This week, we’re proud to feature our first interview. Cyril Lumboy, AKA dolldelight is a lolita fashion designer and entrepeneur from the Philippines who currently lives in California. She’s had firsthand experience advertising in her own blog, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more recently, YouTube. This social media promotion works two ways: one, to promote her own commissions business, but also to promote fashion related products from other companies, such as clothes from RomWe, Gothic Lolita Wigs, eyelashes from Dolluxe, etc.
As a lolita enthusiast, Cyril markets to a very particular niche, intersecting between fashion, cosplay and anime culture. Her promotions simultaneously take on the air of endorsing and/or promoting her lolita lifestyle.
Cyril is more accomplished in social media marketing than you may think. She was around when Facebook put in regulations for like contests, and used pinned posts on Tumblr when that was available. More recently, she succesfully ran a Facebook contest two months ago to pick a Philippines model for her products.
Without further ado, here’s our interview with Cyril (done via online correspondence)

1. First off, we’d like to ask you to introduce yourself and what you do for a living.

I’m Cyril, the designer for the Japanese street fashion, dolldelight, and store owner of the soon to be unveiled online store, Dolly Dynamite.

2. Why do you do promos and advertisements online? What promotions do you do related to your business, and what promotions do you do for your sponsors?

I use paid promotions to reach out to a wider audience in promoting new designs and store products. As for my sponsors, I do reviews of their products.

3. We know you’re very active on Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, and also run your own blog. What do you feel are the benefits of each platform? Where do you think does the overlap between professional and personal use lie? How do you best make use of the advertising possibilities in each platform?

It’s nice to have a presence in the different social networks available. However, as most Facebook page owners know, the said platform now charges a certain fee depending on the amount of followers you want to reach. To be honest, I find this annoying as I have spent creating content and growing my fan base in the past few years.
Now I need to pay should I want to reach most of them. This is why I have decided to be more active in Tumblr. I have realized how effective the reblog function is. While these social networks prove to be useful, it’s always nice to keep a blog where it is all strictly about your content. I also keep a Youtube to test how else it could help me. I have observed though that Youtube personalities tend to be able to grow a more faithful and active following in Facebook. This is something I would like to achieve.

4. We do know as well you’ve experimented with Facebook and Tumblr advertising in the past. Can you share with us your experiences with both platforms?

Like what I’ve mentioned above, with Facebook promotion, you need to pay a certain fee to reach a corresponding amount of followers. With Tumblr, the post you choose to promote remains on top of all your followers’ dashboard. It is significantly more effective though some might have abused the function that it has now been removed from Tumblr.

5. At one point, you had publicly related your problems with Facebook’s advertising rules and decided to focus on Tumblr for your promotions. Can you share with us the details of what happened then and why you made that decision?

First of, it costs a lot to pay to promote in Facebook. Depending on your target audience, the fee could cost between 65$-300$ (this is the current range). The post is said to be promoted in your followers’ newsfeed for three days. Tumblr’s pin post option only cost 5$ and was available for a 24 hour period unless followers manually unpin the post.
Facebook also has confusing rules. It is entirely up to them whether they approve your post for promotion or not.

6. Tumblr recently got acquired by Yahoo. As far as we can tell, they’ve closed up ad opportunities for users for now and focusing on big brands to pilot their new ad platform. How do you feel about this new direction and will you be using Tumblr advertising in the future?

I am still figuring out Tumblr myself. I am hoping that they would allow a function similar to pin post sometime in the future.
(Note: At this time, Tumblr has disabled the ability for users to pay for advertising while they try their new advertising strategies.)

7. Lastly, we would like to ask you what advice you would give to social network users who want to promote themselves and/or their work.

It takes a lot of work to get the word out there. You need to have realistic expectations and ideally, a budget to spend. However, in Tumblr’s case, I think you could work your way up by providing high-quality posts whether it is on fashion or fandoms.
We would like to thank Cyril for her time and urge that you follow her work through her online presence across the web!
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/dolldelightpage
Blog (Blogspot): http://blog.dolldelight.com/
Tumblr: http://dolldelight.tumblr.com/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/deardolldelight
Lookbook: http://lookbook.nu/dolldelight
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dolldelight