Your Products Don't Belong on Instagram

....And here's why.

If you're like other brand owners, you plagued by uncertainty.

As you scroll through your Instagram feed, you see other brands experiencing the success you envision, leaving you to wonder where you're going wrong.

You've tried:

• Getting top-of-funnel reach with reels and TikToks
• Running your own facebook ads
• Hiring an ad agency when that hasn't worked

...And at best those efforts have broken even.

You've tried:

• Incrementally increasing garment GSM
• Creating an unboxing experience
• Collaborating with other better-known brands

You've already:

• Followed the social trends
• Created behind the scenes content
• Started a personal brand (or showed more personal aspects of the business)

But fire emojis 🔥 don't hide the fact that your brand still isn't where you want it to be.

Nothing has worked enough to hand in your resignation at your day job.

But those things were never going to work!

Why?

Because the traditional social media model for streetwear brands is broken.

Fashion industry leaders still:

• Unethically fake sell-out clothing drops to manipulate the hype cycle
• Believe that the only way successfully scale is to obsessively market their product
• Insinuate that branding is not a priority
• Take more than they give back
• Focus on increasing sales, not build communities
• Make instagram pages that appear more like a sell-out store page
• Believe that having a greater mission is reserved for the charities

And that's the only model you've been given.

So of course you copied it!

But you've had enough of your labour not harbouring the results that it deserves.

You're less than ideal 9-5 was never meant to be for-life.

You dream of:

• Handing in your resignation form at your day job
• Making your brand more than a side hustle
• Working for yourself in something you love

But without working all the hours

• Not spending a whole day making ONE piece of content
• Systemizing content creation processes
• Making time for ALL the other tasks you have to complete

At the end of the day, you just want:

• To love the work you're doing again
• The freedom to work where you want with who you want
• To build a community of individuals who love your brand and vision.

IT'S NOT AS HARD AS YOU THINK!

But it requires coming to terms with one simple truth…

Your products don’t belong on Instagram.

At least not as much as many brands post them.

Here's the thing:

Despite what you're told to believe, Instagram isn’t a shopping platform, and it shouldn't be treated as such.

It’s a an entertainment platform.

And although it CAN be use to shop, Instagram does everything in it's power to keep more users engaged for longer amounts of time.

That means better entertainment.

And t pages that entertain better, succeed better.

The big guys like NIKE have known this for a long long time...

Take one look at their Instagram page and you'll find very few product promotions.

Instead they post mini-documentaries, athlete stories, and inspirational quotes.

It's this strategy that has allowed NIKE to stay relevant and other brands to grow beyond their national markets.

And with this strategy, you can turn your side hustle into a full-time job (and beyond).

But I hear you....

How do you post non-product related content while remaining on-brand as a clothing label?

And if you aren't posting your products, what would you post instead??

But you don't want to annoy your audience with content they didn't sign up for!

More on that tomorrow...

Here to help,

Elijah