“The Idea is Not To Compete,” A Best Practice Guide to Kith’s Instagram Accounts.
Kith — Noun; familiar friends, neighbors, or relatives.
At Kith, we are a community of friends, neighbors, and everyone with a multifunctional lifestyle. You will learn about our best practices on Instagram and how we share our messages effectively. You’ve made it this far because you are resilient and your work ethic is on a 1000%. Our purpose is to showcase products, building community through collaboration, with limited quantity releases by our founder Ronnie Fieg.
On Instagram, we have five accounts: @Kith, @Kithfootwear, @Kithwomen, @Kithtreats, and @Kithkids. For this guide, we will go over our three significant pages. Content may travel through all accounts; however, we prefer to have each page to maintain their individuality. The Kith account showcases our newest collaborations, any retro products, new releases, and company announcements. The Kith Footwear account is exclusively for the latest footwear content that we have either created or are carrying at our locations. Lastly, the Kith Women account is for all our products and content for our women market. Throughout all accounts, our target audience age is from 18 to 35. Our demographic includes people from lively cities and people who are interested in New York City culture and style. Let us dive further into each account.
The Kith account is the central hub of what we do and who we are. We prioritize that our content is both centered and symmetrical. High quality, high contrast, and grid placement are essential.
Our page should display sets of threes or nines when we are announcing or showcasing a new collaboration. We post a minimum of three times a week to a max of nine.
Additionally, you will notice a slightly off white background image from our photos. This color is HEX #f2f2f2 (RGB:242,242,242 and CYMK:4,2,2,0). This color is used as a background for all of the products we post.
We have previously included a white border, and in case we received word to bring it back, here is an example.
The Kith Footwear account reflects similar guidelines as our Kith account. The background for all sneaker posts is the same color, HEX #f2f2f2. There are exceptions to this depending on the brand. For example, Yezzy footwear content background features an individual shade. In addition to the background, all footwear is shown primarily facing to the right, with a minimum of 2 photos in the carousel style, while maintaining the centered, high quality, and high contrast image. We publish a minimum of two posts a day to a maximum of seven.
Lastly, the Kith Women account highlights flowy and playful composition. The background is the same as the “Kith grey,” and models are centered. We post content on this account minimum of once a day to a maximum of two. There is flexibility with product placement in an image, allowing for some to be off-center, which differs from our two other accounts.
Overall, with our accounts, we value consistency, clarity, quality, and symmetry. To go further into our post details, let's dive into the captions, quality, and engagement. The character count for a post is an average of 124, with a maximum of 195. For the Kith account, the character count can go up to 904, but only when we are announcing a collaboration.
We do not include hashtags within our captions. We do include mentions of our collaborators, followed by a call to action of “visit our website at kith.com or link in bio.” The quality of our content is part of our look. Thus, the pixel quality is high at 300dpi and 1080 x 1350px for portrait and 1080 x 1080px for squared post. Here are examples of what not to do.
Our communication and engagement with our followers are important. We have found that most of our content will have more likes than comments. However, when we have a follower who poses a question regarding the content, we will respond promptly and clearly to the question. If we get a comment that is of dissatisfaction, although it does not occur frequently, we do not address these publicly but privately through direct messenger.
Overall, this guide is your steady foundation to set you up for success with future content and campaigns. To quote Kith’s founder Ronnie Fieg, “The idea is not to compete…we are just who we are”.
References
Complex (2017, September 5). How Ronnie Fieg Grew KITH From Store to Brand to Empire | Blueprint [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGWLlLP-TLs&feature=emb_logo
Kith. [@Kith]. (n.d.). Posts. [Instagram profile]. Retrieved October 11, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/kith/
Kith Footwear. [@Kithfootwear]. (n.d.). Posts. [Instagram profile]. Retrieved October 11, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/kithfootwear/
Kith Kids. [@Kithkids]. (n.d.). Posts. [Instagram profile]. Retrieved October 11, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/kithkids/
Kith Treats. [@Kithtreats]. (n.d.). Posts. [Instagram profile]. Retrieved October 11, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/kithtreats/
Kith Women. [@Kithwomen]. (n.d.). Posts. [Instagram profile]. Retrieved October 11, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/kithwomen/