Berlin-based Highsnobiety is a popular multimedia brand and online shop with a strong global following. Defining itself as “dedicated to today s generation of style-conscious individuals,” Highsnobiety covers the latest news and trends in streetwear, fashion, lifestyle and culture through its blog, magazine and social media presence.
“Social media is one of Highsnobiety s most important tools,” says Miranda Unwin, Social Media Editor at Highsnobiety. The group’s Facebook page, with about 2.4 million likes and followers, is one of the main drivers of traffic to Highsnobiety s website. Additionally, the group maintains Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok accounts to reach different audience segments.
The challenge:
- Improve efficiency and ease of social publishing
- Manage and optimize cross-platform publishing
The approach
- Use Echobox’s A/B testing to inform social and editorial strategy
- Use timing optimization during out-of-hours posting
The result
- +43% increase in Facebook clicks
- +59% growth in % traffic from Facebook
- +10 hrs time saved per week
1: The challenge
Highsnobiety previously used SocialFlow for its social media publishing, as well as Facebook’s own publishing tools, but found the user experience to be lacking. “The user interface of the previous solution was not the most elegant, and Facebook’s own tools are a nightmare to use, quite frankly,” says Miranda. They needed a more intuitive solution to facilitate work across the social media team and save time. Additionally, they sought to optimize publishing across platforms, at all hours of the day, in order to reach audiences around the world.
2: The approach
Highsnobiety decided to replace SocialFlow with Echobox, the AI-powered publishing automation solution chosen by leading brands around the globe. Social media teams use Echobox to drive greater social reach and automate their social media activity, in part or in full.
Miranda says Highsnobiety chose Echobox for its performance optimization capabilities and ease of use compared to SocialFlow and Facebook’s own tools: “Echobox has a much more intuitive user experience, and also offers a range of optimization features, as well as A/B testing.”
Echobox has a much more intuitive user experience [than SocialFlow], and also offers a range of optimization features, as well as A/B testing.
Miranda Unwin, Social Media Editor at Highsnobiety
Transitioning from SocialFlow to Echobox was “pretty seamless” for the Highsnobiety team, who observed immediate benefits. “We quickly experienced an improvement in our internal workflows, time savings and increased performance,” recalls Miranda. Highsnobiety solves several different challenges using Echobox, including the ability to schedule a significant volume of cross-platform output across the team. “The Schedule Queue updates immediately so everybody using Echobox can see what has already been scheduled,” Miranda explains, “and being able to post to Facebook and Twitter concurrently is a huge time-saver.”
A/B Testing
One of the features Highsnobiety finds most valuable is Echobox’s organic for Facebook – a feature that’s unique in the market. The ability to test different headlines, messages, images and videos to see what resonates most with its Facebook audience is a major advantage for Highsnobiety.
Miranda says the team uses Echobox’s A/B testing feature “all the time,” for nearly all posts that don’t require immediate sharing. The insights gained from these A/B tests are then applied to Highsnobiety’s wider editorial strategy. “It’s very helpful for both the social media team as well as the editorial team, as I can provide feedback for the website’s articles’ headlines and imagery,” she notes.
Using Echobox’s integrated analytics, Highsnobiety can quickly understand which content performs best. With just one click, the team can then reshare the most successful posts to maximize their impact.
“I often reshare high-performing posts, so it’s helpful to be able to easily access analytics to see how posts performed, as well as the A/B test results, both of which inform my posting strategy,” explains Miranda.
[A/B Testing] is very helpful for both the social media team as well as the editorial team, as I can provide feedback for the website’s articles’ headlines and imagery.
Miranda Unwin, Social Media Editor at Highsnobiety
Timing optimization and out-of-hours posting
Highsnobiety enjoys the flexibility Echobox offers for managing social media publishing: the team can alternate between manually posting shares and letting Echobox fully manage sharing.
For example, to ensure content is shared at the best possible time, Highsnobiety uses Echobox’s timing optimization, powered by artificial intelligence. Every few seconds, Echobox recalculates every possible posting sequence based on the latest data to determine the optimal share times to increase traffic.
“I want full control in case of breaking news. However, timing optimization is used for overnight posting, as well as for setting up weekend and holiday posts of our evergreen content, to ensure the posts will receive the ideal time slot when there’s nobody monitoring things,” Miranda explains. “Being able to set a post to publish at the most optimal time in a set window is great for scheduling during the off hours.”
3: The Results
After switching to Echobox from SocialFlow, Highsnobiety observed increases in Facebook engagement and performance: clicks on Facebook grew by 43%, and the percentage of traffic delivered from Facebook grew by 59%.
In addition to improved Facebook performance, Highsnobiety also realized efficiency gains and time-savings of 10 hours per week. “I can say without a doubt that compared to posting directly on Facebook, I save hours every week,” says Miranda. “Echobox is much faster, much more intuitive. It’s much easier to coordinate between my organic posts and the sponsored team’s posts, and enables everyone to work at a faster pace because things can be rescheduled and tweaked very easily.”
Emphasizing the benefits of Echobox’s integrated features, she adds, “The A/B testing is very helpful for honing posts to suit your audience. It has provided a lot of helpful and sometimes surprising insights as to what our audience prefers.”
“I can say without a doubt that compared to posting directly on Facebook, I save hours every week. Echobox is much faster, much more intuitive.”
Miranda Unwin, Social Media Editor at Highsnobiety
4: The long and short of it
As Highsnobiety expands its reach to style minded audiences everywhere, Miranda and her team plan to continue experimenting with Echobox and learning from A/B tests. “I’ve been enjoying the new A/B testing for image posts, so I’m looking forward to playing around with those more,” she notes.
Her advice to other social media teams? For those looking to improve social performance while saving time on processes, she “definitely” recommends Echobox: “It’s extremely easy to learn, even for those unfamiliar with social media posting, and is a huge time saver.”
