Social Media Strategy – The Coca-Cola Company

I’ve used Coca-Cola as an example in my posts before and I decided to use it again in this case study because I believe that as a big company they are managing their social media usage well and overall I think they are using social media successfully in their marketing.

The Coca-Cola Company uses many different social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and Google+. Coca-Cola Company has a huge number of different brands and for example Fanta, Sprite, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero and Diet Coke have their own Facebook pages. I decided to use The Coca-Cola Company and their most popular product Coca-Cola as an example of social media usage.

There was a good article in Simply Measured about “Lessons from Coca-Cola’s Social Media Strategy: Cohesive Campaigns and Creative Content” by Kevin Shively. Especially one thing that Coca-Cola has done well in social media is interaction with customers. According to the article for example 83% of Coca-Cola’s Tweets in one month were direct @Replies. I also noticed from their company’s Facebook and Instagram pages that they answer really often to customers’ questions and comments. Based on the article Coca-Cola’s social presence is well planned and their strategy is developed based on audience wants.

Coca-Cola Company has published their Social Media Principles in their website. They say their company’s role in the social media is to inspire moments of optimism and happiness and build their brands. They guide their associates to “have fun, but be smart” in social media. The Coca-Cola Company offers training to their associates to improve their social media skills.

Coca-Cola has made commitments about how they interact with the public and each other and they expect these commitments also from their representatives. They highlight especially transparency, privacy, respect, responsibility and monitoring. These commitments can fully be found from their Social Media Principles.

Coca-Cola has published separate social media expectations for personal use and for company spokespeople. One thing that I found especially important for personal social media usage was that Coca-Cola encourage people to promote their brands as long as they make sure they reveal that they are connected with Coca-Cola Company. I think this is a really good rule to remember especially because one of their commitments was to be transparent.

- Jenna