Lecture Post: Social Media

My Idea:
Hi there! My idea for the entrepreneurship project is to create an online thrift/vintage store. The store would be updated on a weekly basis and would hopefully be an effective means to shop inexpensively. I hope to target college women with my thrift store. This blog will follow my planning of the store as I learn more about technology & entrepreneurship through lecture.

On Social Media:
Recently in IST 195, our class learned about social media and its uses. I will admit, I have never been big on social media. The thought of putting my personal information "out there" makes me a bit uncomfortable. I do not tweet and I honestly can say I have never posted a single status on Facebook! While I personally am not into social media, I do recognize that it is here to stay. It is such a big part of today's society and really is a great way to market a business. I think social media will play a huge role in my marketing strategies for my thrift store.

For one, I would definitely create a Facebook "like" page for my store. This would be a page where fans of my thrift store could post on my wall, read status updates about the store, interact with other fans, and so forth. I definitely would take care to cultivate my Facebook community. After all, billions of people are on Facebook, so I know this is one social network I definitely do not want to ignore.

Twitter's up next! I feel like Facebook is the place to go to kind of 'look' at what your friends are doing (or in this case, browse my "like" page), however Twitter gives you a voice. I would use Twitter to not only update customers about the web site (e.g. when new items are available), but also to interact with my customers. I want to know what they are saying! I think Twitter is also a great tool for customer service. If a customer is dissatisfied, I can instantly connect with them through DM (direct messaging) and hopefully resolve the issue.

Last but not least, I can see Tumblr being useful in my business. In the fashion world, fashion blogs are becoming more accredited and popular. A lot of fashion-forward girls create personal style blogs on Tumblr. They post pictures of their outfits to show how they styled a look (along with where they purchased their clothing so their readers can get it to) and inspire other girls to do the same. Obviously, each item would never be the same in my online thrift store but I still would like to maintain a blog where girls could submit pictures of how they styled their thrifted items. The best part about Tumblr is the "Reblogging" that goes on. Just like Twitter and retweetings, the more you get reblogged on Tumblr, the more exposure you gain.

Those are all my ideas so far for social media. There is definitely a lot of promise in that industry and I really do see it benefiting my business. Thank you to everyone who commented on my last blog. Catch you next week!