Seller Blog
Advice, help and support for ASOS Marketplace sellers.
Social Success Story - Q&A with @PoppyD
As a small fashion business, you've probably already heard
of @PoppyD, but just in case you’ve been under a stone coloured pair of khakis
for the last year, here’s the scoop on one of our favourite fashion entrepreneurs.
Poppy started her blog ‘What I Wore Today’ in 2010 to encourage herself to wear
more of her wardrobe by posting photos of herself in a different outfit each
day.
As with so many of these stories, the next couple of chapters are fairly predictable:
girl keeps blogging, gains army of followers, becomes ‘internet sensation’,
gets Daily Mail article labelling her ‘saucy’.
It’s the chapters post initial blog-fame that make Poppy a force to reckoned with, and the perfect person to answer your social questions.
It’s the chapters post initial blog-fame that make Poppy a force to reckoned with, and the perfect person to answer your social questions.
Instead of resting on her blog-laurels, Poppy formed a fully
fledged brand, business and social network out of her original concept,
allowing users all over the globe to post their own outfits and chronicle their
own style timelines. She’s a social 'power playa', and the
ideal lady to put your social questions too. Also, she makes us laugh. A lot. Never a bad thing.
Have a read of her Q&A with us below, then get ready to ask her your
own questions through twitter at 5pm BST. Simply tweet @ASOSMarketplace & @PoppyD with your questions and she’ll get back to you from there.
Q: How long did it take before
you felt you were really getting somewhere on your social platforms – did it
take a while before there was a tipping point? When was that?
A:I don't know what the tipping point was, but I have invested a disgusting amount of time into social networks. I have blogged for 12 years now. I joined Facebook in 2005 when you needed a top university email address to register and I've been on Twitter since 2008. It certainly hasn't been an overnight thing, I've been boring people with what I'm eating/listening to/watching/wearing (obvs) for years. I've always had a really engaged following though, even when it was a couple of hundred people, it's just that the following has grown. I'm followed by a lot of influencers and I guess I noticed that really taking off a couple of years ago. I'm followed by a lot of journalists now, which is great for my business.
Q: If you had to pick, which social network has helped build up your business the most?
A: It's definitely Twitter. I can't be doing with FB. I'm sort of of the opinion that you can't do justice to multiple social networks; brands seem to either excel at FB *or* Twitter. Or at least that's what I tell myself to feel less crappy about my poor FB skillz. Every golden opportunity I've had has come from Twitter. Twitter drives more than ten times as much traffic to WIWT as FB does. And I don't bother with Pinterest and LinkedIn and all that razmatazz. You can spread yourself too thin and I do have a business to run! A lot of people fall in to the trap of being obsessed with doing EVERYTHING on social media, you can't do everything well though. You need to really analyse where you get the results and conversions from. And FB is full of people going through embarrassing public meltdowns and cringe breakups.
Q: Did you DIE when you got your verified tick?
A: God, of course! I was at Twitter HQ (because I just hang out at these places, evidently) and they were saying they were surprised I wasn't verified yet...and then I basically wouldn't leave until they rectified it.
Q: Any top tips for how to keep your social interactions not too ‘sell-ey’?
A: Look through your timeline and brutally assess yourself, are 90% of your tweets about your business and links to buy your stuff? That's not hot. Engage genuinely, be a human. You wouldn't stand in front of someone shouting at them to buy your things, so the same etiquette applies on Twitter etc. I'm not a fan of brands tweeting things like "Who is excited about the weekend?" and "Who wants Team GB to win another gold medal?" etc etc. Blatantly the answer is YES, so why ask such a banal question? It's really lazy marketing. The best way to think about it is - would you follow you?
Q: A word of encouragement for anyone feeling a bit ‘social network’ overwhelmed?
A: I'll be honest, I can't imagine starting from scratch now on social networks. I felt behind when I joined Twitter in 2008...and back then you could literally follow everyone who was on Twitter in London! You need to have small realistic goals. It might be tempting to follow 2000 fashion peeps, but it's better to work up slowly....especially as people may see you're following 2000 people but only have 8 followers yourself and think your account is spammy. Start following and engaging with people in small handfuls. Sometimes you can get a lot of support and interaction by getting involved in hyper local stuff, follow other local businesses - they're always keen to support fellow local businesses as they're in the same boat! Connect with other Marketplace sellers, highlight other people's products rather than your own - it may seem an odd thing to do but that sort of Twitter karma comes back around. There's little point following a bunch of z list slebs and expecting to get them to engage with you and your brand, there are zillions of teenagers in their bedrooms tweeting these people all day - your message will get lost in the mix. Concentrate on targeting your actual target customers and other independent designers and sellers - there's a real community out there and it's genuinely supportive. And the only other thing is just to not feel like you have to do *everything* that social media vomits up, there are so many platforms, find the ones that work for you. Analyse their results. Maths is your friend.
Q: Do you use any programs to help you manage all your social stuff?
A: No. That's awful, isn't it? When I worked for other brands I used to use things like Tweetdeck but all those products have changed so much over the years. I just use Twitter.com and the Twitter app. I only manage two accounts though (@PoppyD and @WIWT) so it's not the hardest thing in the world. I also manually track mentions of my name and any URLs containing WIWT.com to see what people are saying without directly @ing us. Google Alerts is still my primary tool though for seeing what's being said about me and about WIWT, I'm yet to find a more useful tool than Google Alerts. They're free too.
Thanks Poppy! Remember – Poppy’s online with us at 5pm today BST to answer your Twitter Q’s too – simply tweet @ASOSMarketplace & @PoppyD with your questions and she’ll get back to you from there.
