Through blogging, Lululemon has created a most enviable image for itself. By associating its brand with yoga, self-esteem empowerment, and living a healthy lifestyle, it has become the face of health and wellness for real people everywhere. Their blog does this in several ways, such as giving readers inspiration to achieve larger-than-life goals (like running a marathon). It also humanizes the brand, which means showing the world that your business is run by real people that consumers can relate to, instead of simply pushing a corporate logo as the face of the company. Humanization is easy for any local business to do. By giving customers a peek into your everyday life, you can show them how you are an expert on the products you sell, and how they can help enhance a lifestyle.

Why it Works

Lululemon features their blog, community happenings, and Twitter feed prominently on their website homepage, giving it more of a community feel than that of an e-commerce store. How? 1) The blog does a perfect job of indirectly selling Lululemon products: By inspiring readers to do things like running, yoga, and leading a healthy lifestyle they are inadvertently pushing them to do things that require, or are at least enhanced by, using their products. 2) They create lasting, relevant content about amazing people in a way that inspires and builds self-esteem. This will bring readers back long after a fashion item a seller is pushing has gone out of style. People will always come back to hear an inspirational message. They won’t to look at pictures of super-skinny models rocking last year’s fall collection. 3) Humanization of the company is big: A recent post (“Munich & Paris, If You Please”) delved into the design team’s educational and inspirational trip to Europe. Poking fun at how much they really ‘worked’ and having team members talk about, and show, how great their life is working at Lululemon gives the brand wicked street credit as one that cares. 4) Brand item promotion through employee use: Presenting their employees in their everyday life as members of their target market shows they stand behind their products, and that they really lead the lifestyle they promote. In a recent blog post, Kristina Simmons, Manager of Social Media at Lululemon, included her in-house email of her weekly exercise routine and an invite to team members to join her.

Bottom Line for Local Business

Humanization of the company and brand promotion through employee use are very easy to partake in for local businesses. This can be done easily by blogging regularly about in-store interactions with customers and employees, or lessons learned from being a retailer. The latter is simple if you truly live your brand, but tricky if you are simply trying to sell it. Give customers a peek into your everyday life and show them how you, an expert on the products you sell, use your products in interesting and effective ways. Photography and video are a great means of communicating this as they create a more real and transparent experience for the viewer, as you’re actually doing it right in front of them instead of simply telling them that you did. Lululemon has almost 300,000 fans on Facebook and 65,000 Twitter followers, not to mention Q3 profits in 2010 were $25.9 million, up 84% over Q3 in 2009. Check out Lululemon for a more direct look!