Walmart uses
Twitter as one of the important social media channels to engage with customers
and also improve its brand reputation. They have seven total Twitter handles with @WalmartHub being the “parent”
handle that only retweets the best performing content from the other handles to
its largest following. The primary Walmart Twitter presence is @Walmart,
which the Marketing team manages. The main Corporate Affairs Twitter presence
is @WalmartHub, with a variety of sub handles (@WalmartGreen, @WalmartHealthy,
@WalmartGiving, @WalmartNewsroom, @WalmartAction) for specific content areas.
@WalmartNewsroom
is company official "corporate spokesperson handle" where it issue
press releases and other announcements. @WalmartGreen is channel for talking
about sustainability. @WalmartGiving is where company addresses the
philanthropic efforts. The Walmart Foundation gave over a $1 billion to worthy
organizations in 2012 and we give grants in communities across the country so
this handle works very well for reaching those audiences. @WalmartAction
focuses on public policy issues and supports company efforts in the communities
they serve. @WalmartHealthy shares news about their ongoing efforts to help
customers get fresh and healthy foods without having to pay more.
@WalmartVeterans is our newest handle designed to support the ongoing
conversation around veterans hiring and other veterans-related issues.
Walmart
primarily chose Twitter as it believes customers it wants to reach for
corporate affairs are mostly present on Twitter. Walmart Digital Communications team manages
approximately 80,000 mentions of significance on Twitter per day that are
specific to Walmart’s reputation or two major missions —tweets related to its
two primary missions first one informing the customers about the lowest prices
offered compared to competitors that will lead to savings and better lives and
second mission to enhance the company reputation.
Walmart understands
it is impossible to handle a volume of 80,000 interactions daily and respond to
each, they have utilised data to target and respond to those that are important
and filtering through these missives to identify important ones to reach. The
social team responds selectively, pinpointing the tweets where they will most
likely make a difference by responding. Walmart promotes its best-performing
tweets to extend their reach and story lifecycles. It also promotes messages to
counter negative mentions with the hope of putting an alternative view in
place. It also comments on negative stories to expose its own perspective more
broadly. Relative to answering questions, the response gap has been generally
narrowed from two or more days to 10-15 minutes, especially on simple,
fact-oriented questions. Underlying its social sharing strategy is the idea
that, “It’s not about when you want to send a message, but when the audience
wants to consume it.” In light of this, Walmart uses an application to handle
and score content while also assessing the company’s real-time audience
presence.