani, but posting vines for their sub-brands as well:  Armani, Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani. Victoria Beckham and Theory are also on the platform.

Publishers: Vanity Fair, Elle UK, GQ Fashion

Luxury Retailers: Neiman Marcus, Mr Porter,  Harvey Nichols, Nordstrom

Luxury Hotels: Beverly Wilshire Hotel

What Are Luxury Brands Doing So Far?

Quite fortuitously, Vine was released around the same time as the latest round of Autumn / Winter Fashion Weeks, which means that many luxury fashion brands & publishers are using this event as an opportunity to test and learn on the Vine platform. So far, there have been quite a few show clips, backstage sneak peeks and a few stop-motion films, which are more challenging and require someone to stop and edit the content before posting. Here’s a great stop motion film from Harvey Nicks.

A very early learning is that image quality is an issue with a lot of these clips. HD and high resolution is a must, especially for luxury brands, who pride themselves on producing rich, high quality images & videos.

Another learning is that 6 seconds is actually a lot of time, in which you can tell a short, sharp, fun story! Just look at what Dogs Trust have done (I know they’re not a luxury brand).

As ever, there are many things to consider before jumping into the platform, such as:

• Is Vine relevant for your social & communication strategy?
• If so, how will Vine (the platform & the content) fit into the brand’s wider social & communication strategy?
• What is the specific strategy for Vine? Is it solely a tool to create videos or will you grow your Vine community as well?
• What stories do you want to tell on the platform? How often will you post?
• Where will you syndicate your Vine videos? Twitter? Facebook? Your website? To other content aggregators?

Fortunately, there are early learnings that can be taken from brands that are already experimenting with the platform.

1. Original Content That Is Adapted For The Best Use of Each Platform: Only The Best Quality Content Is Posted 

A smart content strategy forms the bedrock of Beyoncé’s social strategy.

She shoots / creates a constant stream of images that she then uploads to the most relevant platforms. What underlines all of this content is that each represents a piece of the wider ‘Beyoncé’ story.  She’s famously a control freak and the stories from her life – her shows, her events, her dreams & aspirations and the little day to day activities – all are posted with a clear strategy. Nothing is seemingly posted for the sake of it, with each image being very high quality and individually worth being liked, shared, commented on and remixed.

What can luxury brands learn from this?

• Tell people your stories. Go into your archives and surprise people. Plan what you’re going to say on each platform & when you’re going to say it. 
• Post high quality images & videos – use HD and high resolution standards. The higher the quality, the more likely people will engage & share.

2.  A Clear Platform Strategy: Each Platform Has Different Role In The Wider Communication / Social Strategy

Beyoncé has articulated a clear strategy for each platform, with her website acting as the heart of this strategy. On each platform, you see a different side of her personality.  How does she use each platform?

• Facebook provides a peek into Beyoncé’s world. What’s critical about her Facebook strategy is that Beyoncé only posts when she has something to say, so she doesn’t overwhelm the platform and her fans’ news feeds with updates that would be better suited to another social platform. For example, on the day of the Super Bowl, she only posted 2 photos of her performance on Facebook, whereas she shared 10+ pieces of Super Bowl related content on Tumblr. Her Facebook page has commenting enabled, which allows fans to comment & react to the content she (well, it’s probably her team, not her) posts on the platform.

• Beyoncé uses Tumblr to share a deeper story with fans. Although she was a late adopter to this platform, only launching her Tumblr page in early April 2012, from the volume of content and interaction she has on her content, you would never realize it. Every piece of content that she posts on Tumblr is instantly re-blogged, liked & remixed thousands of times. At time of writing, her post of her Vogue cover had been reblogged over 6,000 times Even though Tumblr don’t post follower counts, there is speculation online that it is around the 3 million mark. Not too bad.

• Instagram appears to be used for more personal / fashion images, with some content duplication with Tumblr. It’s where she posted the candid shot of Destiny’s Child jumping up after their Super Bowl performance and a cute shot of the official Inauguration stage marks.

• Twitter remains Beyoncé’s least active social platform. Since joining, she’s only tweeted 4 times, all in the last year. Despite this, she has 7.1 million followers…all waiting for her next tweet. If I had to attribute a reason for her low Twitter usage, I would say that either she hasn’t figured out her strategy for the platform or that because Beyoncé’s social strategy is highly image driven, Twitter’s text focus doesn’t align with how she wants to connect with her fans.  

What can luxury brands learn for this?

• Have a clear strategy for each social platform. Each platform is different, with each requiring a clearly defined approach & content strategy.
• Don’t feel forced to go onto a platform before you’re ready and even have a loose strategy defined. The world won’t end if you’re not there.

3. Controlled Conversation: The Content Is the Conversation

Like many luxury brands, Beyoncé doesn’t engage in direct conversations with fans & followers. Instead, the content that she posts becomes the means of starting the conversation.

What this means is that she stays above the fray, whilst having a clear view on what people are responding to and sharing in real time.

What can luxury brands learn for this?

Luxury brands who have archives full of incredible content and who don’t need to use FMCG ‘Happy Friday’-style gimmicks to start conversation or make themselves interesting or relevant to fans.

The content is the conversation – don’t feel forced to openly respond to Facebook or Instagram comments. The two-way conversation is one of the truisms of social.

4. Quality Content Begats Earned Conversations & Remixed Content

The sum of Beyonce’s social strategy is a huge volume of earned conversations in the form of likes, re-blogs, shares and comments. This has given her a wider footprint on the web and greater exposure (something she doesn’t necessarily need after the Super Bowl, the GQ & Vogue covers and her HBO documentary)  to non-fans / followers.

Of course, this works both ways. When brands are too controlling of their content and how it is used on the web, they are likely to see a backlash. Case in point: Beyonce’s publicist emailed news outlets online asking them to take down unflattering shots of her taken during her Super Bowl performance. Of course, this sparked amazing remixes of the unflattering images, like these.

What can luxury brands learn for this?

Don’t try to control the earned conversations and the remixed content. Once content is online, it’s there and you can’t get it back or control what people do with it – so make sure what ever you post is great and worthy of being shared & re-mixed in a positive way.

What about Tumblr? Does this visually led platform make sense for luxury brands? My view is that the answer is yes.

Geographically, the platform is still primarily US focused (40% of their users are registered in the US), with more than 170 million people worldwide viewing Tumblr blogs every month (54 million of those people are in the U.S.). Scale is not an issue either with the platform. There are over 70m blogs on the platform, with it generating over 17bn page views each month, an average of 70m posts created per day in over 12 languages.

What makes Tumblr so compelling is its ability to connect with the Millenials & Generation Y.  50% of Tumblr’s user base is under 25 years old and the platform has an 80% retention rate.

The numbers make sense, but what about the platform & its functionality? For luxury brands, who create so much rich content (and could in a way, be thought of as publishers themselves), that Tumblr is primarily about content spread is a big win. This means that the story that the brand wants to tell and wants people to share can be more easily controlled.

That means that success on Tumblr is not based on how many followers you have, but instead on how many people spread your content (via a reblog). For luxury brands, Tumblr is a fantastic opportunity for them s to teach the next generation their stories.

So who’s doing it well on Tumblr?

Marc Jacobs: Really clean design, a great mix of quotes, images, animated GIFs and videos, all tightly connected to the Marc Jacobs brand story and connected to the other Marc Jacobs owned platforms (Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Dot Com). They make it really easy to share the content as well, with specific tracking links for each post.

Kate Spade: Again, their Tumblr is really tightly connected into the overall Kate Spade brand story, with lots of content that is fun, interesting and compelling enough for Tumblr users to want to reblog and like. What I love it is how they also tell product stories, but they never beat you over the head with them – it’s just about the Kate Spade girls having a blast and allowing their Tumblr followers to share in the fun with them.

Barack Obama: Okay, so he’s not a luxury brand per se, but during his election, his campaign team did a fantastic job with his Tumblr, sharing content (animated GIFs, images, videos and quotes), with commentary that was very specific and tailored to the Tumblr audience. These posts  are great examples of this.

So what are the important things for luxury brands to think about when building a Tumblr presence?

1. Tailor your content.

Tumblr is about sharing, so post content that you think people will want to share. As with any other platform, test, learn and use the Tumblr analytics platform to see what type of content gets shared and liked the most. Also interesting is to see what people are saying when they share your content on their own Tumblrs – this should give you a view of the sentiment around your posts.

2. Use your captions. 

If you have captions on your posts, tailor your captions to the tone of the platform. Short, sharp and sometimes sarcastic captions work really well, but it’s also important to stay true to your brand’s overall tone of voice.

3.  You don’t need to worry about comments. 

You don’t need to open up your Tumblr to comments.  This means that when people share your posts, they may add their own commentary, but they won’t be able to comment directly on your Tumblr, unless you have comments turned on.

4. Build a specific editorial calendar for Tumblr. 

An editorial calendar specific to Tumblr, but connected with your overall social & digital editorial calendar. What’s important is that on Tumblr, the lifecycle of content tends to be longer than Facebook and Twitter, so you may not want to post as often. A little (i.e. one post per week) can go a long way.

5. Develop a tagging strategy for your posts.

People discover content by tracking tags (i.e. http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/burberry) on the platform, you need to ensure that each post has relevant, but also interesting tags, which make it easy to track and for people to discover your content.

6. Customise your Tumblr to the type of story you want to tell about your brand.

The Coveteur’s Tumblr looks very different to Rodarte’s Tumblr, which in turn looks very different to Burberry’s Tumblr.

*Update: Tiffany have just launched a Tumblr called From Out of The Blue, which is very image led so far.

Check out this link to see other examples of Fashion Tumblrs.

One might argue that for luxury brands, who use these social platforms for consumer engagement, any communication to someone that has opted in to receive messages is relevant and will support their brand & image building objective – it builds the dream of the brand with people who’ve expressed interest in the brand.

The counter argument is that brands, especially luxury brands, should laser target and ensure that all of their communications on all platforms & channels goes to the most relevant people.

Essentially, the quality and quantity question is something that any luxury brand using social platforms like Facebook, Twitter or SinaWeibo for communication should be asking themselves.

What do I mean by quality or quantity?

Taking a few steps back, when any brand sets up a page on a social platform such as Facebook or Twitter, they must ask themselves a few questions:

1. What is my objective for using this platform? Consumer engagement, information sharing or customer support?
2. What is the objective of growing the platform? To reach as many people as possible or to reach a quality audience that have pre-qualified themselves as interested in my brand? Can I do both?
3. How do I want the platform to grow – organically or through paid activity?
4. If I’m willing to pay for fans / followers, how will I do this?  NB: Approach this with absolute caution and avoid any of the bulk follower  / fan buying services, as you will likely be buying spam accounts that  are completely irrelevant to your brand. My view is that luxury brands should never need to run Promoted Account or Like campaigns – if you have quality content (which all luxury brands should have) it will be easy to grow the platform organically.

Should luxury brands even care about the number of followers  / fans their brand has, as long as they are getting quality engagement?

My view is that quantity doesn’t mean quality – a high number of followers or fan doesn’t equate to legitimacy. It really is about how you engage with those followers, how often you engage & the quality of the content that you give them. You could have 10m quality followers on Twitter, but that number is irrelevant if you don’t give them something that makes it worth continuing to follow your brand.

Quantity for the sake of it means nothing and numbers do not equate to legitimacy. This principle holds true for fan and follower numbers, as well as page metrics. Talking specifically of page metrics, my view is  that quality engagement is a good balance between likes, comments & shares. The number of likes will always be disproportionate to the number of comments & shares, because this is a very simple action, compared to the marginally more complex action of sharing, replying or commenting.

What next?

If you already have a large number of fans or followers, check the quality of these people. There are now webtools, as well as the insights tools on the platform that can give you a topline view of quality.

1. Use a service like Status People to check the quality of your Twitter followers. This service tells you if you the proportion of your followers that are good, fake or inactive based on a sample of 1,000 followers. Find out more here.
2. Work with Facebook to leverage their internal tools to understand who the fans are on your Facebook page
3. Use a series of Facebook Questions to develop an understanding of who your fans are.
4. Run a formal survey on your Facebook page to understand who your Facebook fans are.

Once you know who your fans and followers are, develop or continue a strategy that emphasises sharing strong brand stories, whether they be images, videos, audio or text.  Quality content will always begat quality followers / fans.

Whether or not the campaign was effective, was besides the point in my view. The effort made it a success for a few reasons:

1. Test and learn

The digital benchmark has not been fully set in luxury advertising. It’s great to see luxury brands testing new approaches to digital advertising. They may not get it right, but the point is to iterate and learn, set internal benchmarks and incorporate what works into future campaigns.

2. Digital luxury innovation

I love the evolution of ‘saveable’ media. This was something I blogged  & tweeted about a few years ago, when I referenced a piece of research from Yahoo on digital memories, with the interesting stats that 60% of men and 66% of women sent emails to themselves to help them remember. Interestingly, there are people who were people who took photos of ads (14% of women and 23% of men) in order to remember them.

It’s fantastic to see this type of innovation coming from the luxury sector.

3. Earned media

Being a digital pioneer guarantees coverage and conversations – ask Burberry. Even if the campaign didn’t work, people are talking about what Gucci have done and they have planted the seed that they are willing to test new approaches and incorporate new technologies into their communication.

What is a retweet? According to Wikitionary, it means to repost another user’s message on the social networking website Twitter. Effectively,  a retweet is an acknowledgement of another person or brand’s endorsement of a message from your brand.

When an influencer tweets something positive about a brand, it makes sense to retweet it. The original tweet is earned media and positive word of mouth, which means that a retweet further the potential for the original tweet to influence others.

However generally speaking, luxury brands tend not to trade off associations with their consumers or with other brands, so the question needs to be asked: Should luxury brands incorporate retweeting into their Twitter strategy? 

Before you begin, the first question you need to ask is: How does retweeting fit into my Twitter strategy & objectives?

If you’ve decided that your Twitter strategy is purely about providing brand information without any follower engagement, then you need to strongly consider whether retweeting is for your brand, as it is effectively a tacit form of conversation.

After all that, if you’ve decided, yes, retweeting does fit into your luxury brand’s Twitter strategy, then (as always) there are a few things that need to be decided.

1. Who will you retweet?

Some brands have decided that it’s within their strategy to retweet industry titles, such as Vogue, the Robb Report and Harper’s Bazaar. Other brands are focused on retweeting industry specialists, influencers, brand ambassadors and even competitors. Your Twitter guidelines should include a clear perspective on who you will retweet and the type of content from these individuals and brands that you would like to retweet.

2. Who won’t you retweet?

Just because you’ve decided you’ve decided who you will retweet, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a point of view of who you won’t retweet. You might decide that like Dior, that you won’t retweet anyone. Another approach might be to decide that you won’t retweet anyone who isn’t associated and known in your industry, whether it be in hospitality, jewellery, fashion, food or beauty. You may also take a strong viewpoint on not retweeting celebrities. Either way, your Twitter guidelines need to include this a point of view on this.

3. How often will you retweet? Is it planned as a part of your editorial strategy or is there a level of spontaneity depending on the content of the original tweet?

Consider how retweeting can be incorporated into your Twitter editorial strategy. If you have a planned schedule of tweets which are aligned with your brand’s campaigns, launches and events, how does retweeting fit in? How often do you want to do this? Take some time and consider what criteria a tweet would need to meet in order for your brand to retweet it.

There is also an aesthetic point to consider – the more you retweet, the less visually consistent your brand’s Twitter page will appear. This won’t matter so much when people look at your brand’s Twitter page via mobile or 3rd party applications, but it does matter when they go on to Twitter directly. This leads to the next question.

4. Are you willing to accept other brands / user appearing in your Twitter stream? Are there limits to the aesthetic difference you’ll accept?

Compare Smythson’s Twitter page to the image of Gulfstream’s Twitter page below.

5. As part of your editorial strategy, are there certain events where you will retweet what certain influencers or industry specialists are saying about the event and what your brand is doing? For example, will you decide to retweet during your brand’s Fashion Show, during a benefit or event?

Today, Louis Vuitton decided to tweet influencer and media brand’s reactions to their S/S 2013 show as it was happening.

6. How much deviation from your brand’s tone of voice on Twitter are you willing to accept in a retweet?

If your brand’s tone of voice on Twitter is very serious and staid, then it may appear quite jarring to retweet an ambassador who tweets in a very chatty, fun voice. Conversely, you may be willing to accept this, as you may be using these tweets to implicitly say things that the brand cannot not say itself.

For example, Aston Martin have retweeted a follower who has tweeted about how excited she is to see that the brand is appearing in the next James Bond film. Looking at their Twitter tweetstream, this does not fit with the rest of the tone of voice on the page, but Aston Martin have accepted this, as she expresses something that the brand don’t necessarily want directly.

7. Finally, (and this could be a whole post in of itself), are you willing to let people tweet on your behalf?

Looking at Dior’s Twitter page, they do not retweet any other users or brands, apart from one exception in March this year. During the A/W 2012 show, Susie Bubble took over the Dior twitter page (which was arguably more of a coup for her than for Dior) and was tweeting on behalf of Dior. There are positives and negatives to this, but it is worth considering.

Here’s a summary of how a few luxury brands are approaching the retweeting conundrum. What is your point of view?

1. Stella McCartney: Actively retweet influential media brands such as W, as well as retailers such as Club 21 Global and Net a Porter, models & brand ambassadors and even Olympians! Interestingly, they’ve taken a decision to respond to some fans / followers.

2. Smythson: Take a similar approach to Stella McCartney and actively retweet media brands, models, influencers and other designers / competitors. Looking at their Twitter page, they seem to take quite a liberal approach to who they retweet, as their stream is littered with other brands / users’ logos & avatars.

3. Louis Vuitton; They take a different approach to Dior, their LVMH sibling. They retweet a lot – blogs, media brands and models.

We know that in luxury digital marketing, Burberry has positioned itself as an early adopter, the perennial luxury case study.  Their Twitter usage is a key example of how they’re willing to dive into new platforms, test and learn and become the early standard bearer.

We can see that Burberry have set themselves a clear objective for how they use Twitter & have a clear POV on what they want to get out of the platform. Undoubtedly,  clear objectives are critical for any luxury brand looking to use the platform from an owned or paid perspective.

Above all, luxury brands must ask themselves a number of questions before diving into Twitter.

A. What are the objectives (and KPIs) for using Twitter?

1. Customer engagement: To provide new information about the brand & its products, to recruit new customers into the brand’s world, to provide content that creates earned conversations on Twitter, blogs & other platforms and to potentially have conversations with followers. Stella McCartney does a great job of this, even re-tweeting some of her followers!

2. Customer service: To answer questions, providing help & assistance. A great example is @BurberryService, set up to provide 24hr service to Burberry customers & clients.

3. Purely informational: To inform & to direct to other owned platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or the brand’s Dotcom, where a rich trove of content is held. Dior’s Twitter feed is an example of this approach.

Once you’ve set your objectives for the platform, you need a set of KPIs.  Your KPIs should be based on what do you want people to do with your tweets and content. Do you want them to react? To retweet? To quote? To click?  What’s the most valuable part of the engagement to you? This will effectively become your core metric for Twitter.

B. How are consumers / your target audience using Twitter?

Even if your approach to social platforms is to not talk directly to consumers, you’ve still got to take into consideration how they use the platforms, how they interact with the content & the devices they use to connect to the platforms. With Twitter, over half of usage is via mobile (with mobile revenue set to surpass desktop this year). Generally, we know that mobile usage of the platform is about scrolling & reading content on the go, so  if you want people to engage with your brand’s content (i.e. RT, quote, click, etc) on Twitter, then your copy needs to be sharp.

The 90/9/1 (consumers / curators / creators) rule is still roughly applicable on Twitter, although arguably, more people tend to curate on Twitter because it’s such an easy action. There’s a great debate on this very topic on Branch.

Anecdotally, it would appear that tablet / laptop users are more willing to watch videos on Twitter, while photos are easy to look at via the mobile Twitter stream. This leads to the conclusion that a multi-media editorial / content strategy with very sharp copywriting, that’s true to the brand’s tone of voice  & DNA & takes into consideration multi-device usage would be the smartest approach for any brand on Twitter.

C. How interactive do you want to be with your followers?

For luxury brands, social platforms aren’t inherently ‘social’. As I’ve mentioned before, luxury brands are making their own rules in the social space. They control the conversation through the content they post and control what people are saying & can say about them on their owned platforms. The content becomes the conversation.

As usual, Burberry is first out of the blocks with an approach that’s evolved from no conversation to limited, controlled conversation. For their S/S ready to wear show, Christopher Bailey was actively seeking feedback via Twitter on the show.

Christopher Bailey’s Looking For Feedback!

They also continued their tradition of ‘inviting’ their Twitter followers to the show.

More recently, they’ve taken it the final step and gone over the luxury ‘red line’. Christopher Bailey ‘took over’ the Twitter feed in the run-up to the Spring / Summer 2013 Burberry show during London Fashion Week.

D. What’s the conversation / content strategy? Is there is a mix of text, image, video and audio?

A clear editorial strategy and calendar must be defined for Twitter, as what works on another platform may not work on Twitter.

For example, think about how to differentiate between Twitter and Facebook editorially, with content, and with timing.

Timing: Although you may decide to use the some of  same content on both platforms, your publishing cadence needs to be different. You could potentially post 2 times a day on Facebook  (depending on content, geo-targeting & time zones) and up to 4 times a day on Twitter (with the same caveats). Once you have access to the Twitter analytics platform, you’ll be able to see with greater accuracy when in the day people are reacting to your content and post accordingly, which is especially important if your KPIs are centered around volumes of engagement. However, in the beginning of your Twitter strategy, logic would tell you to align your tweets with natural downtimes (i.e. on the morning commute, lunchtime, towards the end of the day).

It also makes sense to be aware of moments when your target audience might be totally engrossed in a social TV moment, i.e. Downton Abbey, the 100m final of  the Olympics or the FA Cup final. Can you leverage those moments or would a tweet during this time get lost? A global / regional Twitter editorial strategy should also take this into consideration, although this is potentially less important than considering the time zone the tweet gets published in.

Leveraging Brand Moments: Another element to consider is to how to use the platform to leverage the big moments for your brand. How can you align those big moments with your Twitter content strategy without being gimmicky? For example, the mechanic of Burberry’s Tweetwalk during their Autumn / Winter Ready to Wear show wasn’t gimmicky (they were effectively just tweeting images of each look before they went onto the runway), but the name was.

For luxury autobrands, the big moment to think about special content might be during big international auto shows and for luxury fashion and beauty brands, it might be during the international fashion weeks. Your core followers will be expecting your brand’s perspective and content during these key moments, so why not reward them? You can also reward your followers (without necessarily being gimmicky) with exclusive content – a look backstage, an interview with a model / the designer, even the POV of the creator. Again, going back to Burberry, Christopher Bailey has rewarded the followers of the Burberry Twitter feed by ‘taking over’ (as much as 10-15 perfectly curated tweets can be).

E. How are you planning to use hashtags?

As I’ve written in a previous post, hashtags can be quite powerful. On Twitter specifically, luxury brands should use hashtags to:

• Help categorise the tweet (i.e. #lfw)
• Spark conversations (i.e. #odlrlive)
• Help people find their content on Twitter when they’re looking for it (i.e. #proenzaschouler)
• Connect with hashtags being used on other platforms, like Instagram
• Capture or take ownership of conversations around a specific subject (i.e. #DVFthroughGlass)
• Optimise their content on for searches on Google and other search engines

As ever, regular monitoring should be done on any hashtags that you choose to use to see what people are saying and to proactively assess if the hashtag you’ve used has been or is about to be hijacked.

F.  Should you be re-tweeting?

A retweet is effectively an endorsement of  the tweeter’s brand and their tweet. Luxury brands should think carefully about this – an endorsement is effectively borrowing associations from that brand. This is quite a rich territory so I’ll be writing a post specifically on this.

G. Should you use paid media on Twitter? What are the benefits?

Here are currently three different paid media products on Twitter and a pithy summary of why you might use them.

• Promoted Trends: If you have a big brand moment that you want to amplify or if you want to piggyback on a national or international moment (i.e. the Olympics, the US Presidential elections, the Oscars)
• Promoted Tweets: If you want to amplify your content to your followers, their friends and people who are potentially interested in your brand
• Promoted Accounts: If you want to grow the number of followers on your account quickly

Whether or not a luxury brand chooses to use paid media on Twitter should be dependent not only on their objectives for Twitter, but also for the campaign this activity would be tied into.  Choose wisely, as using paid media, especially promoted trends and promoted accounts might be a bit too ‘pushy’ for a luxury brand.

So those are six considerations. Are there any more? What do you think?

Hashtags have made their way onto everything from tv, print, outdoor and digital display advertising to Tumblr blog titles to movie titles. For those of you not familiar with hashtags and what they are, Mindshare have written a great summary that can be read here.

So, with the proliferation of the hashtag into pop culture, what do they mean for luxury brands? What is the right usage of hashtags for luxury brands?

Beyond their usage on Twitter, which I’ll come back to in another post, there are already a few examples that I’ve seen of luxury / upmarket brands incorporating hashtags into their paid media advertising.

Cole Haan, the footwear brand has incorporated the #DontGoHome hashtag as a focal point of its latest New York focused campaign.

These ads click through to a Facebook tab, created to support this campaign, which does what it says on the tin  – it gives you ways to avoid going home in New York, by connecting you with the latest information on the New York nightlife scene.

Another luxury advertiser incorporating hashtags into their advertising is Emporio Armani. They recently ran a campaign, which used #EmporioArmaniLive in the digital display to promote the opening of their new New York flagship store.

When the ads are clicked on, you got taken to a great landing page with a customised Spotify playlist, which has some really great tracks on it, from some of the bands performing at the event.

What’s great about both of these campaigns is that the hashtag has become a campaign device and not just a means of tracking conversations online. The #EmporioArmaniLive hashtag is short-term and tactical and can be used again not only for other events, like fashion shows or exhibitions, but also in other cities for other store launches & events.  The Cole Haan #DontGoHome hashtag is something that is internationally relevant (who doesn’t sometimes want to stretch the night out longer?) and could be used again in other cities with vibrant nightlife, such as London, Paris, Milan or Miami.

Beyond these great, tactical examples, there are several questions a luxury brand should ask itself before incorporating hashtags into its paid advertising activity. As I’ve talked about before, something that creates desire for a luxury brand and its products is that intangible, emotional element, the near-inaccessibility of the brand. Luxury brands should be careful not to ‘lift the hood’ too much on their brand and be too accessible. Being ‘social’ without having a direct conversation with consumers is one way to do this.

Questions To Ask Before Incorporating Hashtags Into Paid Communication

1. Is the hashtag easy to remember? Is it an existing catchphrase or brand name?

Don’t make people work too hard to remember something that is effectively a tagline. Equally, avoid anything that strays into gimmicky territory.

2. If you’re using a hashtag to spark or harness conversation, are you actually monitoring the conversation to check consumer reaction?

There’s zero point in incorporating a hashtag in your communications if you don’t have a solid social listening programme to track the conversations the hashtag is generating.

3. If the hashtag isn’t about creating or harnessing conversation, are you clear about what you want people to do with the hashtag once they’ve seen it in your ads?

Be clear about what you want people to do and where you want them to go. Do you have a hashtag, as well as a URL,  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest logos in your paid media creative? If so, you need to start asking yourself how much is too much in terms of number of points of communication.

4. Does the hashtag work creatively?

Think carefully about how you use the hashtag. There’s no point in slapping a hashtag in the middle of a six-sheet. Arguably, that would be surprising, but would negate the luxury element of the advertising. Equally, there’s not really much point in hiding it away in the bottom right-hand side of the creative.

5. Are you prepared if the hashtag gets hijacked?

Are you in control enough of the rest of your communications to be able to handle if this element gets used by spambots or people looking to promote themselves on your hashtag, especially if it starts trending? What are your contingency plans if the hashtag gets hijacked? Here’s what happened to a few other brands.

6. Have you thought about what next? How can you build learnings from this activity into your next campaign?

What do you think? Do hashtags have a place in luxury brand advertising?