Social media is a minefield for most people. Everyone is saying that to succeed online you need to embrace social media. But what does that mean? What exactly do you need to be embracing and why?
Well, Internet Retailing today reported on Tesco’s new Click and Collect service and touched on how Tesco are using social media to reach their customers. Chloe Rigby, Internet Retailing’s editors, reported Tesco’s approach to social media as “Facebook as a way of engaging with customers and Twitter as a way of offering better customer service”.
This was picked up from Tesco CEO’s Philip Clarke keynote speech to the British Retail Consortium. You can read Philip Clarke’s speech here: SPEECH BY TESCO GROUP CEO PHILIP CLARKE TO BRC ANNUAL RETAIL SYMPOSIUM (sorry for the CAPS, I may fix that later….)
Philip Clarke explains is further in his keynote speech:
“We’re also engaging daily with our Facebook fans. With news, competitions, discussions and welcoming all comments from customers. Our recent competition offering Take That concert tickets generated 10,000 new Facebook fans over one weekend.
We’re also using Twitter to offer better customer service. If consumers get frustrated about a product or service, I am keen that we engage with them online and help them resolve their problem in the way they like most – online, fast, now.” –
Many people ask whether they should focus on Facebook or Twitter for their social media presence. If Tesco is a successful case study to follow then the answer is to use both, but know why you are using each.
For many people Twitter is just a way to stream the latest blog posts or news stories to another search engine (Twitter is really a social search engine in many respects). Facebook is often just used as a way to try to draw in new customers.
Tesco seem to have mastered this aspect very well. Winning 10,000 new fans in one weekend is excellent – it means that for the next promotions that they do they already have a very large and active marketing team. Of those 10,000 fans, many will automatically publish Tesco news items to their wall which their friends and family will also see, so having 10,000 new fans really means reaching out to more than 10,000 people.
A quick peak at Tesco’s Facebook page shows that they now have 62,940 fans. I have just “Liked” them to see what sort of things they are posting to their wall to promote their services.
In fact, their latest offering is some good news for the supermarket giant:
“We would like to say a big well done to all our staff, especially the pickers, packers and drivers who helped us scoop the best home delivery service 2011 at the Good Housekeeping Awards!!”
The double exclamation mark is very in keeping with social media excitement. A little Woot! probably would not be amiss there either.
Earlier today they invited their fans to “enter our exclusive Facebook competition for you and a friend to meet Tom Jones”.
Tesco appear to have 3 Twitter channels; @UKTesco, @uktescooffers and @tescomobile. A quick search of the Internet reveals that they have changed Twitter accounts a few times too with some old accounts now inactive. A sign that they have been experimenting in the past and are now settled, maybe.
@UKTesco is the Tesco Customer Care team and the one which Philip Clarke was referring to in his speech. So, what are they doing well, with regards to customer care?
Well, first up, they provide their customer care telephone number in the description so that unhappy customers can still reach them the traditional way. This is possibly one of the mist important and most over looked aspects of their campaign.
Tesco are certainly replying to people on a regular basis, with comments such as “Hi Matthew thanks for bringing this to our attention will investigate this further”. Cannot see what the problem was though, which makes a dull reading.
What this really brings home though is the simplicity of what they are doing. They are not trying to drum up more business using Twitter (something which every social media marketing gurumeister says that you should do) but simply communicating with their customers in an efficient way which shows Joe Public that they do care. There are not many companies which so openly reply to customer problems in the way Tesco is doing on Twitter.
So, what does it mean for the rest of us? Use Facebook for viral promotions to build a greater fan base, allow customers to communicate with you via Twitter. One advantage this has over traditional Internet media is that you can save a lot of bandwidth by using Facebook to communicate with 50,000 clients. An incredibly powerful and currently still free social tool, more than can be said about most email software.
You can find out more about Tesco Plc. at Shareholders Portal, including company history, dividend schedules and the latest news surround Tesco.
You can read all of Chloe Rigby’s account here: Tesco to expand Click and Collect to groceries.
