Is Social Media Engagement Changing for Jewelry Brands?
Do you feel like you’re struggling to stand out in a sea of sparkle? While it’s true Instagram is the platform where jewelry brands can hope for engagement, the number of total interactions is decreasing. However, not all hope is lost, and some jewelry brands are thriving on Instagram.
If you’ve ever researched jewelry-related hashtags on Instagram, you’ve probably seen how saturated some of them are. For example, the #jewelry hashtag alone has more than 50,000,000 posts, while #jewelrydesigner has more than 3,000,000, and #jewelrylover has more than 1,000,000.
On their Daily Insights blog, Gartner L2 recently published a post about the roles that social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook Pages, and Twitter play in social media strategies for jewelry brands. With Facebook and Twitter serving more of a customer service function these days, Instagram seems to be the only platform where brands can hope for discovery by new customers and engagement with fans.
The most successful brands (L2 uses Adina’s Jewels as an example) are getting their jewelry on the celebrities, models, and fashion bloggers “du jour”, who serve as style icons to consumers who range from Gen Z to Young Millennials. Gen Z consumers “are often inspired by peers, which makes sense regarding their current life stage and their extreme connectivity to social media,” according to an article from Forbes.
At the same time, Gen Z consumers are not established in a career and only have income from a part-time job, entry-level job, or parental allowance. It makes sense that they’d be buying from a brand like Adina’s Jewels, which sells fashion jewelry priced between $28 and $1,450.
So what are you supposed to do about Instagram if you don’t target Gen Z? Is Gartner correct in wondering, has Instagram “reached a saturation point for jewelry content”? Should you give up on social?
My take: worry less about the numbers and focus more on developing your Instagram as the absolute best representation of your brand – like a visual elevator pitch. Use it as a proving ground to try new imagery, colors, or artistic direction. Consider it a place to practice your brand voice by exploring new iterations of your caption copy.
If you’re doing all these things right, you may not hit the high numbers, but you will attract the right customer, if she’s on Instagram. If she’s not an Instagram user, then maybe her social-media-savvy friend or daughter will tell her about you, and you’ll find your way to her anyway.