Today’s big brand, Fiskars, dominates its market segment without necessarily being a household name, proving that depth can beat out breadth any day. Fiskars sells scissors. How do you get people excited about scissors, you ask? Well, if you’re Fiskars and in need of blog marketing, you turn to the crazy world of crafters. You know, all those knitters, quilters, crocheters, scrapbookers and upcyclers — in other words, the people who use scissors a lot!
Back in 2005, Fiskars was looking for a way to connect with the crafters that use its products. The company went on a multi-city casting call, looking for the loudest and proudest crafters in the country. They selected four scrapbooking fanatics who gladly exhibit their craft-love (along with the tools they use), and asked them to blog for the company. Customer engagement, coupled with brand engagement, has turned the brand’s blog into the giant crafter’s community that it is today.
Fiskateers — which is both the name of the company’s blog and what Fiskars’ faithful followers call themselves — uses blogging to generate excitement around the many different kinds of crafting. The blog features project spotlights, events, challenges, contests and even tutorials. Events and contests are tailor-made for blogging, and using other social media to promote the events to point people back to the blog is just smart business. The Fiskars Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram pages are a crafter’s heaven, with each one promoting the iconic orange-handled scissors that we know and love.
Chances are your company is selling something more compelling than scissors. So why isn’t your company blog as great-looking and useful as Fiskateers? Maybe you need to focus less on the numbers side of the business and more on how your customers use your products or services. Maybe you need an agency to help you ghostwrite some blogs. Either way, the more you know about your customers — the more you embrace and empower them — the better your blog will be. But don’t take our word for it; give it a try and see what happens. And let us know what you discover in the comments below.
Better not follow Fiskars’ example. They just closed down all their website communities in the UK, Australia and US. Most of the Fiskateer membership is very unhappy. Many of the members have UNLIKED Fiskateers on Facebook and “Unfollowed” on Twitter and Pinterest, vowing to discontinue their support of the company. It will be interesting to see if their US craft product sales diminish.