The History of Total Merchandise's SMArtie Awards

Total Merchandise (TM) was founded in 2004 in the living rooms of our directors. The business grew quickly and just six months later, TM employed our first member of staff, Liz, who loves TM so much she is still here eight years later! Since 2005, the company has gone from strength to strength, leading us to employ more staff and moving into our own offices in 2007. Since then, we have had to move twice, having outgrown our previous spaces, bringing us to the converted dairy we operate from today.

As a web based business, it didn't take long for TM to realise the power of social media and the potential it provides for businesses. Starting out with Twitter and then Facebook, TM now utilises all the social media channels we can with Flickr, YouTube LinkedIn, Tumblr and more recently Google+ to interact with our customers.

As you can imagine social media plays a huge part of the Total Merchandise business. There are currently well over 12,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 5,000 fans on Facebook which is growing on a daily basis. The directors decided last year that it was important to recognise, thank and reward contributor from social media sites. From this the SMArties (social media awards) was born.

The SMArties 2011 was split into sixteen categories, with winners being given a certificate and small award. Categories included 'most active Flickr commentator', 'Funniest Facebook Poster' and 'Social Media Contributor'. In the 2011 awards, Twitter had 6,000 followers, as previously mentioned, this has since doubled to over 12,000 , which meant that SMArties 2012 needed to be even bigger and better.

The SMArties 2012 is split into twenty categories with new categories including 'Twit of the Year'. As the awards are bigger, the video's have been split into twenty, with five winners being announced each day over the course of a week. The final day's release will also include a video of hilarious 'outtakes'. The SMArties videos will be released via our Youtube channel which you can find a link to on this website. So make sure you check daily to see if you are a winner. Total Merchandise would like to thank all the social media contributors over the past year and we look forward to chatting with you throughout the rest of 2012.

Written by

Total Merchandise | Editoral Team

Our editorial team is drawn from a pool of experienced promotional merchandise product team members, account managers, marketers and other contributors. With such a wide range of skills and experience, they write about many aspects of promotional merchandise, wider marketing and business matters, as well as company news updates.

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