This report concerns social media campaigns of the DiGiorno frozen pizza brand. It inspects and compares the company’s execution of marketing strategies on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr based on the goals these strategies are trying to accomplish. Afterwards, the strategic value of each outlet is determined based on the success in achieving the identified aims, and the account most useful in establishing a social brand is chosen.
The second part of the report inspects Twitter as a social media marketing platform. The paper examines the business strategy of the website itself to determine whether it is a stable platform capable of further growth. Then, the report analyzes specific qualities present in the user base of the website by researching what causes the population to react positively or negatively. Lastly, the paper investigates the use of the site by social marketers, outlining the general policies followed and providing examples community backlash that resulted from failure to follow those policies.
DiGiorno’s Social Media Activity
DiGiorno employs an unusual approach to social media marketing, prioritizing entertainment over direct brand promotion. Although the majority of tweets on the official @DiGiorno account are pizza-related, there are many posts with the general aim of attracting attention, such as comments on trending events. Some tweets are esoteric, with no meaningful content, and many are short reactions to other Twitter accounts and their activity related to pizza or DiGiorno itself.
The account actively engages with commenters, conversing in the comment chain under every tweet. While many replies are standardized, they still show attention to the content of the comments, matching their tone and replying to the meaning if there is any. The light, jokingly provocative tone often taken by the brand creates a friendly atmosphere, although it sometimes results in harm, according to Gebert and Voss (2014). The account tends to produce 1-3 tweets every day, mostly posting jokes and replies to other tweets.
The brand’s use of its Facebook account is not as active as the Twitter one, with new posts appearing two or three times a month. The contents are split between marketing and jokes, promoting advertising campaigns by the brand and its accounts on other media. Less frequent posting leads to each publication containing more meaningful information, making the content less erratic than it is on Twitter. However, it is important to note that the Facebook page has a goal other than spreading information.
The account also serves as a customer service page, actively responding to questions and complaints posted in the comments to their publications as well as in visitor messages. The tone used in these comments is semi-formal but friendly, and their contents are mostly information in response to questions and invitations to resolve the issues via direct messages. As a consequence, the majority of user comments are questions or complaints to which the account responds quickly and efficiently, contrasting its infrequent activity.
DiGiorno’s Instagram account is recent, with the first photo uploaded in 2016. The primary forms of the page’s activity are uploading images on a sporadic basis, with periods of relative productivity and lengthy silences, and tagging other people’s content. The content uploaded and tagged usually is directly related to the company’s product, although there are exceptions, some of them strange for a corporate media account. The account does not interact with its followers, though it tends to leave messages consisting of a small number of emoticons under the images it tags.
Reflective of its support nature, DiGiorno’s Instagram page only has 24.7 thousand subscribers despite the website’s user base being triple that of Twitter, where the brand’s account boasts 120 thousand followers. Interestingly, in spite of the lower interest of the audience, in general, the account’s posts gather significantly more “like” reactions and comments than those on both Twitter and Facebook. This trend may be indicative of greater customer loyalty to the brand on Instagram, but it is also possible that the higher amount of reactions is related to some quality of Instagram’s user base in general.
Lastly, the brand’s Tumblr account is defunct, with the last post happening three years ago. While still in use, its activity consisted of the posting of content and replies to questions, both typically non-serious. Much like the other media, the uploads were split between direct promotion and pizza-related jokes. Uploads happened roughly twice a month, and other then the replies mentioned above, there did not seem to be any user interaction.
Strategic Objectives and Social Currency
The aims of DiGiorno’s various social media accounts are different, designed to complement each other. The Facebook account is almost an online customer support page, the Twitter page seeks to attract people by being entertaining, and the Instagram account appears to be a place to upload content and then repost it to the other two. This section attempts to discern what qualities each of the brand’s presences possesses and make a decision as to which is the most strategically beneficial.
The Twitter page does not intend to facilitate purchases or encourage trial of the company’s product. Its primary goals are raising brand awareness by taking part in popular trends and providing simple, entertaining content as well as deepening customer loyalty by showing that their responses and feedback are seen and often answered. The account does not advertise any specific products or suggest preferring DiGiorno’s pizza to that of other companies, limiting itself to general declarations of love for pizza.
The Facebook page works on a different set of principles, as its low activity is not conducive to spreading knowledge of the company. Its main aims appear to be encouraging trial of the brand’s product and deepening customer loyalty. The former is done by advertising the various public campaigns by DiGiorno that aim to display the positive aspects of the company’s product, and the latter is done by providing information and support to customers who require them on a constant basis. Once again, little advertising of product happens on the page, and the focus on current customers prevents it from attracting new ones.
The Instagram page aims to promote purchases, encourage trial of the product and deepen customer loyalty. It accomplishes the former two by focusing on images of the brand and various attractive-looking uses of its product (pictures of which usually prominently feature the pizza boxes) and the last one by acknowledging the work of the customers who promote the brand themselves by making the images mentioned above and post them for DiGiorno to tag. As a page which is not necessarily meant to attract new customers, it instead contains images that are often reposted on the company’s other accounts.
Although the brand’s Tumblr account is now defunct, it is still possible to analyze its original purpose and strategy by looking at its last activities. The page appears to be aimed at attracting new customers as well as deepening the loyalty of the current ones, similar to the Twitter account. This goal is reflected in the page containing mostly the same type of content, although as it is impossible to comment on Tumblr posts, the brand instead engaged customers by responding to their questions in post form.
Strategic Effectiveness of the Varied Platforms
While DiGiorno’s social media accounts are meant to work together, each of them is also a self-sufficient entity created by different people. As such, they have achieved varying degrees of success, with the Tumblr account even shutting down, and obtained different amounts of value. This section aims to analyze which of the company’s social media outlets is the most effective from a marketing standpoint by measuring the success of each one in achieving its objectives.
DiGiorno’s Twitter account often makes it into the list of the most successful brands on the website. Always active, producing large amounts of content and engaging customers in creative and unusual ways, it has been steadily growing despite the grievous mistake with the “#whyIstayed” tweet in 2014, as described by Meyer (2015). This policy of letting the employees have their voice, combined with the focus on spreading the brand over the product, makes the account a resounding marketing success.
DiGiorno’s Facebook account is easily the largest of its social media enterprises, with its nearly 1.2 million subscribers beating its nearest competitor, Twitter, by an order of magnitude. However, the number of followers is not the only measure of success for a social media enterprise, especially since the total number of Facebook users also dwarfs Twitter’s user base. The page provides a consistent brand message, but the lack of a regular content output does not work in its favor. The voice of the brand when talking to customers is formal as well, discouraging personal engagement. Nevertheless, the account is successful and certainly represents a significant amount of value from a marketing perspective.
The brand’s Instagram account is not meant to have a significant role similar to that of Twitter or Facebook. Instead, it provides support, creating a steady stream of content for them to draw on. However, the account does little else and, as such, is not as strategically important to the company as the former two. Meanwhile, Tumblr’s format that makes it hard to interact with the customers and post-based nature led to the shutdown of the account. It is probable that the company judged Instagram a better platform for content production and chose to abandon Tumblr in favor of focusing on the former.
In conclusion, the two contenders for the position of the most valuable social media resource are DiGiorno’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Both incorporate effective marketing solutions, but the Twitter account’s execution is superior. The Facebook page, however, has a significantly larger follower base than the rest, meaning its actions reach more people. In the end, I have to declare Twitter the most valuable social network for the brand, as its greater marketing power helps the brand grow instead of stagnating.
Twitter as a Social Media Platform
For the social media marketing review of a website, this report will be inspecting Twitter. A microblogging platform that serves as an outlet for many public figures and companies, Twitter focuses on short posts, imposing them with its character limit. As such, communication and marketing strategies for the site have to concentrate on directness and efficiency, presenting a challenge for the marketers but also offering greater returns in case of success due to the ability of users to spread awareness of trends themselves.
Twitter’s Business Model
According to Das (2018), Twitter has two primary sources of revenue, and both of them involve advertising. The first source is direct advertising, for which the company responsible pays Twitter on a per-click or per-retweet basis. However, unlike traditional banner-based advertising, Twitter only advertises by adjusting the priority of tweets. That means promoting tweets, accounts or trends defined by hashtags to appear in people’s feeds more often. Due to the popularity of Twitter as a social media marketing platform, this source is responsible for most of Twitter’s revenue.
The second source of income for the website is called “data licensing,” also known as Firehose. Twitter collects its public data and sells it to various companies, which can then analyze it and learn information about users or brands. The amount of data, combined with the use of advanced tools, can result in the discovery of trends or highly likely guesses that a regular user would overlook. However, while useful for advertising, this information is not intended to be used by social media marketers, as any relevant data on customer behavior can be purchased from a dedicated analyzing company in a processed form.
Das (2018) bases his analysis of Twitter stock on 2016 data, at a point where it hit a low, and declares the model ineffective. However, the current data (“Twitter, Inc. Stock Prices” 2018) shows the company’s value steadily increasing since then. It is safe to say that Twitter has resolved its issues, adopted a more sustainable business strategy and started steadily growing again. Therefore, using it as a social marketing platform is a sound proposition, as it is financially stable and has an actively expanding user base.
Consumers of the Site
At present, Twitter has over 300 million users spread out throughout the world. As a microblogging platform focused on short public posts, it adopts a less personal approach than social networks such as Facebook, and the preferences of its users are accordingly different. According to Weller et al. (2014), Twitter’s user base shows an anti-establishment ideology and resists attempts at overt advertising, looking for mistakes and publicizing them for entertainment.
The publicity and freedom of conversation associated with Twitter have both pros and cons. On the positive side, by engaging consumers directly, the company can secure more customers than with one-sided advertising that cannot take into account a person’s present opinion or specific questions. However, the ability to have your opinion be visible to every other user engaging with the company account also means they can spread their negative impressions very quickly, as displayed by Gebert and Voss (2014). Furthermore, even if the problematic situation is resolved quickly and effectively, knowledge of it will spread much faster and further than in other media.
Social Media Marketers’ Use of the Site
Twitter is widely utilized by social media marketers, with nearly every major company possessing an account. Brands realize that merely having a website is not enough to satisfy customers, and a deeper degree of engagement is necessary. Social media enables users to discover the company through a third party or suggestions, which would be less likely or impossible with a website. The platform also enables crowdsourcing and provides a large amount of information that can be collected and analyzed to provide a picture of the consumers’ preferences.
According to Weller et al. (2014), “companies are interested in making their stakeholders aware of new products and campaigns, while customers want companies to be aware of their complaints about products and services as well as their suggestions for new ones.” As such, brands have to be aware that directly encouraging sales is not a sound strategy for using the platform as it is likely to be met with backlash. Neither is Twitter entirely suitable for handling customer complaints, as those tend to worsen the company’s image more significantly compared to other social media platforms.
Attempts to utilize traditional marketing methods on Twitter usually meet with failure. Weller et al. (2014) describe two incidents where such behavior caused by misunderstanding led to public backlash. One of them involved Qantas, an airway company, which launched a campaign asking users to define what “Qantas luxury” meant to them in exchange for a chance to win a prize. However, the campaign’s launch coincided with an issue that left many planes grounded, and the inability of the company to censor the complaints that flooded in instead of submissions led to the trend becoming viral and damaging the company’s image. Another example is the South Australian Tourism Commission paying celebrities for promotional tweets. While a common practice in standard advertising, when attempted on Twitter, it surprised the originators with the backlash upon the community’s discovery of the payments.
A company’s Twitter policy has to focus on several primary factors to be successful as a marketing measure. The most important one is a direct approach: while the customers will not appreciate overt attempts to sell a product, they will like disguises even less. Another factor is entertainment: if an account is unable to attract the interest of people on its own merits, it will not experience growth. The last parameter to pay close attention to is customer engagement: one-sided attempts to generate activity and content will be less successful than promoting the support displayed by other users, reacting to ongoing events with them and crowdsourcing initiatives.
Conclusion
As displayed in this report, DiGiorno executes successful social media campaigns on three of the four platforms inspected. Their accounts are intended to support one another, with each serving a different purpose. The different approaches and communication styles employed on each social media network also make the company seem more relatable, represented by people with their own opinions instead of a neutral corporate voice. Concerning strategic value, Twitter is likely the most important outlet for the company’s voice among the three.
Inspecting Twitter’s value as a social media marketing platform, the report discovered its potential value as well as unique qualities. The website rewards interaction with the user base, embracing current trends, creative approach, and, above all, honesty. Attempts to utilize traditional one-way advertising often meet backlash. However, close interaction with the user base has its risks, as mistakes in both methodologies and individual cases have a far more significant adverse effect than even on most other social media.
Bibliography
Das, Sourobh. 2018. “How Does Twitter Make Money? Twitter Business Model.” Feedough. Web.
Gebert, Gina, and Lisa Voss. 2014. “Customer Attacks – How To Safeguard Your Reputation.” Bachelor’s thesis, University of Twente.
Meyer, Katie. 2015. “Crisis Management 101: How Did Digiorno Bounce Back From a Cheesy Tweet? “ Medium. Web.
“Twitter, Inc. Common Stock Historical Stock Prices.” 2018. NASDAQ. Web.
Weller, Katrin, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Merja Mahrt, and Cornelius Puschmann. Twitter And Society. Vol. 89. Bern. Peter Lang, 2014.