“The U.S. textile industry has a unique challenge in that the perception of the industry’s vitality and presence in the global market is poor among Millennials,” said Eliza Levy, NCTO’s manager of Public Relations and Grassroots. “Twitter gives us the ability to give the industry a voice and presence among this age group and work to shift this perception via direct engagement with our followers.

 

“Twitter also allows us to push news stories that highlight our industry positively or movements in trade agreements that affect our industry, in real time,” she added. “Twitter is an extremely humanizing platform for an organization, as well. It allows us to answer user’s questions and gives us the ability to interact with people and be a bit more creative than with other platforms.”

 

The NCTO’s primary purpose in using social media outlets is to encourage a broader audience to get interested in the U.S. industry and learn how important it is in the American economic landscape, according to Levy. Twitter is an excellent way to connect with reporters and industry influencers, which is a key function of public relations, she added.

 

“Personally, I believe one exciting aspect of Twitter is the ability to interact with college students studying textiles and get them excited about the possibility of working in this field,” she said.

 

The council pushes out information related to textile industry highlights in a positive way, as well as news about trade agreements that affect the industry, Levy said. It also sends press releases and public statements via Twitter.

 

“I believe this mix of information really sets the tone of who were are as an organization and an industry to Twitter users,” she said.

 

Instead of using its name or acronym, NCTO has the broader but probably more effective Twitter handle @supportUSjobs, which 813 followers around the world. Followers have grown exponentially in just over two years.

 

“Twitter is a platform that demands consistent attention to building a strong following,” Levy said. “As we continue to work towards changing the perception of the textile industry, I am confident we will continue to build our following and strengthen our user engagement.”

 

Consistently growing followers is one measure of success, as were the results of campaign the NCTO conducted. The Stop Exporting Jobs campaign served as a petition drive that garnered more than 100,000 signatures, with more than 20,000 of those coming from pushing Twitter followers to the campaign page, she said.

 

The council is working on the launch of a public relations campaign aimed at branding the industry as a technology driven, capital-intensive innovator of high-quality products that is fully competing in the 21st century global marketplace, and it certainly plans to use social media to help spread the world, Levy said.

 

“As we enter into a new public relations campaign, we hope to continue to get people excited about and engaged in the U.S. textile industry on Twitter,” she said.

 

AATCC

 

The American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC), based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., is a longtime user of social media – and it is active on five of those outlets, spreading its messaging to its thousands of members and others around the world.

 

Through LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, the association aims to raise awareness of AATCC’s mission and importance in the textile industry, within academia, and to benefit textile education programs and students, according to Michael Quante, AATCC’s technical editor and web master. The organization pushes out news, events, press releases, videos of AATCC presentations and industry-pertinent discussions.

 

Most engagement occurs on LinkedIn groups and YouTube, he said, and textile students around the world follow its Facebook posts.

 

AATCC’s main LinkedIn group has more than 10,000 members and hosts active discussions on topics of interest to industry participants. It also maintains discussion groups for the three AATCC Interest Groups: Materials, Chemical Applications, and Concept 2 Consumer®, as well as a Sustainability Group and an AATCC Foundation Group. It also has more than 1,000 Twitter followers, more than 50 subscribers to its YouTube channel, more than 2,000 Facebook page likes and more than 1,500 members of its primary LinkedIn group.

 

Social media has been extremely useful on several occasions, Quante said.

 

“Two years ago, AATCC co-hosted a Denim and Fashion and Garment Washing Symposium locally with N.C. State University and we tweeted about it,” he said. “The Research Triangle Park (@TheRTP) and N.C. State Research (@NCStateResearch) picked up on it and re-tweeted our event information to their extensive networks. There was considerable live Twitter activity at the symposium, even without using an event hashtag. The symposium was a great success. I believe Twitter played a very small, but important role in it.”

 

Quante added that Twitter’s role is particularly important for conference organizers, participants and exhibitors.

 

“The use of hashtags identifying the conference and helping organize tweets during the conference adds a new dimension to conference participation and networking,” he said. “It can connect people of similar interests before, during and after conference who might not have otherwise met.”

 

[TC]2

 

Another North Carolina Triangle-area company, [TC]2 (Textile Clothing and Technology Corp.) of Cary, N.C., is a veteran social media participant, going back about a decade, according to Kilara Le, the group’s product development and process consultant. [TC]2 provides the sewn products industry with a wide variety of solutions that cover the entire product development process.

 

The ability to reach a global network of industry leaders in fashion and retail is “amazing” compared to "old school" networking, according to Le.

 

“We will never replace F2F (face-to-face) meetings, but traveling to Brazil, for example – they are heavy LinkedIn users, so we can be much more productive and meet so many more people per trip. The social interaction happens before, during and after meetings and we can keep successful business conversations flowing real-time, online.”

 

[TC]2 primarily uses LinkedIn. As a global operation, that medium has been a “game changer,” Le said. It is an avenue to lead its clients and network know what is happening and where it is focused on addressing issues, challenges and predictions for the marketplace, Le added.

 

“We are not on Weibo in China but I am sure at some point we will be,” she said. “LinkedIn affords our entire team to network and expand our reach with introductions and groups with similar interests.”

 

[TC]2 disseminates information that Le called “though leadership content” – info such as factory of the future, lean product development best practices, industry updates and global information it gathers through its travels.

 

“We have just started to ramp up our social activities as we have introduced progressive new technologies to the fashion and retail markets – a new 4D body scanner, digital styling/recommendations and virtual fit,” Le said. “We see the engagement on the rise as we start communicating on these new subjects with our client base, community and followers.”

 

[TC]2’s President & CEO, Mike Fralix, is also an active social media user with more than 700 LinkedIn connections – none of whom he sent an invitation to connect to, Le said. “But all of whom he knows or are people connected to multiple people he does know,” she said. “This type of trusted social network is invaluable to both inform the industry of our activities and find resources within it.”

 

Read Part 1 – How textile companies, suppliers are using social media