How Tesco Uses Social Media to Effectively Communicate - Essay Sample

Introduction

Social media is a powerful marketing tool for any brand. It can be used to effectively drive sales regardless of the industry a brand may be involved in. According to a research conducted by the Pew Research Center, 68% of American adults use Facebook (Moth, 2013). Among the younger generation, a significant number of youths use Instagram and Twitter. Even the older adults have not been left out. It is stated that 37% of adults above the age of 65 are also active users of social media. It therefore goes without saying that effectively using social media can greatly help to build a brand presence. Tesco is one of the few brands which have effectively used social media and social marketing to drive sales and make profits. Unlike other brands, it strategically uses social media not only in the provision of customer service but also in engaging fans. The company's success in social media marketing is attributed to its use of focused content and its various calls to action.

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Tesco regularly posts engaging visual content. This is advantageous because the human brain tends to process visual information better and faster than information in plain text (Pena-Taylor, 2018). Therefore, by attaching an image to plain text, Tesco ensures that the content posted is engaging and easily memorable. On many social media platforms, visual content is the primary type of content posted and shared. Tesco has been able to build a steady following on Facebook due to the quality of the content posted. While other brands have taken to posting less serious content in a bid to attract likes and shares, Tesco ensures that all the content posted on its social media platforms is not only educative but also entertaining. For instance, the company once shared recipes and also promoted blogs which were dedicated to healthy living. The customers who showed interest in the various recipes would then acquire the ingredients from the store. Such focused and targeted content greatly boosts a company's sales.

Unlike other brands, Tesco makes a point of only posting once a day instead of flooding its followers' timelines with unnecessary content. The technique ensures that only high quality and valuable content is posted. Posting severally can dilute the quality of the message and it may also be annoying. Additionally, all the content posted on the company's social media platforms is always related to the brand and the products offered. The success of a brand in social commerce is determined by the number of followers a brand has, the number of mentions a brand enjoys and the number of calls to action set up by the brand (Chapman, 2014). Tesco carefully utilizes all these social marketing techniques to increase its sales through social media.

More brands need to tap into social commerce as it has proven to be very lucrative for Tesco. The company was recently ranked as the best retailer in the field of social commerce (Chapman, 2014). Its success is attributed to the company's use of focused content and measured social media presence. On Twitter for instance, Tesco runs separate accounts for different products and functions. Even though a section of critics have argued that the move has diluted its Twitter presence, it has proven useful to the brand since it has enabled it to offer more focused and dedicated support to various market segments (Rollason, 2014). Additionally, the company maintains an active customer support system which ensures all customer queries are handled appropriately and on time. The company's customer support are also available for most parts of the day which ensures that most of the customer's queries are handled as fast as possible.

References

Chapman, M. (2014). Tesco ranked as best retailer for social commerce, claims study. Retrieved from https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/tesco-ranked-best-retailer-social-commerce-claims-study/1294286

Moth, D. (2013). How Tesco uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ - Econsultancy. Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/how-tesco-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google/

Pena-Taylor, S. (2018, October 19). IPA: Starbucks and Tesco show how social media can increase revenue | WARC. Retrieved from https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/opinion/ipa_starbucks_and_tesco_show_how_social_media_can_increase_revenue/2860

Rollason, H. (2014). How Tesco Leads The Way in Social Customer Service. Retrieved from https://www.conversocial.com/blog/how-tesco-leads-the-way-in-social-customer-service