Sunday, February 28, 2010

Threadless- A Social Media Campaign to Learn From

When people first start to consider social media as part of their marketing efforts, the first thing they think of is "money." This is natural tendency of course. But thinking of dollars every minute throughout the duration of your campaign will only stifle it instead of moving you towards increasing returns.

A healthier perspective is to ask yourself, "how can I interact with my market and build a stronger relationship with my customers?" A name and a logo don't give people a strong enough reason to choose one company over another. A personalized engagement is. Aren't you more likely to choose a company whom you've had a positive personal interaction with. Or would go with one because you liked their  name, logo and tagline?

"People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel." I used this quote in another post by Maya Angelou. But since it is an important lesson to keep in mind, I thought to include it again.

Threadless is an example of a company who executes social media successfully by prioritizing quality interactions above everything else. In case you are not familiar with the name, they are a youth culture T-shirt company that lets their target market participate in designing and voting for shirts. Here is a video with Bob Nanna of Threadless.





As you can tell, their social campaign is quite thoughtfully done. It's a great example that illustrates how returns will follow with consistent quality engagement.