Tahki Stacy Charles: Brand Monitoring Report #2

Introduction and Background Information
As I have previously mentioned, the company I chose to monitor is Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc., a yarn company. Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. encompasses four yarn brands: Filatura Di Crosa, Tahki Yarns, S. Charles Collezione, and Loop-d-Loop by Teva Durham. However, I chose to monitor the parent company instead of single brands. To continue my monitoring of this company, I used the following social metric tools: Addictomatic, SocialMention, IceRocket, and TrendPedia.

Twitter
Similar to previous weeks, most of the tweets about Tahki Stacy Charles have been from Vogue Knitting and Yarn Group. Unlike last week, however, TahkiYarns and FilaturaDiCrosaYarns have both showed up on the “Top Users” list on SocialMention, which means that they were both tweeting more than they have over the previous month. This increase is probably due to the Colorplay Challenge contest I mentioned earlier, in which contestants design scarves made from Tahki yarns. In addition, Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. recently released a free pattern for their S. Charles Collezione brand yarns, called the “Elaine Oversized Pullover.” This has generated a bit of buzz on Twitter, with people re-tweeting the link to the pattern.

Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. has improved their Twitter presence by tweeting more often. For example, TahkiYarns tweeted:

By tweeting questions such as this one, Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. is more likely to spark a conversation among its followers and create buzz about their products.

Blogs
Since my last report, many of the blog posts mentioning Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. have been written in Russian, so I was unable to determine if they were positive or negative in nature. I found one blog post where the poster, Geraldine, was asking for suggestions on which yarn to substitute for a pattern, and she was thinking of using Replay by Tahki Yarns. She also linked to the Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. website, which will help to increase search engine results for the company.

Geraldine was leaning towards either coral or crimson, which do you like?

YouTube
Since my last report, Stacy Tahki Charles, Inc. has linked their Twitter and YouTube accounts, so I saw many posts from Twitter saying “I liked a YouTube video,” with a description of the video. Many of these videos were from the TNNA fashion show I showed in class. However, the company has not posted any new YouTube videos. This is understandable, as it is difficult to convey colors and textures through online means, such as videos.

Ravelry
Ravelry is clearly the area in which Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc.’s marketing strategy shines. Clearly, it is the perfect place to reach their target audience. In the “Friends of Tahki Yarns” group, fans of the yarns discuss their knitting goals for the year of 2011, and much of the group is actively discussing the Colorplay challenge. Other threads include users searching for extra skeins of specific colors or yarns.

User “judisohn” posted about errors in a pattern written by the company, which is a great example of Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc.’s outstanding customer service. Within a day, a sales representative for the company (user “AnneBeanVA” posted to apologize for the errors, and offered to contact the designer to fix the problems.

The immediate response placated “judisohn” and preserved Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc.’s reputation. Although the post is not new, it still shows that the company is focused on its customers.

Target Audience
The target audience of Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. is, of course, knitters who will buy their yarns. However, it is difficult to reach many knitters via the Internet, since much of the target population consists of older individuals. This portion of the target audience is usually labeled as “inactives” or “spectators.” Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. has done a great job in reaching the “joiners” in their target audience through Ravelry, an online knitting and crocheting community. By creating a Ravelry group dedicated to their yarns, they are able to listen to the groundswell, respond quickly to problems, and spark new conversations.

Strength, Sentiment, Passion, Reach
The SocialMention snapshots over the past two weeks show that Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc.’s sentiment and passion scores have both increased from the previous month, which is good news for the company. This is probably due to the buzz created by the Colorplay challenge, and the fact that the company tweeted more often than it did in the past month. The number of positive mentions increased, which helped boost their sentiment ratio.

SocialMention Stats Mid-March to the end of March

Unfortunately, the low reach percentages still pose a significant problem for the company. By focusing most of their efforts on reaching their target audience through Ravelry, they are missing the users who are not part of that community. Ravelry forum posts and projects will show up in Google searches, but if the viewer does not have a Ravelry account, they will not be able to view the pages. However, this may provide an incentive for people to join Ravelry, since it is a free community.

The extremely low strength percentage is also an indicator that Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. is not being mentioned frequently in social media outlets. The only sure way to fix this problem is for the company itself to start tweeting and blogging even more. By focusing most of their efforts on Ravelry, the company is missing the bigger picture.

Suggestions and Goals
Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. has done a good job in identifying their target audience, but they have not done such a good job in reaching their customers through a wide variety of resources and technologies. Because Ravelry is a closed community, anyone who is not a registered member cannot view forum posts. This poses a problem to Tahki Stacy Charles’ reach percentages, since those pages are not visible to much of their target population (the “inactives” and “spectators”). By taking advantage of other outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. would be able to increase their reach percentage significantly. In my opinion, they are focusing too much time and energy on Ravelry, and not enough on other areas that can reach more people.

As mentioned in my previous report, strength is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media. Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc.’s strength percentage is abysmally low, at 1% or even 0% each time I have taken a snapshot. This is directly linked to the problem I mention above, in which TSC, Inc. is focusing too much on Ravelry, and not enough on other social media outlets. Companies cannot wait for others to discuss them -- they need to initiate the conversation themselves. By taking charge of the situation, Tahki Stacy Charles, Inc. would be able to spark more conversation and activity, and their strength percentage would increase. Sometimes the groundswell just needs a little push.