Dermstore
Content + SEO Analyst (March 2017–June 2018), Social Media/Community Manager (June 2018–Present)
Social media + community management for a skin care retailer, owned by Target. Primarily responsible for all social media copy/captions on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Also assist with visual content as needed by creating graphics for feed + story, taking photos & video at home, and sourcing UGC.
Responsible for all engagement (including public comments & DMs) on Dermstore’s posts + relevant posts by brands/influencers/UGC. Developed & continue to evolve Dermstore’s engagement strategy, providing a best-in-class experience for followers, customers, brands, and influencers. Fully trained in customer service procedures and have been able to support the customer service team with social media incidents when needed.
Created Dermstore’s private Facebook group, For the Love of Skin, and have grown it to 3,000 members in its first year. Continue to manage and moderate the group using my personal profile to help humanize the brand—posting only as Dermstore when appropriate. Manage a 5-figure budget monthly for ads on Twitter + boosted posts on Facebook and Instagram (supplementary to the efforts of our paid media team), with the goals of engagement + brand awareness.
Since joining the social media team, have contributed to steady growth across all social media platforms: 323% increase in Instagram followers, 83% increase in LinkedIn followers, 28% increase in Twitter followers, 6.8% increase in Facebook page likes.
Frequently Used Tools: Planoly, TrackMaven (Skyword), Dash Hudson, Hootsuite, Canva, Photoshop, Google Analytics
Facebook Group: For the Love of Skin
Spearheaded the creation of Dermstore’s offsite community, the private Facebook group called, “For the Love of Skin” in September 2019.
Group members get early access to sales, exclusive spoilers for Dermstore’s monthly subscription box, BeautyFIX, exclusive giveaways, Q&As with skin care experts and more.
As of November 2020, the group has just under 3,000 members—over 2,000 of whom are active participants in group discussions.
Trending Moment: Quarantine-Inspired Interactive Posts
Interactive, easily shareable, game-style social media posts were having a moment at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. I proposed that Dermstore jump on these trends while they were hot and wrote copy for our “Skin Care Edition” of each post. After collaborating on our vision for the posts as an internal team, we then outsourced the design to a former colleague of mine. I wrote captions for each and posted across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Holiday 2020: Emotion-Forward Campaign Copy
Using assets created by the larger creative team + outside agency/talent, our goal for the holiday 2020 campaign was to appeal to consumers’ emotions and give a sense of the people behind Dermstore—rather than just Dermstore as a brand. I mirrored the tone used across the blog and paid media assets when writing copy for these campaign posts. One caption I wrote was repurposed in a paid partnership with WWD.
We believe that skin care is about more than meets the eye. It’s about the glow that can’t be seen—only felt. It’s about nourishing your soul by nourishing your skin. It’s about loving and appreciating the skin you’re in. 🖤
Skin care can be a deeply personal practice, but it can just as easily be an opportunity to share a moment with a loved one.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Whether it’s applying face masks and watching a movie with your mom or introducing your brother to his new favorite face cleanser, skin care can move from a habit to a tradition. 🖤
We’re embracing the idea that skin care is more than skin deep. It’s the food you eat and your wind-down routine and your relationships with others and yourself that truly make you radiant. ✨
We’re anti-surface level. When it comes to friendships, conversations, skin care products, you name it—we want to get way down deep because that’s where the magic happens. ✨⠀
Digestible, Shareable Education
The skin care/wellness customer is eager to learn. But they want to get right to the point. On Instagram, we’ve found a sweet spot for sharing easily digestible education on hot topics that’s just begging to be shared. Popular formats include Twitter shares (most commonly overlaid on a skin care product texture photo shot by our team), carousels (with short snippets of info overlaid on stock videos), charts, and fun text screenshots with an explainer in the caption. In 2020, these have been among our most shared, most saved, most liked posts—not just this year, but of all time.
ALWAYS always always pair your retinol with a broad-spectrum sunscreen (SPF 30 or higher) during the day. ☀️⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
✌️ reasons:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
❶ Retinol may increase skin’s sensitivity to the sun since it helps new skin cells (that have never seen the sun before) get pushed to the surface⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
❷ Everything retinol is used for can be caused by or made worse by sun exposure
Texts from our BFF 😎
Who are you texting back tonight? 🤔⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
📖 Retinol and alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs)—including glycolic acid and lactic acid—don’t play well together. Avoid irritation or skin damage by A) alternating nights or B) using one treatment for a couple months and the other treatment for the next couple of months.
Is your skin dry or dehydrated? 🤔
Dry skin 👉 needs oil-based products
Dehydrated skin 👉 needs water-based products
Retinol 101: Class is in session. 📖
📖Crash Course: How to Layer Retinol
❶ Don’t mix and match potentially irritating ingredients…but it’s okay if those ingredients are in one product formula.
❷ Just because you probably shouldn’t layer a product with retinol doesn’t mean you can’t use it at all.
Skin care should not burn or sting! 💥
Applying retinol to dry skin (not wet from cleansing or applying toner) lessens the chance of irritation upon or shortly after application.
Now, drop (the names of) your favorite serums and oils into the comments!
Plus, you’ll often find that treating a higher priority concern actually treats a lower priority one via chain reaction! 🙌🏻🙌🏼🙌🏽🙌🏾🙌🏿
Visual Content Creation
When content has been needed on the fly or we’ve wanted to test out a new visual concept, I’ve used my phone, camera, and/or drawing app on my iPad to create assets for Dermstore. Created all of the content below + wrote captions for sharing on Instagram (+ Facebook & Twitter, in some cases).
Note: Created for a Instagram account I was briefly running (just for fun) but provided to Dermstore team to repost
Became Dermstore’s most-liked photo ever at the time of posting (April 2019)
Note: Taken for my personal Instagram but provided original image to Dermstore team to repost
Twitter Revamp
When I took over social media community management responsibilities in early 2018, Twitter was only being used for the occasional blog share + responding to customer complaints. I soon took over managing the channel in a more strategic way. Once our new dedicated Social Media Director started in spring 2019, I was given freedom to “have fun with it” and “break the rules.” What followed were GIFs/memes, a more playful + cheeky voice, fostered relationships with skin care industry professionals, a new series of “pro tips” (drawing from a pool of resources, including in-house estheticians, existing blog content, and a set of esthetician textbooks ordered for further research), and continuous optimizations for the channel. I worked with our tech team to optimize the blog metadata in order to create larger, image-heavy “cards” for blog shares on Twitter and continue to test out functions within the platform.