Twitter Made Moves On The Fashion Runway

Tickets to Fashion Week in New York City are hard to come by. However, staying in the loop was easy this year for fans thanks to the various available social media outlets. Twitter took the stage by providing a go-to guide for all Fashion Week enthusiasts. The Twitter resource provided a list of official Twitter accounts for numerous fashion writers, models, designers and hair and beauty experts. Hashtags were prevalent for the event, creating a broader platform for exposure. Some hashtags like #nyfw (New York Fashion Week), #MBFW (Mercedes Benz Fashion Week) and #fno (Fashion Night Out) were dominant in Fashion Week tweets. Live tweeting by designers, writers and celebrities provided a play-by-play commentary that made it easy for the rest of the world to stay informed.

YouTube offered up a fashion guide of its own with the official Mercedes Benz Fashion Week channel Live from the Runway where fans could watch full collection shows from designers they were interested in. Celebrity interviews, highlight videos and past events helped contribute to the nearly 3.5 million views on the channel.

Fashion Week Impact On Fashion Brands On Twitter

Because Twitter has been the dominant social channel connecting fashion fans with the event and the designers, we wanted to see if the generated buzz affected the performance of the chosen brands on Twitter. Has the fact that the event took place via the social network boosted the amount of times they have been mentioned, did it help them gain more followers or boost their Engagement Rate? We decided to monitor 5 fashion brands by gathering data from the Fashion Week (September 6th – 13th) and compare them to the same period a month before (August 6th – 13th) to find out. Here are the results:

The Fashion Week Has Generated More Mentions On Twitter

All the brands have obviously been mentioned more frequently during the Fashion Week. For example Michael Kors has been mentioned 8 702 times compared to the 313 mentions in August.

Fashion Week Increased Follower Growth

Most of the designers were so successful on the runway and on Twitter that they have convinced more people to follow them across the network during last week. Fashion designer Betsey Johnson has increased her follower base by 66% in the last week when compared to the same week in August. She seems to be retweeting a lot from fans and celebrities and tweeting personal tweets with pictures. Michael Kors on the other hand gained only a few new followers compared to his very productive week in August and Calvin Klein didn´t perform that well either.

Some Have Been More Engaging Than Others

Michael Kors, Tommy Hilfiger and Lacoste have tweeted content that their fans appreciated, like photos from backstage, captures of models getting ready for the show, pictures with celebrities etc. Betsey Johnson and Calvin Klein have been engaging their followers better in August.

P.S.: Don´t forget to save the date for the upcoming Engage 2012 event taking place October 23rd in New York City! Find out more here.