Case Study - Walmart Social Media Strategy – Engaging with customers on Twitter

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. 

Case Study: Social Media Strategy Walmart – Informing Customers and enhancing Brand reputation

Walmart’s social media strategy is two pronged where in the primary objective is to make customers and potential customers recognize Walmart offers the lowest prices compared to its competitors in the industry with a mission to  is to save money so they can live better lives and  second objective is to protect, defend and enhance Walmart’s reputation. For Walmart, interactions with customers on social media have proven to be a pivotal of their marketing efforts. Walmart benefits from a staggering flow of daily engagement that spikes during November, the peak holiday season when customers drastically increase their spending. The objective behind the corporate affairs social effort is to have meaningful social conversations to influence perceptions about Walmart.

Walmart partnered Google, and that has a local bent, incorporating inventory at nearby stores into Google search results. If you search for any product Stephen F. Quinn, chief marketing officer at Walmart explained, Google will tell you if you’re local Walmart have that product in stock, and it will tell you that store’s location. Walmart started experimenting with this process since 2012 and has increased its efforts for the holidays. Walmart uses Facebook to announce its local store manager’s special on the various offers and discounts in its stores as these offers differ from store to store. Walmart marketing runs the sales side of digital at Walmart where four thousand of the 10,000 Walmart stores have their own Facebook pages.

Walmart predominantly depends on half-million monthly pieces of user-generated content on Facebook and Twitter. Walmart has enjoyed 60,000 daily interactions on social media across 7 dedicated social handles and claims a stunning 10x ROI. With 31 million Facebook fans, more than any other brand on the network, it is no surprise that on Black Friday last year, Walmart received comments at a rate of 42 per minute. "We have ROI that's really strong. And, it's transforming our organization. This level of engagement we now have with customers is changing a whole bunch of other aspects of our marketing," said Walmart marketing Chief Stephen Quinn.

Walmart social media strategy is to use its online platforms to connect with consumers and generate sales. Walmart identifies influencers on various social networks and communicate directly with them about programs such as natural disaster relief efforts or the number of honorably discharged veterans the company has hired to date (30,000) on the way to its goal of 100,000 hired by 2018. Walmart also stopped paid promotions that led to gaining of followers on social media sites. In 2013, Walmart's average reach through Facebook was 474,000 with an engagement rate of just under 3 percent. In the first two months and 18 posts into 2014, that reach had climbed to 2.4 million and engagement had nearly doubled to 4.7 percent.  Walmart ultimately uses social media to present a positive face of the company, benefit the customers and also increase sales for the company.

Case Study: Social Media Strategy @ Mercedes Benz – Targeting young Customers through Social Media

Mercedes Benz has been actively engaging with customers and prospective customers particularly younger generation customers as part of its marketing and sales strategy "Mercedes-Benz 2020 - Best Customer Experience". Worldwide, Mercedes Benz has around 23.5 million fans on the national and international Mercedes-Benz Facebook pages and the company has successfully set up a benchmark in the automotive sector in terms of engaging with fans and customers. Mercedes Benz has two million likes, shares and comments monthly at the international Facebook page highlights the aggressive fan engagement who discusses the brand and its products. To attract younger generation customers like 21- to 29-year-old potential consumers who felt Mercedes Benz cars as “stuffy” and more suited to their parents’ generation, the company launched the new CLA-Class cars that feature a compact design and a relatively low price — models start at less than $30,000.

Mercedes put its main marketing focus on social networking and first established a partnership with famous filmmaker Case Neistat who in exchange for a CLA car, made four videos showing his personal experience with Mercedes’ vehicles. Mercedes also invited Instagram’s five most popular photographers to drive CLA vehicles and post photos to the site. The photographer whose post garnered the most attention won a car. Mercedes-Benz’s Nathan Tan, a supervisor of advertising said that the social media marketing effort paid off as the average age for CLA buyers fell by 11 years which is younger compared to Mercedes buyers in general. “Mercedes ended up with an 82 percent conquest rate, or percentage of new buyers who had previously chosen another brand. Seventy percent of new buyers had never previously bought a luxury car. “It was the greatest advertising in Mercedes’ history,” said Nathan Tan.

Mercedes uses Instagram along with Facebook and Twitter successfully in a powerful way and has the most active fans among all car brands. Mercedes plans on increasing these social networking platforms in 2014 to further tap into a younger generation of buyers. Instagram Shootout is where car photographers can post images on the Mercedes-Benz channel which can be rated by users to determine the winner. Since 2009 the company has been using social networking when it launched a professional journalistic network to maintain close contact with a large number of international online opinion leaders from a range of different areas, from cars and technology to fashion, design and lifestyle. Mercedes-Benz marketing strategy for the all-new 2014 CLA-Class is working well and the company believes social media as a critical platform to attract a new generation of younger buyers who have never purchased a Mercedes vehicle before. Luxury car manufacturers are aggressively engaging with fans, customers and potential customers on various social networking sites as they have to constantly engage with above set of people, build brand reputation and increase the aspiration to own the brand’s products.  

Social Media @ UBS – Social Media Monitoring outsourced to Accenture to hedge reputational risk

UBS, global financial services provider started using the social media and social data to manage reputation risks since 2010 when the company deployed Jive Software, but the initial intention of monitoring is to provide customer service on social networking sites. Later UBS started combining social data and other media reports like news reports with internal data to identify reputation risks and garner insights to assess its risk exposure before doing business with clients. UBS understands the importance of reputational and professional risks in the financial industry as any damage to these risks will have a significant effect on the bank’s business. Social Media mentions, posts, comments and updates by customers and people posted on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. have a significant effect on the firm’s brand reputation. According to Accenture Case Study titled “Keeping Track: Social Media Monitoring UBS”, “Swiss banking giant UBS is using social media monitoring as an integral component of its communication strategy. The bank wants to get a good snapshot of its public image and identify what type of issues are gaining importance in the banking industry. “First, we want to listen carefully to, and meticulously evaluate, what customers are saying about us and what they expect,” says Michael Willi, Chief Communication Officer at UBS. “If we succeed, we can use social media to better address the different target groups.” Customers are actively engaging on the various social networking sites and are posting both negative and positive comments on social networking sites and financial services firms have to monitor and respond to them or else there will be significant effect on the firm’s brand reputation in the highly competitive financial services industry.

UBS has outsourced its social media monitoring to Accenture which helps them to effectively monitor activity on social media platforms and identify the posts, comments and tweets that could affect its brand and reputation, and respond or countermeasure them fast and efficiently there by reducing the damage. Accenture employees at the Delivery Center Warsaw study comments made on German, Spanish and Portuguese social media sites located in central and southern Europe and Latin America. The Delivery Center in Mumbai, India, processes postings made in Western Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific (Source: “Keeping Track: Social Media Monitoring UBS”). Accenture tracks and monitors comments in social media in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Accenture delivers detailed reports on a regular (daily, weekly or ad hoc) basis and these reports are based on the tracking results and additional analysis. UBS gets a comprehensive view on the various social media platforms and UBS Brand Management and Communications Department relies on Accenture to collect and analyze information. Financial Services industry is highly regulated and firms need to follow the stringent regulations and accordingly have to manage their social media presence and customer engagement. It is not easy to keep track of the various social networking sites and it requires highly advanced technologies and analytical tools to capture and analyze social data and use it in further improving the existing and launching new products and services. 

Case Study: Social Media Marketing Strategy @ JPMorgan Chase – Customer Service & Relationship Management on Twitter

JPMorgan Chase, United States biggest bank has been actively using Twitter majorly for customer service as the bank's customer-service team responded to complaints, queries and also offered solutions to the problems and redressed the customer grievances. J.P. Morgan's customer-service account alone has more than 26,000 followers on Twitter and has sent more than 90,000 tweets since its inception. “A lot of people think that Twitter is a fad and you can’t really use it effectively to talk to customers,” Bianca Buckridee, a VP of social media with JP Morgan Chase told a recent panel discussion, according to a report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school. Buckridee’s team responds directly to questions, using personalized accounts with photos attached – making for a more intimate connection with JP Morgan Chase staff. In November 2013, JPMorgan tried to conduct an online discussion with one of its executives by asking questions via the Twitter hashtag "#AskJPM" and was forced to cancel the even within six hours as Twitter users tweeted hundreds of messages for the event that were either jokes or negative questions about the company's business practices. The planned Q&A was quickly aborted. "Tomorrow's Q&A is canceled. Bad idea. Back to the drawing board," the bank tweeted. JPMorgan Chase also uses its twitter account to also provide the news, policy changes and also information about bank’s product and service offerings.

In January 2014, JPMorgan Chase promoted Kristin Lemkau to chief marketing officer who announced her plans to build out the bank's online digital marketing capabilities and also rework the bank’s social media presence that took beating due to the twitter fiasco. In an interview with American Banker, Kristin Lemkau said, "If you look at our digitally owned channels, we just don't have as rich a strategy as some of our competitors do," she added, citing the company's lack of a main Facebook page and room for improvement with its website. She feels the bank needs to talk more about the good things it is doing on various social networking sites so as to improve its social media reputation. Mobile phones are another area where Lemkau is hoping to "find better ways frankly of reaching our customers." Despite many challenges and regulatory issues Banks have to increase their presence and consumer engagement significantly as the customers are actively engaging g on various social media platforms and networking sites and address the grievances and also provide the necessary information related to policy changes, rules, regulations and products and services. To further strengthen its efforts JPMorgan Chase recruited Susan Canavari as Chief Brand Officer for Chase for leading strategy and development for the consumer brand, including advertising, creative services and social media marketing and reports to Kristin Lemkau, the firm’s Chief Marketing Officer. JPMorgan Chase is not only looking at social media as way of engaging with customers but also use the data on various social networking sites to further improve the bank’s product and service offerings. 

Case Study: Social Media @ Wells Fargo – Listening to Customers through Social Media Command Center

Wells Fargo made significant investments to set up its Social Media Marketing unit over the past 5 years for listening and evaluating the voice of their customers on various social networking sites and platforms effectively and respond to their grievances and queries. In an interview with Portada,  Wells Fargo's CMO Jamie Moldafsky  said, "In the past 18 months we established new policies and processes, engaged partners and people, and launched new platforms to move from social test/learn to having a robust social business. We have a hub and spoke model where an enterprise team develops the capabilities, accelerants and guardrails for the company to follow." Wells Fargo established "social media command center" in San Francisco and a backup location in Charlotte — where employees keep an eye on  eight large screens that display Tweets, Facebook posts and other social media content published about the brand, engage with consumers on topics that are trending and quickly respond to specific customer queries.

Both the command centers are constantly monitored by dedicated staff five days a week, 12 hours a day and the bank deployed technology of Salesforce.com that monitors the mentions of its name around the clock so that the bank keep watch on customer’s response to various products and services, or initiatives such as establishing more computerized smaller branches. "It's a fundamental change to consumer behavior," says Renee Brown, the head of the enterprise social media team at Wells Fargo. "[Social media] is the new water cooler and street corner where people are gathering to talk.” The monitoring is also helps in better handling of complaints and negative comments as large banks regularly face complaints related to everything from poor branch service to questionable fees to their handling of foreclosures, and in the social media world it is very important for banks to quickly acknowledge the complaints and make an effort to resolve them. As part of its social media outreach, Wells Fargo has a "social care" unit to which it refers many of its customer complaints.

In the year 2013, Wells Fargo was mentioned more than one million times on social media sites and comments included a mix of positive and negative comments. In an interview with Portada, Wells Fargo's CMO Jamie Moldafsky said, "in 2013, we significantly increased engagement, fans and followers and have seen improvements in sentiment by integrating and moving toward a socially engaged business. We’re excited about the engagement we’ve experienced so far."  We have a terrific team of more than 75 social practitioners that meet regularly across all of our businesses to build and support our social media content and programs. Social media also allows us to spread our marketing messages very quickly and effectively, particularly when integrated into our marketing campaigns. When our millions of fans tell their friends that they like our products and services which helps change perception more than anything else." Wells Fargo have always been an early adopters of technology and Wells Fargo executives were the first in banking industry to adopt the new social, mobile technologies to help deepen customer relationships.

Oracle Social Media Sales Strategy – Encouraging Sales team to actively engage on Social Networks

Business to Business marketing is effectively being done by companies using the social media platforms and social networking sites.  Social Networking world is chaotic and often lot of unrelated and unwanted content is flowing around and it is very difficult for the companies to monitor the social networking sites constantly and also need to employ resources who not only monitor but also respond on the various social networking sites. Companies have to respond to the customers instantly as the dissatisfied customers may launch a social media campaign and attack that will severely affect the brand reputation and the sales of the company. Oracle Inc. uses the social media and networking sites for increasing the sales of the company. Oracle Sales strategy integrated the social media as one of the key components and the company built a wide presence on all of the major social media networks and most of the conversations and engagements are related to company’s products and services. Oracle went a step further and encouraged its sales representatives to use Twitter to engage with prospects in meaningful, helpful dialogue during the sales process, which is quite a new initiative for a B2B company. Traditional B2B marketing strategies included monotonous cycle of emails, webinar invites, check-ins, blog content, technology updates and hoping the customers will engage. Oracle employees were trained on how to properly use social media which transformed Oracle into a social media savvy company with about five percent of the company’s 23,000 sales reps using Twitter. Oracle training program included large scale training sessions, as well as small support-style workshops and Jill Rowley also produced and starred in an internal 10-episode webinar series that focuses on social selling. 

Oracle Social Selling evangelist Jill Rowley argues that Sales professionals need to understand that buying process and buyers in today’s world are very different from earlier as they are digitally-driven, mobile, socially-connected, empowered with unlimited access to real-time information about business problems, products, companies, competitors — about all sorts of things. Social networks are where the modern sales professional can do research, networking, relationship-building, and can use these channels to earn trust.  And earn trust by sharing content that is useful, that is education and training, insightful, and informative and of value to the buyer, regardless if the buyer buys the salesperson’s product or not. Along with Oracle content mostly related to company’s products and services Oracle also encourages its employees to use a 4-1-1 Rule: sharing four pieces of relevant third-party content for every one piece of Oracle-branded content, plus an offering of lighthearted fare like a cat video or motivational quote. Lot of information is available on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Slide share, Facebook, Twitter, etc. which sales professionals can use for their advantage. Oracle is looking at social media and networking sites as one of the critical component of its sales strategy along with traditional sales and marketing strategies and since social media is also having a significant effect on the way businesses run their operations also means that company has also look at the social selling a disruptive go to market strategy and look to benefit from it and make a competitive advantage. 

AT&T Social Media Strategy: AT&T Social Circle employees as Social Advocates

AT&T social media strategy included utilizing the company’s employees who are already active on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter and encourage them to share their opinions on the social media platforms and create awareness about the company’s products and services and also promote the marketing and other promotional campaigns. It all started in 2009 with a small group of employees and currently the group grew into strong 1500 employees who actively share updates and posts on Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. For eligibility into this program employees should be active on the above mentioned social networks for more than 90 days and they have to go through a training program to avoid any potential issues and problems. The company initially identified some 500 employees who were active in social networks and started a pilot project with them.

In a presentation at SocialMedia.org‘s BlogWell conference in Dallas, AT&T’s Senior Manager of Emerging Communications, Lee Diaz highlighted Nielsen survey facts that 92 % of consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising and 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a product when they hear about it from someone they trust, which also encouraged AT&T to encourage their employees as social advocates. Employees are an excellent resource of knowledge and information about company’s products and services, actively participate on various social networking sites and with training, necessary tools and platforms and encouragement from company allowed employees to actively engage with consumers on social networking sites. AT&T also monitors and measures the activity and engagement of the employees so as to analyze the effectiveness of their content.

Lee Diaz also highlighted AT&T added a hub to centralize the content and the employee advocates. It allowed their advocates to explore all of the content in total and decide, for themselves, when and how they would share. The centralized hub allows AT&T to share content immediately, make announcements, etc. It was important that the employees can access the hub from any device. They used SocialChorus for the hub, which includes the embedded hashtag. One of the main components of AT&T’s social advocate program was a simple hashtag, #ATTemployee. This let their employees share content from AT&T while being transparent and staying legal. It is also important for AT&T employee advocates to engage with one another, too so as to further improve the content efficacy and AT&T has an internal platform called tSpace based on IBM Connections platform, which is available only to employee advocates. The program has seen some good results as there have been more than 20,000 influencer activities, more than 410,000 audience engagements, and estimated media value of more than US$ 1 million. AT&T is now encouraging all its 250,000 employees to participate in this program voluntarily and company is actively sharing the content that they want the employees to promote in all the internal platforms and it is up to the employees whether to share or reshare the AT&T news, information, announcements, etc. on their preferred social networking site. AT&T realizes the fact that employee engagement will have significant influence on the reputation & brand image of the company.

General Electric Social Media Strategy – Innovative Technology oriented Content

GE social media strategy can be called a digital content factory which is a convergence of different social media platforms that allows company and customers publish and share their own content. The company deals with significantly high quality content that discusses the innovations in technology, emerging technologies, explanation and description about existing technologies. Along with Facebook, Twitter—there are other social networks like Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube on which the company actively allows sharing and publishing of customer generated content of different types along with creating daily, original content on our own owned channels like GE Reports and Txchnologist (which then gets distributed socially and on third party blogs and news sites). According to Beth Comstock, GE CMO, since business itself is social and customer engagements are critical for the business survival, GE utilizes social media tools and platforms allow us to connect directly with our customers, from product ratings to reviews to customer communities where real time collaborating and innovating is happening. Linda Boff, executive director of global brand marketing, GE said, “Real-time marketing is the ability in near real time to produce a response through content, experiences or service to a live event or customer event that delights your audience or customer into engaging with your brand around a shared moment.”

GE strategically utilizes the social platforms to tell stories about the way the company impacts the lives of people and tells the stories about the successes and the challenges the company is facing and using content that is creative and highly impacting visually has allowed the company build a strong relationship with their customers. On social media platforms GE focuses more on on technology and innovation and not on selling its products and services. GE has many Facebook pages including GE Appliances, Lighting, Aviation, etc. and on these pages most of the content is related to questions, images, videos and links relating to a wide range of topics, including jet engines, medical science, outer space and data science. There are also more interesting initiatives, such as ‘Stump the scientist’ which asks Facebook fans to pose questions to one of GE’s chief scientists

With a global presence in more than 150 countries and over 300,000 employees worldwide, General Electric (GE) is a conglomerate that operates in everything from finance through to aviation, appliances and healthcare. Most of the GE businesses are highly regulated businesses like healthcare, energy and financial services the company always have to be very cautious about the content and for overcoming the issue it has a team of strategist, producer, designer and lawyer to make fast decisions on both the content and the distribution. The company has been successfully using the various social networking sites to engage with customers, partners and investors and significantly improving the brand value of the company. We've done some research on our content marketing," said CMO Beth Comstock, speaking with Adweek at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference. "And we get 30 percent extra value for every dollar spent."

Case Study: Enterprise Social Network @ Pfizer – Pfizer World intranet & My World

Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies in terms of revenues, with employees of around 1, 00,000 and operations across 150 countries in the world had implemented an enterprise social network styled intranet within the company for their employees to communicate and collaborate across the globe. Pfizer World intranet is built on Microsoft SharePoint platform and the company prior to this had more than 400 intranet sites. Bob Libbey, Head of Digital and Social Communications at Pfizer, Inc., likes to think of PfizerWorld – the company’s singular internal channel - as an online town square. “People come to get their news and information about the enterprise - about the various pieces of Pfizer - that’s a big part of what’s made the project a success. Obviously we use email a lot; we distribute a promotional newsletter twice a week to show what’s upcoming in PfizerWorld. We need to be careful not to overload people. We’re always looking for ways to help people sort their information. That to me is the biggest challenge right now - helping people prioritize all the news and information that we’re sending to them,” Libbey explains.

In 2008, the site had 1.4 million article views; in 2009, the number jumped to 3 million article views, along with 10 million site visits on the whole. For 2010, article views topped 5.2 million and visits reached 55 million. In its third year, PfizerWorld generated 5.3 million article views and 61 million page views, up 279 percent and more than 1,000 percent respectively over the predecessor site. And the project yielded $20 million in maintenance, support, and development savings over the four years. The news crawl runs along the bottom of people’s desktops and includes the top stories of the day from PfizerWorld, top news clips of the day disseminated by the Media Relations team and breaking news as needed.  Pfizer also launched a social networking hub called My World,  a personalized intranet page to increase employee engagement, enable information sharing and facilitate collaboration; and a colleague message board called Moving Pfizer Forward to encourage candid discussion about company issues and employee engagement  and introduced as part of our PfizerWorld intranet platform back in 2010. That first year this internal networking hub drew 41,000 unique users who generated 800,000 page views. The second year it rose to approximately 60,000 users driving 1.6 million page views. Pfizer expanded its Social Media Policy to reflect the rise in usage of internal and external social media channels across the company. 

Internally, Pfizer created new employee channels, including the only pharmaceutical-company sponsored blog for Pfizer scientists, Think Science Now, on Pfizer.com; a personalized intranet page for employees; and a colleague message board. Pfizer also made content easier for visitors to share through Facebook, RSS etc. Many of the blog postings from Think Science Now appear on Pfizer’s Facebook page, for instance. Pfizer had been able to implement and integrate social network styled tools and platform internally so that employees can actively use it, collaborate and communicate with colleagues across the globe and work together to achieve the organization goals.

Case Study: Enterprise Social Networks @ Toyota – Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration

Toyota uses Salesforce.com enterprise social network platform called Chatter that facilitates internal communication between hundreds of thousands of Toyota employees across the world to interact, share and collaborate with each other on a day to day basis and work for the organizational growth. Employees have to login to access the intranet, join groups and participated in discussions of their interests and can post updates, comments, opinions, questions and get answers and suggestions from coworkers based in 170 countries around the world.  With Chatter platform allowing collaboration and sharing of information and documents employees can actively collaborate and work together to resolve critical issues. “People have only 24 hours a day,” says Toyoda. “But through social we can connect with many people at once.” Enterprise social networking platforms are critical tools for knowledge management as organizations need to document and share the knowledge within the organizations effectively for growth. "Most of the knowledge is tacit. It is walking around in the heads of our employees," said Steve Kang, social enterprise manager for Toyota. "The question is how do you get that knowledge? How do you extract that knowledge? Because it's not written down anywhere. This provides us with a way to do that."

Toyota started using the Chatter based intranet since 2012 and employees can access the intranet not only through desktops but also using the mobile devices like iPad, Android and BlackBerry applications. Employees can create topic centered groups and engage with others on this platform and interactions should be mostly work related and one of the popular group is the "ask all Toyota" for employees to pose questions to other Toyota workers around the globe. Another important usage of Chatter in Toyota is the cross-departmental task forces that collaborate across different departments located across the globe and they prefer chatter rather than the traditional email as Chatter allows easy flow of information between collaborators.  Even the senior management in Toyota actively use intranet to communicate with employees and employees keep track of the posts by the senior management. Toyota even implemented a translation service within the chatter so as there will be seamless interaction between Japanese and Non-Japanese employees that enhanced communication among Toyota employees around the world, leading to quicker decision-making and information-sharing as enhanced communication ultimately help to make products and services best suited to consumers. Along with digital modes of communications Toyota also uses face-to-face contact where in Senior management regularly walk around and talk to employees and also regularly hold roundtable discussions. Employees are critical part of organizational success and organizations need to implement platforms that allow communication, collaboration and sharing of information and knowledge between employees and also with senior management so that they can also work together for achieving the organization goals and objectives. Enterprise Social Networks also allow employee engagement with customers and also allow engagement on external social networking platforms too. 

Case Study: Social Media Monitoring @ Toyota analyzes social media data for sales improvement, quality improvement & marketing

Toyota uses social media monitoring to analyze the social media data across social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. to keep a track of what customers are thinking about their cars, specific models, customer feedback, and quality issues and use this data to improve the sales of cars. Social media monitoring and sentiment analysis have become a key element of social media strategy for companies as the customers actively engage on various social networking sites and voice their opinions and often criticisms about the company’s products and services. In a CIO.com article by Zack Hicks is CIO at Toyota operations in North America and group vice president for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A, “Today, we use social media data analysis across many areas--sales, service, quality, marketing and product development. For example, if a customer expresses interest in a car, we can determine engagement by analyzing the frequency of dealership visits via their Foursquare check-ins, understand their dealership experiences, and even understand what features may have sparked their interest in a competitor's product. This allows us to stratify leads based on their readiness to buy, moving stronger leads to the top of the list.” One of the best methods of analyzing the social media data is the keyword correlation and linkages that will help the company analyze what all options the customer looking at before buying the Toyota cars and what keywords customers are using for the search and whether the key words reflect the company’s brand image and reputation.

Social media monitoring also helps in competitive intelligence by using the sentiment analysis the company will study how customers are talking about Toyota’s car models and is that talk is materializing into final purchase of the car by the customer and accordingly use the information in predictive analysis of future sales. Toyota also uses the social media data to understand more about their existing and potential customers like their hobbies, interests, what movies and TV shows they like, what sports they like and what all other social networking platforms they actively use which will help Toyota to do brand collaborations, place ads, promote such events and use their marketing and advertising budgets efficiently. Toyota is also immediately responding to the quality, product and service issues faced by Toyota customers and resolve them as soon as possible to avoid backlash. Toyota is also using social media platforms to identify the prospective customers, analyze their needs and requirements, understand what other brands of cars the customers are looking at and also target the customer with specific offers like discount coupons, providing customers the necessary information and clarifications so that they can make easy and fast decisions. Toyota also uses the data to study the effectiveness and performance of their dealerships and how dealers are pushing the sales as dealers are critical link in the car sales. Social media has become a critical platform for the automobile industry particularly car industry, as the car makers are aggressively using social media for product development and reduce lead times by testing the concepts on social networking sites. Social media monitoring has become a big competitive advantage for the auto industry and Toyota is using the social media monitoring strategy effectively. Social Media Monitoring is proactive strategy that helps companies to understand their customers and develop products accordingly.

Case Study: Audi Social Media Strategy – Twitter & Hashtags linked to Super bowl Ads

Audi is one of the world’s leading premium brands and is among the most admired manufacturer of high-quality and  innovative luxury cars and represented in 110 countries  worldwide. Company success can be attributed to pioneering concepts in the domains of advanced technology and design. Audi had been aggressively building its social media presence for the past few years and the company has widely acclaimed for its innovative social media campaigns particularly its twitter campaigns, a unique bridge between social media and TV, being an early adopter of using hashtags in TV ads. Audi was the first Super Bowl advertiser to attach a hashtag to a Super Bowl spot in 2011 for its ad “#ProgressIs” for “Luxury Prison” that encouraged conversation on Twitter prior to, during and after the game, and Audi also used this similar strategy in its 2014 super bowl ad with #StayUncompromised, based on the “no compromise” strategy promoted in “Doberhuahua.” #WantAnR8 hashtag was originally started by one of Audi company’s followers, was initially organic and then supported by Audi with paid advertising through an ad agency and was also featured in a nationally run TV advertising campaign, along with over a year of social messaging and this hashtag is widely synonymous with Audi social. Audi has presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Audi social media strategy is based on long-term goal to "connect consumers in bold new ways and break through the traditional approach to social media platforms." Audi’s largest social media entities including Audi USA on Facebook and @Audi on Twitter are operated by Audi of America. The official Audi R8 has more than 28 million likes, Audi USA page has more than 7.9 million likes and also maintains individual Facebook pages for different countries. Audi used Tagboard to display certain tweets from consumers on a large display screen near its vehicles at the New York Auto show. The automaker has promoted the Tagboard through its Twitter and Facebook channels. Consumers can contribute to the Tagboard by using two hashtags – #Audi and #NYIAS – in their tweet. Audi had been using the various social networking sites to promote its brand and company also utilizes its social user engagement platform to really understand the fans, boost engagement levels and improve the overall user experience. Audi believes fans are most important for the brand success and use the social data about their fans and develop content that significantly improves the customer engagement. 

Audi social media success highlights the fact the automakers can look at social media as a reliable way of engaging with customers and followers. Audi opened digital showrooms in prime city centre retail estate to attract luxury car buyers where vehicles will be displayed virtually, with Audi’s displays being on show on Berlin’s grand Kurfuerstendamm Boulevard in a shop four times smaller than a traditional dealership. All 49 models are available to be seen on multimedia screens without the need for time-squeezed prospective buyers who cannot go on test drive. The digital solution also solves the problem of being able to display a big product range in a small space where footfall is much greater than on the outskirts of urban centres. Audi’s showroom comes with the comforts of a customer lounge alongside its car dealers, who face a new challenge in selling cars which potential buyers are yet to sit in or drive.

Case Study: Starbucks Social Media Strategy – Cross Promotion & Sharing Customer experiences

Starbucks, the premium coffee chain that competes with a unique selling proposition rather comfort and luxury rather than convenient quick service concept has built a significant social media presence across various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, etc. The company has millions of fans and followers on the social networks and Starbucks uses social media not only to advertise its offerings but also occasionally drives customers to various stores located across the globe through promotional offerings. The Starbucks Facebook Page was created in 2008, with a total fan count of around 17,544,417 and 36,359,483 likes and Starbucks Twitter page has more than 18,300 tweets and 58 million followers. Apart from Facebook and Twitter Facebook social media strategy is built around their company web site and additional social platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Youtube, and My Starbucks Ideas. On Instagram the company has 400 posts and more than 2.1 million followers. Starbucks has more than a million followers and posts content every few days with nearly all of it taken from its Facebook page and Twitter feed.

One of the most important for Starbucks social media success can be attributed to the fact that the fans and followers of the company can easily post the pictures, videos, tweets and status updates on the various social networking sites. Company actively encourages to share the in store experiences of the customers and also talk about their coffee and also promotes the customer stories on its social network pages which has encouraged the customer to build a long term relationship with the company and the company also benefited from the active consumer following on the social networking sites. Starbucks also is very active on the image based social networking sites like Pinterest and Instagram, where customers share their Starbucks moments—whether it be the return of a favorite holiday drink or just an artsy coffee cup shot. Customers along with their happy moments also share the promotional offers and new product launches too. Starbucks promotional programs include My Starbucks Rewards, personalized "signature" drinks, and localized store experiences. Social cross-promotion has been gaining prominence in the digital world and the company uses this strategy well as when Starbucks takes a photo, it shares it on Instagram, posts it to Facebook, tweets it on Twitter, pins it on Pinterest.

Starbucks has over the years built a strong loyal customer base of coffee drinkers who are not bothered about price but like the company’s unique selling proposition of good coffee, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around. Along with focusing on high quality coffee and customer service the company also works on many charitable initiatives. A team of five people manage the company’s social media presence and the company is sticking to principle of more customer created content rather than the company creating and posting the content on the social networking sites. Starbucks also understands the fact that each social networking site has its own unique set of users and the company needs to reach the users with appropriate content which can be done by encouraging their customers to share their experience actively through pictures, videos, posts, status updates and comments. This strategy has helped the company dominate the social media space and rank among the top companies in terms of social media presence. 

Social Media Advertising revenues expected to continue growth till 2017, marketers cautious

According to a report by emarketer, social media advertising revenues in US are expected to reach close to US$ 4.5 billion in 2013 and also predict the revenues to grow by more than billion dollars and reach close to US$ 6 billion in 2014 and reach US$ 7 billion in 2015. According to BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Social Local Media Forecast, social display ad revenues in the U.S. will grow from $4.3 billion in 2013 to $6.8 billion in 2017, a 12.6 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR). During the same period, U.S. native social advertising, spurred primarily by Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, will more than double, from $2.4 billion to nearly $5 billion, a 20.3 percent CAGR. U.S. social mobile ad revenues are expected to grow from $1.6 billion in 2013 (up 250 percent from 2012) to $3.5 billion by 2017, a 21.3 percent CAGR. BIA/Kelsey projects total U.S. social media advertising revenues will grow from $6.7 billion in 2013 to $11.9 billion in 2017, representing a CAGR of 15.5 percent. Locally targeted social advertising will grow at a 22.6 percent CAGR, from $1.7 billion in 2013 to $3.9 billion in 2017.

Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, LinkedIn, Google+,  etc. are the major social networking sites that are expected to drive revenue growth and they are investing heavily on the advertising platforms and looking to monetize. But the crucial fact is that all the major social networking sites are struggling with mobile advertising platforms as majority of the social networking sites users are using their mobile devices to access social networking sites rather than personal computing devices like laptops and desktops. Facebook is still experimenting and constantly changing their website layouts and also experimenting with different types of brand pages format and also the ad display formats. Almost all the social networking sites are seeing good growth in revenues but the amount spent on social media advertising is small compared to the traditional television, print and even overall digital advertising like search and Google ads. Reasons for this is that marketers are not able to exactly quantify the return on investment of the social media advertising, effect on customers in terms of retention and satisfaction levels.

According to Dachis group social media predictions for 2014, less than 10% of advertising budgets are allocated to social channels, Social media budgets will only be 12% of all marketing spend in 2014, and despite the critical importance of content to seed social marketing and community engagement efforts, only 9% of marketers have a full time blogger. Yet over 70% of marketers plan on increasing their investment in social media in 2014. Image based social networking sites like Instagram, Pinterest, Video based sites like We Chat and chat based social networking sites like WhatsApp, etc. also causing confusion in the marketers as there is an argument that fatigue is setting in Facebook site users and they are slowly moving away to other social networking sites. Even the reemergence of blogging is also attracting the marketers to look back at it. Overall marketers are looking for quality engagement rather than quantity engagement on social media sites and are also recruiting specialists who will help them effectively manage the social media presence. Social networking sites on their behalf have to make sure their advertising platforms deliver the best value. 

Case Study: Unilever Social Media Strategy – Internal Digital Social Platform & Project Sunshine

Unilever Plc sells more than 400 brands of products across the world in 190 countries and the company iconic global brands include Dove soap, Hellman's mayo, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Axe deodorant, etc. Unilever is world's No. 2 consumer-goods company and spends more than US$10 billion on advertising and promotion of its products. In 2013 end, Unilever launched an internal companywide social media campaign Project Sunshine that shifted from different marketing campaigns for individual products in different countries to a new strategy that promotes the brands' social-mission stories and urges consumers to make small changes in their own lives—changes that generally involve buying Unilever products. The company shifted its focus based on the fact across consumer products industry most of the players have realized social media as cheapest and effective way of reaching customers and also need to have a centralized marketing strategy which will enhance the effectiveness of social media strategy overall. Social media marketing is different from traditional marketing as social media is real-time and companies need to sense and respond immediately and constantly review and change their social media strategy.

The internal digital platform was designed and built by Accenture using Salesforce.com Chatter, the enterprise social networking technology, that will help Unilever connect its marketers, brand managers and partners in 190 countries and enables sharing of knowledge, best practices and creative assets across the company. According to Accenture press release, “The new applications boost collaboration amongst our marketers globally, helping them to easily find people, information and conversations that they should be a part of,” said Marc Mathieu, SVP Marketing, Unilever. “The platform provides our team with the tools they need to develop and build our brands in local markets, which is critical to driving our ‘Crafting Brands for Life’ strategy. It also frees up time for our team to create more magic – that is, to engage with consumers and create more effective marketing, which will be key to delivering our ambition to double the size of our business while reducing our environmental footprint and increasing our social impact.”

For effective social marketing the digital platform will help Unilever brand team create a central hub that showcases individual brands and allows marketers and partners participate in conversations and also access relevant content and assets. There also has to be collaboration with the central brand teams in company headquarters and local teams in different countries so that company maintains uniform brand strategy on various social networking sites. “These tools really help us harness the power of the brands, the power of the people in Unilever and our agency partners – that combination is very powerful for us,” said Mark McClennon, CIO Consumer, Unilever. Unilever believes social media savvy consumers are expecting from the company high ethical standards, accountability and transparency across all the company’s brands and Unilever is using the social networking sites to deliver the message of sustainable living.  

Enterprise Social Networks Case Study – Nestlé created Facebook styled intranet NestChatter

Nestlé has more than 330,00 employees worldwide and manages some 2,000 brands like Nescafe instant coffee, Kit Kat, Maggie, Nespresso coffee, Pure Life bottled water, etc. and each day sells 1.2 billion items. Nestle has a very active presence on various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. The company successfully manages 1,500 pieces of content being posted every day on social media, 50 percent of all Nespresso capsules being sold online, 180 million Facebook “likes” (with growth of 5-7 percent every month) and 200,000 employees on an internal social media platform. The company has more than 170 million fans across over 750 brand pages on Facebook alone. Company planned to embrace the social media both externally for customer engagement and internally for employee engagement. For social media strategy to be successful a well-planned and developed content strategy is a must. Content developed by professional media agencies, content generated by customers and also the content generated by employees is essential for any social media strategy to work. Enterprise Social Networking software developed by IBM, Saleforce.com, etc. play an essential role as the companies can create their own Facebook styled intranets within the company for active employee engagements.

Nestlé embraced social media inside the organization successfully and it implemented one of the largest internal social networks with more than 200,000 users using enterprise social network platform developed by Salesforce.com’s Chatter platform. Facebook styled intranet which Nestlé created is called NestChatter that significantly increased the level of sharing and collaboration by employees in the company located worldwide. Employee communities were formed with an agenda to promote online listening best practices and another strategy “Winning with Mobile” that is mobile apps and mobile friendly sites. Company went further and also used it to recruit talent with relationship-building skills and such employees were identified based on the way they collaborated and participated on the intranet platforms. Nestlé has been on focusing on finding ways to encourage and spread virally digital communication among employees across the globe. Employees are asked to blog and are scored on likes, viral share and post clicks. There is an internal version of YouTube and Facebook (similar to Chatter) with employee-generated content.

NestChatter streamlines the passions and experience of employees to create content, and use it as internal currency and also encourages creating new ideas and recognizing innovative staff members. The intranet too also improved the efficiency of employees through sharing information, collaborating on projects across geographical regions and time zones, efficiency of marketing teams that using the information created new innovative campaigns for various products and also helped in testing and interacting with customers in innovating new products and improve existing products. Active engagement by customers has reduced significantly the time to market and product failures too. Another case that significantly highlights the need for Facebook styled intranets within the organization that not only promotes employee engagement but also generates content that is very critical component of social media strategy.

Social Media Strategy Case Study @ Nestlé – Digital Acceleration Team key to success

Nestle faced a severe back lash on various social media platforms from customers in 2010 when Greenpeace boycotted and posted a viral video which highlighted the company’s use of palm oil produced from unsustainable practices which destroyed rainforests major  habitats of orangutans. Nestle strategy of forcefully removing the viral video and improper handling of Facebook pages protests failed which forced the company to relook at its social media strategy as a whole. Nestlé embraced a new social media strategy based on principle of open engagement to rebuild its reputation and an ethical code implemented that promoted open, honest engagement and this strategy was communicated to employees worldwide. Company developed a new framework using data and insights gained from social media activities on various platforms and used it to develop new successful and innovative campaigns. Social Media monitoring and engagement on various social media platforms by a dedicated team has enabled the company to engage with consumers and public and avoid negative sentiment and social crisis.

Nestlé created the Digital Acceleration Team (DAT) which continuously tracks consumer sentiments in real-time and instantly responds to any negative trends they identify on various social networking sites. The DAT team is responsible for listening and monitoring worldwide social media conversations and identifies early warnings about negative sentiments. The DAT team is also responsible to strategize and determine which the best approaches to social marketing both in terms of driving reach and engagement. DAT also produces training videos for Nestlé operating units worldwide, and also manages an internal social networking system that enables employees to find and work with others sharing similar interests. Blogging is encouraged, and the firm has its own YouTube-like, internal video-sharing system called DigiTube. DAT also conducts a program for company executives working at different parts of the world to the company’s headquarters for eight months of intensive training in digital trends and the skills learned there are taken to regional offices worldwide. DAT members have ‘hack-a-thons’ to solve problems, anticipate trends and search for ideas.

Nestlé’s social media strategy has been successful as the company successfully manages 1,500 pieces of content being posted every day on social media, 50 percent of all Nespresso capsules being sold online, 180 million Facebook “likes” (with growth of 5-7 percent every month) and 200,000 employees on an internal social media platform. The company has more than 170 million fans across over 750 brand pages on Facebook alone. Post the DAT model success company scaled it worldwide and launched in India, China, and Italy with plans for 12 other locations. Company has been focusing on active employee engagement on various social networking sites as content is critical and employees are the best source of the content as the company do not want to totally rely on professionals and media agencies for social content. Nestlé sells 1.2 billion products a day across the globe and significant numbers of customers are active on various social networking sites and company has to engage with them on such platforms and respond to their opinions and interests.

Social Media Sales Strategy @ IBM Listening for Leads & inside sales teams

IBM had been using the social media and networking platforms to drive sales for its products and services. IBM believes the fact that in the current business world both current customers and prospective customers are aggressively engaging on various social networking sites and the company had developed a social strategy that is hugely successful. IBM social media sales strategy started in the 2009 when the company initiated the “Listening for Leads" program that uses Social Media to help identify opportunities by sales representatives.  Business to Business sales teams use many internal websites that help them to know more about the products and updates and also have a blog with RSS feeds connected to LinkedIn and Twitter through which customers can follow them and maintain relationship. Additionally inside sales teams were set up called “seekers” who on a voluntary basis go to particular social media sites where they listen to conversations and determine whether there’s a potential sales opportunity. The leads then transferred to a lead development representative, a telephone sales rep who has been trained to have a conversation with the lead to qualify and validate the opportunity and then pass it to the appropriate sales resource to follow up. A variety of performance were used by IBM to measure success like retweets, mentions, reach, revenue, and leads, analyze patterns and trends in the data and with the help of marketing analytics understand how sales were improved. IBM found that reps with strong customer relationships and social platform usage had a 2-6% improvement in sales over their colleagues who were less effective.

With the success of social selling in B2B sales teams IBM extended it to B2C and all sales teams within the company and equipped them with necessary training so that join the ongoing social conversation and use it to identify and progress new opportunities. IBM invested in social media training, toolkits and personalized digital pages to help its inside salespeople generate leads and manage account relationships. IBM successfully used this strategy in pushing sales of Public Cloud commerce engine. Three months after launch, 19 per cent of all Public Cloud inside Sales Rep Page traffic could be attributed to social media activity – and 11 per cent of these visitors clicked through to commerce sites. Additional results for the first three months include: 55 per cent increase in Twitter followers, more than 3500 tweets and retweets compared to less than 500 at implementation, more than two thousand clicks driving prospects and clients to rep pages and the SmartCloud Enterprise website. The cost involved in driving this traffic was far less than the traffic generated through the traditional media and advertisements and the conversion rate into sales is also high. Inside sales teams also called as virtual sales teams or remote sales teams within IBM consisted of employees with domain expertise and specialists that can effectively engage with customers and help them resolve their problems and queries. IBM inside sales teams have effectively supported the field sales teams in closing more deals and generate millions of dollars of revenues to the company. IBM internal social media profile includes 17,000 individual blogs, 1 million daily page views of internal wikis and information-storing websites and more than 400,000 employee profiles on IBM’s initial social networking initiative, IBM Connections which is playing a big role in its social media sales strategy. 

Social Media Strategy Coca-Cola – Employee Engagement & Active Monitoring

Coca-Cola understands the importance and value of direct brand conversation facilitated by social media platforms. Company has expanded its marketing strategy and included social media marketing into it as customers are looking to engage with the company on various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Coca-Cole went even further encouraging their employees to actively participate and engage with customers on various social media platforms. Employees actively engage in millions of conversations that take place on various social networking sites and share the optimistic and positive spirits of Coca-Cola brands.  Social Media Principles guide the employees in terms of how to participate both at the personal level and official capacity and mostly surround on the principle of “Have fun, but be smart.  Use sound judgment and common sense, adhere to the Company’s values, and follow the same Company policies that you follow in the offline world.” The company also provides the relevant training to employees and agency partners through internal online learning portals and also evaluates them and update accordingly. Company expects the employees and agency partners use blogs and other social media tools not only as a form of self-expression, but also as a means to further the Company’s business, aware of the implications of engaging in social media and online conversations that reference the Company, its brands, or its business, and that they recognize when the Company might be held responsible for their behavior. 

Coca-Cola also has made certain commitments as highlighted on the company’s website for the customer engagement on various social networking sites like transparency in the social media engagements, protection of consumers’ privacy and comply with applicable privacy policies, IT security policies, and laws, rules, and regulations, respect copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity, and other third-party rights, responsible use of technology by not aligning with any organizations or Web sites that use excessive tracking software, adware, malware or spyware and judicially monitor behavior of employees and consumers in the social media space, establish appropriate protocols for monitoring social media presence, and keep appropriate records of our participation as required by law. Coca-Cola Social Media Monitoring strategy is first monitoring and reviewing what conversations related to Coke are going on the social media world, second respond to the chatter quickly and with accurate, fully transparent answers, third record short video pieces that respond to the chatter in an entertaining, but informative manner and finally redirect social media users to other content on other social media sites. Coca-Cola also gives more importance to the fans and customers on the social media platforms and encourages them to post and share most of the content on the social networks and also aligned its marketing strategy accordingly. Coca-Cola social media strategy has been to influence purchase decisions and loyalty by leveraging the emotional ties people have with their products. This strategy has been hugely successful for the company as the statistics of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube highlight but the company feels that there still long way to go where social media generates hard sales so that company can increase revenues and profitability.