Sportsgirl embraces Bloggers

On Monday 8th February I was invited to attend the Sportsgirl Roadshow parade for Autumn Winter 2010. Primarily, this is put on for the Sportsgirl retail team, however this year, they invited a few Melbourne Bloggers to attend to take a sneak peak at the action. It’s an interesting strategy on Sportsgirl’s behalf. The bloggers feature their own reviews and photo’s from the parade, and share this with their communities.

Jade Roberts (PR Manager) said she has been working with bloggers for 2 years and finds they are effective for reaching out to potential/existing Sportsgirl customers because of their strong community followings and unique perspectives on fashion. It’s also helpful due to the fact that online is immediate and Sportsgirl is all about fast fashion.

Whilst at the parade I chatted with Kate Elton, Online and Events Manager whose position was created to cater to the new Sportsgirl community website some 8 months ago. Kate's role varies from updating the website daily with product, blog posts and articles to managing the social networking community (twitter, facebook etc). Kate has found Twitter has been incredibly popular in the last year and uses it to offer sneak peek's to their twitter followers. She finds the website sections that are most popular are to do with 'style advice' i.e. Style Snaps and Style Me.

The parade was a high-energy event with a Circus/ Moulin Rouge/ Vaudeville theme and featured smiling models (a refreshing change that epitomised the perfect Sports-girl)! The audience gasps, laughs, claps and general buzz was a combination of lust (for the pieces they have yet to own) and $$ signs clicking over in their heads (as they saw what would sell in their respective Sportsgirl stores)! This roadshow was a great way of inspiring the Sportsgirl staff about what's coming in store as well as offering the wider Sportsgirl community the opportunity to share the night through the bloggers attending.

Using Twitter for Business

Have you noticed that the world is all a-twitter? Between Ashton Kutcher, Oprah, CNN, the faux Vogue Twitter account and the Iran elections, it seems everyone is tweeting from the bus, plane, office, train, restaurant table, fashion parade front row and footy. So if you're feeling a bit left out, or are new to twitter and want to know what all the fuss is about. Let me tell you.

Twitter has the ability to build and maintain brand presence, offer real time customer service, allow community interaction and all within a short sentence. It is a powerful, free, social networking site that could create a new connection with your customers, people you admire and its brilliant for networking.

Before you get too stuck into it, I would highly recommend downloading this e-guide that Clare Lancaster of Dot Marketing has put together. It helped me get my head around it and the nuances of using twitter successfully.

Clare is a connoisseur of Digital and understands how to write in true "laymans" terms for us folk who hope to enter into the digital world without talking too much "geek language".