First of all, no fleas were hurt in the writing of this column. “Flog” is Australian for “sell hard”, as in the classic flea market barker of old. Nowadays we flea markteers don’t bark about our wares, we tweet about them. Very PC, and works much better. Well, sort of I think.
I’m an old school gal – I run a flea market for God’s sake! But even when Topanga Vintage Market was just a twinkle in our eyes, Lori and I knew that these days even a flea market needs a web site. So we set up our .com with our young techi friend Rain Lee at Duosites. After much obsessing over background patterns & designs we chose this. I call it our “80’s look” cause after a while we looked back and said, “OMG What were we thinking!”
primitive early website artifact
Then I started blogging. I started dreaming about corporate sponsors, expense-paid trips to Brooklyn Flea, my own reality show… Well, thank god that last one never happened! The best thing about the blog is that it turned into a good old-fashioned newspaper column in RG Canning’s Collectors Calendar. 🙂
Anyway, we know we’re in the digital age now and we need to get with it, so I keep trying, with mixed results. I got the hang of Facebook after only a few frustrating weeks of banging my head on the Wall (couldn’t resist an FB pun). Hit it big with a post about ‘vintage’ Mexican food.
Lesson #1: Post About Food and People Will Share
Of course, as soon as I got Facebook down I heard that we really needed to be on Twitter. So I set us up @TopangaVintage and sat back and waited. Not much happened. I can’t read tweets. My eyes are too old. Or my brain. Example:
Bohemian Trading @bohemiantrading 15m https://www.etsy.com/treasury/MTI5MzIyODB8MjcyNDA4NjQwMQ … #voguet #vogueteam #vintage ?TRENDS? #PurpleBiz #share #share #lifestyle #style #mode #moda #????
What does it all mean?
And Pinterest was fun, but it was either run the market or spend hours dreaming and pinning, and I reluctantly chose the former. Then our web master Rain suggested Instagram. Pictures! With Kodachrome effects that don’t require a degree in Photoshop! Now this is my speed. As one of my favorite vendors (#MissJeanUpcycles) says, “you don’t have to read it first like Twitter, you get the picture first!” Pictures like the one below from very hip young places like “thisisnotikea” that buy at flea markets and yard sales and create collections at their shop but also have thousands of followers and all that good stuff:
Lesson #2: Pictures with Dogs get shared even more than food.
So it used to be that branding at the flea market meant getting a moniker like “Walter The Seashell Guy” or even a nameless but very effective one like “the hat lady.” But now you can bark even louder as #theseashellguy, and all your followers will happily share your “word of mouth”.
Now that’s what I call flogging the flea!
