In order for any company to expand, it is essential to reach people’s consciousness. In the 21st century, social is by far the fastest and easiest way to expand branding, which is why most brands can be found both on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr. Being the world’s second largest retail company (with more than 3,100 stores on 53 markets)1, H&M is no different. The clothing brand even set a goal to expand 10 – 15% every year from now on2. Below is a more detailed explanation of how H&M uses different social media.
Facebook is for much more commercial use, with statements such as “check out the perfect selection of jackets and coats to take you through colder weather, which one will you get?” describing typical commercial pictures. Also, they make more opinion-related posts about living wages, thereby supposedly attracting people who might doubt the way their clothes are being manufactured. A lot of the content from H&M’s Facebook account is copy-pasted on its Google+ account.
Instagram is more classy and appears less sales-related. The pictures don’t contain as many models and full-size looks, but are often cropped to point out details or only showing smaller items such as shoes and jewelry. This way they’re probably deliberately drawing attention to other items than clothing, thus making more people notice the jewelry and they will hopefully buy it.
On H&M’s YouTube channel is a more broad variety of topics. There are videos showing off the different seasons’ collections, but there are also videos explaining environmental (H&M on Water Stewardship) and social (H&M on Fair Living Wages) policies in detail.
In conclusion, H&M varies its posts/submissions according to the website/app to spread content and divide focus. This might be a helpful strategy for attracting different kinds of customers, which the brand will need in order to reach a 10 – 15% increase every year, especially with the large variety of customers it already has.
Even though it is normal to see mothers with children and boys in H&M stores, the customer base is mainly teenage girls/young women, which is also the group it targets most frequently in social media like Facebook and Instagram. Most pictures are of girls’ clothes and jewelry, but every once in a while pictures of guys to be found as well. It becomes even more attractive to even more people when the brand starts associating itself with environment-friendly industries and proper working conditions. Aside from the fact that it is the customer base and the brand probably intends to keep as many customers as possible while expanding, it also makes the most sense to appeal to young people through social media, as more young rather than old people are involved with social media. So with a few variations, the target audience of H&M’s social media strategy is more or less the same as its customer base, because this is what makes the most sense.
H&M joined Facebook in 2010. Looking at sales numbers from then until 2013, there has been a 18.5% increase in sales over a period of 3 years, even with the financial crisis still wearing off3. However, from 2006 to 2009, the increase in sales was almost 50%4, which could signal that even with social media strategies to attract customers, H&M is close to having reached maximum customer capacity. This could be the reason why the strategy for 2014 is to penetrate the Asian market, but this doesn’t show in the social media, which could mean that H&M’s social media strategy is to preserve the amount of customers it already has rather than gambling and going for an entirely different target audience.
The brand can only do this because it knows its customer base. It would be hard for a small blog like The Hyde Street Journal, which has a lot of different content, to apply the same strategy to social media because the viewer base is unknown. Even so, advertising it on social media probably wouldn’t hurt, as Facebook posts or tweets attract attention and may just help get more viewers/subscribers to the page.
Sources
[1]http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/02/12/hm-india-idINDEEA1B05L20140212
2http://about.hm.com/en/About/facts-about-hm/about-hm/expansion-strategy.html
3http://about.hm.com/en/About/Investor-Relations/Key-Figures/Five-Year-Summary.html
4http://about.hm.com/content/dam/hm/about/documents/en/cision/1076966_en.pdf
HYDE STREET JOURNAL 