In today’s Alumni Update, we spoke with Ksenia Avdulova, a 2010 M.F.A. Fashion Merchandising alumna who now works in Social Media at Gilt Groupe. She centered her senior thesis on the e-commerce retailer, worked her way up, and eventually landed her dream job! She was also one of the panelists at the online student workshop in New York. Read on for Ksenia’s insights into the growing role of social media in fashion – and for some awesome NYC recommendations!

You recently started working as the Community Manager at Gilt Groupe. What does your job entail?

Being a social media manager has many different aspects to it, but if I had to break it down to three main fields that I work on daily, they would be:

1. Ensuring that Gilt Groupe’s vision and voice is consistently represented across the social media channels, mainly by creating content for Facebook and Twitter. The company has several businesses; all of them have social media presence, and I am responsible for managing and growing the largest one – the Women’s Wear Business.

2. Listening, analyzing, and implementing. I can’t stress how valuable social media is in terms of listening to customers (present and potential). It’s not just about knowing what interactions are taking place on our Facebook and Twitter pages, but much more so about using that information to cater to our followers and provide them with content that they want to engage with. A big part of that is working closely with the Social Customer Support team, which does an absolutely amazing job of answering customers’ questions and resolving their issues via our Facebook and Twitter pages.

3. Project managing social partnerships with external partners. Besides being very social, interactive, and fun, the Community Manager job involves a good amount of project management. For example, currently we’re running a Sweepstakes in partnership with Milly. It was my job to act as a liaison between various teams within Gilt, Milly, and the app developer to ensure a smooth launch and running of the campaign.

Being a community manager is a very exciting and fast-paced role, especially at a company that is known to be a trend-setter in its field. There’s never a dull moment: there’s always a new online conversation to monitor, a new trend to watch, and a new idea for a Facebook post. The most rewarding part about the job is the communication that happens with followers of the company, as well as being a part Gilt’s creative, driven and dynamic team.

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On Friday, February 10th, School of Fashion Online Students gathered in New York for a workshop and portfolio review. Industry speakers and teachers gave beautiful presentations about their knowledge of the industry and offered great advice to the students that attended.

The day began with School of Fashion Executive Director Gladys Perint Palmer giving a fashion illustration demonstration and passing on some words of wisdom:

“It’s not what you do, it is what you don’t do you regret”

 “Learn the rules to break the rules”

 “Communicate through drawings”

 “Learn to look and you will see”

 “You can’t do everything”

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