Social Media Critique for Starbucks - Report Example

Social Media Critique for Starbucks Contents About the Company 2 Current Social Media Techniques 2 Effectiveness of the current social media tactics 3 Mobile Engagement 5 Recommendation for future improvement 6 Measurement 7 Innovation 10 Conclusion 10 References 11 About the Company Starbucks is a U.S coffee chain established in 1971 and its headquarters is in Seattle, Washington, USA. Its mandate is to inspire and nurture the spirit of humans. Starbucks provides coffee, pies, cakes, tea and other goods. The company has over 12,000 shops around the world throughout Europe, Middle East, South America, the Pacific and North America. Consumption of coffee is to some extent a cultural consumption that fosters a communication culture in an environment which can enable customers to enjoy and interact. There are a number of social media accounts for different areas and locations where Starbucks is open such us Starbuckscofee Myeongdong, Starbucks Mexico, Starbucks Brasil, Starbucks UK, and so on. This analysis will be based on Starbucks brand as a whole. Current Social Media Techniques Starbucks is a leader in the use of social media for social commerce and marketing. The company uses social media to promote its new products, interact with its customers and raise awareness of events. Its social media strategy is built on social platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, blog (My Starbucks Ideas), Google+, Instagram and YouTube. Starbucks boasts of 10.2 million followers on Twitter, 83,442 subscribers on YouTube, and 40million fans on Facebook, 6 million followers on Instagram, 216,900 followers on Pinterest, and Starbucks provides customer engagement on on-on-one basis on these platforms. Starbucks is an excellent social media model in the corporate world through its ability to be active in listening to the suggestions, positive feedback, criticisms and concerns of customers. Effectiveness of the current social media tactics Twitter Starbucks has proved that Twitter is its valuable tool and has been rated on the microblogging site as the eighth most popular company beating Microsoft, McDonald’s and Walmart. The most tweets on Starbucks’ Twitter page are directed at users. An upset customer tweeted Starbucks to bring back peach green tea lemonade. Starbucks replied “@kathy_murica You should request its return on @mystarbucksidea so others can vote it up!” Starbucks responds directly to disappointed customers ensuring that they are satisfied in the end. Dissatisfied customers on Twitter are given by Starbucks the capability to be heard. Starbucks shows that it cares for those who buy its products when it responds directly to its customers and tries to fix the problem at hand. @Starbucks is the original twitter account, and alongside it there is @MyStarbucksIdea with 51,700 followers, who are free to share their ideas on how to have best experiences with Starbucks. Posted ideas include bringing back the Sidamo coffee from Ethiopia and cake pop flavours. This provides a platform for enabling customers to post ideas and thoughts conveniently thereby feeling empowered. Starbucks does not use its twitter pages to promote its products. Instead, it treats its followers and fans as friends daring them to share their photos with how their favorite drinks, or how they spent Mother’s Day. The in-store experience has been transferred to online. A person on Starbucks Twitter page feels like walking into the physical store itself. Starbucks on Twitter sympathizes with customers when things go wrong, listen to suggested ideas and give positive feedback just like an in-store staff would do. Facebook Facebook updates on Starbucks page are not done more often by its social media management team. However, the updates are usually ultra-clever and eye-catching when posted. A good balance is stricken in posting helpful tips, sales messages and fun contests to its customers. For example on August 2, 2015 Starbucks posted helpful tips on how to clean the filter of the coffee-press. My Starbucks Idea Website My Starbucks Idea website actively engages Starbucks customers. Customers are encouraged to submit their ideas on improving customer experience, better products, and new community involvement, among others. Customers can ideas that have been submitted, view and discuss them with Starbucks employees from various departments. Customers are polled regularly for their preferred products and the most active customers in poll participation, comments, and submitting ideas are tracked. This site is a market research, internet marketing, online community and a crowdsourcing tool. Pinterest and Instagram Fancy cups and espressos that are beautifully decorated are a part of the coffee culture of Starbucks. Social sites like Instagram and Pinterest enable Starbucks to visually shine by posting beverage-related eye candy that are appealing to customers. The Pin boards feature Starbucks cozy and soothing spaces, coffee gadgets and tea rituals. On the other hand Starbucks Instagram presents beautiful images related to its coffee culture and community. The captions on the pictures are appealing and triggers comments from followers who feel excited to join the fun. For example Starbucks has posted a picture on Instagram with a caption “This moment. Is Perfect”. The picture shows a serving of a small cake and coffee which entices someone to go for it. It attracted over one thousand positive comments with many expressing their interest in having such a ‘perfect moment’. Updates on Instagram are done once per day unlike other companies that update after every two hours. This allows followers to give attention to one post daily and be able to comment without getting destructed between updates. The posting of updates on its social platform show that Starbucks goes to where its customers hang out. When a photo is taken it is pinned on Pinterest, tweeted on Twitter, posted on Facebook and shared on Instagram. As the world becomes more focused digitally Starbucks leverages on cross-promotion. This integration strategy promotes the brand and increases its visibility. Starbucks also encourages sharing through its frequent promotions such as ‘buy one get one”. Such promotion gathers high social media engagement through shares, “likes” and comments. Followers on Instagram and Pinterest can share their ‘Starbucks moments”. Mobile Engagement MarketingLand describes Starbucks as ‘Mobile King’ because of its outstanding mobile strategy. Starbucks uses its own Mobile Rich Media Interface Definitions (MRAID) in its mobile ads which enable ad units to expand to fill mobile screens. The shake, tap and swipe features enables users to engage with Starbucks brand and share on social media. Starbucks payment app for iPhone allows users to shake their phones to display the payment barcode. Customers can also tip their barista through the digital tipping option on their phones. In 2013 Starbucks made revenue of 1 billion dollars in mobile payment (Business Insider Intelligence). The Starbucks app is used for rewards and loyalty program which enables users to provide their personal information such as credit card number in order to use its app. All customer purchases are captured by Starbucks app which enables points and advances to be given to customers to tiers, where they can get offers and promotions. Entangling transactions and loyalty programs enables Starbucks towards customer experience and not just point of sale. Starbucks implements technology such as virtual gift cars, coupon downloads and QR codes uplifting itself as the market leader in the industry. According to Business Insider Starbucks was twice in the past three years name Mobile Marketer of the Year. Mobile strategies are also used in promoting holiday deals, services and product launches to drive instore traffic and product awareness. Recommendation for future improvement a. Promoting Starbucks accounts- There is a possibility of linking all social media accounts. Since Starbucks has an Instagram account, it should ensure that its Twitter and Facebook accounts are linked so that only one post is made at time reflecting to all pages instead of making three posts. b. Frequency- Starbucks makes one post per day to all its social media accounts. Too many posts can become like spam email to followers who can stop following. Starbucks should increase its post to two or three per day to refresh the page. There is a lot going on at Starbucks stores every second and these moments should be shared more often with followers. c. Educating newcomers- Starbucks has millions of followers on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts who tune it to see their latest pictures and get informed about the new services and products being offered. The posts made by Starbucks are mostly pictures of beverages and sometimes food, as well as videos and pictures praising a certain part of a store or the company. These pictures communication a welcoming atmosphere and indulgence. Starbucks needs media publicity as well. The company seems to concentrate on its already loyal customer base with its posts. It should educate new visitors on why Starbucks stands out from other coffee shops. d. New product launch- Starbucks posts on its social media accounts a picture of a new drink or food item that is about to be launched. This does not seem effective because many young people post pictures of drinks and food and post them on social media, making it a common place. Starbucks should instead shoot a short video of about ten second showing the new beverage being made by a barista and explain why the beverage is different from the rest, and why customers need to try it. The best venue to watch this video is on Snapchat as it is easy and convenient. Measurement Going social is the best thing Starbucks has done to instantly access millions of customers or visitors. However, it is one thing to become a social media guru and it is another thing to know how effective the social media strategy is and how to measure its success. Starbucks can apply metrics to various platforms of social media to provide better quality products and promotions to its customers as well as attract new ones. Engagement of fans Having millions of fans can depict the marketing success of Starbucks, however, to get accurate measurement, the interaction of fans with Starbucks profile/page, retweets, shares, pokes, comments and number of likes will indicate the effectiveness of its campaign. Facebook posts and shares, and Twitter retweets help to know how the content is spread and likes, replies and comments help to know who is replying to Starbucks contents. When more many fans engage with Starbucks brand the more they’ll be interested in its products, and the more likely they will be willing to purchase its products. Traffic to the company website The aim of conducting as social medial marketing campaign mostly is usually to direct traffic to the company website. Google Analytics can be used to check statistics in order to find out how much traffic is coming from social media traffic. Conversions Too much traffic is great for the business but it is important if the visitors take an action including participating in a contest, buying coffee, subscribing to a newsletter, among others. Reach The spread of conversation in a social media is measured by reach. Reach can help Starbucks understands it content context. How big is the audience for its message and how far is the dissemination of its content? Reach measures the potential size of the audience. Though it is good to have a large audience, reach does cannot be relied on its own. Reach is powerful in comparison with other metrics of engagement as it should be used as denominator in measurement equations. For example number of to calculate engagement replies, retweets or clicks can be divided by reach. It measures the number of people who participate from the possible campaign audience of Starbucks. Volume This is the social media metric that is the easiest and the first to measure. It depicts how wide interested people are in the brand. Volume is more than just wall posts and tweets. Measuring the number of people talking about Starbucks brand and the number of messages about Starbucks, and track the change of these numbers over time is very important. For example, “people taking about this”, is a useful metric from Facebook Insights which measures the number of unique people who posted about Starbucks brand on to their walls. Sentiment Analysis Sentiment analysis is an alternative technique of research use to collect and analyze textual data on the internet. It is a data mining method which evaluates textual content systematically by the use of machine learning methods. It is a marketing research method which presents real time evaluation of consumer opinions in an efficient and effective manner. It enables the collection and analysis of data from samples that are very large without time delays, obstructions and hindrances. Sentiment analysis will enable Starbucks to collect rich data on consumer opinion and attitudes in real time without compromising on generalizability, validity, and reliability. Starbucks will not have to invest in market research activities that are costly and lengthy when gathering feedback on opinions and attitudes. Innovation Starbuck’s is successful in its business crowdsourcing concept through its My Starbucks Idea Website. This platform has positioned Starbucks as the first social media engagement adopters in the corporate world. My Starbucks Idea Website engages Starbucks customer to share ideas regarding products, involvement and in-store experience related to the brand. Approximately over 190,000 ideas have given to Starbucks among with implementation of approximately 300 has been done. Starbucks has combined the concept of market results, customer engagement, social media and experimentation and, the results made key components for its marketing strategy and brand. Starbucks strong presence on various social platforms has set it bar while in term s of staying social and engaging customers. Conclusion Starbucks has proved to be a social media king in its industry with evidence of its success on the digital platform. It serves as a benchmark for any company looking forward to success in the use of social media. References Starbucks. (2015). Company Information. Retrieved on October 16, 2015, from < http://www.starbucks.com/> Starbucks. Retrieved on October 16, 2015, from Starbucks. Retrieved on October 16, 2015, from < http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/> Starbucks Coffee. Retrieved on October 16, 2015, from < https://twitter.com/Starbucks> Starbucks. Retrieved on October 16, 2015, from https://instagram.com/starbucks/ Starbuck. Retrieved on October 16, 2015, from < https://www.facebook.com/Starbucks> Read More

@Starbucks is the original twitter account, and alongside it there is @MyStarbucksIdea with 51,700 followers, who are free to share their ideas on how to have best experiences with Starbucks. Posted ideas include bringing back the Sidamo coffee from Ethiopia and cake pop flavours. This provides a platform for enabling customers to post ideas and thoughts conveniently thereby feeling empowered. Starbucks does not use its twitter pages to promote its products. Instead, it treats its followers and fans as friends daring them to share their photos with how their favorite drinks, or how they spent Mother’s Day.

The in-store experience has been transferred to online. A person on Starbucks Twitter page feels like walking into the physical store itself. Starbucks on Twitter sympathizes with customers when things go wrong, listen to suggested ideas and give positive feedback just like an in-store staff would do. Facebook Facebook updates on Starbucks page are not done more often by its social media management team. However, the updates are usually ultra-clever and eye-catching when posted. A good balance is stricken in posting helpful tips, sales messages and fun contests to its customers.

For example on August 2, 2015 Starbucks posted helpful tips on how to clean the filter of the coffee-press. My Starbucks Idea Website My Starbucks Idea website actively engages Starbucks customers. Customers are encouraged to submit their ideas on improving customer experience, better products, and new community involvement, among others. Customers can ideas that have been submitted, view and discuss them with Starbucks employees from various departments. Customers are polled regularly for their preferred products and the most active customers in poll participation, comments, and submitting ideas are tracked.

This site is a market research, internet marketing, online community and a crowdsourcing tool. Pinterest and Instagram Fancy cups and espressos that are beautifully decorated are a part of the coffee culture of Starbucks. Social sites like Instagram and Pinterest enable Starbucks to visually shine by posting beverage-related eye candy that are appealing to customers. The Pin boards feature Starbucks cozy and soothing spaces, coffee gadgets and tea rituals. On the other hand Starbucks Instagram presents beautiful images related to its coffee culture and community.

The captions on the pictures are appealing and triggers comments from followers who feel excited to join the fun. For example Starbucks has posted a picture on Instagram with a caption “This moment. Is Perfect”. The picture shows a serving of a small cake and coffee which entices someone to go for it. It attracted over one thousand positive comments with many expressing their interest in having such a ‘perfect moment’. Updates on Instagram are done once per day unlike other companies that update after every two hours.

This allows followers to give attention to one post daily and be able to comment without getting destructed between updates. The posting of updates on its social platform show that Starbucks goes to where its customers hang out. When a photo is taken it is pinned on Pinterest, tweeted on Twitter, posted on Facebook and shared on Instagram. As the world becomes more focused digitally Starbucks leverages on cross-promotion. This integration strategy promotes the brand and increases its visibility.

Starbucks also encourages sharing through its frequent promotions such as ‘buy one get one”. Such promotion gathers high social media engagement through shares, “likes” and comments. Followers on Instagram and Pinterest can share their ‘Starbucks moments”. Mobile Engagement MarketingLand describes Starbucks as ‘Mobile King’ because of its outstanding mobile strategy. Starbucks uses its own Mobile Rich Media Interface Definitions (MRAID) in its mobile ads which enable ad units to expand to fill mobile screens.

The shake, tap and swipe features enables users to engage with Starbucks brand and share on social media.

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