Converseon worked in partnership with Lion Brand Yarn on the ideation, development and implementation of an enterprise social media strategy. This case study is a submission for the 2009 Forrester Groundswell Awards.

The Challenge

Establish an authentic and relevant online voice for a beloved 130 year old crafting company and institute best practices that help build relationships with passionate consumers of online knitting communities.

The Approach

Lion Brand Yarn was not sure if its customer demographic would be likely to engage in social media but was willing to experiment with the new technology in an attempt to engage and connect with its passionate consumer base. They engaged Converseon to help them listen to the online conversation about knitting and crocheting, better understand their customers social media behavior, identify opportunities for engagement and develop a coherent and measurable social media strategy.

The brand’s approach to social media hinged on an open approach to conversation and a employee driven content and relationships. The brand focused on ‘talking’ to its customers and prospects and expanded its efforts in social media as the rigorous measurement framework indicated success. Lion Brand Yarn has taken a long term approach to community building and it is now, 18 months after the initial launch of the Yarncraft podcast, that the brand is seeing the most success and measurable return on investment.

Implementation

Lion Brand teamed with Converseon, utilizing our Conversation Mining technology to map the knitting/crocheting online community, identify influential online voices and identify opportunities for engagement in social media. This listening uncovered a deep, interconnected and highly engaged community of passionate users spread across blogs, podcasts and even dedicated knitting/crocheting social networks.

With Converseon’s strategic guidance, the ‘Yarncraft‘ podcast was launched. Hosted by a pair of LBY employees, the podcast was produced bi-weekly and focused on knitting and crocheting topics. The podcast was posted to a dedicated blog, distributed via iTunes and also given away as a CD in store for less tech-savvy consumers. The podcast was designed to be a conversation with customers and knitting community figures moreso than ‘internet radio’ in the broadcast model.

In April 2008, the ‘Lion Brand Notebook‘ blog was launched, providing content and links to other knitting sources. The blog was also powered by Lion Brand employees with content ranging from customer polls for product development through to ‘knit alongs’ that combine online/offline access allowing customers to knit the same project together. The ‘knit alongs’ alone have proven to be a measurable driver of ROI for the brand as each virtual event drives a direct link to increased sales of the yarn featured.

Results

• Lion Brand is one of the 2009 Internet Retailer’s ‘Hot 100′ Retail Websites, their site receives over 2 million visits a month
• The podcast regularly has 15-20,000 downloads while the blog attracts tens of thousands of readers each month
• A Lion Brand survey of 30,000 of their customers found that those customers who have interacted with the brand through social media are 83% more likely to identify as ‘very brand loyal’ than non-social media users and are several times more likely to recommend the brand to others
• Traffic analysis shows that traffic from social media routinely converts at a much higher rate than most sources, outperforming email marketing and banner ads
• From June 16 – July 16, 2009 traffic coming from the brand blog to the brand e-commerce website converted at 41.21% higher than the brand’s average traffic.
• From June 16 –July 16, 2009, the average per visit value of the blog traffic was 39.44% higher than the site average

Conclusion

Lion Brand Yarn initially set out to build relationships with the online knitting community by talking with their customers via a corporate blog and podcast. As a result of an investment in people rather than products, they found themselves with a passionate and brand loyal group of knitters, who not only engage with the brand but impact the bottom line by buying and using products as a result of social media engagement.

Further Resources

PR Week Case Study: Lion Brand Yarn finds success in measured approach to social media,

Slideshare presentation from 2009 Internet Retailer Conference:

In addition, the presentation above is a series of customer endorsements quoted verbatim from a survey of the LBY blog and podcast audience asking them to share their thoughts and feelings about the two venues.

To connect with Lion Brand Yarn online subscribe to the Lion Brand Notebook blog, listen to the YarnCraft podcast, follow them on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Recently one of our own, Paull Young, turned his birthday into a social media experiment to raise money for charity:water a group working to provide clean water in Ethiopia.

The purpose of this experiment was not only to raise money for a good cause, but also to gauge the amount of leverage Paull could exert over his social network.

Why is this experiment important?

One of our biggest challenge in social media consulting and marketing is connecting conversation and relationships to action and ROI. The more we work to understand what types of relationships have the most potential for action, the better we can prove our impact.

Paull’s Method:

Tracking: By using Bit.ly Paull was able to track the number and sources of clicks to his charity page.
Communication: Paull used his Facebook status to make his friends aware of charity efforts when they came to his profile page to wish him happy birthday. Secondly, he used Twitter, on his birthday and the days following his birthday, to talk about the charity, his efforts and to spur greater action.

What were Paull’s Results?

Paull raised $1,240 for clean water in Ethiopia in the month of September. By looking at the statistics provided by bit.ly Paull was able to track how many people clicked on his link and where each of them came from.

Paull got:

• 101 clicks from Twitter
• 39 clicks from Facebook30 clicks from his blog

He received:

• $530 from his blog
• $325 from his personal contacts (i.e. people not on Twitter or Facebook)
• $302 from his Twitter friends
• $10 from a friend on Facebook (curiously, he met this person on Twitter)

If you do the math you can calculate the dollar amount Paull received per click:

• On his blog each click was worth $17.66
• On Twitter each click was worth (almost) $3
• On Facebook each click represented $0.25

Paull’s Takeaways

The greatest action comes from the people that you have the best relationships with.  These are people that you have relationships with in the real word, co-workers and close friends.

Although Facebook has a much great potential for visibility it has weaker relationships: 77 people left Paull a Facebook wall comments saying happy birthday, 39 of them clicked through to his charity page and only 1 donated.

Twitter allowed for a more active visibility.  On Facebook he could only change his status. Twitter allowed him to create a constant reminder updating his tweets nearly 20 times to remind people of the opportunity.
A bigger network = bigger results – Pete Cashmore of Mashable joined Paull in his charity efforts and was able to raise more than three times Paull’s amount.

For a more in depth look at Paull’s case study check out his blog posts. Importantly, you can support his efforts until the end of this month by visiting his page and making a donation.

Other related posts:

• A Geek’s Reflections on Personal Fundraising via Blog, Twitter, and Facebook
• The Well that Twitter Built

PY – This weekend Constantin Basturea and I are attending the superb UGA Connect conference for the second consecutive year. To mark the occasion, I asked our Fall intern Lindsey Loughman, a UGA Graduate and Connect attendee last year, to write a guest blog post about the conference.

Connect 2008 is a conference that is near and dear to my heart. Connect is an annual event at the University of Georgia, that brings together professionals and educators under the banner of social media education.

A little background, Connect 2007 was a student campaign lead by Dr. Karen Russell. Dr. Russell and others at Grady College, UGA’s journalism school, realized that social media was changing PR and there was a growing gap between PR education and practice. Connect was one way that they could try to close that gap.

It provides an opportunity for industry to exchange notes. Educators bring with them emerging studies on the effects of social media and results of best practices, while practitioners bring the experience of case studies and social media techniques. But, at its core Connect, is about building relationships in the real world, boosting the plethora of online venues where students, practitioners and educators are connecting like PROpenmic.

Connect is also a big part of my story and how I came to Converseon. Last year I worked in a class under Dr. Kaye Sweetser to provide live coverage of Connect. There, I feel in love with social media and met Paull and Constantin for the first time. It was a perfect match; all at once I had found an incredible new field of PR and some of the most talented (and very cool) people who practiced it everyday.

My Connect story has played out, but I can’t wait to see what new stories and relationships that will be formed this year. And you can too if you follow their blog, Twitter, and Flickr accounts.

Converseon worked in partnership with Graco Children’s Products (a Newell Rubbermaid brand) on a full scale social media strategy. The success of the community building, relationship driven approach has led to us submitting the following case study for the Forrester Groundswell awards on Graco’s behalf.

The Challenge
Connecting a 66 year old brand in a tightly-regulated environment with a highly-interconnected online community of influentials with a proven skepticism towards brands.

Graco needed to assess a complex and fragmented online conversation that occurred across multiple websites and environments including message boards/forums, hundreds of parenting blogs, numerous parenting social networks, Twitter, YouTube and many other social media venues.

The Concept

Graco first “listened” to the conversation to develop a clear understanding of the conversation landscape in the parenting category. This informed a strategy to:

- Make Graco an accepted and welcomed participant in the online parenting conversation.
- Humanize the Graco brand and build lasting relationships with the community by demonstrating that behind the brand are a group of concerned and engaged parents.

Implementation
Listening (“i.e. Conversation Mining”) activity found that there was a robust, active parenting conversation that was largely resistant to commercial efforts to engage them in conversation.

A core thrust of the strategy: Don’t force the brand into the conversations, but instead environments to facilitate relationships between influentials and be invited to the conversation.

A core component: A series of Graco blogger “Get-Together” events across the country t to allow Graco to engage in an acceptable manner. This laid the groundwork for the subsequent launch of a corporate Graco parenting blog authored by a multi-disciplinary team of Graco employees. The blog was carefully crafted to focus on “parent first” issues, stories, advice.

The blogging effort was supported with the complimentary use of other social media tools, including Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and more.

Successes

• Conversation Mining results showed the volume of the online conversation for the Graco Brand nearly doubled, while the polarity of online mentions rose from 68% positive in 2007 to 83% positive in 2008
• Amongst this shift, 100% of posts sparked by proactive outreach have been positive
• A significant increase in positive recommendations/reviews – this desirable topic became the most common discussion of the Graco brand
• Graco featured on the Today Show, Business Week and as a case study at BlogHer Business conference
• In just 6 months is ranked as the 59th top parenting blog in the hundreds strong Parent Power Index
• Thousands of monthly unique visitors to the Graco Blog, increased traffic and conversions at main Graco site
• Graco Blog ranks on the front page of Google for many relevant search terms
• Technorati Authority of 88 resulting from 224 blog reactions in 6 months (higher than many Fortune 500 blogs)
• 155 posts at the Graco blog garnering 530 comments

Hear What Others Have To Say

• Company Blog Check Up: Graco – Mack Collier (5th Best Score so far in Mack’s extensive series of corporate blog reviews)
• Graco Blog is Fantastic and Graco Continues to Rock Their Corporate Blogging Efforts – Jake Mckee (The Community Guy)
• Social Networking is Personal – Kelby Carr
• So You Want To Talk to Mommy Bloggers? – Erin Vest (Queen Of Spain)
• Rubbermaid Unit Gets Parents Talking Online – Atlanta Journal Constitution

To connect with Graco online subscribe to their corporate blog, see parenting blogger videos at the Ready For The Road Ahead car seat site, follow them on Twitter and see pictures from their blogger events on Flickr.

As per the headline, we’re extremely proud to have been selected by the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association as one of their four WOMMIE Award winners for 2007.

The art of Word of Mouth Marketing online is continually evolving and we’re having a great time working at the coalface. Rob Key will be presenting our case study at the WOMMA Summit on November 14-15 in Las Vegas – but in the mean time you can learn from the great case studies hosted at the WOMMA site. In the meantime, we’re happy to be recognized like this:

“I was thrilled to see the caliber of work considered this year for the Wommie Awards, particularly when comparing them against last year’s submissions,” said Amanda Van Nuys, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Organic, Inc. and Wommie Awards judge. “Collectively, the case studies clearly demonstrate how word of mouth marketing has grown up over the last few years as it transitions from its adolescence and into a more evolved and disciplined marketing practice.”

On To The Friday Links!

This week the Converseon team have had a mix of social networking and smart technology catch our eye. The content below has already sparked some deep thinking and conversation amongst our team, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photosynth Demonstration (RSS Readers, click through for video)

This technology is mind blowing. As they say: “Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images”Consumer 3.0: New Trends in CGM

Pete Blackshaw gives a general overview of the current state of CGM marketing, including some links to good examples.

Facebook Facts that will blow your marketing mind

Mitch Joel shares some stats on Facebook from the Canadian Marketing Association conference:

1. The average Facebook user spends about twenty-one minutes plus per day at the online social network.
2. The average Facebook user visits four times per day.
3. Facebook is adding about three hundred and fifty thousand new users every day.
4. Just this morning Facebook surpassed fifty million worldwide community members.
5. Facebook’s size doubles every six months.

Can Facebook feed its ad brains?

Facebook is expected to tap artificial intelligence to deliver ads to its 49 million members. This is a good real world example of the challenges that companies face in serving the right ads to the right people in real time.

A Series of Podcasts with Lee Odden and Mike Moran

Some great discussion here about Mike Moran’s new book “Do It Wrong Quickly: How The Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules”

Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives

A good analysis of what Google’s new OpenSocial can allow you to do to help share great content with your key audiences.

This post highlights some work Converseon has undertaken for American Ventures.

It can be difficult to involve C Level executives in social media, they’re time poor, they are still learning about the changes that are occurring and often they are uneasy about the uncontrolled nature of the blogosphere. At the same time the valuable knowledge and insight these individuals can share can really benefit their relevant niche community. While we look forward to the day when it is the norm for organizations to climb aboard the Cluetrain, at this early stage it is often best to help CEO’s dip their toes in the water as they become educated in the unique nature of social media.

CEOs blogging and podcasting are not new but it is more difficult to involve a CEO in social media in industries that might seem a bit atypical, like commercial real estate. In this case, we worked with Philip Blumberg, the CEO of Blumberg Capital Partners and American Ventures to help him launch the Philip Blumberg Five podcast expounding on the impact of current real estate challenges on commercial real estate development and other topics. The recording of the podcast was also filmed to share the information via YouTube to make the most of his contribution and help spread the information to interested parties.

This early effort with socially media provide an extension of his blog and hopefully the beginning of a deeper involvement with social media in future.

The following case study is a summary of the panel Rob Key shared with Quixtar’s Robin Luymes at the Corporate Reputation and Communication Conference organized by The Conference Board (New York, September 26, 2007).

The client

One of our clients is Quixtar, which has been recognized as the #1 online retailer in the Health & Beauty category in Internet Retailer’s “Top 500 Guide” that ranks America’s largest retail websites, with $136 billion in sales in 2006. The company ‘offers a business opportunity that allows people to have a business of their own based on retailing products and sharing the opportunity with others who will do the same‘ and provides a compensation plan, products, merchandising materials, training and education to hundreds of thousands of Independent Business Owners (IBOs).

Quixtar is the sister company of Amway, and its official representative in US and Canada.

The challenge

Converseon was contracted to work with Quixtar when its online reputation was highly negative. Critics were using third party websites to post complaints that were receiving no answer from the company. Also, critics were accusing Quixtar of using ‘black hat’ SEO techniques in order to suppress criticism.

First step: Conversation Mining

We started by undertaking a comprehensive overview of the CGM conversational landscape, in order to understand the main topics and issues associated with the brand, what is the associated polarity, who are the most influential and the most vocal critics, and how their contributions are impacting the search engines result pages — among other issues.

Developing and implementing a social media strategy

Based on the analysis of data gathered through Conversation Mining, and on our readiness assessment of Quixtar’s internal culture, we developed a strategy for enabling the company to participate in the online conversation by engaging in civil discourse with its critics and advocates, in a direct and transparent manner.

The strategy implementation included:

• Development of a blog portal
• Social Media workshops for key senior executives
• Identifying and training employees on blogging 101, ethics and best practices, writing for web
• Development of blog themes
• Adoption of WOMMA Code of Ethics
• Addressing legal issues, establishing processes and protocols
• Optimization of content and infrastructure for search engines
• Ongoing daily counseling, training and optimization.

On December 1st 2006, Quixtar launched Opportunity Zone – a “place to talk and learn about the Quixtar business opportunity and the people, products, and plan that support it“- with Inside Quixtar and The Real Quixtar Blog, two blogs written by top communications managers. Ada-tudes, a blog written by top executives, and One By One, a blog about Quixtar’s philanthropic and community service efforts, were added in January 2007. Since then other 6 blogs have been launched – on topics going from shopping and selling to fashion and beauty, food and cooking, stories from IBOs, information technology, and sponsored events.

Results (as of end of August, 2007):

• The volume of conversation about Quixtar has increased 41%
• The volume of Quixtar-generated CGM content has increased 5 times
• The volume of CGM content authored by major detractors has decreased by half
• The positive sentiment in CGM content has increased 150%
• The negative sentiment has dropped 39%
• The depth of the conversation has increased by 83%

Beyond the cold numbers, the Opportunity Zone has become the place where Quixtar is talking, through employees and top executives, with its stakeholders, on a whole array of issues, good and bad, concerning its business. The process of opening the communications channels is not necessarily a simple one — but both critics and advocates seem to think it’s well worth the effort:

Kemi T, Quixtar Inside Out

Finally (okay, this time it’s for real), I want to say that I am really impressed by the Opportunity Zone. It’s great that the corp has opened this avenue of two-way communication. Sure, I don’t agree with every single thing that’s there (and what does that matter anyway?), and some are impatient what they perceive as slow (or nonexistent) progress, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m liking what I see, and I hope I’m not disappointed.

Robin Luymes, The Real Quixtar Blog:

SO, with Opportunity Zone, we’re getting a little naked. Are we stripped bare yet? Hardly. After all, we’re talking about 50 years of organizational culture that needs to be shifted. But, I will say this, within the walls of Quixtar and even down the street at Alticor, people are noticing the Opportunity Zone and I think there’s a genuine interest in getting nekkid. Some will still be concerned about whether we reveal too much or that we will get into legal trouble or that we will look bad. Well, I don’t worry too much about looking bad, because we already haven’t looked that great to a lot of people out there. I think people understand there are certain legal things we can’t discuss because they’re live issues, but we should talk freely about the issues we can.

So, get naked! Out yourself before you’re outed. If people find out stuff about you or your business from someone else, they’ll assume you were holding out on them. Our business IS an incredible opportunity for others and DOES offer incredible products that can make a real difference in people’s lives. There’s nothing to hide about that!