At first I thought about looking at how Coca-Cola uses social media. But after looking at a few of their tweets and Facebook posts, I found their social media presence to be pretty carefully groomed so as to present a packaged image. Their facebook page claims to share "stories" of customers, but the posts weren't really stories, so much as carefully selected marketing strategies. Like this "story":
Perhaps real users sent the picture in, but the message is just "Coke" over and over again. There wasn't really any substance. I decided to look instead at Zappos.com, because I've read that they have a particularly strong web presence.
Indeed, the first tweet on Zappos' official feed contained this tiny url linking to an email that CEO Tony Hsieh had just sent his employees: bit.ly/KH5sTm
To spare you the link jumping, Hsieh informs his employees that Amazon will be overseeing the company's business in Kentucky. I think it's pretty compelling that the CEO of Zappos shares corporate decisions with his Twitter following. That's a pretty open way of doing business. It's definitely still controlled, but unlike Coca-Cola's carefully groomed page which asks people questions like "What gave you your biggest grin today?" that are essentially empty, content-free attempts at looking personal, Zappos feels more off the cuff: more casual, but at the same time more interested in delivering information.
Furthermore, the context in which the "regular people" of twitter write about Coca-cola is very different than Zappos. A lot of the tweets containing the word "coke" were jokes about people ordering double cheeseburgers and a diet coke. And of course there are the inevitable uses of the word "coke" to indicate that other highly addictive substance. It's makes Twitter scouring even more of a chore than it sounds.
Zappos on the other hand is a fairly unique name, so scouring for Zappos is likelier to return relevant hits. And they are fairly compelling hits; many discuss (or link to discussions of) Zappos corporate culture. Here are three tweeters with links to different articles on the web presence of Zappo.
First I followed a link posted on Twitter by Deirdre Breakenridge.
The article Deirdre is linking is found here. The article itself doesn't have much to say about the individual blogs it's touting. It's merely an aggregation of a so-called top 40. But they do provide a link to Zappos' main blog. I clicked through to check the comment threads. The first page had 8 blog entries and only one user comment: a thread of vociferous unprompted praise that was entirely unrelated to the content of the blog post. User Dieuvens171440 said: " I have never seen such a great customer service. I am extremely thrilled about my whole experience with zappos. I have never been so satisfied. From placing the order to talking to the customer representatives,the service exceeded my expectations. I will definitely refer this website to my friends. Thanks!!!" Page 2 had 8 blog entries, and zero comments (that ratio might look familiar to the reader of this blog). Page 3 of the Zappos blog is fairly similar to page one. Most posts have no comments at all. Of 8 posts, 3 have comments. One is very similar to Dieuvens171440's post -- an unrelated, all-caps praise fest. One appears to be poorly translated spamming. But the third is definitely of interest. It's starts with a complaint:
There are three things that are important to note here. First of all, the complaint comes at 3:29 pm and the response comes at 3:31pm of the same day. Someone is clearly carefully monitoring this blog space. Second, the response appears to come from an actual person. The user name is Hannah E. and her avatar appears to be her own picture. What a humanizing way to clear up a complaint. Third, Hannah offers the user multiple ways to take care of the problem. So, while it doesn't look like many people are taking the time to read and comment on the Zappos blog, it is clear that their posts are carefully monitored. This makes the blog itself look more like another customer service access point (albeit one wrapped in full color advertisements; let's be honest, the blog posts function as little more than product pushing).
This tweet from Jim Stroud caught my eye not so much for its mention of Zappos, but for its mention of Sodexo, who are not traditionally known for social responsibility. Stroud's hashtag wasn't immediately recognizable to me. I followed and realized that Stroud was probably live-tweeting in time with the 2012 Premiere Mobile Recruiting Conference. So, I wasn't able to track down the actual comments about Zappos or Sodexo because the only available video was a live stream.
It's most likely in this case that the mention of the two corporations was merely a way to plug the conference. This kind of appropriation is obviously commonplace on the Internet, so much so that the Rick-rolling meme can be seen as a parody of it (it's not really a rick-roll if I warn you, but for those of you who are now craving Astely's baritone, I'll oblige). It is worthwhile to note though that Zappos' name carries enough weight that Stroud thought it might pique the interest of potential conference goers/watchers. Zappos didn't respond to Stroud here, but it also doesn't seem to be necessary to respond. Even if this is an appropriation, it mentions the company in good terms. If anything, it shows the weight that the company name carries.
Finally, retailgeek linked an article about Zappos' use of Pintrest.
The article is rather short and can be found here. But the salient morsel of the article is that Zappos is trolling Pintrest and suggesting products to users based on what they've pinned to the site. Zappos actually has a page dedicated to this process called PinPointing.
From sending out corporate emails via Twitter to translating their users Pintrest desires into product reality, Zappos is clearly using social media in an innovative, proactive way. The fact that regular Twitter users were posting about Zappos Pintrest presence (retailgeek wasn't the only user to point to this article) shows that Zappos is engaging people in corporate conversations. This is very different from the careful grooming of Coca-cola where the message is essentially "Coke: drink it." Zappos has interested its customers in its corporate processes. It's clearly an effective strategy because the conversations are about so much more than shoes. This is important for the e-tailer because they don't even produce the goods they hawk. If they get people fired up about the process and the customer service, they can more readily build up a grassroots following.
There are definitely strategic takeaways for libraries in this too. An open, frank conversation about library processes on an official Twitter page could make patrons feel more engaged in the everyday decisions of their local library. I might not personally be comfortable scouring Pintrest and recommending books and websites without an invitation, but there may be something of use there too. Unasked for reader advisory might be the wave of the future or it might not, but certainly Pintrest can be used to determine the needs and desires of your patrons. This in turn could lead to programming, book selection, or outreach opportunities.
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