Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Assignment 3 - Chris Larson - Social Media Marketing Analysis

Bush's Bean's Facebook Page
Likes: 129,000; Talking about it: 1,680

Bush's Beans is probably one of the more popular brands of canned bean products, but that certainly isn't due to their Facebook page. While it certainly attempts to fulfill some of the qualities that signify appropriate use of Facebook for branding, it fails to construct an attractive and engaging social media presence. This is best demonstrated by the behavior of its contributors. While some comments say that they love the product, most mention how a user found mold in the can or a vole leg or how Bush's Beans uses GMOs in their products. This was Bush's Beans's only attempt at creating a customer service "portal" and it was relatively ineffective at that. The reason being that they only responded to the "vole leg" complaint and did so by urging the user to send their issue to a separate online customer service form, so even then they aren't completely utilizing Facebook in that respect.

In relation to the other factors, Bush's Beans does post new material daily, but it is mostly not engaging (different meal combinations, pictures of their product, etc.). At times they do try to encourage participation by asking a question, but these are rather infrequent and thus encourages little engagement. User-generated content isn't prohibited, but it is sparse as there is not any real incentive for people to post pictures of themselves or anything related. As for premiums, there are no mentions of any coupons or giveaways by the company itself. The only mention is in a comment that one user left after she asked for coupons. So premiums are only present when initiated by the user. In essence, Bush's Beans is an example of what companies should not do with social media marketing as it does not encourage user generated content, makes a marginal effort to increase site participation, provides no premium offers, posts unengaging content, and limits the use of the site for customer feedback.

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