Social media influencer and International Jewellery London guest speaker, Katerina Perez, is one of the most popular and inspiring names in the jewellery industry today.
Here, she shares her top advice to help you excel on social media, grow your brand and make a great impression on your customers…
Q. Influencers such as yourself use social media to its absolute advantage – what would be your advice to others who want to emulate your success?
For me social media is the diary of my jewellery discoveries, so I tend to share pieces that impress me rather than posting jewellery that gets the most likes. There are two things I find vital for success, and not just on social media; it is high quality of work and consistency in what you do.
To provide the first I photograph jewellery on my professional camera thinking carefully about the composition of a frame to make a photo appealing. I also regularly team up with talented jewellery photographers like Simon Martner or Turi Lovik Kirknes. To provide the second aspect, I post on a regular basis a few times a day, and keep high standards of work always looking for ways to improve.
Q. Lots of brands worry about ‘reach’ and ‘engagement’ on social media, what would your top tips be to see better stats on social?
I believe that the quality of featured content is the key factor in growing social media followers. It is important to have high quality images with considered composition that help to create a visual story. And it is the story that passes the message and keeps your followers interested in your profile.
Working with influencers who have the right audience is another way of increasing the reach as well as paid social media advertising. With the new algorithm Instagram measure one’s popularity on the rate of engagement, so a brand or a designer needs to ensure that they interact with their audience.
Q. Instagram is full of beautiful images, how can brands, businesses and individuals stand out?
It’s all about creating your own style. For example, some brands post images in specially designed frames, others use the same filter on all their images to have a unified look, a third group choose to stick to certain type of photos e.g. minimalistic. These are just a few examples.
When searching for a style it is important to check what your competitors are doing: what photography they tend to share, how often they post, what kind of images they have, what captions they use. Do they resort to similar style photos or experiment with their visual content? Having answers to these questions will help you to understand how to stand out.
Q. What do you think brands and businesses underestimate about social media?
Many brands underestimate the power of social media, they want results too quickly and confuse it for a selling tool. Having success on Instagram or Facebook requires a lot of effort and regular analysis that can help to improve performance in the future. One of the great tools I use is Iconosquare which is an Instagram app that offers a variety of analytics, allows you to schedule posts and see how your competitors are doing.
Q. Do you think social media can lead to sales or do you think it is more about brand awareness and reputation, or both?
I believe the brand awareness and desirability that social media creates will inevitably lead to sales. However, actual sales also happen on Instagram – I have heard on numerous occasions even from high jewellery brands that they would get a direct message or an email with requests that turn into sales.
Q. How do you see social media progressing for jewellery brands?
In the age of technology social media will continue to strive and I am sure we will be actively using new emerging channels in the future. For now, Instagram is the most important tool, but it is changing a lot and becoming a lot like Facebook. With such tendency brands might start looking at new methods of reaching out to potential clients.
We’re #withyou connecting your brand with social media influencers, bloggers and high profile names from the national and international jewellery industry.
Meet Katerina in person at IJL 2017! Discover our Seminar Programme here.
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