One of my main responsibilities at TPAL will be social media managing. This involves uploading data and monitoring TPAL’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and blog. Personally, I am very interested in fashion and therefore “follow” and “like” a number of clothing labels and retailers. However, I have never completely understood the power of social media in this industry until I watched the following interview with Sophia Amoruso, Founder and CEO of the incredibly popular online store, Nasty Gal.
It is in this interview and basic research thereafter that I learnt that Nasty Gal was once an eBay account that sold vintage clothing. Since its inception as a retail outlet in 2006, it has grown by over 500% every year, with no marketing team, instead relying purely on the power of social media. Today, they have hundreds of thousands of followers across all social media platforms, using their #NastyGal hashtag to leverage and promote their brand to their current and potential customer base.
I now have a greater understanding of the huge potential of social media if it is accessed correctly and consequently am looking forward to the challenge in assisting TPAL to grow its customer base through creative yet relative material. Yet, I find it difficult to understand how social media can have such a huge consequence to the growth of a business, so much so that a company of that size does not need a marketing team!?!
This pushed me toward investigating more into TPAL as a business. During my initial introduction, it became increasingly apparent to me that the role of PR within an organisation is vast, consequently impacting many other departments of a business. For example, this week upon focusing on the development of TPAL’s brand and company image, I have had to work closely with other areas of the business.
Operating diligently with management to understand thoroughly the mission, vision, goals and company values of the organisation, has assisted me in understanding the image and direction of TPAL to be portrayed to the public. TPAL’s CEO and Founder, Jessica Owen, believes greatly in communicating with the public in a synced way that portrays the same company image through every communication. She wants each message to clearly communicate her business values and operations but with a twist of TPAL’s business creativity.
To ensure this, I’ve had to work closely with TPAL’s design and IT team working on product offering and website content. With the design team I undertook a basic competitor analysis, looking at what competitors were offering their customers, helping to decipher TPAL’s point of difference when compared to other online fashion competitors.
Conversely, with the IT team, I was encouraged to explore the current website and suggest points of improvement. One of the major downfalls I found with their website was their “About Us” page that appeared dated and basic upon comparison to competitors. I have now been given the responsibility of updating this page next week.
Through gaining a greater insight into the foundations of an online retailer, I now understand the even greater importance of a digital footprint to push more and more customers toward your website. This is logically achieved through successful social media strategies such as competitions, insightful content and capturing graphics, all to which will be included in my upcoming social media posts!
That's all for now,
Kirsten
3 comments:
Hi Kirsten,
I hope your enjoying your placement. I also follow various fashion brands and retailers on Instagram and totally agree with your conclusions on the importance of social media for fashion retailers – especially boutique and online retailers like TPAL.
I have noticed all retailers have a different social media approach and believe it is important to create a unified presence across all social media platforms. I agree there must be consistency in order for people to be able to recognise the brand.
I also follow TPAL on Instagram and I’d like to say you are doing a fantastic job at portraying the vision and mission of the retailer. One particular factor that I feel differentiates your Instagram from other retailers is that you post ‘real’ model photos as opposed to all airbrushed and digitally touched up images.
Look forward to hearing more about your placement!
Thanks,
Stacie
Hi Kirsten,
Your placement sounds pretty exciting so far! I am well aware of Nasty Gal and love buying clothes from the site and completely agree with you about the increasing impact social media has on buyers!
I follow quite a few fashions brands/stores on Facebook and Instagram to make sure I stay updated on new clothing, brands and most importantly sales and special deals! Social media does have such a huge impact on the public now and has helped so many various businesses, organisations and companies around on the world, regardless of what their specialty is. Nasty Gal represents a business which has done extremely well with the rise of the Internet and social media and has definitely used it in their favour to minimise marketing and sales techniques.
That is amazing that they don't have a marketing team and actually really surprised me that they didn't! I guess this just enhances the extreme power social media has on us now!
Keep up the great work
Cheers
Lydia
Hi Kirsten,
I thoroughly enjoyed your blog post on the changing and evolving use of social media within the fashion world. Social media truly has the power to turn a small boutique into an internationally known business. I think the reason social media is so popular within the fashion arena is the visual impact it has on its viewers. Customers can see, like and comment on images they find appealing. People are able to show others the type of style they have by linking themselves to shops, brands and people on social media sites. Good luck with the rest of your social media endeavors!
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