The document outlines strategies for building a successful apparel e-store through digital media and social integration, emphasizing the importance of creating a socially interactive shopping experience, leveraging influencers, and implementing SEO best practices. It details a multi-step approach including website design, social media strategies, content marketing, and various forms of advertising to enhance user engagement and increase sales. Additionally, the document highlights case studies and examples of effective social media usage in the fashion industry, demonstrating the impact of viral content and community involvement.

1. A few thoughts
on how to
build the coolest
apparel e-store
through
Digital Media & Social Thinking
Chandramouli Bhattacharya

2. Pillar 1
Socially integrated – Make
shopping a truly social
experience with friends
and sharing in each part of
the journey
Pillar 2
Leverage influencers –
Establish influencer status
through blogger network
and evangelist programs
“Fashion is a highly social category, and people
naturally want to share the things they find, want and
purchase.” – ShoeDazzle on FB Testimonials
Pillar 3
Pillar 4
Back linking, SEO and Web
PR
Content heavy strategy,
creative ideas: aiming for
content virality

3. Basic Approach
Step 2 - SEO best practices
SEO - Keyword Research
- Backlinking
- Tracking
Step 1:
Website
- Website design best practices
- Website integration with social
- Integration with Blogs
- Shopper Experience
Step 3:
Social Media Strategy & Email
-Social media ecosystem
-Cross leveraging social media
-Social media programs
-FB best practices and ideas
-Content strategy
-Using FB to test products, ideas
and email integration.
Step 4:
Paid Advertisements
Step 5:
Articles, PR, Affiliates and others
- PPC basics
- Paid features
-Directory listings
-Sponsorship basics
Step 5:
Creatively Inspired

4. Website
Website Design
There is an evolving style ethic for
the stand-out and successful ecommerce apparel stores.
Minimalist luxury undertones,
web 2.0 clear visual centric
interfaces, e-commerce learning?

5. Website – Design Direction
What Do We Know About
Evolving Design
Preferences?
Rich product photography
Neutral tones
Large Picture tiles format
Vintage Photography

6. Social Integration
“Fashion is a highly social category, and
people naturally want to share the
things they find, want and purchase.” –
ShoeDazzle case study
The website should have an
inbuilt social mechanism.
“Upworthy has accumulated 1.3
million Facebook fans who are
reader zero in their viral content
model .
Upworthy promotes stories and
makes it easy for people to post
the stories on Facebook to share
with friends.
The site has two large Share on
Facebook buttons and a pop-out
box that prompts people to Like
its page. This strategy has led to
phenomenal growth. In one
year,.” – Facebook Developer
success stories
Create a rich social shopping
experience
through
social
pluggins, virality buttons. And call
to action
“77% of ecommerce shoppers prefer
social media logins”. – Jay Baer of
Convince and convert

7. Social Integration – Few Examples
Opt-in Email
Create group
sharing/scrapbook
building app
Loud and clear
Website Pre-Launch Stage
Build Customer/Visitor
Database
Offer incentives to email
signup – Vouchers/Coupons
Social Media Buttons
Article sharing
Picture Pinning Features
At every step of the
customer journey use Like
button, Send button, Follow
and embed, Share,
Facepile, Comments,
activity feed etc.
Eg: WANTWORTHY
Gamify platform with PBLs
Use FB Apps – Social
Graphs
Promote social actions.
Tried on – “Rahul Tried on
this suit”
Closeted – “James closeted
this shirt”
Steal – “Chander wants to
steal that style”
Eg: POSE
Make it cross platform

8. Blog Integration
Mother Blog
Blogger Relations – 2 Strategies
Incubate Evangelist Network
Have blog elements feature on
the LANDING PAGE.
Influencers/Trendsetters
have
immense pull in the Fashion and
apparel business.
Find influential bloggers and offer
video/podcast/interviews
and
offer scribed versions with link
backs. Authority links.
Roll out incentive scheme for
wanna-be bloggers and young
designers.
Support blog financially and
technically.
Use blogs for social reach,
personalization, evangelism and
linkbacks.
Have a highly functional and
stylized central blog.
Blog is an excellent content
management tool and Google
loves constantly updated content.
Establish blog as the content
bank of stories, content and
establish it as the original Social
Platform in terms of FB and
Pinterst content arising through
it.
Don’t use standard vanilla blog
theme but don’t go for something
too complicated.
Roll out design collections with
influential bloggers.
Find medium-authority bloggers
within the niche and subscribe to
their updates.(page rank of 3-5
and alexa rank of 100000500000)
Search for bloggers on blog
catalogues, technorati and google
blog search.
Link to them through your blog.
Reward through Blogging awards.
Use Bloggers as content creators
and social network content
managers.

9. Why are Bloggers Important
Leandra Medine
manrepeller.com
3.7 page views per month
Booming affiliate network
The Sartorialist.com
Trendsetter in early 2000s of the
street style cult.
Street style photography evolved
as major fashion trend.
Bryan Boy
Susie Lau
Works with Gap, Urban Outfitters
and H&M on campaigns and
special projects.
No.5 most influential blogger in
the fashion world.
328,000+ Twitter follower
Started as a blogger – now judge
America’s Next Top Model show.
Shared platform with Ana
Wintour (Vogue/Devil wears
Prada) NY Fashion week
Confessions of a Closet
Shaily Khera
One of India’s most prominent
style bloggers.

10. Site SEO – Best Practices
Choose Best keywords/research
Freekeyword.wordtracker.com or
Google keyword tracker
Long tail keywords and be
extremely specific
Do not over-optimize keywords
Have ample back linking
Blogger
backlinking,
Online
groups, Google groups, Craigslist,
Link directories, Local directories,
Google local directories.
University/Colleges
through
college programs or roll outs
through evangelist network.
Keep on Constant back linking
Research competition back links
Use open site explorer (SEOMOZ
tool) to research competition
back links and filter to show
followed and external links only
Use page authority and domain
authority
to
determine
prospective link value (ranking of
30 and above)
Keyword tag best practices
Use of title tags, headline tags,
definite use of alt tags, content
tags, meta tags
Use of keyword tagging and links
on back linked articles, blogs and
author bios
Clear site
structures
maps
and
URL
Have keywords for all pages and
not just for the main page
Use of SEM for initial website
visibilty
Keep Content fresh, original and
grammatically hygienic
There are around 200 different
SEO conditions as laid out by
various webmasters. Constant
adherence to those guidelines

11. Social Media – Basic Approach
Use Blog as the content core but
FACEBOOK as the central social
networking platform
Use social media channels to
create cross platform likes and
opt-ins to reinforce presence in
customer shopping journey
Social media active segment for
the email list
Reward engaged FB users by
giving them access to discounts
and programs first
Run group discount FB like
campaigns through email
Use Email Marketing and FB as
complements
Use Social media icons across
platforms eg: FB like buttons on
emails. Blog links on Twitter feed
FB, Email, Twitter, Pinterest
message integration
Test inventory on FB and Pinterst,
promote via email campaigns
Time of the email testing could
tell when to update FB status
Cross channel headline testing
through Twitter, Email and FB
Use FB to source email content
Use email to test future FB ads
Use Facebook fan posts in emails
and on Twitter
If something has clicked on FB ask
people through sorted mail lists
to come to FB
Content, Community, Contests
Social Analytics
Use services such as HOTSUITE to
manage social conversations
Use GOOGLE ANALYTICS to
measure cross channel impact
Use FB ANALYTICS or
PAGE
LEVER to cull out FB insights
Syndicate content across the web
through RSS feeds (for blogposts)
and RSS directories
Use FB groups for evangelist
network interaction and ideas
sharing in addition to FB page
Publish daily content and Youtube
videos (embedded and on
Youtube channel is short and long
format)

12. Some Facts – Jay Baer
“58% of adults check email in the morning 1st thing (USA) FB is 11%”
“84% of people who like pages on FB have been customers of the
company.”
“Only 18% of corporates have social media icons in emails.”

13. Face Book Stories - Upworthy
Upworthy Example noteworthy
as its mission is to pinpoint and
distribute internet content on
the net without creating own
content. Growth is purely
referral
Two large Share on Facebook
buttons and a pop-out box that
prompts people to Like its page
Facepile plugin to show people
coming to Upworthy.com which
of their friends like the site
Upworthy estimates that about
65% of the US population on
Facebook has a friend who likes
the site
Publish stories that help people
express their identities on
Facebook
Upworthy also focuses on
quality vs. quantity in stories.
The team uses Facebook to
identify worthwhile topics
Use A/B testing and analytics to
nail headlines
For each piece of content,
Upworthy curators create at least
25 headlines. The managing
editor chooses four of those and
tests them to see how readers
respond
Upworthy has learned that a
good headline can be the
difference between 1,000 or
1,000,000 people reading or
viewing a story
It tabulates clicks per share and
shares per view
Uses their Facebook Page to
engage your audience
Statistics
Grew Upworthy.com to 10.4
million unique visitors in 1 year
(as of March 2013)

14. Face Book Stories - Poshmark
Poshmark is a mobile
marketplace opening up people’s
closets for shopping
Using Facebook Login,
Poshmarkers snap and list
Instagram-like pictures of items
The Poshmark experience is built
around real-time "Posh Parties",
virtual themed-based parties
where people gather on the app
at the same time to shop and sell
their fashions
Poshmark also uses age
segmentation to find images that
appeal to different age groups. It
also uses geographic-based
audience targeting prior to
hosting its city-based live Posh
Parties
Tests multiple creatives and keep
content fresh
Poshmark uses three primary
images while testing another two
and targets keywords and brands
App Insights measures paid and
organic app installs. Ad
Manager measures and analyzes
the impact of Poshmark’s mobile
app install ads campaigns
Poshmark
implemented
several Open Graph actions
including the Like action.

15. Face Book Stories - Pose
Pose is an integrated mobile app,
canvas app and web site about
style and trends
FB to attract new users &reengage existing users
Pose mapped the most frequent
interactions people take in their
app - pose, comment and love to Open Graph actions to
maximize the number of stories
users publish
As more people interact the more
the story will appear in news feed
Open graph actions
Pose an Item - "Morin Oluwole
posed an item"
Comment on an Item - "Jeff
Sherlock commented on an item"
Love an Item - "Kristin Thayer
loved an item"
Since launching with Open Graph,
Pose has seen a 5X increase in
daily signups for their mobile app
and web site by making it easy for
people to share the different
products and fashion they like
with friends

16. Uniqlo – Pinterest Story
Interactive campaign for scrollers
Using more than 100 shell accounts, a team of more than a dozen
simultaneously pinned rows of long graphics in a five-category takeover .
As users scrolled, the graphics appeared animated in the style of an old
film strip..
http://youtu.be/e5FM-VcE7UA
Winner of Webby 2013 in Best use of social media category

17. Youtube and co-creation stories
Youtube
Using constant crowd generated
videos to generate interest
Using commissioned artists to
create content on loose briefs
Co- Creation
Using contents to generate
interest in engaged amateurs to
be part of the creation process

18. Other Media Opportunities
IPAD and Kindle
Mobile
Use Blog content and evangelist
network pictures and videos to
create
IPAD
and
Kindle
magazines
Use Facebook integrated open
graph apps for mobile prompting
live action
Promote sharing, tagging and
pinning
Use Social APPs to promote live
action
Audio interviews(podcasts) are
great for building profiles,
syndication and SEO
E-books and e-magazines
broaden reach
Use the same content for email
opt-ins
Publish and distribute through
Apple and Kindle store
Use foursquare style geo-tagging
options for style hotspots and
evangelist network street meets
Store Locations
Use store locations to display live
social feeds and user feeds.
Use QR code mechanism to
register shoppers on the network

19. Paid Media
PPC Advertisement
Product or site sponsorship
Use Google ad words (yahoo
Marketing, MSN Adcenter) for
pre-launch buzz creation, new
user groups, rapid awareness etc
Other sites in a similar segment
Newsletter/Blog sponsorship
Forum Sponsorship
Word press theme sponsorship
Use predominantly CPC model
on Google ad words network
and search network
Directory listing
Yahoo.com,Business.com,
BOTW.org, DMOZ.org and other
local directories
Text Link purchasing
Grey area
Textlinkbrokers.com
Text-link-ads.com
Use web PR to bring in location
specific attention
Prweb.com
Sourcewire.com
What should press releases do
Create controversy
Make people feel special
Appeal to a specific market
segment
Contain a link back to your
website
Successful local promotions
Personal PR with bloggers, PR
people
Perhaps even local PR firms

20. Some more thoughts
How to leverage and
create a robust evangelist
network?
Leverage the ample supply
of fashion design
graduates, wannabe
bloggers, Youtube
musicians and
photographers
As a pre-pre launch activity
advertise to this target
group through FB
campaigns, Pages and
Groups and on campus
“ Earn Fashion Street Creds
– Get rewarded”
Launch paid sponsorships
for top few and monetary
prizes for the inspirational
Get to use college back
links and young talented
evangelists
Crowd-Sourcing Ideas
Use the evangelist network
groups (separate from
brand page) to crowd
source video and content
ideas with prizes and a
gamified incentives
How can the app interface
look?
Launch app in the
evangelist network
Have social action buttons
App clearly set-up to create
sharing
Campaigns to promote
virality and buzz
Constant ideas self
produced and through
evangelist network to
promote video and other
content virality
Perhaps our own Gangnam
style or Oldspice man
Here is an idea:
“MEN IN SUIT CHALLENGE”
Short hilarious clips of men
in full formal suits taking
unusual challenges
1. Diving underwater
2. Climbing coconut trees
3. Shopping in hugely
crowded mandis
4. Undergoing millitary
drills

21. Notes: This PPT is more of an overview than a
complete plan.
Chandramouli Bhattacharya
Ph: +919916602825, +919013494223
chandramouli_bhattacharya2013@pgp.isb.edu
chander.bhattacharya@gmail.com
Thank You