Starbucks and The Groundswell: Original Post

 

Starbucks and The Groundswell

Would you like a little groundswell with that Grande latte? Starbucks certainly hopes you do!

An active presence on social media is essential for any brand in 2020. It enables direct interaction with customers to not only receive feedback on products, but also allows brands to actively see how we are discussing their products with one another as well.  A good social media strategy drastically improves brand recognition, while creating a wider audience.

The idea of fully embracing the groundswell is discussed in this week’s reading. The concept of listening to, talking with, energizing, as well as supporting the groundswell offer any company today boundless opportunities in an ever growing technological world. 

A company that does a brilliant job engaging its online audience and remaining in the know with the day to day discussions of their products is one of the world’s most well-known brands: Starbucks. 

Starbucks thrives through its active presence on social media. With a twitter account of 11 million followers, it actively reads and responds to tweets from customers, thus consistently engaging with the groundswell. In addition, Starbucks uses specific hashtags to engage with customers and promote brand awareness such as the #redcupcontest, Tweet-a-coffee and the Meet me at Starbucks campaign. 

Tweet-a-coffee encourages us to give a $5 gift card to a friend solely by using @tweetacoffee and a friend’s twitter username in a tweet - a smart marketing move as it brought in around $180,000 worth of coffee and gave Starbucks many new twitter users to target and market towards. The Meet me at Starbucks social media campaign (#HowWeMet) is a very strong utilization of the groundswell in that it gets us talking about our own stories of how we met others at Starbucks, encouraging others to do the same. Not only did the use of this hashtag bring people together and into the business, but it also allowed its community to interact and respond with one another through these shared stories. 

 

Another way that Starbucks energizes and takes part in the groundswell is through MyStarbucksIdea. For many years, this forum created a two line form of communication with the brand and its customers. As customers, we can submit our ideas, requests and recommendations through the server. Recently, Starbucks eliminated the community aspect of MyStarbucksIdea, which allowed customers to engage and discuss the company with one another on a forum for over 10 years. As conversations and community discussions are popular on apps such as twitter and facebook, the corporation is now focusing more on communication through these platforms.

Starbucks also commonly engages through word of mouth, discussed in length by Li and Bernoff. As customers, we want to take advice and recommendations from other people, instead of putting all of our trust into the media and CEOs of large companies. Starbucks employs the necessary methods for successful word of mouth promotion, including investigating into customers enthusiasm with ratings and reviews, fostering a community to energize customers, and participating in and energizing online communities of Starbucks enthusiasts and customers. MyStarbucksIdea and the brand's various hashtags are also utilizing word of mouth technology, as they create a community that in turn results in more discussion and business for their products.

Starbucks has amassed a wide presence on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook that actively listen to, talk with and engage its customers and followers all across the globe. Employers respond back to both negative and positive feedback on these platforms, forming a perception that the company actually cares about customers' experiences, fostering a sense of loyalty from customers, something not very common with giant corporations.