Put Polyvore in your Fashion PR Lexicon

Whether you are a fashion PR practitioner working on multiple clients or a fashion designer doing PR solo, chances are you’re always on the lookout for innovative ways to get the word out about your brand and products. While there are many places to potentially promote your brand, the trick is often reaching the right audience.  For this reason, the free (addictive) and fun service Polyvore should be in every fashion PR maven’s toolkit.

Simply put, Polyvore is a community-driven online fashion magazine curated by thousands of fashionistas. Each month, millions of fashion-obsessed females come to Polyvore to discover new brands, play with fashion and share trends and tastes with other users. They’re especially passionate about finding the hottest designers and products, which makes Polyvore an especially powerful tool for independent or emerging fashion labels.

How does it work?

Polyvore’s innovative virtual styling tool allows fashion enthusiasts to mix and match products they love to style outfits (known as “sets”). Building a set engages people in a very deep level of interaction with products on Polyvore, a level of engagement that you won’t likely find anywhere else – Users spend an average of 10 minutes on the site per session! Items used in a set are clickable, making it easy for interested to link directly to product pages, encouraging sales.  By having a presence on Polyvore, brands can build serious grassroots, viral buzz. In addition to living on Polyvore,  sets icredibly viral, community members share their creations with friends through social networks like Facebook and Myspace, and many fashion bloggers use Polyvore to embed looks directly on their blogs.

The best part about Polyvore is how intuitive it is to you – it’s a simple drag and drop interface to create a set. PR Couture worked with the lovely people over at Polyvore to put together this quick and easy “Polyvore 101” so that you can begin to reap the benefits of the the Polyvore functionality and community by  sharing your fashion clients or designs.

Create a Polyvore account

• Take a deep breath and jump in. Customize your profile by including an icon and description of your brand. Agencies may want to create one account and include several clients or opt to create unique accounts for each client. Or, do both!  Polyvore allows you to have friends and favorite different sets, and these actions are a great way  to begin interacting with the Polyvore community and build following.

Promote your products on Polyvore

• If you have a website, you can add products to Polyvore by submitting a product feed. If you only have a few products, you can also use Polyvore’s Clipper tool to import products directly from your site. This is an incredible and effective way to gain viral buzz and socially merchandise your products.

Put ‘Add to Polyvore’ buttons on your site

• Having ‘Add to Polyvore’ buttons on individual product pages on your site will encourage shoppers to import your products into Polyvore and use them in outfit creation and sets. This activity will also organically boost the popularity of your products and brand on Polyvore.

Use Polyvore sets to pitch seasonal trends, celebrity looks etc

• Think of Polyvore as an online mood board, where you can incorporate images, photography, text and products to more fully express a pitch idea. A quick pitch via email or Twitter with a direct link to a Polyvore set, or if you use an email marketing service, embedded directly into the email can go far in sharing a fresh idea with ease.

Think of user-generated sets as mini editorial spreads

• Each time a member of Polyvore includes your products in their set, it’s akin to a mini-editorial spread, full of useful links direct to your site. Take note of interesting ways users are styling your designs. Identify and build rapport with top users or your biggest fans. Pick a few of the best Sets and include them in your digital press kit or on a press page.

Run a Brand Sponsored Contest on Polyvore

• Another great way to promote your brand on Polyvore and virally throughout social media is to engage the Polyvore community in a fun competition to merchandise your products. Some very successful contests in the past have been with We Love Colors, YesStyle, James Perse. Polyvore also offers hugely discounted contest rates for Up & Coming Designers and Stores so please get in touch to learn more. Contact ads@polyvore.com for more details!

One final tip

• Before you get started, jump onto Polyvore and do a quick  search to see how many Polyvore sets have already been created using your brand. This can become a useful metric or insight for PR agencies as well. Pay attention to how this number increases with ongoing invovlvement in the community!