The Use of Social Media for Business - Coca-Cola Company - Case Study Example

The use of social media for business: A case study Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Discussion 3 Facebook 4 The Coca-Cola Community 5 Engagement isSimple with Photos and Words 5 Connecting Through Mutually Supported Cause 8 Twitter 11 Pinterest 13 Google+ 15 Conclusion 16 Reference 17 Introduction For many organizations including business, nonprofits and governmental agencies the use of social media very often begins in Marketing, public communications or in a similar office or department with direct connection to customers and stakeholders. This is important and makes sense since through involvement with customers via social media marketing gives a boost to overall awareness in the marketplace and especially in the minds and hearts of those customers increasingly out of reach of interruptive media. In other words many organizations are looking for engagement and they see social media as the way to get it. With the advent of Web 2.0 and the Social Web companies are clearly utilizing the opportunity to interact with the customers through this. Social Media is the most important tool available to a company for connecting with prospective consumers. Social media acts as a medium to socialize the and through this media companies can win the trust of the consumers and connect with them at a deeper level. Thus social media marketing is the new mantra for many companies and marketers are taking note of different social media opportunities available to them and have begun to implement them at a higher rate than ever before. Both businesses and social media marketing have become more sophisticated. This report will take a look how Coca Cola company has used the social media to its benefit. Discussion Coca Cola is a market leader in carbonated beverage market and in terms of their presence on social media. Social media is a driving force in the field of marketing and communication and it is only getting larger. This social media marketing is changing the way marketing was done in the past. Connecting first hand and Instant feedback are two of the many important benefits of Social media marketing. Coca Cola is a well respected food and beverage company and has achieved high sales in 2013. They have achieved growth in their concentrated sales volume by 2% as compared to 2013. They have sold around 28.2 billion unit cases of their product in 2013 as compared to 27.7 billion in 2012 (Coca-Cola, 2013, p. 44). The company is actively engaged with their consumers via several social media platforms and helps build a platform for social media marketing plan. The consumers in today’s world are much more empowered. The social media is also exploding and gone are the days when one simple needed to create an impressions bout their brands with the consumers. Nowadays it’s all about expressions about the brands with consumers. It’s all about expressions, communicating in a dialogue with consumers so as to meet their expectations. Facebook The key to marketing through Facebook is very simple. It includes interaction and engagement. But it is very difficult to accomplish these two tasks and it cannot be done by simply posting a product photo on Facebook. It is a tactical process and it requires that a company become more of a business of the peoples and less of a corporate identity. Coca Cola has been successful in using Facebook as social media marketing tool. In 2006, social media was a mere 3 percent of total media spend by Coke and in 2013 it went up by 30 percent. Coca Cola has over 80 million likes in their Facebook page which is the largest Facebook page by any single brand. And the Facebook of Coca Cola was not created by the company. It was created by two Coca Cola fans in California. The value of these two fans and now more than 80 million fans that have joined with them is that the company can dialogue with them. The fans can tell them things which are important to them and to their business. A consumer nowadays no longer wants only a great product, but they want to buy products from companies which are aligned with their own characters and values (Mitra, 2013, p. 1). The Coca-Cola Community Over the years, Coca Cola has undertaken different marketing campaigns like Santa Claus and polar bear holiday commercials. They have endorsed their products through many celebrities like Elton John, Elvis Presley and Bill Cosby. In 2010, Coca Cola had come up with gold collared cans in Olympic Games and recent anti-obesity campaign. Most of the commercials were effective and through these promotions and commercials they tried to show how popular the company is or how it is in tune with recent times. Thus Coca Cola had taken different approach for successfully developing social marketing strategy. In 2008, Coca Cola has joined Facebook and in five years it has since then garnered over 80 million likes. Coca Cola focused more on their fans and less on straightforward product promotion. The Marketing department of Coca Cola has created a community which essentially is a collection of stories showing how the people all around the world have helped the company in making it into what it is today. Such a philosophy has been the driving force behind the success of Coca Cola. They have achieved it through photos and statutes which encourage interaction and engagement with the customers and support their causes and integrate them into various forms of social media. Engagement is Simple with Photos and Words Facebook provides an easy way for companies to reach an audience and build a fan base through their photo or status update and thus encouraging likes, comments, shares. Whatever gets posted on Facebook must convey a sense of community within the fans so that they feel there is a connection between themselves, other fans and the company and that the company does not solely revolve around a product. It must carry the image of being a customer centric organization instead of being a product centric organization. Coca Cola had achieved this task by giving simple status updates like when one individual looks up at the moon half of the world population is also looking at the moon with the individual. The question is can the individual feel the ray of togetherness. This status message was posted by Coca Cola in 2011, and it generated 1,413 comments, 18,690 likes and four shares. Coca Cola can engage with their fans through uploading photos on Facebook. Through the photos, the company can tell a story to their fans. The current Facebook page of Coca Cola states that the Facebook page is a collection of stories of their fans showing how people around the world have helped make Coke into what it is today. Coca Cola had a cover image which showed that the drink is not for a particular person instead it is for all people who have travelled at different times in their lives. Figure 1: Cover Photo of Coca Cola Facebook Page (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) Coca Cola has not used just text and photos separately but sometimes they include photos as their status updates which can also be engaging. With summer season approaching, Coca Cola can promote their brand themselves and still promote conversation among the fans by referring to any popular summer activity. Coca Cola has done it in the past by uploading a skateboarding photo. It mainly focuses on the soft drink with someone at a skate park in the background. The photo was partnered with the status that “Skateboarding is a fun way to break a sweat. So what is your favourite skate park?” Though Coca Cola could have posted the photo with only the first sentence as the status which shows that Coca Cola is a good choice for anyone when he is thirsty, but by adding the second sentence it encourages their fans to share and comment their experiences. Connecting Through Mutually Supported Cause Coca Cola had connected with their followers and fans through a cause that it mutually supported. In 2011 Coca Cola launched a campaign for endangered species. On their Facebook page Coca Cola promoted the can design along with posting videos form the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Through such an activity Coca Cola showed their fans and visitors of the page that The Company is not about product itself but it also cares important causes. This in turn sparked positive comment from their fans and it attracted more fans along with positive comments about the company and thus boosted their product sales. Figure 2: Coca Cola Arctic Home campaign (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) Coca Cola has a number of Facebook apps like a video real of its ad named “When will happiness strike” and another app named “Ahh Giver” which enables the users to send a personalized message and give a free coke to a Facebook friend. Figure 3: Coca-Colas “The AHH Effect” Campaign (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) Coca Cola also has separate Facebook pages for other products like Coke Zero and Diet Coke though it has far fewer fans. Diet Coke page of Coca Cola has attracted over two million likes by posting daily updates of pictures and fashion content of the Diet Coke man. But Interestingly Coke Zero page has around 4.2 million fans in spite of the fact that it is updated only few times in a month. Figure 4: Diet Coke Facebook Page (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) This shows that Coca Cola has been successful in their Facebook campaign. Twitter Coca Cola just like most global brands has separate Twitter feeds for each of their local markets in which they operates. The company has separate dedicated pages for its different brands and sub-brands like Coke Zero, Diet Coke, its racing teams and the long-deceased founder Doc Pemberton. The main Twitter feed of Coca Cola has over 7 million followers and it has been tweeted for more than 75,000 thousand times. This is a clear indication that Coca Cola is among the most active brand present in the market (Riley, 2010, p. 152). The popularity of the Twitter feed can be found from the fact that their social team rarely posts any straightforward marketing message. Instead they primarily use Twitter to respond to @mentions. Each day they has to respond to huge number of mentions including follow requests, complaints, general chitchat and compliments. The global popularity of the brand can be found from the fact that they even have a Spanish speaker among them (Anderson, 2010, p. 83). Figure 5: Coca Cola Twitter Feed Page (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) Thus Coca Cola has effectively used its Twitter feed to communicate with customers instead of simply pushing out marketing messages. Diet Coke feed has adopted a different approach and it is mainly used for asking questions, tweeting marketing messages and spouting inspirational quotes. The brand messaging of Coca Cola through Twitter is targeted mainly at women. Figure 6: Coca Cola Twitter Page (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) Pinterest Pinterest account of Coca Cola is quite interesting with only one brand which relates to specific Coca Cola ad campaign while others are all images that focus on a random theme. There is one brand related board known as “Olympic Games Moments” along with loads of images showing sponsorships of Coca Cola for the event. They have other five boards are themed around topics like “Keep Discovering”, “Be Together” and “Be Active”. They all have great photos which are taken from Flickr and carries important message to the fans (Zarrella, 2009, p. 59). Figure 7: Pinterest Page of Coca Cola (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) Coca Cola has used the platform to collate all of the images given by people. This pleases people since they would notice the company’s effort in caring for them. The social team of Coca Cola ran a competition in Pinterest which is becoming a common tactic for driving up awareness and followers. Google+ Coca Cola maintained an active Google+ page during the first half of 2012 and updated their page every few days. But after Olympics ended the update tailed off to weeks or sometimes months. It initially had more than 800,000 followers but the level of user engagement on Google+ is really low as compared to Facebook. Figure 8: Google+ Page of Coca Cola (Source: Aggenbag, 2013, p. 1) Conclusion Social Media is an important tool for businesses to keep themselves engaged with the customers. Coca Cola has gone a long way and have invested heavily into their social media marketing. In 2006, social media was a mere 3 percent of total media spend by Coke and in 2013 it went up by 30 percent. This shows that Coca Cola has taken great interest and has been so far successful in generating increased revenue by adopting social media. Coca Cola has engaged with their fans from many platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. From the above discussion it can be concluded that Coca Cola has been more successful in engaging with their fans through Facebook than any other social media platform. Facebook fan page was created in 2008 and since then it has over 80 million fan base. They have separate Facebook page for each product like Diet Coke, Coke zero etc. Coca Cola has tried to engage with the customers and their fans have equally responded to them in kind. Coca Cola should concentrate more on Facebook to communicate with their fans. Reference Anderson, E. 2010. Social Media Marketing Book. London: Springer. Coca-Cola. 2013. Annual report 2013. Available at: http://assets.coca-colacompany.com/d0/c1/7afc6e6949c8adf1168a3328b2ad/2013-annual-report-on-form-10-k.pdf. [Accessed on: 07 March 2014]. Mitra, M. 2013. Coca-Cola is not yesterday, Coca-Cola is tomorrow: Muhtar Kent, The Coca-Cola Company. Available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-12-20/news/45378710_1_coca-cola-company-consumers-coca-cola-facebook. [Accessed on: 7 March. 2014]. Riley, J.A. 2010. 2011 Social Media Directory: The Ultimate Guide to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Resources. New York: Pearson Education. Zarrella, D. 2009. The Social Media Marketing: Game Theory and the Emergence of Collaboration. Sebastopol: OReilly Media, Inc. Aggenbag, R. 2013. How Coca-Cola uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Available at: http://moreclicks.co.za/how-coca-cola-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google/. [Accessed on: 7 March 2014]. Read More