Emeric (00:00):
I’m going to say it because you’re not going to say it, but you are definitely crushing it on Twitter.
Whitney (00:05):
Thank you.
Emeric (00:06):
I’ve never seen any other company doing so well on Twitter. Elon, what should you do on Twitter to make your life easier?
Whitney (00:11):
Get something like AgoraPulse to make your life far, far easier.
Emeric (00:20):
Welcome to the Social Media ROI Hotseat podcast. My name is Emeric Ernoult. I’m the CEO of AgoraPulse. And since 2011, I’ve been obsessed by proving that social media was more than likes and followers, that it was actually delivering a real return on investment and a business impact that can be measured. At the beginning of 2022, AgoraPulse launched a social media ROI tracker and report. And since then I’ve been on a quest, the quest of social media ROI success stories you can learn from and be inspired by. This is why this podcast exists, and I hope that thanks to what you’re going to learn following it, you too will be measuring the business impact of social media on your business or the business of your clients. Let’s get on with the show.
(01:11):
Hello, everyone. I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Whitney Medworth to the show. Whitney is the head of content for a company called Homefield Apparel, director of content, actually, Homefield Apparel. And Homefield Apparel is an eCommerce business based out of Indianapolis in the US, focusing on college sport apparel. So tell me more about that, because our audience is not only US-based, it’s international, and as you know, I’m French. So explain to our audience what is college sport apparel and what you do.
Whitney (01:50):
Sure, yeah, so we make officially licensed apparel for almost every college in the US. We have over 150 … there’s obviously a lot more and we continue to add, but we have a ton of schools. And what we focus in is vintage inspired. We really get into the details of these designs, and our designers go through all kinds of research to find logos and designs that haven’t typically been used before. And so it’s a little bit different than what you may find at a Nike or an Adidas or something like that. We’re going really, really into the detail, the history of your school, traditions, moments, all those things that make people really proud to be an alum from the school or a current student at the school they’re at. We go try to invoke all those memories and stories through our apparel. And we’ve seen a lot of success that way, putting that much thought and detail into our designs.
Emeric (02:49):
So very strong communities there behind each school and each sports team.
Whitney (02:55):
Yeah. The fan bases behind these schools are huge and they care so much about their school, and so we try to replicate that with them.
Emeric (03:05):
Tell us a little bit more about the mission or the vision or the idea behind the company. Why was it started? How was it started? Do you know a little bit more there?
Whitney (03:15):
Yeah. So like I was saying, I’ll expand on it, a lot of the bigger companies, they’re producing for so many schools and so many times that there may not be a lot of variety or uniqueness, sometimes, in the designs. And so our founder, our CEO and our founder, he knew that there was an underrepresented spot for all these vintage inspired designs and all the storytelling and thoughtfulness. He knew that there was an opening there that was missing in college apparel. And so he started with some really small schools, but some really fun ones that have really unique mascots, like a Green Wave, or there’s a school in Michigan that their mascot is like a literal rock that wears a fur coat. And he started going with these really small, fun schools that were underrepresented, and started to make these great shirts for them. And just the momentum came, that then the bigger schools wanted in as well, but still keeping that same mindset of these designs that people aren’t used to seeing for their school.
Emeric (04:21):
How old is the business now?
Whitney (04:25):
Just started in 2018, so-
Emeric (04:28):
2018, very young.
Whitney (04:29):
… just over four years old. Yeah, very young.
Emeric (04:31):
Just over four years old. Great. How many of you now today?
Whitney (04:35):
I think including the warehouse and the designers and marketing and all that, I think maybe we’re around between 30 and 40. A lot of that comes obviously from the warehouse side as well, that make all the shirts for us.
Emeric (04:53):
Yeah, 30 and 40, all US-based?
Whitney (04:57):
Yes. Yep.
Emeric (04:57):
Yeah. So it’s a decent team. It is a decent business to be built in a little bit more than four years, so that’s quite amazing. Can you share with us how it got started, so we understand why the idea came from, but how the distribution got started? What was the early distribution of the t-shirts and the apparels that they were selling back in the days?
Whitney (05:24):
Yeah. So they started with some local Indiana schools. That’s where we’re from. And so getting IU, Indiana University, was huge. That is the biggest school and arguably the most popular school here in Indiana. So able to get in with some of those Indiana schools. And then like I said, some of those smaller fun schools, as we call them, maybe they’re not the most … they haven’t won the most championships, but they are the most fun designs [inaudible 00:05:56] with those. And starting to just get the trust of those licensing departments. And then starting to, I’m sure as we’ll talk about, immerse ourselves in those communities and those sports communities and reaching people that way. But it’s been eCom the entire time, with a massive, massive push on social to get the shirts out there.
Emeric (06:23):
Okay. Would you say social was the main go-to-market for the business, or there were other go-to-market that were bigger or as big as social?
Whitney (06:33):
100%. And to be even more specific for us, it’s been Twitter. A lot of people will say to us, “You’ve figured out the one platform that other people can’t.” And we have and we agree, and sometimes we wish that we could figure out Instagram as well as we figured out Twitter. Yeah, but that said, it’s been Twitter. We were able to get ourselves into college football Twitter, which is where the community is. If people are really interested in college football, which is massive … Here in the US, college football is very big. And those fan bases, they’re on Twitter. They’re in their communities on Twitter, they’re following certain writers on Twitter, they’re following other fans on Twitter. And that’s where they live. That’s where they get their information. That’s where they watch games together. They have inside jokes. It’s essentially message boards as we used to know, but that’s what’s on Twitter now.
(07:35):
And we were able to really get in with some of the bigger names in college football Twitter, more of the national names. And it just sort of spread through that way, and fairly organically as well. A lot of the big college football Twitter influencers, I would say, organically were excited about our brand. And I think that speaks to the designs. We’ve had a lot of success, but I can’t have my success on social without the incredible work that our designers do. So it goes hand-in-hand, but a lot of that initial success was because there were really big names in college football that truly just wanted to promote our brand and talk about our brand on their own. It wasn’t forced. And so once that snowball started, it really just took off. And we have realized how important that is. And we go really hard into each community to try and reach those fans.
Emeric (08:42):
When did you join the adventure?
Whitney (08:45):
I started in May of ’21.
Emeric (08:51):
’21. And before, how was social maintained and dealt with?
Whitney (08:56):
Yeah, so I have a very cool and I think unique experience in that with this small company, our CEO, before me, he was running the Twitter. And I do have this unique experience where my CEO understands and gets the value of how to be online and how to tweet and how to do all those things. And he had started the ball rolling himself with some of this stuff, and then I’ve sort of jumped in and just continued to take it to the next level and expand what we’re doing. But yeah, I hear a lot of, I’ll just say horror stories, but I am very unique in that our CEO, and he’s in charge of our marketing department right now too, he just gets it. He gets what social is, he gets how important it is, he gets how you have to have a voice and personality. And yeah, it’s great in that regard.
Emeric (09:59):
Having buy-in from the boss or the bosses is usually amazing when you’re in social, because there are so many of them that don’t understand social. So that’s definitely a blessing. I totally get that. Do you know how the CEO was measuring the impact and effectiveness of social before? [inaudible 00:10:22]-
Whitney (10:22):
Yeah. I think in the early days, I think it was just pretty obvious through just some pretty standard reporting through Google Analytics and through Twitter analytics, seeing where those customers were coming from. I think it was pretty obvious from the start that creating this human brand … that’s the whole thing we’ve done, is try to just be human on social and Twitter. I think it’s pretty obvious from the start, just looking at some basic analytics, that Twitter was just moving the needle in ways that other places.
Emeric (11:01):
You mentioned earlier when we were talking that you have been growing a lot since you arrived, and that growth made tracking things difficult. Can you tell us a little bit more about that growth?
Whitney (11:15):
Sure.
Emeric (11:16):
How did it look like for the past two years?
Whitney (11:19):
Yeah, sure. So how it works in college apparel is that you can’t just make apparel for anyone. You have to have a license and you have to get approved and they have to approve of your designs. And it’s not an easy process, and it’s honestly a world that’s a little bit hard to get into. But because the goodwill of our brand had been building up, because the hype around our brand was building, these bigger schools wanted to start to get in. And what originally could have been a long five-year plan was happening in a year or two, because if the five biggest schools in the country want you to make apparel for them, it’s silly to say no. You kind of got to do it.
(12:07):
So we’ve been basically launching new schools on our site nonstop from when I started in May to beginning of January this year. And we’re talking the biggest of the biggest schools. And when it’s moving that fast and you’re adding these new fan bases … like we were doing them once a week. So you’re adding in these massive fan bases to your funnels and to your social, weekly.
(12:40):
I say this lightly, knowing that it’s not the way to live and why I’m here today, we were bringing in so many new people every week and adding these new schools every week, and it was growing so fast, that we necessarily weren’t having to be like, “Okay, well, what’s not working? And let’s adjust or let’s look at why this isn’t working anymore.” We did have a couple of instances of that, which I can talk about. But for the most part, when you’re adding in these massive sand bases every week that are excited to come to you, you don’t necessarily need to go back in and say, “Oh, well, why was this week lower?” Well, it wasn’t lower because we had that gift of constantly bringing in new people.
(13:26):
That said, we ran into some problems last summer, not problems, but last summer was the first summer … We had challenges. Last summer was the first summer that people were back out doing things again since COVID. We had really captured a fan base that there wasn’t anywhere to go. These people were begging for sports to come back. Why not channel that energy into seeing what t-shirts are going to be released this week? As people started to get back out into the world, they weren’t necessarily as tuned into their phone on a Saturday as they had been, because now they’re at baseball games or at their kids’ events, or they’re on the boat for the weekend.
(14:11):
So we had to readjust some stuff there as we saw the numbers were dipping, and that’s where we implemented a new strategy was capturing SMS. We started using social last summer, not as much as to sell the t-shirts, we obviously were, but we wanted to also capture them early and get them in our SMS funnel. That way we’re definitely getting to their phone, we’re not just hoping that they see us on Twitter. And seeing what happened last summer when some of those challenges start to arise and needing to adjust, it made it more clear going into the start of 2023. It’s like, “Okay, we’ve added all these schools in. We’ve had the rush, we’ve had the snowball effect. Now we got to figure out how to keep these people engaged and keep them coming back to us,” which is exactly why it was like, “Okay, let’s get with a software program that can help us do this more efficiently and better,” because of the reports I was running, I was doing it all manually and just doing it through Excel. And so it was obvious that we needed to dig in a little deeper.
Emeric (15:23):
Tell us a little bit more about those Excel report that you were doing. What were you doing them from, and what was the process like, and how long did it take you, and how often?
Whitney (15:35):
I was very manual and I was tracking everything from … Because our cadence would be on a Monday, we announced the school that we’re launching. Then all through the week, we’re hyping up that school, we’re getting everyone really excited. We’re teasing some designs. We’re in the fan base. And then on Saturday we’re releasing the collection and everyone’s going nuts, shouting on Twitter. It’s really fun. And so what I was dealing with each school was trying to track what engagement and the reception was of the announcement of the school and trying to help have that help determine us … I got a list of 15 schools, okay, now we can look and see that Monday reception was this good and they sold this much on that day, so we could start to figure out what a school may sell on that Saturday launch day.
(16:36):
We’re using it for that kind of stuff. Using it for obviously just growth, engagement, trying to figure out … We tested out some different types of teasers and showing off some designs, and so we’re tracking all that and it’s all manual, “Okay, this tease did this well,” and just trying to make sense of all that manually. And then when we switched to trying to bring in more SMS, “Okay, here’s how many people we got through SMS. Here’s how many people are clicking the links,” and just trying to make sense of each school’s launch and trying to determine how many people we could bring in, what those sales might end up being when the school was launched.
Emeric (17:24):
If you were to describe the percentage of business or the approximate percentage of business that’s coming directly from Twitter, what would it be? Is it 50% compared to, for example, repeat business that you may have from your CRM and existing customers? What is the new business that you are totally attributing to Twitter?
Whitney (17:48):
Yeah, I don’t have those numbers in front of me. I wish I did. I know it’s fluctuating for us a lot right now, because as I said, we were bringing in these huge new fan bases. And so our customer acquisition cost was just so small because it’s … Ohio State, it’s a huge fan base, we’ve never had their apparel before and now we have it. That is just a massive customer acquisition. But now we’re going back to the school, so now we’re giving Ohio State more stuff. So customer going to be way different now, because we just had these huge influxes of people coming in. So off the top of my head, I don’t have the correct numbers and I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but Twitter was huge for us, it was massive. It was the thing that was bringing in customers at a huge clip, but it’s much different now already that we’ve got those huge rushes in.
Emeric (18:55):
So Twitter is the thing. It is the big source of success on social media. Without breaking any secret or trade secret or anything, can you share with us what are the best tweets? What are they generating for you in terms of business? We looked at a couple of them [inaudible 00:19:18].
Whitney (19:17):
Sure, yeah.
Emeric (19:19):
Can you share the numbers?
Whitney (19:20):
Yeah. What we have found is that … and I think this can apply to any company, just apply this to your fan base or your customer base or who would be shopping for you, is that we just became one of them. So we didn’t try to be a brand, we just tried to be a person. In college football Twitter, college basketball Twitter, whatever it may be, we just try to be a person that people like. Now there’s a brand name on the account, but we didn’t try to be a brand. We just tried to be part of it. And we do that with every single school that we launched, so we would do things to … If a school has something that they call themselves, like a nickname or whatever, we would change our display name for the week. We would fully immerse ourselves in these schools and become part of them. I would learn all the inside jokes that their community has. I would learn who the most famous or most memorable players and moments, and just become part of them and build that personality and trust.
(20:33):
And so if I looked at numbers, our best tweets would be the ones that say, “Ohio State launching this Saturday,” because everyone’s going to scream and tweet and DM their friends and say, “Oh my gosh, it’s coming. It’s coming.” On the numbers, those are going to be the best tweets every time. But if I had to really tell you what the best tweets are, they’re the ones on a Saturday where you are watching games with the community and you’re part of it and you’re building that trust and rapport with people. So there’s your numbers best tweet, but there’s also the brand building and the community building tweets that maybe those don’t show up on the line item as bringing the sales in. But those are the tweets that made people say, “Oh, I like this brand. I want to buy from them.”
Emeric (21:30):
Yeah. So what you’re saying is there’s a lot of work about creating amazing content that they relate to that they feel is really crafted for them and they feel that it is genuine, that you care about them and the community and what they care about, and that builds the trust. And once the launch day’s coming, then you got the big tweet with the thousands of dollars associated with the tweet.
Whitney (21:53):
Exactly, right. Yeah.
Emeric (21:54):
But it’s all the result of a lot of work before to create that trust and that relationship with the community.
Whitney (22:00):
100%. When they feel that you are really part of it … And I think to our credit, we’ve done an amazing job in that we somehow have brought all these fan bases that they don’t like each other, right, they’re rivals, but they’re okay that one week we love Ohio State and the next week we like Penn State. We’ve build up enough trust with everyone that they don’t care. They’re like, “Cool, that’s fine,” which is pretty interesting when it’s like these are rivals or teams that maybe just got beat by somebody. And sometimes they’ll make jokes with us, like, “How could you do this to me? How could you move on to a new school?” But that’s also the community we built, is that it’s fun. And they know they can joke with us. They know they can send us a tweet and say, “I’m blocking you for the week,” and we know they’re joking and it’s all in fun. So like you say, it’s that work of building up all that trust and community that gets you big numbers at the end of the week.
Emeric (23:09):
We know Twitter is your go-to social network, the one that’s working the best. We know you are making dozens of thousands of dollars of revenue via Twitter every month. That’s significant revenue. That’s really, really outstanding. I’m going to say it because you’re not going to say it, but you are definitely crushing it on Twitter.
Whitney (23:30):
Thank you.
Emeric (23:30):
I’ve never seen any other company and any other person at any other company doing so well on Twitter. You told me before you kind of knew it, but you didn’t really have any measurement of how well it was doing. What was the trigger for you and your CEO to decide that you had to move from kind of knowing, to actually knowing? What was the trigger, and what did you experience going through that transition of kind of knowing to actually knowing?
Whitney (24:10):
Yeah. I think the trigger for me was I knew that 2023 was going to be a big year for us, but in a different way. Like I said, we’re going back to all these schools now. And we’re actually launching more apparel. We’re not launching more schools, but we’re actually launching more apparel than we have in the years past, because we are trying to get back into all the fan bases and keep them engaged. And so I knew that my workload was about to increase by quite a bit. I knew that I couldn’t keep just doing my little Excel sheets and spending half my day on it. And the other part of it too is I was actually manually tweeting everything, too. I wasn’t scheduling anything. I wasn’t preparing in those ways. My content was prepared, but I was doing it all manually.
(25:02):
And so there were a couple of things at play there. One, it was like the workload for me is about to increase quite a bit. I have done a great job. I feel confident that I’ve done a great job, but I think it’s time to make it just a bit more official and save myself some time. And so there were two things at play. It was the reporting, but also just the ability to schedule and do several different platforms at once. It was a combination. And we knew that we had been on a marathon for the past year and a half that I’d been here. We knew that I was sprinting for the whole marathon. And so it was a pretty easy … like I said, I have an amazing CEO that knows the value of this. And so when I said, “Hey, I am ready to … I got to get something going here,” he gave me that full trust of like, “Yep, I’m with you. I agree. Let’s make it happen.” And so again, I’m very fortunate to have that support and understanding of how important social is to the business.
Emeric (26:19):
So now you have a report, you know exactly how many thousands of dollars you make per tweet, and you know how much money you make on Twitter every month. How do you leverage that? How has it changed the way you do it or the way you report about it? What’s the difference now?
Whitney (26:35):
Yeah, I think what’s interesting for me is that, as I say this over and over again, I have the full support, and I know that my manager and CEO … I know that he knows how valuable I am. But there is something a little different than someone just knowing and someone being able to take something and say, “I know you know it, but here’s the real numbers though. Here it actually is. I know you trust me. I know that we are doing a great thing here, but here’s this big old number that actually exists.”
(27:12):
And so I think being able now in weekly meetings, in monthly reporting, in planning for other events that are coming up, now that I have these new reports to be like, “Okay, here it is. This is the actual stuff, here is the actual success. The numbers are large” … I think no matter how much someone supports you and trusts you, there’s nothing better than having the actual data and having it fast and easy to give versus me spending all that time trying to figure it out myself. So like I said, I’m not fighting for someone to understand my value. That said, it sure is nice to have just easy, big numbers to show off. And it’s been super helpful so far to get that process going for us.
Emeric (28:12):
Yeah, it’s moving from, “I think we’re doing the right thing,” to, “I know we’re doing the right thing.”
Whitney (28:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s good too. And I think for all of us that work in this industry, it’s good too to have this stuff for yourself. Who knows when you may need it for yourself and be able to advocate for yourself, whether it’s at the current job or wherever your next job or whatever it may be. But you can’t really tell somebody else, “Hey, I know I’m good at it. It looks pretty good.” Being able to say, “Here are the numbers of exactly what I did, when I did it, how I did it, how much I grew it,” having that concrete data is invaluable personally just for yourself, but also for your company, too.
Emeric (29:02):
Yeah, that makes sense. Beyond being able to prove the actual dollar amount of the success, which I totally understand is an amazing progress already, is there anything else that you’ve learned by being able to get a little more granular on where the success is happening and how it’s happening? Anything else than just proving its existence?
Whitney (29:28):
Yeah. I think also it’s prove something we already know quite a bit, is that … and this, I don’t know if this is the answer you’re looking for, but it’s been for me, is that the amount that … We’ve done so well, we’ve done so much. And I look at these numbers and I’m shocked at how much we haven’t tapped into Instagram and TikTok yet. And it’s mostly for lack of resources. And the platforms are a little different. Twitter is just known for sports fans. It’s where they are. But that said, people on Instagram go to college, people on Instagram watch sports, people on Instagram who want this apparel.
(30:09):
And so for me, looking at these numbers that come through, I’m just like, “We haven’t even remotely tapped into these other platforms.” And I know we’ll figure out how. I know it won’t be a one-to-one replication, and what worked on Twitter is not going to work on Instagram. We’ve got to find a different way in. We’ve got to find ways to do it differently, but this eye-opening look of like, “Hey, let’s go” … We’ve figured out Twitter. It’s going to be a lot of work still. We still have to put all that same effort in. And we still got to do a great job there, but we know that playbook. Despite whatever happens with the Twitter platform, we still know the playbook there. Look at the playbook we need to get for these other platforms. And so that’s been super eye-opening to me, that we don’t even really have the door open there yet. We have some good followings and we have good content over there, but we haven’t even made a dent yet. So it’s pretty exciting to me to be like, “All right, the next truly big challenge is like, how do we take this somewhere else?”
Emeric (31:21):
Yeah. I saw a LinkedIn post that you’ve made recently that you’ve been able to grow your audience on TikTok quite significantly in the past months.
Whitney (31:30):
Yeah. These platforms are all about your niche and not trying to be anybody else. What is it that you do that people like you for? What is that, and how do you make it apply on other platforms? And it took a while to figure out TikTok. And it’s a roller coaster, but we have found that people love the stories that are on our designs of our shirts. And so, “Okay, how do we make that happen on TikTok?” And so we started to work through some of those ideas of telling the history of shirts and telling the history of mascots. And we’ve actually started to do that within our email chain as well, giving those people that are in email … they’re starting to get some of these history lessons as well. We’re trying to take that personality and community that we’ve built on Twitter and like, “Okay, how does that look everywhere else, including email, Instagram, TikTok?” So we’re working on it. And I’m sure as anybody listening to this knows, the platforms are always changing. It’s not an easy job, but we’ll keep working to figure it out.
Emeric (32:48):
Well, thank you so much for sharing that journey with us. And if you had a final word for our listeners or viewers, depending on where they’re watching or listening to this, what would be your piece of advice on tracking business impact from social media? What is it that you’ve learned in the past two years that you think they should know? I heard you’re spending half a day on building reports, and now less. What are the things that you think if you had known two years ago, you would’ve done earlier?
Whitney (33:24):
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think for me, the biggest takeaway is the things that something like AgoraPulse does, first off, you just have to have it. I think that’s the biggest thing. You need something like this. Your job as a social manager, a lot of us, it’s always just one of us. I feel that with everybody. These teams are small. You need something like this, or it’s going to save you time. There’s things that you think that you’re doing or whatever, but these are … they’re going to save you time. The money is worth it. The investment is worth it.
(34:03):
And so I think that to me is just biting that bullet of get these types of resources for yourself to make your life easier, because when you have these resources, now you’re more freed up of time to do the other stuff you need to do, which is, where are your people on these social platforms? How do I become part of my community on social? How do I have the right voice? How do I find all those things? And your creative brain doesn’t have all the time, because a lot of us, I think we have to be creative. We have to be analytical. Now we have to be video directors, we have to do everything. Some of those things, I’m sure we’re all better at one of them than the other. For me, I’m a bit more creative than I am analytical. Therefore, I need this.
(34:54):
And now I continue to have more time to just do my creative stuff and think about what’s next and what’s coming on social and not like, “Oh man, I haven’t done my reporting for the week. It’s going to take me an hour. I really don’t want to do it because I need to get other stuff done.” Let AgoraPulse fill in those blanks for you and let yourself have more time to figure out that nitty-gritty stuff that you have to find. You’ve got to find your community. You got to go meet them where they are. You got to be part of them and build up that trust and rapport, whatever platform it may be. I’m now recommending that it’s Twitter for everyone, right? It’s going to be where your people are, but you can do what we did on Twitter, wherever your people are. And then get something like AgoraPulse to make your life far, far easier.
Emeric (35:51):
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Or there are many tools out there. We’re just one of them.
Whitney (35:56):
Sure, sure. Yeah.
Emeric (35:57):
I don’t want to just do advertising about us. But yeah, we’re definitely aiming to save time and make this reporting on ROI easier, plus a ton of other stuff that are going to help you save time on socials. One last word for Elon, on what should you do on Twitter to make your life easier? We’re going to make sure he gets the message.
Whitney (36:20):
Yeah. Look, look, Elon, just don’t kill it, please. Don’t take it away from me. Just leave it. Let it-
Emeric (36:27):
Don’t kill it, yeah. Please. Just leave it the way it is. It’s great.
Whitney (36:30):
It’s fine. Let us continue to do our thing. Don’t take it away, and I won’t ask for anything else.
Emeric (36:38):
Great message. I hope he listens.
Whitney (36:42):
Yeah, I hope so too. I hope so too.
Emeric (36:43):
Thank you so much, Whitney. That was great to have you for this time.
Whitney (36:47):
Thank you.
Emeric (36:47):
And it was great to get to know you and your story and the amazing success you’ve had on Twitter, so thank you so much.
Whitney (36:55):
Yes. Thank you so much for having me.