Monthly Archives: June 2012
Spotlight on Annie’s Homegrown
It’s been a long time since I’ve spotlighted a brand who totally “gets” social media. My most recent was a spotlight on Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. It’s time, people! Before I get started and on a non-social media front, I think Annie’s Homegrown branding is super friendly and adorable.
I’ve been a fan of Annie’s Homegrown for awhile, their snacks are tasty and full of organic ingredients. Zero guilt…unless I eat three handfuls of their Bunny Grahams…opps!
Annie’s Homegrown has really embraced social media as a tool to communicate the uniqueness of its products, the culture of the company, its philanthropic efforts and even Bernie’s whereabouts.
Facebook – 251K “Likes”
The first thing you’ll see is a super friendly cover photo, which highlights their summer campaign, Bernie’s Summer Road Trip. A great example of leveraging Facebook as a vehicle for communicating the campaign and engaging fans. The company updates its cover photo to feature a new pic of one of its fans taking Bernie out for some fun.
The company is also using Facebook apps to share recipes, communicate its philanthropic efforts, for example, their campaign Win a School Garden and coupon savings on Annie’s Homegrown products. You may see other Brand Pages using custom apps and there could be a disconnect between the app and the company branding. Not with Annie’s Homegrown; the custom apps are appropriately branded and easy to interact with. To Annie’s the Facebook Page is more than just a marketing tool, but a way to engage with fans. You’ll find fun open-ended questions, fun photos and replies to fans’ comments. There is definitely a heart beat behind this Facebook Page!
Twitter – 5,600 Followers
The Twitter background is reflective of Annie’s Homegrown values, seeking out “the best ingredients Mother Earth has to offer, harvesting pure, natural flavors to make delicious foods every family can feel good about.”
Engagement with Annie’s fans continues here with a number of replies and retweets to keep the conversation going. Additionally, there is cross promotion of its Bernie’s Summer Road Trip campaign, its philanthropic efforts and all kinds of recipes. The cross promotion helps fans understand that Annie’s Homegrown has one online voice and can expect the same value of content on each social channel. I was a little surprised to see there wasn’t a hash tag created for Bernie’s Summer Road Trip campaign. It would help compartmentalize online conversations about this fun campaign!
Pinterest – 996 Followers
14 Boards all ranging from eco-friendly product ideas the company supports, current campaigns (check-out Bernie’s road trippin’), funny photos like this one and more healthy and yummy recipes.
Annie’s Homegrown definitely understands the importance of using social tools to grow its brand, communicate the wonderfulness of its tasty products and engage with customers, all the while maintaining one and true online voice.
3 Things I Liked in Social Media, Week ending June 24.
1. Brand Page ‘hover-over’ pop-up in news feed – I love this and it’s one of those little details you may not have noticed. Users will now see a pop-up of your Page’s cover image when they hover-over the Page title in their news feed. Now’s the time to really think about how high impact your Brand Page cover image is. The new pop-up feature could likely be a first impression to prospective Page fans, so it’s important that your Page cover image is eye catching and aligns with your brand.
2. Twitter’s outage – I actually DIDN’T like this the first 20 mins or so, but I realized there was a silver lining to the 2-hour Twitter downtime. I came to realization that:
- Twitter fans awaiting response from me will be ok because they can’t access Twitter either
- I can work on Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube projects I had on my to-do list
- I caught-up on emails and other administrative things
- I worked on fine-tuning a marketing communications calendar
What did you do during the Twitter outage? I thought this gif image was pretty funny in expressing sentiment of the outage.
3. Hotel Tonight mobile app – If you ever find yourself in need of a hotel room last minute, open this app! This mobile app shows you unsold hotel rooms with an up to 70% off reduction in price. Not bad, right?
Twitter Plans to Send User Tweets to Salesforce.
Photo from onlinesocialmedia.net
Twitter has agreed to give Salesforce, a customer relationship management company, access to over 400 million public tweets for data analysis. Data analysis for what exactly? Salesforce would like intel on how Twitter users are engaging with brands.
From a brand standpoint, this is fantastic news because this will be the genesis of better customer engagement, relationship cultivation and wider brand reach online.
From a Twitter user standpoint, do we want our interaction with brands to be analyzed? Do we prefer brands to reach out to us before we reach out to them? Maybe it’s case by case.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Personally, I want interaction with brands on my terms, not theirs.
