Social Media Interview: April Cornell

For this project, I chose to interview the owner and creator of the company I work for, April Cornell. I was able to interview her in person at work. Because I was jotting down notes and had no other way of transcribing the interview, her responses are not worded exactly as she said them, but her messages remain the same.

Q: What social media sites do you use?
A: Facebook, which links to Twitter, the store website, and a blog, which is not very active at the moment.

Q: What messages are you trying to send with Facebook in regard to the company?
A: Our products mostly appeal to women, so it's a place to have conversations with women related to the product. Women share personal experiences and taste, and I share some of mine as well as details of production. It's more spontaneous, which helps develop a more real connection, and develops trust. I also post notices about sales to give the customers who view the page an advantage.

Q: How has social media benefitted your business?
A: It keeps the brand alive through discussion. Some customers post their positive experiences in the store and post about the products they love. People also find out about the store through Facebook, and it has brought a lot more direct shopping.

Q: What are some negative aspects you have encountered with social media?
A: Random weird people posting, sometimes negative. I recently had to block a strange fellow. We can't monitor what people post at night; a designer not affiliated with the company recently posted pictures of some of her dresses on our page. Sometimes people get into conversations not directly related to the product and I have to be careful to read everything and delete anything inappropriate. Also, there was recently a negative discussion about the product not being made in America, and I had to jump in.

Q: How do you decide what content to post?
A: There are three categories: the first, about 50% of what I post, is anything of interest to our customers: events in the store, personal ideas for women - for example, on the morning of Superbowl Sunday I posted a recipe of what I made for breakfast. The second, about 25%, is directing customers to web sales. The third, about 25%, is miscellaneous, such as responding to people and sharing non-personal things like office meetings, or that I am at the annual show in Atlanta.

Q: What are the advantages of one site over another?
A: I mostly use Facebook because my mindset works better with it - I can say and show more, and people from more age groups are on Facebook more than Twitter. Twitter is more viral, but I am the one who manages the social media and one person can't do both.

Although April was busy preparing to leave for India, she let me take some pictures of her in the store:

She also has a Youtube channel, which she didn't mention in the interview, but I picked a video of how her prints are made: