Social media has finally become one of the hottest topics at fashion and retail trade shows. From Project to Pool, WWDMAGIC to Sourcing, Las Vegas, show attendees learned how they could work with bloggers, bloggers learned how to build careers from their blogs and retailers learned what they should know about geolocation and social commerce.

This year,  the project floor felt like one part Sundance (tweet house), one part SXSW (tech gurus) and of course, two parts MAGIC. Hautelook presented a panel that discussed how to build brands through social media. Moderated by Jennifer Von Grove of Mashable, panelists included:

• Derek Draper of Wildfire
• Matt Ellsworth of 8thBridge
• Garth Holsinger of Klout
• Josh Ochs of MediaLeaders
• Nima Abbasi of Syndicate Media

Question: Facebook has 650 million members / Average users only follow 8.7 brands / In 2010, users “like” 7.6 million pages every 20 minutes:  Why are users actually engaging with brands?

Derek Draper: Three reasons:  Get offers, product giveaways, sweepstakes.

Editor’s Note: This is only one piece of the pie; customers want conversations and things that are educational and  fun, as well.

Question:What does influence mean in Facebook?

Derek Draper: Facebook is a more influential environment than Twitter.  The level of engagement is about 10 times that of Twitter, where people are following, but  yield no interaction. It’s opposite in Facebook, which is about “real friends,” whereas Twitter is “not real friends.”  The key indicators of influence are actions like looking at photos and the impact of sharing photos. When a message goes out, do people around the messenger (friends) take an action?

Question:  Companies are trying to measure the value of a “fan” – from $3.60 to $132 per person. Is there a monetary value that brands can associate with each fan?

Josh Ochs: Brands don’t “own” their likes.  You have to refollow, collect email, phone number…cross-pollinate them to Twitter.  Engage them.  Grabbing email so you can reach them at another time…Most value comes from having all three…Twitter, Facebook and email.

Nima Abassi: The most important measure is converting customers to take an action.  For all of their clients, Facebook and Twitter tend to be in the top five referrers to a website or ecommerce page.

Editor’s Note: Engagement should not be the first goal for acquiring Twitter followers and Facebook fans, it should be enchantment and intrigue:  it doubles the acceleration time it takes for engagement.

Question:  Facebook Page Specifics.  What are 3 things a brand needs to know in setting up a page?

Derek: Draper: Engagement is the purpose so you need something on the page that simply asks them to engage.  The more likes or comments you get on a status update, the more people are going to see it.  There are two ways to get likes/comments:

1. Simply ask people to Like your status/video/photo
2. Ask easy to answer questions, i.e. Yes/No

Nima Abassi: You want your status to end up on your fans’ walls.  Call to action plus multimedia helps provide greater reputation for your content.  Especially for fashion, use photos.  Tabs are gone now, so brands need to be more pro-active in highlighting in the left hand panel.

Matt Ellsworth: 3 basic things…

1. Why would a fan Like you inside Facebook if they find the same info on your website?  You need to make it unique/enhance the Facebook experience so they will Like you.
2. Have a content plan – know what you will be posting (Why would they interact? Why would they read it?  Why would they share it?)
3. You must have consistency.

Garth Holsinger: {Contrary view} People do not want to be “friends” with brands.  There’s a gap between what people think is engaging and what is actually engaging.  Go to people in the company that actually use Facebook, not people who have a “grand idea” of what is interesting.  It’s the same with Twitter:  work with people in your company that are heavy Facebook or Twitter users.

Matt Ellsworth: Yes, Garth is right for brands such as 3M (scotch tape), but it’s different for the fashion community…people DO want to be friends with brands.

Josh Ochs:

1. Keep image “square or tall” 200×600 to work with …use all real estate.  Make sure a square of that is your icon.  Make sure your feed shows a representation of your brand (name of company or logo)
2. Landing tab.  When they land, give them a call to action:  “Like us to get the latest deal!”
3. Plan out your tweets for the month. Don’t tweet on the fly.

Editor’s Note: Plan tweets for a month? That is an odd recommendation. The best fashion personalities online have controlled conversations and interactions with their fans and followers. It accelerates the engagement this panel speaks of.

Question: Some brands leave page dead and have no strategy.  How much time should a brand invest into their Facebook page?

Nima Abassi: The more time invested up front to plan, the easier it will be to go forward.  You need at least one go-to person to coordinate.  Getting back to content that works:  learn from others successes.  Go to 20 like-minded brands and evaluate what worked, what didn’t.

Josh Ochs: Don’t let other people post on your page because that post remains at the top.  Plan out your posts for the week. Upload a photo to increase the engagement on the post.  Usually this results in ½ day Monday to plan…respond to customer responses for the rest of the week.

Garth Holsinger: The old way (a year ago), you’d let marketing department create the page and figure out how to share it. Now we (for example, NIKE) create sharing first, then create marketing material that suits the sharing. So marketing now revolves around sharing.  They look at organic and slow approach.  Long term…5 years out.

Editor’s Note: This is where the editorial and strategy team of FashionablyMarketing.Me disagree.

1. You can study 20 brands’ successes and get some indication of what was successful, but in 90 days it will be irrelevant. A brand or retailer’s Facebook strategy should evolve as its fans evolve, and that’s about every 90 days. If you’re talking to you fans in the same way in April that you were January, you’re losing engagement.
2. While Ochs offer insightful answers, his approaches mostly fit strategies for consumer products and the suggestions are outdated. These would negatively impact fashion brands and retailers looking to use social media customer engagement and as a revenue channel.
3. Garth is 100% correct – Slow organic growth – enchant, intrigue, then engage by sharing your brand’s story and world. Look at Burberry, who hit the nail on the head.

Question: Social Media ROI – Is there an ROI?  How do you approach that?

Matt Ellsworth: Selling is the direct response to ROI.  Have a plan to monetize/a pathway to monetization.  You can have a strategy that produces loyalty and engagement, but you’re betting at the end of the day that they will return to a store or ecommerce and buy product.

Derek Draper: In terms of ROI, Facebook is not easy to measure.  Example:  In Google, there’s intent.  Ad ROI is measured by running 100,000 impressions to get 100 clicks and 1 purchase.  But with Facebook, it’s not that easy.  Build an audience first. Then engage: build trust, educate about product, only then you can turn them into loyal buying customers.

Nima Abassi: ROI depends on what the company wants to do.  Some want communication or visibility, but not necessarily engagement.

Question: Selling on Facebook is a trend.  Is this sustainable?  Why would a fan buy from a Facebook page?

Matt Ellsworth: It’s different for every brand.  Some are running with it, offering it as a unique experience or exclusive sale within Facebook.  Users are getting used to it.  You can now put stores in your news feed (like video).  This can be shared by others.  Watching friends interests’ lends itself to selling.

Derek Draper: Buying products is not the #1 reason people are on Facebook, it’s to connect with family and friends.  So to get people to buy, you need to make the shopping experience social and fun.  Their platform tool allows clients to create their own Groupon deal.  Deals tip, transaction goes through.

Nima Abassi: You don’t need to integrate a shopping solution on Facebook.  It can be a collage of photos that links to your ecommerce site.  Create a call to action and the environment where people like to engage, then you can make the transaction happen along the way — not necessarily right then and there.

Question: Is Facebook a fad? Or to put it another way, what would you say to a brand that says it’s not worth my time to set up Facebook or Twitter accounts?

Nima Abassi: Evaluate your ROI in other investments and allocate your budget accordingly.  What are you getting out of X dollars in Search vs X dollars in Advertising or X dollars in Events.

Derek Draper: Dig into stats.  600 million users, 50% or more log in every day,  the average user spends 55 minutes per day on Facebook.  Regardless of what you think about Facebook, that’s where consumers spend time.  Brands need to figure out how to reach them in a relevant way.  Spend time and effort being more creative.  Brands that ignore Facebook are missing the boat.

Matt Ellsworth: Not an absolute necessity.  Core service and product are more important.  However, conversations happen in Facebook.  Do you want someone else to guide the conversation, especially if there’s negative comments?

Garth Holsinger: Double down on Social Media.  Hire people who actually use it.  Do it now because a year from the now the landscape will have shifted even more.

Josh Ochs: A Facebook marketing plan should rely on great messaging.  Don’t let the tools get in the way of your small business.  Don’t let Social Media take over your whole day.

Editor’s Note: Retailers and brands absolutely need to have a presence on Facebook and strategy for fan engagement.  And yes, they should be looking at Facebook commerce (fcommerce), whether that’s a small selection of products,  digital pop-ups like Coach and Rachel Roy have done or a full e-commerce extension like ASOS has recently done.

This panel offered some amazing insights and great points of consideration, but I felt that most panelists should have researched their audience more. I felt there was a lack of understanding from some of the panelists on how Facebook should be used by fashion brands in making connections to their customers. Fashion is different that retail when it comes to social media. A fashion brand’s social engagement strategy is not the same as it online product distribution strategy, which I felt was being confused on this panel.

Photo: Madison Buyer