It’s safe to say that retailer Club Monaco was slow in getting into the social media space. Although the company had both a presence on Twitter and Facebook in 2010, it hadn’t yet developed an actual social strategy. Posts on Facebook weren’t in synch with its posts on Twitter to tell the brand’s story.
Last year, it aimed to change that, implementing a strategy to develop a global community of brand ambassadors on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. The goal: to skew a bit younger and encourage fans to not just engage with the brand, but also promote it to their friends. Its social media strategy now centers around the brand’s Culture Club blog, which depends on social media platforms to distribute the brand’s content.
“Launching a social media strategy was a natural progression to evolve with the dramatic shifts in the media landscape and how our consumer is consuming content,” said Ann Watson, vp of marketing at Club Monaco.
The Culture Club Blog, a collection of images from those behind the brand, launched November 2010 as a section of ClubMonaco.com. It was then moved to its own microsite, before becoming fully socialized on Tumblr.
Club Monaco reoriented its Twitter, Facebook and other social presences to act as distribution channels that draw on the Culture Club. The idea is to repurpose content to fit each social venue. For example, Club Monaco posts behind-the-scenes photos from Instagram on Facebook every Friday; every Tuesday pick a photo from its Foodies board on Pinterest or Culture Club and post it to Facebook and Twitter for #TastyTuesday. It typically posts once or twice daily on Facebook and Twitter, where it has 119,000 and 15,000 followers, respectively.
”We are very selective about how much and what we do cross-promote,” Watson said.
The social team tries to include a call to action in each post. It asked on Facebook, for example, “Are you looking forward to wearing a cashmere sweater or a leather jackets this fall?” The brand’s data shows these type of posts elicit more participation from followers.
Club Monaco has defined a different set of metrics for each platform. It has found that not all metrics within social are trackable to a direct sale or conversion. For instance on Facebook and Twitter, while it loves to see its likes go up in numbers, engagement (comments, shares) is at the top of the brand’s KPI’s. On Facebook it places value on the “talking about” and “daily engaged” metrics. This allows the brand to adjust its social content strategy on the fly because it is not just about gaining more fans but making sure that those consumers that have taken the time to engage, do so more than once.
“Until we have a firm social content strategy in place for a platform, we make it a rule to not to engage with a community only halfway,” said Watson.
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