Yesterday I had the amazing opportunity to speak on two panels at Pure London fashion trade show. Pure is such a hub of fashion activity with so many amazing brands showcasing their talent. I am always blown away by the dedication and passion shown by labels who manage to completely transform their white-washed, square metre cubicles into beautiful creations compact with framed wall pictures, 'grass' floors, sheepskin rugs and entire tea party displays.
I am wearing...
Red blouse: Primark
Houndstooth pencil skirt: Krisp
Cropped black jacket: New Look
Red felt heels: New Look
Gold cuff: Topshop
Gold tiered necklace: Accessorize
For my morning panel; 'Utilising the power of the blog,' I was joined by moderator Steve Spear and blogger Frances Bacon: Schoolrunstyle. We explored the growing importance of blogging and discussed the key ingredients needed to grow a strong, loyal following. Prompted by questions from the audience, we touched on many issues relating to blogging from how to keep the balance between images and text, to what exactly SEO means and does. It was a great panel with a strong audience involvement. It was also really nice to meet Frances who has been blogging for around 2 years and has a loyal following of yummy mummies of all ages. Very inspiring!
The second panel; 'Social media master-class' centred around the use of social media as a marketing tool. Joined again by moderator Steve Spear, and owner of Rumours and Ribbons fashion boutique Victoria Mears, we talked about which sites are the most important, how social media sites can help to grow a business or expand your following and how to cope with this new, time-consuming necessity. There were some fantastic questions from the audience which sparked discussions on what to hashtag, how important the quality of Instagram images are, what time is best to post and how to handle targeting a varying audience across sites. One of the biggest issues people seemed concerned about was how much time social media was taking up. I spoke in some length about ways in which to cut down the time spent on these sites and how I have implemented these as the PR and marketing manager at Tanya Elizabeth. There are many useful tools such as the Statigram app which enables you to pre-schedule your Instagram posts, Twitter Ads where you can pre-schedule your tweets, and Hootsuite which allows you to sync all your social media sites and control, pre-schedule and check your statistics for all of them in one place. This was a really exciting panel with some interesting points raised and it was great to have the chance to talk about such an important issue with like-minded individuals.
It was amazing to be at Pure again and get the chance to re-visit some my old favourites such as Collectif Vintage, Helen Moore and Alice's Pig. There were also some great new brands to discover. I really love that they have catwalk shows at Pure as it's a completely different experience seeing how the garment moves and lies on a figure rather than simply hanging amongst others on a rail - here are a few snaps!..
(I absolutely adore this outfit!!)
I hope you have a great time if you're going to Pure today or tomorrow, and if you came to either of my panels yesterday do please let me know what you thought in the comment box below!Labels: Alice's Pig, blogging, catwalk, Collectif Vintage, fashion, Helen Moore, panel, Pure London, Rumours and Ribbons, School run style, seminar, social media, Tanya Elizabeth, trade show, trends
