Social Media Community Management Case Study

• After a total rebranding, La Croix began targeting people who were too health conscious to drink soda with no interest in plain water.
• To achieve this, La Croix resorted to using trending hashtags relating to current health trends to keep their product relevant.
• Instead of creating a new trend/hashtag, La Croix decided to keep up with the already happening trends. This helped the brand to retain existing customers even as their tastes and diets change.
• Some of the strategies used by the brand include interactive displays and influencer marketing.
• La Croix took a different approach with influencer marketing by "consistently monitoring the use of their hashtags and posts people tag them in giving the brand a steady flow of insta-worthy images."
• The brand also extended the love by actively sharing posts from accounts with as low as 150 followers.
• La Croix cultivated a unique community on its social media accounts by engaging with their audience without waiting for likes and comments to come their way.
• It went out of its way to seek out others with outside-of-the-box targeting and captivating content.
• In return, its proactive community management led the brand to have one of the most successful user-generated content strategies on social media today.
• The brand became more than a drink of choice for the midwestern housewife but expanded its reach beyond the region.

Social Media Community Management Best Practice

• Knowing when best to post content to customers and also, timely responses to their questions is regarded as one of the best practices employed by alcohol brands, according to Rivaliq, Viral Nation, Hubspot, and The Social Element.
• The Social Element opined that in a survey, “45% of consumers stated that social media is one of the first channels they go to when they have any questions or issues.”
• A brand’s ability to quickly and effectively respond to customer inquiries can break its customer service reputation.
• About 72% of people who complain about a brand expect a response in less than an hour. Also, “customers are more likely to buy from companies who provide them with a timely response.”
• The Social Element suggests using social media management tools as a solution to timely response to inquiries.

Research Strategy

Social Media Marketing Agencies - ICUC

• A website link to ICUC is provided herein.
• ICUC is a social media management services company that offers community management, content moderation, and social listening services to clients.
• Industries served by ICUC include food & beverage, CPG, energy, entertainment, pharmaceutical, financial, healthcare, hospitality, and media industries.
• The company has a team of more than 400 multilingual specialists that helps in providing social customer care solutions to its web of industry-leading global clients.
• ICUC helps build customer loyalty, minimize risk, and maximize insight using its technology and human-powered solutions.
• The company is privately held with its headquarters located in Montreal, Quebec.
• ICUC offers full-service social media management, including community management, strategy, review management, social listening & reporting, moderation, and social content.
• Some food & beverage clients of the company include Coca-Cola, Nestle, Unilever, and Kellogg's.

Firebelly Marketing

• A website link to Firebelly Marketing is provided herein.
• Firebelly Marketing is a social media marketing agency with the goal of making brands more likable and profitable via social media.
• Its headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana.
• Its services include social media management, social media ad, and social media audits.
• Firebelly's social media management solution encompasses custom monthly content calendars, publishing at best times, fast and timely response to fans, wide-reaching promotions, and monthly channel performance reporting.
• The company won the 2018 Sprout Social's Cultivate Award for "going above & beyond in providing excellent social media services to clients."
•  450 North Brewing Company, Justin Vineyard & Winery, Mimi Blue Good Food, and Upland Brewing Company are some alcohol/beverage brand clients of Firebelly Marketing.

Sociallyin

• A website link to Sociallyin is provided herein.
• Sociallyin is a 100% focused social media marketing agency interested in "creating lasting connections through interactive engagements by connecting people and ideas through strategic online communications."
• The company employs top creative talent to help run its result-driven services.
• Its headquarters is located at 1500 1st Ave N, Suite F104 Unit 26, Birmingham, Alabama.
• Its services include community management, custom website building, social media strategies, digital advertising, and creative social content production.
• According to The Manifest, Sociallyin created software that "connects wine drinkers with wineries by marking corks with unique identifiers. The software reads the markings on the corks and provides customers with information about the wine."
•  Beveren Vodka is one of the company's clients that operate in the alcohol space.

Big Spoon Co.

• A website link to Big Spoon Co. is provided herein.
• Big Spoon Co. is a privately held marketing, consulting firm, and PR company specializing in crafting memorable experiences to ignite and strengthen meaningful connections for food, beverage, and lifestyle brands.
• The company is located at 1705 E. Franklin St., Richmond, Virginia.
• Big Spoon Co. is focused on building brand awareness for its beverage customers around special occasions while working with the brand to adopt event ideas starting from conception to reality.
• The company claims to have a decade of first-hand hospitality experience serving restaurants, planned events, managed coffee shops, worked food trucks, and poured beers in brewery taprooms.
• Its services include strategic planning and consulting, social media management, public relations, event planning and management, project management, and brand partnerships.
•  Sazerac, Blue Bee Cider, Bookbinder's Seafood & Steakhouse, The Jasper, and Buz & Ned REal Barbecue are some beverage brand clients of Big Spoon Co.

Automated Response Tools

Autoresponder Bot

• Autoresponder Bot is a cloud-based software that enables its users to instantly send customer replies to DMs to all comments across all Facebook posts and ads.
• It also enables auto-reply in sequence to new messages received from the fan page based on keywords.
• Facebook Autoresponder Bot can be structured to auto-reply to any fan page posts, including Facebook ads, dark posts, photo albums, boosted posts, videos, and photos.
• Its features include 100% integration with Facebook, the ease of use, 24x7 operation (even when the system is off), personalized replies using keywords, Facebook contest module to enable tagging, and revisiting past posts.
• Autoresponder Bot plans are charged as one-off payments. The Basic plan costs $39, Professional plan $69, and Elite plan $119.

Chatdesk

• Chatdesk creates software that enables companies to deliver better customer support, scale efficiently, and drive sales growth.
• The Chatdesk Teams product enables its users to increase conversions by quickly responding to customers on Facebook and Instagram ads, chats, and emails.
• The Chatdesk platform learns from the user's historical tickets through machine learning and allows for ticket customization. All that is required is to connect the user's channel to the Chatdesk portal.
• Through its machine learning model, it provides a personalized response to posts on social media channels.
• It has a record 15% increase in conversions on Facebook and Instagram Ads and functions 24x7 with 80% savings per ticket.
• The Chatdesk Growth level plan costs $99 per month, while the Advanced plan costs $900 per month. Clients interested in the Enterprise plan are to contact the Chatdesk sales team.

Rocketbots (Respond.io)

• Respond.io claims to be the number one business messaging platform that allows users to receive customer messages via any channel and provides a 360° view to the user's team.
• Its features include shared inbox to help collaborate and respond lightning-fast to messages, 360° customer view, easy chat automation such as tagging, assigning, or message response, and complete channel integrations.
• A Facebook page and a Rocketbots account are required to set up Respond's Facebook auto-response. The setup steps are provided herein.
• Respond.io starting price is $29 per month and has an upper limit of $495+ per month.

AgoraPulse

• AgoraPulse is regarded as the most comprehensive feature-set of all the social media automation tools.
• It helps users plan and schedule content across six different social networks and also track performance, allow team collaboration, and permit scheduling content reposting time and time again.
• Its social media inbox solution features an automated inbox assistant, instant alert about fans and followers, Facebook and Instagram ad comments management, real-time inbox management, and others.
• AgoraPulse Facebook enables users reply to all Facebook page’s comments, private messages, page posts, ad comments, and reviews and also provide community management options.
• Its subscription packages include Medium package $79, Large $159, X-Large $239, and Enterprise $399, billed annually, or Medium package $99, Large $199, X-Large $299, and Enterprise $499, billed monthly.

Hootsuite

• Hootsuite is regarded as one of the most vastly used social media automation tools. It gives users the ability to keep monitoring their brand and social media channels with its real-time updates.
• With Hootsuite, users can grow their Facebook engagement and make publishing quick and effective through increasing post frequency and engagements, Facebook message scheduling, efficiently monitoring and responding to messages, and improved performance.
• Hootsuite helps users create and launch/test ad campaigns quickly on Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads within minutes and increase conversions by managing placement, timing, and targeted audiences.
• Its pricing plan includes $19 per month for the professional plan, $99 per month for the team plan, $599 per month for the Business plan, and Enterprise plan based on request.

Social Listening and Community Management Tools

HubSpot

• HubSpot allows users to build marketing campaigns, share content such as landing pages and blog posts, automatically assign content to multi-social channels, and discover the most appropriate time to post content.
• It is an all-in-one inbound marketing software that provides more than just social listening but offers an out-of-the-box social reporting to help monitor different social media platforms, publishing time, and campaigns.
• Its features include social media management, content scheduling, social media monitoring, and reporting, marketing automation, SEO, analytics, blogging, and emails.
• Hubspot's full social media tools are offered as part of its Marketing Hub Professional at $800 per month.

Awario

• Awario is a social listening tool with building brand awareness as its focal point. It provides users with access to data that matters to their business, including customer insights, market, and competitors.
• The platform offers a social selling tool as a free add-on to users known as Leads.
• Awario's operation mechanism is based on crawling and indexing web data technology built into a powerful web search mechanism for businesses.
• The tool employs Awario's predictive insight technology to identify people who are searching for recommendations about a product similar to that of the user or people looking for an alternative to the user's competitors.
• Its features include Boolean search, powerful sentiment analysis, social media dashboard, location-based monitoring, social listening reports, Slack integration, topic cloud, and social listening API.
• Awario's pricing plan includes $29 per month for the Starter package, $89 per month for the Pro plan, and $299 per month for the Enterprise plan. Alternatively, users can purchase an annual plan for $24 per month for the Starter package, $74 per month for the Pro plan, and $249 per month for the Enterprise plan.

Keyhole

• Keyhole helps customers make better decisions with social media data. The company claims to be the #1 in the globe for Hashtag Analytics.
• This is achieved through the accurate measurement of historical and real-time social media data and illustrating the information in simplified graphs and layouts that makes reporting and strategizing easy.
• It allows users to automate posts and also track keywords or hashtags across Twitter and Instagram.
• Keyhole's solutions include campaign monitoring, influencer marketing, event monitoring, brand monitoring, and market research.
• Its features include hashtag analytics, social media reporting, Twitter historical data, social mention, keyword tracking, social media account monitoring, and social Media Analytics API.
• Keyhole is offered to customers depending on the package. The different packages include Keyhole Suite (social listening & account analytics) at $59 per month, social listening & campaign tracking at $49 per month, and social media account analytics at $49 per month.

Mention

• Mention is a social media and web monitoring tool that enables brands and agencies to listen to their audience, monitor the web, and manage social media.
• Its superior listening capabilities have helped more than 4,000 enterprise clients, including Airbnb, MIT, Microsoft, and Spotify, to improve their communications and marketing strategies.
• Mention functions by tracking millions of content sources across 42 languages to enable users to monitor their brand mentions globally.
• It also has a competitive analysis tool that enables users to compare their brand against those of competitors to ensure greater content relevance to their customers than their competitors.
• Its features include online media monitoring, competitor analysis, brand management, audience listening, social media channel pilot, and agency growth.
• Mention's pricing plan includes $29 per month for the Solo package, $99 per month for the Pro plan, and $450+ per month for the Enterprise plan. Alternatively, users can purchase an annual plan for $25 per month for the Solo package, $83 per month for the Pro plan, and $450+ per month for the Enterprise plan.

Brandwatch

• Brandwatch is regarded as one of the most powerful social listening tools in terms of analytics.
• It offers "image recognition, demographic data about the audience, trending topics in your niche, API access, and dashboards that can be exported into customizable PowerPoint presentations. "
• Its features include adding preferred sites, image analysis, insights from industry-leading AI, alert notification, and instant identification of influencers.
• The platform can be integrated with different sources, including "Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Sina Weibo, VK, QQ, news and blogs, the web."
• Brandwatch Pro plan costs $800 per month with 10,000 monthly mentions and 30 days of historical data. Its Custom Enterprise plan is available upon request.