The power of Twitter

About a year ago Best Years ventured on to the social media forum Twitter

Basically Twitter is just another way to communicate with people but its only allows you to post comments of 140 characters.

You chose to follow people or businesses who you think are interesting and invite people to follow you if you think that they might be interested in what you are up to. In this way you effectively create your own community of people and businesses linked by common interests, in our case retail and fair trade and obviously wholesale toys

As soft toy and knitted toy wholesalers we tried Twitter only due to the sheer amount of publicity surrounding its use as a marketing tool. However we have been hugely impressed by it.

We have picked up a couple of customers but much more importantly we have found new suppliers and received some excellent advice on tax and SEO. We have also gained the valuable ability to evesdrop on the conversations of retailers which has been illuminating and very useful

Although we loved Twitter we did not realise the full extent of its power until the row between a small designer called Hidden Eloise and the stationery retailer Paperchase

Hidden Eloise believed that Paperchase were using one of her designs without permission. She contacted the retailer and was told that she was wrong and that was that as far as they were concerned. Hidden Eloise looked in to taking a legal case against Paperchase but realised that it would be too expensive. This all happened last November and nothing else would have been heard about it except that the issue swirled around Twitter until it was mentioned by an author called Neil Gainsford who has a very large following

Then it all exploded. The row has been reported in The Telegraph and The Guardian and a boycott of Paperchase stores been proposed. The Head Office has been inundated by irate calls and emails

I do not know the rights and wrongs of the case (although I can see that there is a marked simularity between the designs) but what is interesting is that because Twitter links people with shared interest, and they can re-tweet (pass on) to their followers the story was able to gather momentum until it became national news. Viral marketing in its truest form

Watch out big guys - we now have the power of Twitter behind us!

You can find us on www.twitter.com/knittedtoys

If you join twitter please do follow us and we can then follow you back