I’ve chosen to monitor Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. Tahki Stacy Charles is a yarn company that encompasses the following yarn brands: Filatura Di Crosa, Tahki Yarns, S. Charles Collezione, and Loop-d-Loop by Teva Durham. Each yarn brand has its own Facebook, Twitter, and Ravelry page. Ravelry is an important social network for yarn brands to utilize. For more information on Ravelry, see my previous blog post here. To monitor this company, I used the following social metric tools: Addictomatic, SocialMention, IceRocket, and TrendPedia.
Marketing Strategy
Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc., uses a marketing service, The Wool Wide Web, to manage their web and social media presence. The Wool Wide Web helps yarn companies and specific yarn brands implement social media marketing strategies. Some of the services The Wool Wide Web offers include: Social Media Campaign Creation, Social Media Monitoring, an E-Newsletter service, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Adwords Campaigns, Google Analytics & Webmaster tools integration, WordPress websites, Branding Strategies, Retail Support Programs, Designer and pattern support, and ghost blogging.
The advantage of using an outside service like The Wool Wide Web is that companies with little or limited knowledge of the groundswell or social media technologies do not have to spend the time learning how to use them – they can hire a company to do it for them. This allows the yarn companies to focus on creating new products. Companies hire outside designers for advertisements, why not hire a company to market for you?
YouTube
Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. has its own YouTube channel; however, the company has only uploaded one video. This video is an interview with Stacy Charles and Diane Friedman of Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. Another top result when searching for TSC, Inc. was Yarn Group, a subsidiary group of the National NeedleArts Association. Yarn Group uploaded a video from the TNNA Spring/Summer 2011 Fashion Show, which features models showing handknit garments made from Tahki Stacy Charles yarns.
Many of the blog posts I came across were reviews of specific yarns, such as this review of Tahki Stacy Charles Cotton Classic. The review mentioned that the yarn has a very pleasant texture and is great for beginners since it doesn’t split easily.
Look at all those colors! (Source: yarn.com)
Another blog post from Knitting Daily promoted a contest being held by Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. – the Colorplay Reader Challenge. Knitting Daily, of Interweave Knits, is running a contest to win $250 worth of Tahki Yarns. To enter, you need to create a multi-colored scarf using at least 4 colors of Cotton Classic or Cotton Classic Lite. Readers will vote on the most creative knit scarf and the most creative crochet scarf. Contestants will use patterns provided by a professional designer. Tahki Yarns is also offering a 10% off coupon for your purchase of Cotton Classic or Cotton Classic Lite if purchased for the Colorplay Reader Challenge.
Topics, Tone, Strength, Sentiment, Passion, Reach
By looking at SocialMention at a few intervals across a couple months, I was able to determine some general trends about Tahki Stacy Charles. In general, the topics mentioned are the yarn brands themselves – but beyond that, they were either positive or negative reviews. Also frequently mentioned were sales or discounts currently being offered on Tahki Stacy Charles yarns. The general perceived tone was positive, while negative reviews were extremely rare. According to SocialMention, strength is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media. Tahki Stacy Charles’ strength was quite low, at only 1%. This shows that overall, Tahki Stacy Charles was not being mentioned very often.
SocialMention Stats Mid-February to Mid-March
The sentiment, or the ratio of mentions that are positive to the mentions that are negative, was neutral overall, ranging from 12:0 to 13:1. This means that for every 13 positive mentions, there was only one negative mention. Passion, or the measure of individuals who are talking about your brand will do so repeatedly, varied greatly for Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. It varied from 72% in mid-February to 43% in mid-March. Tahki Stacy Charles is only being mentioned by a few repeat users, like Vogue Knitting. Reach, or the measure of the range of influence, ranged from 4% to 11%. These percentages are calculated by using the number of unique authors referencing your brand divided by the total number of mentions. TSC, Inc.’s reach percentages are an indicator that they are not reaching too many users.
Conclusion and Future Monitoring
I will continue to monitor Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. to see if their reach and strength percentages increase. We might see some entries into the Colorplay Challenge competition, and that would definitely increase the company’s web presence. In general, TSC, Inc. could benefit from posting more YouTube videos, because that would provide users with more ways to find out about Tahki Stacy Charles’ yarns. So far, I would say that Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. has gotten its feet wet in the Groundswell, but it needs to become more involved to make an impact.
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