Expert Brand Building Advice From Visibu

On the 27^th January, Visibu founder and industry expert, Stephanie Santayana, hosted a detailed and informative workshop on, ‘Brand Building Through Social Media for Boutique Apparel & Accessories Brands’.

The informative workshop covered key topics to social media success such as: 

• Content types
• Brand Aesthetic
• Brand Values
• Customer Engagement

First, Stephanie talked about her range of experience in different industries, such as fashion, lifestyle and food. Although the workshop focused on social media for apparel and accessory brands, throughout the workshop, Stephanie referred to the different industries she’s worked in and how she would approach the task for each industry and why. 

The main focus of the workshop was building a universal perspective of your brand. To do this, Stephanie showed a graph made up of 4 categories: ‘Brand, Product, Category and Personal’. This helped establish focus on each key objective when making your ‘brand universe’. 

When looking into ‘Brand’, Stephanie explored the advantages of being a small business; how you can display where and why you started your business. She also mentioned the importance of presenting your brand values and purposes when building your brand identity. She suggested making growth and progress updates, as this is something large brands like H&M or New Look, are less likely to do.

Stephanie explained the importance of visuals, such as graphics and colour to help set the tone of your brand. Although these posts typically receive less engagement, they are important in conveying your brand’s aesthetic and need to look cohesive. 

Moving into ‘Product’, Stephanie used examples from other brands, showing, once again, the advantage of being a small business owner; being able to show your creator perspective of the products, and using that to promote products using original designs and ideas. Also, Stephanie pointed out that social media is used as an extension to shopping online, meaning people look for different images of ‘real’ people using the products, something you normally wouldn’t be able to see on your website. These images should be promoted and celebrated on your page, which us brings to the importance of brand aesthetic. Having a distinctive brand aesthetic can help your audience emulate your brand in their own product images. Enabling you to use those pictures on your own page without looking out of place. 

Finally, Stephanie progressed onto ‘Category’ and ‘Personal’, where she elaborated on brand experience. Explaining different content ideas, like sharing knowledge through tutorials and hacks, style inspo and industry knowledge. Or, building community through team profiles and merchandise. As well as lifestyle posts like TikTok, to entertain your audience through humour, relatable content and memes.

Closing the workshop, Stephanie had a discussion segment, where she answered questions tailored to each person asking. These questions included copyright issues and what contributes to being high on a social media search bar. 

Feedback from this masterclass was excellent and included :

“VERY in-depth thank-you! Brilliant and encapsulating presentation.“

“Super clear communication of ideas from Stephanie, her ability to explain an idea, using lots of clear examples to demonstrate. Brilliant. The whole thing was totally engaging throughout. No small feat!“

“This is the best webinar I have attended in a very long time. Very informative, concrete info and action. Amazing, thank-you so much!“

“Thank-you so much! It was great content and presentation!“

“Most invaluable. Content was great. The examples given were really useful. Learning about the different types of posts and what each one achieves. This will help me to plan my posts.’’

A big thank-you to Stephanie.

For more FashionCapital masterclasses led by industry experts tap here.

Review by Leah Martin