Tweeting Theo is good news for business

The University of Southampton has so many enterprising and tech-savvy students.

Third year BSc Management student Emilie Prior told me how she put her digital marketing skills to good use by impressing business expert Theo Paphitis with a creative tweet.

Every week, the entrepreneur, best known for appearing on BBC TV’s Dragon’s Den, holds Small Business Sunday on Twitter (#sbs). He invites messages from fledgling companies for two hours, then retweets his six favourites to his 243,000 followers.

Emilie has worked for the Salisbury-based company doodlebystitch.com since the beginning of her time at university. Among its products are bed linen and tablecloths etc that can be ‘doodled’ on with special pens. The innovative textiles can then be washed clean and drawn on again. Emilie’s tweet was a picture of a specially doodled pillowcase dedicated to Theo.

“The reaction was amazing,” says Emilie. “It was great promotion for the company and certainly raised our profile – we quickly got 200 new followers to our account @doodlebystitch”

Emilie has enjoyed learning about cutting edge digital marketing techniques with Dr Lisa Harris and Tom Chapman at the Southampton Management School and plans to pursue her interest in this field after graduation.