Let's Play Dress Up

Fashion and style were not my main focus in high school. The majority of my wardrobe consisted of sweatpants and t-shirts. Growing up in a small town there was not much to choose from as far as shopping goes nor did I wish to spend my hard earned Ingles cashier paycheck on clothes that I felt I did not need. All of that changed when Dress Up Boutique opened in downtown Gainesville. The store offered a great selection of styles for affordable prices and that was when my love of boutique fashion began. While it may sound dramatic to say that I was tomboy turned girly-girl because of a local boutique, Dress Up played a large part in the pride I took in my wardrobe.

The result of my most recent shopping trip. 

Dress Up has grown tremendously since opening its first store in Dahlonega, GA. The small business now has 10 locations and an online store that you can view on their website, http://shopdressup.com/. To say that I have spent most of my work savings at their store is an understatement.

Since opening in 2009, I have seen Dress Up's social media morph from the jumbled content that is typical of a new start-up small business into what I believe to be a success story of what happens when social media is done right. Despite posting six times a day on their Facebook page, every post is relevant and showcases a new outfit from one of their collections. Dress Up has done a fantastic job of constantly bringing in new inventory and properly displaying it on its media platforms. It uses Instagram in a similar fashion, constantly posting new inventory and encouraging interaction with it's followers.

Dress Up does a wonderful job of always acknowledging its followers and even re-posting photos of customer's wearing their styles.

While Dress Up has mastered Facebook and Instagram, I feel that the store's Pinterest page could use some reorganization. Pinterest in itself can be a harder platform to grasp at times. In a few boards and pictures, a business must attempt to completely convey its brand without losing a potential consumer's attention. And unfortunately for businesses, repins do not always turn into sales. However I see great promise in Pinterest for small businesses like Dress Up. Unlike other platforms that require the consumer to follow their pages for content to appear on news feeds, Pinterest is a platform of exploring. A small business in Arkansas can have a pin go viral and lead to pinners around the country being aware of the business. In contrast to the astounding 119,799 followers Dress Up has on Facebook, the company only has 3,332 followers on Pinterest (as of September 1, 2014).

So why does the Pinterest page have so few followers compared to Facebook? I believe that Dress Up has lost sight of it's purpose on Pinterest. The store has 33 boards, some of which are completely unrelated to what the business offers such as "The Red Carpet" and "Celeb Style." But somehow the store stands for self esteem with their Mend Campaign, see http://shopdressup.com/pages/our-cause. I don't exactly see how celebrities that are society's image of perfection can be put onto the Pinterest board of a company that is trying to boost self image of girls. The solution for Dress Up's Pinterest is simple, go back to basics and look at what the store really stands for. More boards doesn't always equal more followers. I believe that if the less relevant information is removed and the boards that have potential are really invested into, Dress Up's Pinterest could be as successful as its Facebook or Instagram.

Dress Up is only a 5 year old company at this point, and it has already taken tremendous leaps and bounds with its store growth. I have no doubt that the store will continue to refine its social media presence and create a sense of flow between the various platforms.

Want to learn more about Dress Up Boutique? Visit them on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShopDressUp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShopDressUp
Instagram: http://instagram.com/shopdressup
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/shopdressup/