Social Media Value

Coca-Cola has done well in the social media space. The company uses a range of social media platforms for ad campaigns and social media marketing. On Facebook, Coca-cola has more than a 100 million fans. The company does not make regular day-to-day updates. Other brands push out updates daily. However, Coca-Cola can go for a week without posting anything. The reason could be because the brand does not operate an online store. Hence, its social media marketing efforts are mainly focused maintaining brand image and raising awareness of its ad campaigns rather than on driving people to its shops. While the company has a relatively low engagement on social media, it engages its audience on a more personal level. Given that it draws consumers from all over the world, the brand responds in different languages to engage its bilingual consumers (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). The brand uses many pictures and videos to capture audience’s attention.  Since most posts are videos, promotions, hashtags and quotes, it generally attracts a few thousand likes. To increase engagement, coca cola should add more emotional posts to inflict feelings and keep people interested. 

On Twitter, Coca-Cola main Twitter feed has more than 3 million followers.  It is an active brand on this platform and has specific pages dedicated to products and sub-brands such as diet coke and coke zero. The brand primarily uses Twitter to respond to mentions, complaints, compliment, and requests. Coca-Cola Twitter engages customers by posting consistently and frequently.  The brand is more active during holidays and attempts to get its audience excited about upcoming festivities.

One of the most successful social media campaigns utilized the hashtag #ShareaCoke. Followers could share their stories and experiences on Twitter using the hashtag. Individuals who shared their stories had their photos featured on the firm’s website and across billboards. The marketing campaign was so successful and was able to generate massive amounts of content by particularly targeting consumers who utilized social media to share stories and photos. This is a creative way to give creative control and brand ownership to brand consumers, making users to promote their brand online by starting their own social media conversations (Kaplan,& Haenlein, 2010).

The marketing strategy gives way to multiplatform conversations on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Online conversations become organic as they are driven by consumers rather than the brand itself. This has integrated the brand into the homes of its users, becoming part of their lifestyles. The brand has provided consumers with value on a consistent basis. For millennials and teens, personalization is a way of life. This group of consumers places high value on staying connected with friends, individual storytelling and other forms of self-expression. The brand through its campaigns gives its consumers the ability to do all these things while still promoting the Coca-Cola brand. For example, when a consumer shares a name-branded Coke bottle with a friend, the consumer feels as if he is honoring his friend rather than promoting the Coke brand itself. Further, by sharing photos of good moments with the #ShareaCoke hashtag, social media users drive more personal online media content, to the benefit of the brand.

References

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59-68.

Mangold, W. G., & Faulds, D. J. (2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business Horizons, 52(4), 357-365.

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