How Bikini Luxe Has Engaged (And Enraged) On LinkedIn

Of all the founders I hear from with ideas for finding and engaging customers on social media, Candice Galek, CEO and Founder of Bikini Luxe is one who's willing to push the envelope, on multiple fronts. In less than 20 months she’s taken her retail company from a tiny living room table in Miami Beach to a warehouse and a team of more than 40 employees worldwide and has amassed a social media following of more than 250,000.

“As a new startup we’re constantly looking for new and creative ways to increase our brand presence on a budget,” she told me. Social media, naturally, is one of her keys. Ditto influencer marketing.

So far, Galek attributes the lion’s share of Bikini Luxe's success to social media and fashion influencers. Her most recent steps, while highly successful in driving sales, engagement and audience, have also given her and other entrepreneurs pause as she’s pushed the button with a set of provocative posts on LinkedIn.

In a set of updates and articles she put up photos—beautiful images—but in particular, one of Miss Universe contender Natalie Roser, in a rear-view model shot wearing a bikini from fellow company Montce Swim and a headline to spur dialogue: “Is this appropriate for LinkedIn?”

The response was immediate. “I really seemed to have touched a nerve with Linkedin users,” she said. “It’s that issue of ‘continued Facebookification’ of LinkedIn, some said, while others objected for religious reasons.”

Five thousand reads and 500 comments ensued in a matter of days. Most were supportive. Some were not (and were vocal enough to LinkedIn that at one point her account was taken down). But she’s back. The same photo now adorns a follow-up post that analyzes reactions to the original post.

“It seems to be a very hot topic,” she said. “There are more than 6,000 views, 268 likes and 188 comments on my new post. It’s off the chart.”

Interestingly, a similar post she made with a model shot of a shirtless male under the same headline, “Is this appropriate for LinkedIn?” produced nearly zero response. What are the lessons in this that other founders should learn?

I suggest the following:

1. Social media is the world’s greatest test bed. Thanks to the vast size of the social audience, every entrepreneur has access to a medium that will let you know, sometimes even in minutes, if what you’re doing is working or not. You could A/B test a headline. Social media is perfect for testing the tolerance of participants for different approaches on different mediums. Over time, it’s the audience reaction that determines whether a photo or a theme that works on Instagram, for example, will be accepted or rejected on a business-oriented site like LinkedIn.
2. A provocative assertion or question is an audience magnet. Anybody with a keyboard and an attitude is as big or bad as anyone else on the web. There were thousands of responses to Candice’ set of pushing-the-boundaries posts, and when people get involved, for better or worse, they’re engaged.
3. It’s not always a good thing to push boundaries. Like any strategy, “shock and awe” will only take you so far. If you use it too much, the effect will be numbed. And if  the outcome of Galek's posts were to get her permanently kicked off of LinkedIn, the idea would be a bad call. In light of this, Galek is choosing her next steps carefully (in fact one of her most current posts is a tutorial for social media participants on how to block the users or posts they’d prefer not to see). Played too heavily, boundary pushing becomes neither “shock” nor “awe." When an approach becomes predictable, participants fade away.
4. The final proof is in the business and revenue metrics. Galek’s big adventure occurred within the space of less than two weeks, but in that time she’s seen a 20% increase in sales, and 1,500 new people have made connection requests. So far, so good.

How Galek’s feeling now: “The number of supportive personal messages I’ve gotten has been overwhelming,” she says. “People really relate to this issue. I've had multiple people reach out to me with requests to do collaborations, promote their brands and do marketing with them.”

“For now, I’m still taking this all in and doing my due dilligence. But I have a sense that many of the connections I’ve made will end up being what we call ‘super fans’ of the business--people who really get behind a company and help to promote it. These types of customers are invaluable to a business like mine.”