FreshDirect on the Net: Fresh or Rotten?

As a busy New Yorker on-the-go, I’m a big fan of FreshDirect. Although I’m lucky to have a grocery store on the block next to my apartment, like most grocery stores in the city, its selection can be limited and inconsistent. And even though it’s only one block away, I prefer not to lug more than a few bags on the walk home!

So for this week’s blog post, I decided to take a look at FreshDirect’s presence in the social media sphere. To begin my observations, I checked the company’s Twitter page. On my personal Twitter account, I follow @FreshDirect, so I knew they had some activity on this social media channel. I must admit, I’ve never paid attention before to the number of followers they have: 3,629! For a regional grocery delivery service, I think that’s a pretty reasonable amount of followers.

One of the things you’ll notice from scrolling through their recent tweets is that FreshDirect participates with both proactive and reactive tweets to customers. It promotes specials, handles customer service disputes and even engages in casual conversations with customers – some of which aren’t even directly related to its business. Also worth noting is that FreshDirect has more than 4,000 tweets to date.

I think it’s a smart strategy for FreshDirect to use Twitter in a variety of ways, because its customers may be looking for information, help or just a fun and quick interaction with a brand that they love. Overall, the Twitter account seems well run and a helpful communication tool for the company.

Next, I checked out FreshDirect’s presence on Facebook. Until now, I hadn’t done this, but when I “liked” their fan page, I received an immediate response on the webpage that thanked me for being a fan and encouraged me to join the brand’s conversation online.

I was surprised to see that FreshDirect only had a little more than 900 fans on Facebook. The company does a great job providing information about its suppliers and business partners, announcements on new products (including ones that customers have clamored for!) and posting polls that are fun and interesting (e.g., How do you like to spend time with friends? See a movie; dine out at a restaurant; Stay in and catch up; Go shopping; Other). My only guess as to why there are fewer Facebook fans than Twitter followers, is that customers may be more interested in receiving quick, informational updates via Twitter (discounts, daily specials) than in getting feature-driven information (Q&A interviews, tips) on Facebook.

Finally, I searched for FreshDirect on socialmention.com to get an overall sense of the brand’s recognition online (blogs, bookmarks, events, images, etc.). According to the website, FreshDirect has a “strength” score of 3%, which means there is a low likelihood that the brand is being discussed in social media. This is calculated by the “phrase mentions within the last 24 hours divided by total possible mentions.” Unfortunately, FreshDirect also scored low with a “reach” of 23%, which measures the brand’s range of influence. This is calculated by “the number of unique authors referencing your brand divided by the total number of mentions.”

On a positive note, FreshDirect has a moderate “passion” score of 36%, which measures “the likelihood that individuals talking about the brand will do so repeatedly.” Additionally, the company’s “sentiment” ratio is 30:1 representing the number of mentions that are positive compared to those that are negative.

Socialmention.com provided useful analytics, because it showed that the FreshDirect brand might not have enough of a social media presence in terms of quantity or reach. This was further proven when I searched for the brand on Technorati – only two blog posts came back that mentioned FreshDirect! Sadly, these results are the same even when you enter the company’s name as two separate words.

The good news is that the company generates a lot of positive and passionate chatter in social media channels. I think it’s also fair to say that FreshDirect makes a considerable effort to genuinely engage with its customers through various social media channels. In fact, I also discovered that FreshDirect posts YouTube videos that may be of interest to its customers, such as testimonials and its funniest commercials.

Overall, it looks like FreshDirect is on the right track with its social media presence and has identifiable areas where it can improve.

Who Knew Blogging Could Be Good for Your Health?

 

This week, I caught up with a good friend of mine, Kayla, who works for a hospital in Orlando, Florida. Kayla is a marketing specialist for the hospital’s communications department.

Kayla updated me on a new wellness program that recently kicked off at her hospital for its employees. I was really interested to learn more about the program overall, because my company also recently began a wellness initiative. Having a friend who works in the same area of communications can be extremely helpful for idea sharing and brainstorming about how to resolve challenges!

For the focus of this week’s blog post, I held a phone call with Kayla to ask her about the use of social media for internal use at the hospital. As luck would have it, she has led the charge in the wellness program to launch an internal blog. Based on our conversation, it sounds like the program and blog have been well received and there are more developments to come.

Here is a brief overview of our conversation about the employee wellness blog at Kayla’s hospital:

Q: What type of social media tool are you using for internal communication (e.g., employee to employee, not external-facing such as to customers) at the hospital right now?

A: We have a new blog on our internal website to communicate with our employees about the new wellness program.

Q: How will the blog be used and what is its purpose in the wellness program?

A: Each hospital campus has a wellness manager who will focus on coordinating on-site activities through the blog. Additionally, they are responsible for developing short blog posts about health and wellness. The website also includes videos and podcasts written and recorded by our employees.

Q: That sounds like a really exciting initiative. How do you think employees feel about this, and what are you seeing in terms of participation so far?

A: The feedback from employees has been amazing. We gauge our success based on the number of page views and comments. Our employees regularly comment on the blogs and videos to share ideas on how the content motivated them or to share their own healthy tips.

Q: That’s great! It sounds like this internal blog has proven to be extremely useful as a communication tool for your wellness campaign. What do you find is most helpful about it?

A: It’s a quick and inexpensive way to promote on-campus events. One of the benefits is that when there are changes to locations, dates, times, etc., we can quickly modify the postings.

Q: Is this blog better than other tactics you've used in the past to communicate with employees?

A: I wouldn't necessarily say it’s “better” but I would say it’s a welcome addition to our internal communications program. Our other methods are considered by many to be outdated (ex: daily memos with key announcements sent to department leads, a monthly magazine). We have very little email communication. Our wellness blog provides an instant way to get information distributed.

Q: What are some of the challenges of incorporating this blog into your wellness campaign?

A: The biggest challenge is that some of our employees do not have access to the Internet at work; however, we’ve been working to change that since this program has been implemented. By the end of next year, all departments will have at least one computer that has limited Internet access, which will include permission to view the wellness blog.

The other challenge is that some employees do not engage with the wellness program (for whatever reason that may be) and therefore do not have access to the great information that is being provided. Learning why these employees do not participate and making the necessary changes is important in the next year.

Q: Well, it sounds like your team is aware of the key challenges and some ways to overcome these in the future. When it came to getting the sign-off for this project, did you get pushback or support from senior leadership on creating an internal blog?

A: Senior leadership has been on board since day one! The wellness program is the brainchild of our executive team and they support it 100%. In fact, many of our videos and podcasts are written and voiced by our executive leadership.

Q: That’s excellent! Happy to hear the program is going well and that the blog is a hit. Is there anything else you want to share?

A: In addition to the website, we are currently investigating the use of an iPhone/Droid app. This app would sync with the employee's wellness action plan so they could track their nutrition and activity throughout the day.

Changing Directions: From Agency to Corporate

Since I’ve been struggling to identify a topic for this week’s blog post, I decided to turn inward for inspiration. Or, more specifically, I’m reflecting on my personal transition in the past year moving from the agency side to working in-house. I’ve worked for non-profit and small and large agencies for five years, including Ketchum, here in New York. At the beginning of this year, I joined the corporate communications team at Time Warner Inc.

As most of my agency friends have joked with me, one of the easiest changes has been not tracking my time. I will admit that I have no regret in leaving this necessary, but tedious task behind. Especially considering that my former client, FedEx, was one of the agency’s largest and required dozens of billing codes across the account. For those of you working in agencies, I’m sure you can appreciate how much work it takes to manage all those project codes!

I loved working for this client and learned a great deal from the variety of projects we supported. I also benefited from learning how to manage my time with competing demands. In my previous role, I balanced multiple client requests on an hourly basis, researched and developed campaign materials (sometimes within 24 hours or less!) and pitched and secured media opportunities on a regular basis. I also learned how to quickly solve problems while thinking on my feet and how to provide my clients with insights and strategic communications recommendations that addressed their business challenges and opportunities.

I’m learning that while my background and experience on the agency side has served me well in my new position and company, there is still a great deal to learn! For starters, I primarily worked on the external communications side in my old agency jobs. The projects I supported ranged from enterprise-wide CSR campaigns and local market outreach events to product/service launches and media relations support during the client’s busiest shipping time of the year: the peak holiday season.

Now that I work in corporate communications, I’m learning a brand new area of tactics and strategies. I focus on crafting messages about our business and internal company policies, so that they are clear, actionable and resonate with employees. I work with an amazing team to create internal campaigns that promote company or department-specific initiatives.

A lot of our campaigns involve the development of creative marketing collateral, including brochures, videos, elevator wraps, micro-sites, e-vites and more. I’ve had a lot of fun drafting content or working with vendors to create these materials. And it’s always fulfilling to see the finished product around the building or watch employees engage with a campaign that my team developed.

I also oversee our weekly company e-newsletter, where we provide employees with important company announcements, updates on upcoming events and articles about the exciting content our divisions (HBO, Time Inc., Turner Broadcasting System and Warner Bros.) are working on and producing. I’ve also learned basic HTML language and support an associate director with the management of our company intranet.

Although it was a tough choice to leave an agency and client that I loved working for and learned from every day, I’m glad that I took a step down a new path. I’m really enjoying my new role and look forward to growing my career with Time Warner. It’s only been six months, so I have a lot more to learn!

And eventually, I will stop thinking in 15-minute billable increments throughout the day.

Has anyone else recently transitioned to a new company or industry? How has the process been for you?

Looking Back - President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall

On July 6, the White House held a town hall with President Obama via Twitter. Obama has often been credited for how he successfully leveraged social networking during his campaign to rally his supporters and to win the White House. Although live Twitter chats are nothing new, this online forum was the first time a U.S. president had live tweeted and marked the continuing ways social media has changed the way we communicate.

Nearly 170,000 tweets were captured during the Twitter town hall and people communicated using the #AskObama hashtag. In addition to the success of this large number of people engaging with the president, I think there were a few notable highlights with the execution of this event.

Twitter's Executive Chairman, Jack Dorsey, noted that the White House partnered with Salesforce-Radian6, a well known social media monitoring agency, to analyze conversations on Twitter in the weeks leading up to the town hall discussion. Just as we begin the first step of any public relations campaign with research, I thought this was a critical first step. Armed with this research about the Twitter landscape and trending topics, Obama’s team was able to gain a better sense of the mood and sentiment about the economy, which helped them prepare the president for wide variety of questions from the audience.

I also think it was a smart move for the town hall to have eight curators that helped to select the tweets that were discussed. From a logistical standpoint, this certainly helped to streamline the process for reviewing the thousands of tweets that poured in over the hour. In terms of equally representing the audience, I think it’s great that the curators participated from around the country.

However, in the spirit of total transparency, I think cumulative information should have been provided about the curators, such as breaking down their geographic location, age and/or political affiliation. While we don’t need to know who each curator was personally, I do think it would have been beneficial to have a general sense of who selected the tweets featured in the town hall.

With regard to the selected tweets, I think President Obama did a great job answering questions that he didn’t know in advance. That said, I think he could have done a better job with responding quickly in order to ensure that more than 18 tweets were addressed during the one-hour session.

Another area that I think worked well during the town hall was that the topic of tweets, ranging from job loss to the debt ceiling, were tracked by percentage of people tweeting about them and also in which areas of the country these topics were trending.

On a final note, I think President Obama and his team did an excellent job hosting this Twitter town hall. Although there are some areas for improvement, I think they were successful overall in providing an open and engaging forum for constituents to address the President.

Don’t just take my word for it. If you didn’t have a chance to participate in the town hall, check out a video recording of the event below!

Maybe Disruption is a Necessary Evil

Social media is disrupting the practice of public relations or corporate communications, but not adversely. I think it's forcing us to reevaluate how we use communication to accomplish business objectives and it also challenges us to truly hold up our end of the bargain in the two-way communication model.

Although our industry is built on the foundation that public relations is about managing relationships between our clients or organizations and their various internal and external audiences; it's often been easy to fall into the trap of assuming that this is mostly achieved through media relations or marketing tactics. I find that social media is another tactic for us to use outside of traditional methods that have become like muscle memory (pitching the media, creating marketing collateral, writing speeches, managing events, etc.), while at the same time, securing feedback from the audiences we're trying to reach.

The challenge is that our jobs already encompass so much. Between planning strategies, executing campaigns and reporting back to our respective clients or department heads –who honestly has time to fit in yet another communication tactic? In this way, social media can feel like a bit of a disruption to our ongoing routine. Now, in addition to coming up with a strategy, objectives, target audience, media list, marketing creative and all the other bells and whistles that come with major campaigns, we have to think holistically about where social media fits into the picture.

Although it may be a challenge to fit one more tactic into our already busy professional lives, it can be seen as a positive change overall. Shaking things up in our industry helps us all to think more creatively, push boundaries, reevaluate the way things have always been done, and best yet – increases our value to customers and companies.

For example, in my previous job working at Ketchum, I worked on one of our biggest clients: FedEx. As the agency of record for this global company, our team handled public relations for many of the FedEx business units, including FedEx Office (formerly known as FedEx Kinko's). As can often be the case with many retailers, most people are familiar with the basic services FedEx Office provides (copying and printing, signs, banners), but awareness was low about a wide range of other services available (design service, mobile printing, direct mail, computer rental and more). After conducting market research and developing a strategic plan, we helped FedEx Office launch a consumer blog in the fall of 2009: Out of Office.

Although we continued to use traditional methods to execute campaigns that promoted FedEx Office, we now had another channel for educating and engaging with customers. Nearly two years later, the blog has a strong following and the team continues to produce fun and creative posts that show customers the myriad ways they can enjoy the company's product and services. Customers also enjoy sharing the projects they’ve created or soliciting feedback when they need more information.

Did the blog create extra work for my former agency team and our clients? Of course! But, it also helped us to reach the company's target audience in an interactive way and gave us new opportunities for spreading the word about FedEx Office.

At the end of the day, social media is one more trick in our toolbox that when used effectively, helps us make a positive impact on the relationship we're responsible for managing in the two-way communication model. It may make our to do lists a little longer, but my hope is that it's worth it for both our industry and the organizations we serve.