Instagram Best Practices Guide: Urban Outfitters
Welcome to Urban Outfitters! We’re a multinational fashion and lifestyle brand, that has also entered the home and beauty market. Our goal is to offer high quality and unique clothing that generally provide funky, laid-back looks. Keep in mind that our main audience is teenagers and twenty-somethings. We use our Instagram as a place to promote products from our many different lines, update followers on current sales, do giveaways, provide real user feedback, and so much more! Here’s a practice guide of how to effectively brand for our Instagram — have fun!
Tone & Voice of Brand:
The main words used to describe our brand’s tone are:
· CHILL // SOOTHING
· UPBEAT // FRIENDLY
· UNIQUE // FUNKY
Writing & Word Count:
As a company, we enjoy making our customers feel comfy cozy, and hope to convey through not only our images, but also our words. When writing Instagram captions, there are a few tricks we keep in mind. Generally we include a colorful description about the item(s) we’re promoting in the picture, have a range of around 2–4 sentences in each caption (a 15–45 word count = ideal), use abbreviated slang words, and use periods for the first sentence, but more exclamation marks when telling people to “tap to shop!” It’s also important to @ our brands, other UO accounts, and influencers, such as @Nike or @UrbanOutfittersHome. Sprinkle some emoji’s here and there if desired. Some of our recent favorites to use are 👀, 💖, ✨, 🌷, 🌈, and 🌿.
We have a few essential hashtags that we use on a consistent basis. They are:
· #UOMens — Use when a product from our men’s line is shown.
· #UOHome — Use when a product from our home line is shown.
· #UOBeauty — Use when a product from our beauty line is shown.
· #UOonYou — Use when sharing a customer’s photo.
· #BDG365 — Use when promoting our BDG denim line.
Visuals:
We want the tone of our brand to also show through our images. We stick to a fairly consistent color palette, which can be seen to the left, and includes beautiful, muted, mainly earth tones.. Our main goal for our Instagram feed is for it to look aesthetically pleasing by being cohesive, with consistent colors and filters. We stick to mainly colored photos, except for when we make black and white video testimonials, like our recent Generation Renewed clips. Make colors pop against neutral backgrounds. Remember that our logo colors are black and white, so having pops of color in our photos adds personality to otherwise simple branding.
When to Post & How Often:
We want to post consistently, but not so much as to become overwhelming for followers. This means post around 1–6 Instagram stories in one day, with posting hours being spread out, and posting on the feed about 2–4 times a day, gradually. The best hours to post on Instagram are from 10am-3pm. Since we post several times throughout the day, we recommend posting first at 10am, next at 1pm, then 3pm, and then 7pm if needed.
Customer Feedback:
Replying to customer’s comments and DM’s is important to use. We recommend taking the first hour of the initial feed posting to respond to some comments. Be sure to respond to DM’s that are deemed worthy of responding to, whether that be with a complaint, asking to partner, and so on.
Overall, we want to create a colorful, laid-back, cozy atmosphere not only in our stores, but also online. Thanks for helping us do so!