Coca-Cola is a well-known soda brand that was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1886. Coca-goal Cola’s is to change the world by creating moments of fun and hope, making a difference, and refreshing the world. Sprite, Coca-Cola, and Fanta are among the items available from the brand. As part of its offerings, the company has launched a series of corporate social responsibilities (CSR) initiatives in order to give back to society (Davis et al, 2007).
Coca-Cola hires over 100,300 people globally and is ranked among the largest private businesses with a large workforce. The company has its headquarters in Downtown Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. The recent earnings shows that the revenues of the company declined by 11% due to structural changes of 10% and currency 1%. The overall earnings dropped from $10.01 billion to $9.41 billion when compared to last year earnings (Culnan et al, 2010). http://www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainability
Digital and Social Media Use
Coca cola takes digital platform with utmost seriousness in conducting their daily business transactions through sharing optimistic and positive spirits of their brands. The digital platforms that Coca cola use include;
The company has attracted over 60 million fans to its main Facebook page and this has not come as a surprise because it is one of the most recognizable brands in the globe (Culnan et al, 2010). One of the honors that come with its global recognition is its capability to leave the Facebook page unattended for long. The main objective of the company is to maintain the brand image and raising responsiveness of various ad campaigns instead of pushing several updates to keep their fans interested. For instance, most of the adverts of the company in the recent past have been to help polar bear advertisements of the coke as well as the charity undertaking of the company to assist the Arctic (Davis et al, 2007).
The company has also used Facebook platform to publicize and promotes sports. Besides, the company has come up with a number of Facebook apps such as Ahh Giver and when will happiness strike that enables the users to send adapted posts and a free coke to their associates in the Facebook. Coca cola has created pages on Facebook platform specifically for its other products such as Diet Coke and Coke Zero that have attracted a number of likes by posting regular apprises of images and style contents of the Diet Coke man. Coke Zero has attracted over 4 million fans though the update takes place only few times a month (Davis et al, 2007).
Coca cola has a distinct twitter feed for each of the marketplaces in local areas that it controls. It has as well devoted pages for variety of goods and sub-brands such as Diet Coke, Coke Zero and the founder of the corporation Doc Pemberton who is long deceased. The core twitter feed of the company has over 700,000 supporters and is estimated to have tweeted more than 70,000 times hence making among the liveliest products in the world. The social crew hardly posts promotion posts that are straightforward and simply use the platform to respond to the views and the demands of the clients. Twitter handle responds to a huge number of mentions per day comprising follow requirements, complaints and universal compliments.
The social crew has a Spanish presenter among them hence enabling them to reach a wide range of customers globally. The twitter is used for communicating with clients instead of just pushing out marketing messages. However, due to the high number of users in the platform, there are still several mentions that go unanswered which can be addressed by the Coca cola Company through increase the number of staff in the social customer service teams (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). The Diet Coke brand has adopted a unique strategy that is basically used for tweeting marketing messages, posting inspirational quotes and asking questions.
It responds to a considerable number of mentions daily but not more than six on average. The brand messaging page is aimed specifically for women hence an indication that the company is missing a tactic by not being all-inclusive in reacting to other customers. However, the company has clearly defined its customer base hence having a capacity to communicate with its customers so as to increase brand loyalty. The Doc Pemberton feed is a decent example of how to utilize twitter for the engagement purposes of the customers instead of just marketing (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014).
The Pinterest account is quite fascinating because there is simply a single board that relates to a precise Coca cola movement while others are images that emphases on unsystematic themes (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). Such a brand includes Olympic Games Moments that entails a load of pictures portraying sponsorship of Coca cola of the event that all connect to approved Coca Cola websites. Others are themed round vague topics like Be Together, Be Active and Keep Discovering. They contain some inordinate photos that are taken from Flickr therefore none of its links back to the website of Coca Cola which is a deception that most products fall into. Some brands were specifically created for the purpose of Coca Cola but most of them appear to be in pictorial form from random Flickr accounts hence an indication that there are numerous people who likes to take photos that resembles the Coca Cola adverts (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014).
Others even come from the weddings of the people. It is great knowledge by Coca-Cola to collate all the pictures into one place and seemingly the individuals who take such pictures will be glad that the business has observed their efforts. There is equally a Diet Coke Pinterest account that has 3400 followers somewhat more than the Coca-Cola page (Culnan et al, 2010). The page has nine boards that are principally brand associated, but does a good work of gathering content dispatched on other networks and websites by the fans.
In some instances, the social team has taken time to ask permission before repining the photos from twitter or Instagram. The social crew also ran a pinterest challenge a few years ago that is becoming a collective strategy for creating up consciousness and followers. Contestants have chances of winning a trip to New York in the fashion week through making a new fashion board and pinning four autumn fashion pictures with the use of hashtag# TakeMeToNYC (Culnan et al, 2010).
Google +
About three years ago the company had maintained an active Google page and posted updates frequently. The page has over 800,000 followers however the extent of user commitment in the page is very low when likened to Facebook and has merely a few +ls and remarks on each apprise that is posted (Davis et al, 2007). It is overall quite unexceptional other than the reason that the company has experimented with hangouts in several occasions of which one cannot deny that it is one of the best features offered by Google. A few years ago, it hosted hangouts with the coke racing team, one of the fans of Coca cola as well as the artist; Jason Derulo. It offers fans an opportunity to engage with brand beyond typical likes and +ls. The page of Diet Coke is somehow less impressive compared to other platforms (Culnan et al, 2010).
YouTube and Instagram
It was the first social media platform that the company joined on the year 2006 and has attracted over 600,000 subscribers and several views on each post and advert they put forward on the platform. Similarly, instagram is one of the recent social media platforms that the company has taken advantage of in relation to marketing and advertising their products. The company has over 1 million followers and over 400 posts on the Instagram page (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014).
Analysis
Coca Cola uses different tactics when it comes to social media but what it is important is their ability to maintain a compact brand message. When the company was picked as certified partner of the 2014 World Cup, it strategically put on each of its social outlines with the World Cup headers, campaigns and content. In the midst of the soccer disturbance, the company is also supposed to uphold a coherent association with a wide range of audience other than soccer fans (Davis et al, 2007).
Crowd-Sourced Content
Crowd-sourced content is a strategy used by the company to engage its audience and generate the content that they are able to share (Davis et al, 2007). The strategy involves collection of advocates and not only engaging the present fans and making the real part of the understanding of the brand. If this experience happens to an individual, they would be more than excited to share, retweet, and mention the video to their audience and friends as well as those who may have not have followed the company yet.
Direct Engagement
Direct engagement is another tactic that assists the company in achieving their objectives in social media. In most instances, one of the largest encounters for any multinational organization is to keep up with the size of mentions (Miller & Lammas, 2010). Coca-Cola is one such company that has managed to excel by using this approach as they have employed the tactic as a customer provision process through showing some love to the fans that are in love with the brand. The approach has confirmed very fruitful to the product which has the capacity to channel issues to service hotlines of specific customers of a particular country. With a big company such as Coca-Cola, paying attention to such a big customer base is a huge responsibility and the main reason for the success of the company in using the strategy is on the twitter platform (Davis et al, 2007).
Influencer Involvement
As a way to promote its crowd sourcing strategies, the company involves influencers such as Ryan Seacrest. The drive was a lead up to the world cup in Brazil and has used numerous influencers as a way to get operators to add their own selfies to their various projects.
Success of the Company
The company has been very successful in achieving the objective of advertisement in social media especially in the 2014 World Cup event through embracing new mediums and measuring its success (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). Coca-Cola has not been afraid to go into variety of contents in that it has the capability to create content that get results in Tumblr, Facebook and other social platforms. It has been able to inquire from the audience and fans through the social media platform and offer to them what they require. Besides, the company’s social presence is carefully crafted in that a number of its strategies is developed depending on the requirements of the audience (Davis et al, 2007).
The company has constantly counterchecked the tactics and enabled them to respond to followers on various platforms. However, one thing that the company should have done to better accomplish their objectives is to have a strong monitoring system in the activities of the social media. It will enable them to know whether the marketing strategies are going as projected or not and if the objectives in the marketing section of their brands are being achieved or not (Davis et al, 2007).
Conclusion
It is apparent that Coca-Cola Company has taken social media presence to the next level through ensuring that they understand their audience by creating contents that are appealing and easy to share. The company has thrived in knowing beyond the demographics of the customers hence helping the company marketing and advertising branch to make informed decisions. Additionally, the company has also accept the fact that social media is a two-way conversation that requires them to understand their fans by first listening to them is when they get better approach on how they provide services to their clients. The tactics have undoubtedly put Coca-Cola among the top companies that use social media as a way to benefit as well as the community.
References
Culnan, M. J., McHugh, P. J., & Zubillaga, J. I. (2010). How large US companies can use Twitter and other social media to gain business value. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9(4).
Davis, C. A., Brown, R. S., Melrose, D., Melrose-Allen, C., & Candy, A. (2007). U.S. Patent No. D547,664. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Miller, R., & Lammas, N. (2010). Social media and its implications for viral marketing. Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, 11(1), 1-9.
Paniagua, J., & Sapena, J. (2014). Business performance and social media: Love or hate?. Business horizons, 57(6), 719-728.
