Claire Ebben - Assignment #3 Social Media Marketing Analysis

Facebook Page: Coca-Cola
Page Description: The Coca-Cola Facebook Page is a collection of your stories showing how people from around the world have helped make Coke into what it is today.
Popularity: 74,896,915 likes, 610,672 people "talking" about it

The Coca-Cola Facebook page is hugely popular. Over 74 million people have liked the page, allowing Coca-Cola access to these people's news-feeds, updating daily so that Coke becomes a part of their everyday lives. The page is a great social marketing tool because it is a way of making a large corporation like Coke to seem more accessible and personal to the consumer. The page features posts of Instagram pictures, such as one post that features a woman eating at a table, with the caption "Thumbs up if you're enjoying those leftovers..." continued with "...with a side of Coke!" printed on the picture. This can be seen as an example of effective social media marketing because not only is the post being utilized as a kind of print ad to associate eating food with drinking Coke, it also invites people to "like" the post, therefore generating popularity for the post and the page itself. In this way it is both the Coca-Cola company and the consumer who are working together to advertise and market the brand of Coke over and over.

The page is very successful in its different features. Coke employs both premiums and participation together through "America's Favorite Park" contest that they held earlier this year. Consumers were invited to have meet-ups in different parks in cities across America where Coke would be given out for free. The winning park received a $100k grant from Coke to restore or maintain the park. This enables consumers to engage directly with the product and actively participate in its promotion. Another feature on the Facebook page is a customer service portal in which customers can have a dialogue about Coke. On the page, there are many posts of a photo in which there is a blank space, asking fans to comment what they believe the missing word should be. For example, there is a post that says "I'd trade ______ for an ice-cold Coca-Cola right now!" inviting the users to share what they were "trade." There are many posts like this one, encouraging people to say positive things about Coke's different products. Another feature on the page is content flow. The page is updated daily, ensuring that the people who like the page already will be updated, but also encouraging people to like new material that will then be placed on non-fans news-feeds, hopefully garnering more people to like the page and increasing its popularity. One feature that the page does not have is user-generated content. All of the posts are clearly professional photos or generated material from Coca-Cola, demonstrating that the company wants to maintain authority on the page. However, the page admin does tag certain fans in each post, giving some sort of personal user interaction on these posts.