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Insights

Promotional practices *really* working right now

Start glowing-up your social media platforms and get on top of your promo game ready for the holiday season. Keep reading to discover our round up of techniques and content creation hacks to use across your social media platforms.

Plan merch photoshoots

Posting content that shows yourself sporting or using your own merch is key. For all types of creators, showing off the quality of your products to your audience helps to increase sales as well as establish your personal brand. Set up your own DIY photoshoot and style your products in a way that engages your community. You can order samples of your products at base cost within the “Listings” section of your account.

Creating video content is an effective way to capture the interest of your community of fans on social media. Use platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram IGTV, Reels, and Stories to upload dynamic videos featuring your merch samples–this can increase sales by 50%. Wear your merch while filming, mention your products within your content and even consider filming a dedicated editorial style video to announce the launch of your products. Always make sure to provide links and reference to your products by using #linkinbio on Instagram posts and including URL links in your captions and descriptions. Check out this super cool video by Miles Carter generating hype around his Made to feel products.

There are a tons of tools online you can utilize to help you to create effective video content featuring your products. For example, experiment with Placeit’s video section of mock ups and insert your merch designs for Instagram stories, video posts and product demo’s. Don’t forget, Instagram and TikTok both have free built in video editing functions, and they’re super simple to use—add text, filters, cuts, music and more!

Collect and share social proof

Successful creators incorporate social proof into their promotional efforts by collecting and sharing customer photos. Fan’s selfies act as positive reviews of your products and sharing them is an engaging way of generating trust in your brand. 

Whatever way you decide to promote your product, encourage fans to share photos wearing your products. Double up this kind of content for your own social channels and promote the popularity of your products. Sharing your fan’s content helps you interact on a more personal level with your community while building relationships with your followers, encouraging loyalty and building trust.

Brand consistency

It’s important to create brand consistency across all of your social platforms so followers can easily recognize you—we recommend using the same branding elements between your store and socials. If you need help creating design assets, check out these design resources to help you get started.

The last, yet perhaps one of the most important promotional practices is making sure you’re frequently sharing good quality imagery with your followers. Consider creating a Later.com account to plan your content across all social media platforms. Try to post at least 3-5 times a week with a variety of content. Come up with a strategy and experiment with posting at certain times of the day to see which posts get more engagement.

Kick off your promotional strategy by ordering samples of your physical products at base cost price. Head to the dashboard to get started.

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Creators

How Sanne Vander built a successful merch brand on YouTube from her bedroom

Lifestyle YouTuber Sanne Vander is passionate about creating health and fitness content for her community. Sanne’s wellness–focused channel educates and inspires viewers with beauty tips, healthy living and fitness plans.

Continue reading to discover how Sanne built her brand (VNDR), created a dedicated community of fans (a.k.a. her “Vander family”), finds design inspiration, promotes her products, and more.

Building a relatable brand

“I fell in love with the concept of being able to create video content, upload it from your bedroom and share it with the world. Whether you are making videos or merch, all creative processes start with a story. What message do you want to get out to the world? Don’t be afraid to change your direction along the way.“

Sanne’s brand VNDR official has rocketed since growing her following across YouTube and Instagram. The secret behind her success is being able to engage with fans on a personal level. On Sanne’s YouTube channel you’ll find the “girl chat” playlist, discussing her personal struggles—covering everything from mental health to periods and shaving. Opening up in such a genuine way helps her connect with viewers, building trust around her brand. Fans are able to join Sanne on her fitness journey too, following her work–out experiments and transformation challenges. Her engaging, relatable video content has enabled Sanne to establish a large, loyal following of people who are proud to wear the products she creates.  

Designing products fit for ‘Vanders’

Creating merch with Spring is super easy and efficient. I use the launcher to create designs directly without using other software like Photoshop or Illustrator.”

By creating her own sleek storefront, VNDR official merch, Sanne joined a network of thousands of influential, young entrepreneurial women using Spring to grow their personal brand.

As well as making design concepts personal to her story and identity, a lot of Sanne’s merch inspiration comes from her fans directly. Sanne’s products include not only variations of her branding, but uplifting messages on her clothing and accessories. For example, her Let’s Glow hoodie features two dragons on the back, encouraging Vanders to “become the strongest, most powerful” versions of themselves. 

Selling a range of products from athletic wear to hoodies, Sanne motivates followers to get #vanderfit and wear them while following her workouts. Take note–she’s successfully integrated top trending loungewear and is seeing promising sales from new products like fanny packs, sports bras, socks, and beanies. 

‘Glowing up’ social media to promote merch

Sanne excels at promoting on social media. She’s got Instagram totally figured out, taking full advantage of the platform’s full range of useful tools and features. Sanne follows promotional techniques on Instagram like highlighting her store link within her account bio, using Instagram stories to feature fans wearing VNDR products, as well as posting photos and videos wearing her own products too.

“My Vanders share a lot of photos of themselves wearing VNDR official merch on social media. It makes me happy seeing how amazing the designs look on them.”

Sanne also effectively promotes her products on YouTube. She’s set up the Teespring x YouTube merch shelf integration to showcase products and increase sales. She’s also optimized her channel banner to feature merch images and most importantly, wears her products in her video content too. As viewers watch her content they’re able to preview and purchase the same product from her merch shelf below the video.    

Thank you to Sanne for sharing her story! You can check out Sanne’s merch on her VNDR storefront, join the #Vanderfit club by subscribing Sanne’s Youtube Channel or check out her VNDR official instagram.

Get started on building your brand and designing your merch below.

Categories
Insights

How utilizing fan’s selfies can increase sales

Social proof is an important marketing tool, especially when it comes to online shopping. Social proof normally includes user-generated content like customer testimonials, case studies, online reviews, etc.  Considering 84% of millennials are likely to be influenced into making a purchase based on user-generated content (social proof) it’s clear just how powerful social proof can be! 

Lots of creators incorporate social proof into their promotional efforts by collecting and sharing their community’s photos. Photos of fans wearing and using your products generate hype, as well as affirm the value and quality of the products you’re selling. This content also functions as positive reviews of your products. Sharing them is an engaging way of generating trust in your brand. Not only this, but it also brings your community together, leading to more sales in the future.

Check out our video and complete guide below for examples of how creators are using social proof to leverage more merch sales—get inspired and try them out for yourself.

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Insights

12 ways to increase sales on Twitch

Twitch’s 15 million+ daily active viewers and massively engaged audience makes it the perfect place for streamers to promote their products. Plus you’ll get even more out of the platform using our powerful integrations; the Twitch Merch Store Panel Extension provides customers with a fully-integrated shopping experience and our Streamlabs integration enables buyers to create personalized merch alerts post-purchase that are visible to you and all viewers on stream. 

Don’t forget Teespring is one of the only platforms that enables you to create subscriber-exclusive merch for Twitch too. Whether shoppers access your products through the panel extension or your merch store, they’ll have to verify their subscriber status to purchase these exclusive products. This can be a good tactic for increasing subscriber count while driving sales through limited edition products.

Learn about the top 12 ways streamers are promoting and selling merch on Twitch in the video below. Pick and choose your favorite tactics or use them all to supercharge your sales. Don’t forget to check out Teespring’s complete promo guide for in-depth details and real-world examples of these tips in action. Complete Twitch promo guide.

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Insights

The top Twitter features for promoting products to fans

Twitter has an average of over 300 million monthly active users and it’s the 7th most visited website in the world! Also, over a third of Twitter users buy from a brand they follow—making it a great platform to promote and share your Teespring products. Most brands and organizations have Facebook accounts already, but if you’re new to Twitter you can learn about getting started here.

Using Twitter to promote your products is very easy…but there are a few things you should keep in mind to get the most out of your tweets. The video and complete guide linked below, which are full of examples of how creators are using Twitter’s features successfully—get inspired and try them out for yourself!

Categories
Insights

10 YouTube features all creators should know

Whether you’re an established creator who’s looking to expand their online presence, or someone who’s just starting out, YouTube is a powerful platform to promote your products. Video content is being watched more now than ever before with 85%+ of all internet users in the US watching video content every month. Taking this and YouTube’s incredible 2 billion monthly active users into account means you’ve got a huge potential audience at your fingertips. 

Check out our newest promo guide below, covering 10 features and tools you can us to drive even more sales on YouTube. The the video and complete guide linked below are full of examples of how other creators are using these features successfully—get inspired and try them out for yourself!