When developing a social media presence for your fashion brand, there are many variables to consider. 

The social media space is in constant evolution and is providing a very “noisy” market space for those brands who are looking to build an audience and develop a loyal following. 

When challenged with such a complex marketing environment, it is easy to fall prey to false myths and to simple answers. 

In this post, we’re going to review some of the most common myths to creating viral content for your fashion brand.

With no further ado, let’s dive right into it!

#1 False Myth:  There is a formula to creating viral content. 

Everybody is out there trying to create viral content. 

Viral content by definition is something unexpected that innovates on the established rules of communication, by creating a message so emotional, fun, and compelling that viewers can’t resist but clicking on it and sharing it.

As soon as a new format is created by a successful company, other brands try to test it and build upon it for improvement, through “incremental” innovation. 

Viral content is by definition a disruption of current communication frameworks and can’t be broken down into a step-by-step strategy. 

Of course, over the years, marketers have identified some of the most relevant “ingredients” that can’t be left out of your viral marketing recipe, but no viral video can be spent more than once. 

#2 False Myth:  Viral content makes you a lot of money.

Moreover, it’s important to notice that viral content is used in a type of social media strategy called: “engagement” strategy.

In this context, brands are able to grow their following and get a buzz out of the momentum that viral content can create.

At the same time, however, we should note that strategies based on viral content and engagement have a flaw, as they don’t connect social metrics - such as likes and shares - to actual business metrics, such as revenue and profits. 

As a result, even the most successful viral content strategy could have little if any impact on your actual sales. 

This is the reason why engagement strategies need data backing, through a strategy called the “nurture” approach that matches the high social engagement with a conversion-oriented sales funnel. 

If you’d like to learn more about social media strategies and how they provide benefits and limitations for your brand, we’ve got a great article for you to read here.

Great, let’s now move on to the next false myth.

#3 Social media allows any brand to go viral. 

Social media platforms developed a business model that revolves around gathering an audience and then monetizing it.  

In simple terms, social media platforms offer advertising opportunities to brands who want to connect to an audience that they are able to provide.

At the beginning of the social media era, more or less in 2007, social media platforms were building their respective audiences and understanding user behavior connected to social media platforms. In this first stage, monetization was not as advanced and hyper-targeted as it is today and the organic reach of content was much higher. Social networks wanted to keep users engaged and to do this they were maximizing exposure of the content that showed early signs of viral potential.

Nowadays, brands have a harder time spreading great content as social media platforms want users to take advantage of their paid services and make use of their tools. As a result, organic growth is harder to achieve unless you’re investing in advertising or influencer marketing as well as on content creation.

Algorithms dictate how content is spreading and as a result brands end up losing control over the way the content circulates online and over the audience it is shown to. 

Becuase of this issue, connected to the impact that algorithms have on content distribution, we can understand why other marketing channels such as email marketing have instead witnessed growth. This is due to the fact, that simply put, in email marketing a brand is capable of controlling exactly who will be the recipients of a message.

Because of this, brands can’t rely on social media doing all of the work for them. We’ll address this point in the next section of our post.

#4  Once you post, it’s just a matter of time for your content to spread organically.

The last misconception we’d like to cover when it comes to viral content is that spreading viral content is simply a post-and-wait game. 

Some marketers may still have a romantic notion of viral content, that once it is posted, it will naturally connect and engage with its intended audience. This is not the case, actually. 

It’s up to the brand to identify all of the spaces and places where the viral content needs to be seeded in order to increase its reach. 

In this sense, a brand may face a “chicken and egg” dilemma: should I develop a strong presence and then distribute potentially viral content, or should I create viral content to create a strong social presence. 

Of course, there is no straight answer.  Each brand needs to understand the goals and purposes of viral content distribution and do all of the hard work that starts from the moment of its publication.

Great! Now that we’ve touched upon all relevant topics, it’s time to draw a few conclusive remarks.

Conclusions

There you have it! In this post, we’ve covered three common myths on viral content and social media. 

All in all, this does not mean that viral content is dead. It’s alive and well, but creating it takes effort and vision.  As we like to say, it takes years of hard work to become an overnight success. 

As we’ve discussed there is not a straight line to follow towards your social media success. It’s always a good idea to question your strategy and make sure that the time you’re investing in content creation is focused on data and evidence. 

Developing a social media strategy for your fashion brand is not simple, but if you’d like to explore our website further, in our blog, you’ll be able to find a wealth of helpful and informative articles on how to build a strong media presence for your brand, and build an audience by spreading your message. Enjoy!

By the way, if you’re looking for some academic literature on the matter, there’s an excellent book we recommend when it comes to developing your strategy: Social IMC: Social Strategies with Bottom-Line ROI

We’ve used this book as one of the sources for this article and we highly recommend it if you’d like to learn more about community building on social media.

It’s a great idea to do some reading and research before investing time, money, and effort in developing your web presence so that the decisions you’ll be taking will take your business far.

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