It’s a busy time in the ASOS Canteen at 4pm and by the time we leave, a bottle of Coke doesn’t quite cut the hunger mustard. This week #BEYOUROWN meets Sedge Beswick, the 27 year old Social Media Marketer taking 2016 by a storm. We grab a seat and get some expertise on the subject. Not only does she have a cool name, but she is an uber cool person. We talk about her current role as , her label. So grab a coffee and indulge with us. Global Senior Social & Community Talent Manager, we open up her book, “140 Ultimate Twitter LOLs,” and get an insight to her label SRSLYSocial.
Yes, very well! A bit hectic and chaotic!
(As we can notice, the canteen is packed and we grab the first table we see and Sedge hands her book over…… and then we start.)
You’re the Global Senior Social & Community Talent Manager at ASOS, such a mouthful! But how’s it going?
I think I have the worst job title ever, it’s ridiculously long! What it means in a nut shell is that I look after what ever falls under our community propositions, so thats our advocacy programme which is taking ASOS’s biggest fans and advocates and making sure that they continue to love and want to work with us. Then we have social content creators that are owned by ASOS, so thats training and developing and educating those guys. Just generally being aware of what is going on in the social space, what ASOS could be doing and should be doing and seeing the potential there.
So tell us about your book ‘140 Ultimate Twitter LOLs’
Its quite old now its around 2 years old in November! So basically I lecture at universities over Europe and my idea behind it all was obviously helping people to understand a little bit more about social media and the fact that you can have a career in it. Most people think that I still just sit on Twitter all day, which I definitely don’t! So I do have quite a dry sense of humour and the book is very witty and aimed specifically at students to try and give them that head space around the difference of being a student to then getting their first time job and potentially not tweeting everything that you might have done at 3am on a night out!
So a bit of a Bible then?
Yes a few tips and tricks on how to achieve your social stardom, so to speak.
So how difficult is it to make that transition from student to employee?
For me, you have to be ballsy and you have to really want it. I interview a hell of a lot of people. I started out as the first person on the social team, we are now a team of 32 and it is really quite telling when you are interviewing, the ones who are students and have bags of energy,super keen and really want it.
They could have ten followers on Instagram but the big thing for me is when I scroll through, I look at the consistency and frequency if they’re posting and if they understand that this is full time hard graft. It’s also really important that, as an entry level piece that they keep at least one social media platform up to date, just to show that they really understand the time that it takes to invest in this as a career.
How effective is social media for companies?
It totally varies business by business, I think for me the big thing is looking at the platforms. A lot of new brands launch, and they are trying to be on very platform juggling all the content. It might be that you only decide to be on Facebook or Instagram, because you have to really scale back and see which one really works for you, ask yourself “What do I want to achieve and is this platform the right way to achieve it.”
You also need to do research on the behaviour of each of the platforms, making sure that the experience is totally unique based on the content that you come across. For example, Facebook is for humorous sharable content, but is also great for click throughs and referrals. Instagram is based around curable content, whether that is imagery or video. Tumblr posts are well over the top, polished but very creative weird and wonderful things go down on there.
So with what ever your brand is that you are doing, just try and focus on a couple of platforms to start with that are the most relevant and experiment on the frequency of how many times to post through out the day works for you.
Talking of brands, explain SRSLYSocial and what worked for you?
I own a brand called SRSLYSocial, I post 3 times per day via Instagram and that allowed us to build a strong 9 thousand following on Instagram, but what we are doing is very social and thats the nature of what we do. That frequency really worked for us.
How do you gan traffic and traction?
Its about working out what your USP is and really sticking to it and hammering that home constantly so that people know what to expect from you. You cannot be schizophrenic in social media and that is what will set you aside from everyone else. This how you will start to build that loyal fanbase and the people who are really interested in what you are doing and offer.
How do you find the content when you run out?
That is the hardest part. With SRSLYSocial, it’s all about geeky nerdy people that are obsessed with everything social, we pick up on new trends and key phases and make them into a cool thing. So for us it is easy, we are constantly on the look out for slogans to popularise. So we curate content based on that and never stray to far away from that.
What is your biggest pet hate?
Hash-tagging, thats my biggest pet hate ever. One is fine and I can stomach that but when people post 5 thousand hash tags it just looks desperate!
We notice you have a lot of key advice to give.
Yes one of the main reasons for starting my book, is based on the lectures that I teach. Often lectures can be quite dry and powerpoint heavy, whereas mine tend to be a bit more lighter and I like to talk about things that have gone wrong and what i have learnt of the back of them. The second reason for the book is that a lot of people that I had come across asked me about getting their products onto ASOS, and I didn’t have the answer for it. So I went away and I researched it, from getting a book published and then to getting onto ASOS Marketplace and what are the necessary procedures to be taken. I really wanted to share this with other people and cut a lot of time out for them.
So how do new brands get picked up?
ASOS Marketplace is a really great place to get noticed. A lot of talent gets nurtured and discovered on there. They watch if any of the new brands have potential and it’s a great spring board platform with really low commission sales. It serves a purpose.
Finally talk us through your lectures.
I had probably had been working for around 6 months, I despised talking in front of people. I was also one of the first people in my year to graduate and get a job, so my old university teacher brought me back to talk about that side of things more to other students. However it was atrocious, I was shaking it was that bad. After that, I said to them that I would love to come back and do another one and make it more personalised and tailored to the students I was talking to.
I went back and I absolutely love it, usually for an hour I give an overview of what I do and how I have got to do the things I have done, but the second section is a bit more one on one where I talk to them about where they want to go and what project are they working on, I try to help them and give them contacts or recommend them to people for various roles and job offers I know of.
