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Starbucks Marketing Strategy … Making Social Media a Difference Maker

By Mike Schoultz
Starbucks marketing

Starbucks marketing

 

Social networking is not about farming followers, it’s a way of cultivating relationships.

-  Hubspot

 

Social Media and Starbucks marketing?

 

When choosing to learn from others social media strategies, it is always helpful to choose one of the top dogs in social media.

 

Meet Starbucks.  They have been successfully executing their social media marketing plan since the first days of social media and social commerce. For over 5 years, and their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.

 

An introduction to Starbucks is unnecessary.

 

With more than 18,000 retail locations in 60 countries, the coffeehouse is the picture of success.

 

Starbucks rode the baby boomer trend in the 1990s, the swelling ranks of mid-age professionals that created the need for a “third place,” an “affordable luxury” where people could share and enjoy a cup of coffee with friends and colleagues, away from work and home.

 

In our opinion, the company has inserted itself into the American urban landscape more quickly and craftily than any retail company in history. It has forever changed the way companies market themselves to customers. Here is how we feel they have been so successful:

 

Market segmentation

The company has stayed with the upper-scale of the coffee market, competing on comfort rather than convenience, which are the case with its closest competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts.

 

Execution

The company continues to focus on its original product bundle that includes good coffee, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around. They keep their attention on paying attention to the details of great execution and service.

 

Social Media

One of the earliest adopters of the use of social media for marketing and social commerce, Starbucks has certainly taken a leadership position. Their social media strategy is built around their company web site and 6 additional social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, Youtube, and My Starbucks Ideas. We will review Starbuck’s social media strategy in detail below.

 

Adaptation and Innovation

Starbuck’s business crowdsourcing, via its My Starbucks Idea website, has been a hugh success. Why you may ask? Because they have combined the concepts of change, experimentation, social media, customer engagement, and market research and made the results key components of both their brand as well as their marketing strategy. Have you given My Starbucks Idea a try? What did you think?

 

 

Starbucks has clearly embraced the digital realm. With a strong presence on multiple social networks, the brand has set a high bar when it comes to being social and engaging its customers. They are at or near the top of nearly every major brand ranking in social media.

 

Starbucks’ ability to wear so many hats—corporate success, “local” favorite, and Internet sensation—warrants strategic examination.

 

Why is Starbucks such a social media marketing success story? There are seven key reasons their social media strategy is a successful difference maker for their marketing campaign:

 

Here is our take on why:

 

Customer relationships

Instead of solely focusing efforts on accumulating new customers, it cultivates its current relationships. This ensures more fans/followers in the long run, as well as the continued existence of brand advocates. This holds true across the board: In-store experiences are highly valued—along with online engagement—emphasizing the importance of customer service.

 

Going to its customers

When Starbucks takes a photo, it shares it on Instagram, posts it to Facebook, tweets it on Twitter, and pins it on Pinterest. It clearly goes to where all its customers like to hang out. Cross-promotion is more valuable as the world becomes more digitally focused.

Each network provides an opportunity to reach a new audience, and integrating your strategy on each is crucial to increasing visibility and promoting the brand.

 

Customer engagement

They believe in letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible.  They listen carefully, observe, and apply new ideas from what they learn.

 

Encourages sharing

Happy customers are eager to share good experiences and offers. For example, the Starbucks frequent promotions like “buy 1 get 1″ garner an extraordinary amount of engagement on social media through comments, “likes,” and shares.

 

My Starbucks Ideas

The My Starbucks Idea website, where Starbucks does its business crowdsourcing, has been actively engaging customers for over 4 years now.  It encourages customers to submit ideas for better products, improving the customer experience, and defining new community involvement, among other categories. Clearly, Starbucks has seen and believes what Peter Drucker has to say about business adaptability. 

 

Customers can submit, view, and discuss submitted ideas along with employees from various Starbucks departments – “Idea Partners”.  The company regularly polls its customers for their favorite products and has a leaderboard to track which customers are the most active in submitting ideas, comments, and poll participation.

 

The site is at once a crowdsourcing tool, a market research method that brings customer priorities to light, an on-line community, and an effective internet marketing tool.

 

Experience customization

Starbucks provides its unique experience through programs such as My Starbucks Rewards, personalized “signature” drinks, and localized store experiences. Their social sites, in particular Pinterest and Instagram, encourage users to share their Starbucks moments—whether it be the return of a favorite holiday drink or just an artsy coffee cup shot.

 

Taking a stand

Giving consumers a charitable reason to buy that steaming cup is beneficial for all. The takeaway from Starbucks is to know your customer and tie that in with what matters in the world—so, pay attention to how your brand can fit into trending topics.

 

Starbucks reflects a mission

Its mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” They believe lifting customers up will lead to more customer loyalty. It’s “The Way I See It” quote campaign is a perfect example.

 

 

Lots of ideas here that can be easily replicated … which ones do you feel could benefit your business?

How could you improve the Starbucks Coffee Social Media campaign concept for your business?

 

Starbucks is one of many businesses we can learn from. Please post your comments below, offering questions or your own great examples of social marketing strategies.

 

 

Like this story? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or Google+ for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

 

More related reading from Digital Spark Marketing’s blog library:

The Story of Two Roads

Are You Aware of These Surprising Facts on Innovation?

Do You Practice These Habits of the Highly Creative?

 

 

Mobile Technology Use Results from Nielsen’s Social Media Report

By Mike Schoultz
mobile technology use

Mobile technology use.

 

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble solutions.

-       Lee Iacocca

 

Have you had the opportunity to see and read the recent Nielsen Social Media Report yet? Lots of very interesting data and graphically presented so as to make reading and interpretation very easy. This blog will share some of the more significant results and their implications for businesses relying on social media and mobile technology use for engaging consumers.

 

Smartphones and tablets have led to ‘always on’ access to the Internet. So where are people spending all this time on the internet? According to this very interesting report, more and more of it is spent on social networking sites.

 

“Time spent on mobile apps and the mobile web account for 63 percent of the year-over-year growth in overall time spend using social media,” states the report. In addition, 46 percent of social media users access social networks via a mobile device. In regard to social media use overall, users in the US spent 121 billion minutes on social networking sites between July 2011 and July 2012, up from 88 billion the previous year.

 

Social Media Reliance is Positive for Brands

 

Whether on mobile devices, laptops or desktop computers, demand for social media engagement is good news for brands. A recent survey (PDF) from social media curation platform provider Mass Relevance revealed some interesting facts:

 

  • 75 percent of social networkers talk about brands; for 18-34 year-olds it’s 91 percent;
  • 62 percent are more likely to engage with social brands;
  • 60 percent are more likely to share the messages of brands that integrate social experiences into their own digital properties, such as a brand website or mobile app;
  • Where social commerce is concerned, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) have already made a purchase based on social content; that was true of 76 percent of 18-34 year-olds.

And finally …

  • 59 percent of respondents reported they are more likely to trust brands that integrate social media;

 

Recommendations for Brands

 

In summarizing the survey results, Mass Relevance found that consumers rely on social media in four ways:

 

  • They pay more attention to brands that integrate social media;
  • They are more likely to share social experiences;
  • They prefer to do business with social brands;
  • They use social information to make purchasing decisions.

 

Based on these findings, the company made the following recommendations:

 

Engaging with Consumers

 

“Consumers pay more attention to brands that create social media experiences and spend more time on websites when social media is integrated,” the survey said. Therefore:

 

Brands should integrate social media experiences into their own web properties (including mobile apps), as well as engage with consumers on social networks.

 

Amplifying Their Message

 

Not only do brands have audiences, each audience member has his or her own network of friends and followers. When a brand shares a message, chances are some of its fans will follow suit. When the audience shares, the message is amplified. 

”The good news is the audience wants to share the message of social brands,” stated the survey.

 

Promote Trust

 

Since more than half of survey respondents indicated that they are “more likely to trust brands that integrate social media,”

Brands should use it to foster such confidence.

 

Summary

 

The increased use of mobile technologies has made access to social media easier and more readily available and people are taking advantage of this access to talk about brands. Therefore, brands should welcome this trend by integrating social experiences to engage with fans and followers, amplify brand messaging, and promote trust.

 

“Your audience prefers and trusts social brands and is starting to use social information to make purchasing decisions. With the fragmentation of experiences, the explosion of digital experiences, and the desire for participation, the time to integrate social media into all facets of brand marketing is now,” the survey declares.

 

Brands that do so put themselves ahead of the sales cycle and create a presence at multiple touchpoints along the purchase funnel.

 

Remember … brands are verbs and what they do matters more than what they say.

 

Please share a story on your business’ brand design with this community.

 

 

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

 

Read more from Digital Spark Marketing’s blog library:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

12 Ways to Build Social Commerce Business through Great Customer Service

 

9 Great Ways to Improve Your Social Media Design

By Mike Schoultz

social media design

Social media moving to the center of customer engagement

 

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

-  Edwin Schlosberg

 

In the ever changing landscape of social networking, you might be wondering if you are getting the most out of your business’s social media design?  Here we define social media design as the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.

 

Social media design usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. Company messages, stories, and helpful information spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it provides relevant, interesting and/or useful information. Hence, this form of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth, meaning it results in earned media rather than paid media.

 

We think of social media as just another marketing channel when we need to instead think of it as the influencer of all channels.

 

To improve your social media design, you must improve social networking and customer engagement. We have found 9 ways to accomplish these improvements that we use with our clients:

 

Know as much or more than your audience … valuable content is essential

 

It is all about quality … quality is much more valuable than quantity

 

It is about building relationships … meaning conversation is required. Don’t add to the noise

 

A picture or image … is worth 1000 words. Visual marketing is growing rapidly

 

Keep you messages … short, simple, and relevant

 

Define … specific objectives for your campaigns

 

Measure your accomplishments … against your objectives. Learn and apply learning

 

There are NO shortcuts … it requires time and energy

 

It requires persistence and patience … don’t give up

 

We are finding more and more businesses are defining meaningful ways to use social media, even if it isn’t always to sell directly.

 

“Web merchants view social media more as a medium to build up brand awareness and customer loyalty than as a way to drive immediate sales,” says Internet Retailer reporting on its latest survey of 175 companies that sell online.

 

Survey participants included 85 web-only merchants, 40 consumer brand manufacturers, 34 retail chains and 16 catalog companies.

 

Here’s a rundown of the findings by the numbers:

  • 96 percent say social media campaigns are important to the future of their Internet business; 53 percent label it very important.
  • 90 percent have a Facebook page, 75 percent are active on Twitter and 54 percent use Pinterest
  • 51 percent post videos on YouTube, 9 percent use Google+ and 15 percent leverage Instagram.

 

The more success you have with customer engagement via your social media design, either on-line or off, the better your understanding of their needs and priorities.  Having the best customer insights makes it much easier for you to define your next moves and improve your odds of success.

 

Please share a social media design experience with this community.

 

Like this short blog?  Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn   or add us to your circles  for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

 Read more:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

12 Ways to Build Social Commerce Business through Great Customer Service

 

 

Call Digital Spark Marketing today for a free consultation.

Let us give you some more recommendations on improving your social technologies, on-line and in person.

 

 More reading on customer engagement and social technologies …

Social Media Commerce Using Social Games

By Mike Schoultz

social media commerce

Many social commerce game examples to study

 

Why Social Games Are Marketing’s Next Frontier

 

We read an interesting book recently, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World written by Jane McGonagall.  Here are a few of the interesting takeaways:

 

Growth in gaming

“[Al]though a typical gamer plays for just an hour or two a day, there are now more than five million ‘extreme’ gamers in the U.S. who play an average of 45 hours a week. To put this in perspective, the number of hours that gamers world-wide have spent playing “World of Warcraft” alone adds up to 5.93 million years.”

 

Impacts of gaming

“In a good game, we feel blissfully productive. We have clear goals and a sense of heroic purpose. More important, we’re constantly able to see and feel the impact of our efforts on the virtual world around us. . . . One recent study found, for example, that players of ‘Guitar Hero’ are more likely to pick up a real guitar and learn how to play it.”

 

Learning persistence

“Research shows that gamers spend on average 80% of their time failing in game worlds, but instead of giving up, they stick with the difficult challenge and use the feedback of the game to get better.”

 

Building relationships

“Studies show that we like and trust someone better after we play a game with them—even if they beat us. And we’re more likely to help someone in real life after we’ve helped them in an online game. It’s no wonder that 40% of all user time on Facebook is spent playing social games.”

 

These takeaways support our position on the importance of games and gaming as the next important customer engagement technique. Consider these points in evaluating why games are so valuable:

 

Games can be combined … with rewards which permits fueling loyalty

 

Advertising, like other marketing elements … is moving from eyeballs to engagement

 

Social games … fit all platforms

 

Games have shown ability … to draw large communities

 

Brands can become … a component of game experience

 

Games aren’t limited … to just the virtual world

 

Lots of reasons to add games to your social media commerce and marketing campaigns, don’t you think?

 

Please share a social media commerce gaming experience with us.

 

Like this short blog?  Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn   or add us to your circles  for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

 Read more:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

12 Ways to Build Social Commerce Business through Great Customer Service

 

 

Call Digital Spark Marketing today for a free consultation.

Let us give you some more recommendations on improving your social technologies, on-line and in person.

 

 More reading on customer engagement and social technologies …

 

 

12 Ways to Build Social Commerce Business by Great Customer Service

By Mike Schoultz

social commerce business

Focus your social commerce business on building customer relationships and trust.

 

The key is to be part of people’s lives. People will always prefer to do business with friends.

-      Marty Kohr

 

Digital Spark Marketing defines social commerce business as the use of social engagement to personalize and energize the shopping experience. It provides a social context to shopping and is both a channel and way of doing business.

 

Here are 12 ways to build social commerce business through your customer service that we use with our clients:  

 

Your employees … are your service. Hire for their friendly, caring attitude and train for skills and knowledge. Empower them to be customer advocates.

 

Share all great service stories … with your team. Celebrate the smallest of successes.

 

Common courtesy … leads to customer respect, which leads to conversation and the building of relationships and mutual trust.

 

Care for customers … like you are the company owner. Not all owners or executives make great leaders, but the ones that are should be emulated. Watch how they take pride in how they deal with customers and employees, then follow their lead.

 

Analyze when things go right. When a company receives a complaint people usually have discussions to find out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Next time you receive a letter of praise, meet to find out what went right and how it can be repeated.

 

Be better than average. Amazing companies don’t always deliver “Wow!” type experiences, they are just a little better than average – all of the time. All of the time is the secret sauce.

 

 

Focus on building loyal advocates. A loyal customer is a repeat customer, but may still buy from your competition. The ultimate loyal customer is a repeat customer that buys what you sell, but only from you, and not your competition.

 

Use social media … to enhance your customer service by sending value added messages, creating users groups and doing market research.

 

Pay attention to details. Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest impact. Figure out the details that your customers enjoy and make them a routine part of doing business with you.

 

Create a consistent experience. One sure way to erode loyalty and social commerce is to deliver an inconsistent customer service experience. One time it’s great. The next time it is barely average. And, the next time it may be great again. Inconsistency creates uncertainty and erodes customer confidence and trust. Lack of confidence and trust  leads to giving customers a reason to consider your competition.

 

Socialize your business. People do business with people, so make it personal. Customers should want to do business with you because of you and your employees. Make your customers “feel at home.” You may have a great location, cool displays, great value, etc. That’s all great, but if your people can’t make your customers feel welcome and appreciated, all of the other  doesn’t matter so much.

 

Create a customer service culture … it starts by practicing what we call, “The Employee Golden Rule”: Treat your employees the way you want the customer treated – maybe even better.

 

Now it’s up to you. Choose one customer service strategy to start with. Have a meeting around it. Discuss how to implement it. Then, do it and repeat the process, creating something good for your customers to talk about! Soon you will have a much stronger social commerce business.

 

Please share a social commerce business experience with us.

 

 

Like this story?   Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn   for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

 

Want to learn more about Digital Spark Marketing? 

 

Reading from Digital Spark Marketing’s library:

 

Read more:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Does Your Business Build Customer Trust?

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

 

Call Digital Spark Marketing today for a free consultation.

Let us give you some more recommendations on improving your customer relationship building, on-line and in person.

For more reading on customer engagement, click here.

 

 

 

Tips on Social Media Design To Improve Social Networking

By Mike Schoultz

social media design

Steve Jobs was the best of the best at audience engagement

 

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

-      Edwin Schlosberg

 

The more success you have with customer engagement via social media design, either on-line or off, the better your understanding of their needs and priorities.  Having the best customer insights makes it much easier for you to define your next moves and improve your odds of success.

 

It has been said that to improve social networking and customer engagement you must be useful or entertaining (or hopefully both).  Have you ever seen the videos of Steve Jobs with his media presentations on Apple’s new product announcements?  I am a big fan, I admit … but you don’t have to be a fan to recognize the genius in his presentation. They are simple, useful, and most of all, entertaining.

 

Let’s examine the strengths of these presentations and apply them to improving your social media design and customer engagement. Remember … the objective of your content marketing is to create a context in which your audience can think:

 

Focus on dreams, not products … it is the end state customer utility that counts most

 

Create ‘Holy Smokes’ moments … grab immediate attention with your title and lead paragraph sentences

 

Use heroes, villains, and drama … tell a story to communicate your content whenever possible. Stories do a good job of giving meaning that can be remembered.

 

Stick to the rule of 3 … focus on no more than 3 key messages

 

Think simple … communicate with simple words and messages for a broad audience

 

Rely on visual messages … use images to convey your messages and re-enforce with words

 

Create Twitter friendly key points and messages … more on the simple theme with rich keywords

 

Share the stage … collaborate and test your content and editing with others both inside and outside your business. Do include key customer advocates

 

 A final thought to remember  … social networking is not about farming followers, its a way of cultivating relationships. 

 

Lots that we can apply from these eight lessons, isn’t there?

Please share an example or experience from your story vault for this community.

 

Like this short blog?  Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn   or add us to your circles  for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

 Read more from Digital Spark Marketing’s blog library:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

12 Ways to Build Social Commerce Business through Great Customer Service

 

 

More reading on customer engagement and social technologies …

 

Social Media Commerce and the Network Economy

By Mike Schoultz

social media commerce

Social media commerce is created through real dialog

 

Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not.  Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.”
                                     -  Seth Godin

 

 

If you follow people like Robert Scoble and Seth Godin, etc., you know that we’re living in the era of “social business” and  social media commerce.  I read The Cluetrain Manifesto three years ago, though it was released over a decade ago.  One of the central ideas in the book is this: markets are conversations.  Even in this day and age many companies still do not comprehend this concept (even if their employees sometimes do).

 

 

What Cluetrain was talking about were changes in current company-to-consumer interactions, though their emphasis was on how technology and the web, among other things, were changing this interaction in a radical way. What these authors were saying, at its heart, is that communication matters and that the way we think about organization-to-customer communication needs to change.

 

It’s all communication

 

Websites, intranets, message boards, email blasts, blogs, developer conferences, and marketing presentations — it’s about communicating.  It all matters.  Whether it’s a blog, an e-news letter, or a conversation with a customer, what communities and customers yearn for from organizations is authenticity and transparency, simplicity, and a real human, emotion-without-the-BS approach to communicating.  A real conversation…for a change.

 

The Cluetrain tenets — the “95 tenets” at the beginning of the book — speak largely to wired communications.  But it’s all communication.  While the “Thesis” may not have been written with marketing or social commerce totally in mind, many of the items fit nearly perfectly and can serve as good advice or reminders for how we need to connect and engage with our communities today.  Below are ten items (in bold) I took from the list of “95 Theses” in the Cluetrain (my comments follow), that represent great tips for social commerce marketing:

 

 

Your Markets

Markets are conversations not abstractions, and so are our customers.  They’re people worthy of our full attention and respect.  If businesses and employees can remember that it’s about customers and not about the business … they will be on the right path.

 

Your Customers

Customers are human beings … NOT demographic segments.

 

Be Part of the Community

To share the concerns of the community, companies must belong to the community.

 

Share Your Knowledge and Enthusiasm

Share what you know in your conversations … no strings attached.  Make things interesting for your customers.  Pay attention when customers speak and remember things that are said for their next visit.  You will be amazed at how fast customer relationships will grow. 

 

New Social Organizations

Networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social knowledge exchange to occur.  Are you participating?

 

Customer Sources of Information

People have learned that they receive far better information from one another than from anywhere else.  Word of mouth marketing campaigns should be your top priorities.  Do you know which of your customers are your best influencers?

 

No Secrets

There are NO secrets in the internet society.  Whether the news is good or bad about a business, customers will tell everybody.

 

Lighten Up

Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously … develop a personality with a sense of humor.  A genuine sense of humor requires: humility, straight talk, and big values.  The best employees take their role and their customer very seriously…but they do not take themselves too seriously.  They are relaxed…they have nothing to hide.  At that moment, nothing could be better than sharing time with your customer, and he/she feels that.

 

Internet versus Mass Media  

The internet is enabling conversations among people that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.  The message … it is not adequate to simply have a web site or be on Facebook. You must find ways to have conversations.

 

Customers Have the Real Power

When companies don’t grasp this fact, customers easily turn to other companies that will be more attentive. Have you noticed the changes occurring in customer loyalty lately?

 

In summary, remember that people communicate with people … not brands or busnesses. It’s all about social communications and relationship building.

 

Do you have any social media commerce experiences or stories to share with this community?

  

Like this story?   Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn   for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

 

Want to learn more about Digital Spark Marketing? 

 

Reading from Digital Spark Marketing’s library:

 Six Business Lessons Learned From the Bamboo

Build an Effective Team by Being a Talent Hound

Giving Gratitude … the Story of the Entangled Whale

 

 

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

By Mike Schoultz

social media initiatives

Be part of the community conversation

 

We recently posted a blog entitled “What Can a Proactive Social Media Strategy Do for Your Business”, where we described the many benefits of  creative social media strategy.  All social media sites are actively engaged in successfully integrating businesses into their sites. This blog describes 8 popular social media initiatives for improving your customer engagement.

 

Businesses, while all taking different approaches to using social media sites, are all seeking to engage their customers (both new and old) through two way conversation and soliciting opinions and feedback.

 

Let’s examine some of the more popular customer engagement initiatives many businesses are using:

 

Soliciting Opinions

       What charities to support

       Asking favorite flavors or products

       What they would like to see on social media pages

       Likes and dislikes

       Collaborating on product / service design

 

Voting on Most Favorite Things

      Moment in Michael Jordan career

      Most scary roller coaster

      Donuts

      New design features

 

Co-creation of Products / Services

      Ad Campaigns

      Outfit design combinations

      Facebook page

 

Pictures of Customers with Products

 

New Application Introduction / Usage

      Creating customized holiday cheer cards

      Ordering products (even for local delivery)

      Local store locator

 

Use of Videos

      Live events, such as fashion shows

      Product demo’s, do it yourself tips

      Game clips

      Local, regional activities

 

Promotions

      Weekly giveaways

      Coupons

      Free products to entice Facebook fan signup

      Special rates for Facebook fans

 

Content

      Menus

      New product introduction

      Share product/articles from magazines

      Targeted messages to customer groups/segments

      Special business events

 

There is considerable creativity in the use of social media by many businesses, with very good engagement results.

 

If you are not taking advantage of social media customer engagement, you are missing a great opportunity to create / build customer relationships for you and your brand.  Why not put some of these ideas to use and gain valuable feedback and customer insights?

 

If you would like a great example of a social media strategy in action, read: What Makes Whole Foods Social Media Strategy a Difference Maker?

  

If your business is using social media, are there results  or initiatives that you would like to share?

 

If you are a customer of one or more businesses using social media, what are your likes and dislikes of their initiatives? What would you like to see more of?

 

Like this story? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

 

More reading from Digital Spark Marketing’s library:

Six Business Lessons Learned From the Bamboo

Build an Effective Team by Being a Talent Hound

Giving Gratitude … the Story of the Entangled Whale