Final Presentation

Social Media Monitoring Part Two

Previously

On my last social monitoring post, I introduced all of the basic information and status of Dunkin' Donuts on social media and used social monitoring software to help illustrate the analysis on Dunkin' Donuts' relationship with the groundswell.

This week's post I am going to introduce you content below:

1. Special Campaign Digging-#mydunkin

2. Feedback from the groundswell 

3. Suggestion is based on these week's social monitoring

Special Campaign Digging-#mydunkin

#mydunkin is an integrated social campaign Dunkin’ Donuts launched in October 2013 and after more than 10 months it still going on. The hashtag is about fans like @MEG_ANCH & their Dunkin’ stories. People use this hashtag to tell their everyday life to other Dunkin’ Donuts’ fans and their thoughts on Dunkin’ Donuts. At the same time, Dunkin’ Donuts’ launched TV commercial through Vine.co which makes Dunkin’ Donuts a hot topic everywhere since then.

After more than a year’s operation, this hashtag #mydunkin right now is no longer like a social media campaign creature, it’s more like an everyday activity for people. Boot from morning till midnight, if there is a Dunkin’ Donuts store open on the street, Dunkin’ Donuts’ stories with people will never end. Dunkin’ Donuts is trying to use social media campaign to create its own culture.

This social media campaign not only saves Dunkin’ Donuts a lot of money on advertisements but also cultivates a lot of fans of Dunkin’ Donuts’.

Feedback and Suggestion

After several weeks hardworking on Dunkin’ Donuts’ social monitoring, as the author of this report, I got not only pure social data and deeper understanding of Dunkin’ Donuts’ social media status but also learnt a lot and thought a lot according to the analysis I had. The best way to improve the relationship between the company and its groundswell is to find out the problems and figure out a way to solve it.

Feedback from groundswell

Though Dunkin’ Donuts has a pretty good and healthy imagine among public and its customers, this report still needs to dig into the groundswell and find out the truth of Dunkin’ Donuts among the groundswell.

Positive:

Dunkin’ Donuts as a daily life essential brand really has a lot of positive feedback. Those feedbacks are easy to find on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms.

Negative:

It is really shocking to find that a top brand pisses off its customers and reunites them to build a website: http://dunkin-donuts.pissedconsumer.com. 

From the website and the contents on that, it is really a big problem for Dunkin’ Donuts to think about that. After checking some of the reviews, I personally classified those complaints as below: 1. Customer Service 2. Food and Drink Problem. Those complaints come with location and problem category which really can help Dunkin’ Donuts find out what exactly happening in its stores. Look at the top of the homepage you will find that zero resolved issues which mean none of the issues here have been resolved or even was found by Dunkin’ Donuts. If Dunkin’ Donuts cannot deal with a problem like this, it is really possible causing a bigger problem in the future.

Another typically negative feedback comes from a website called Consumer Affairs: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/food/dunkin_donuts.html. This is a website created specially for company complaints. After checking most of the complaints, I found they are very well written by the kicker and all over 100 words which obviously are all high quality complaints. Dunkin’ Donuts can really learn something from those complaints if it cares.

Suggestion on social platforms

1.  Listening to the groundswell. Listening to the groundswell is a really important step for every company wants to come with the groundswell. But based on the observation of Dunkin’ Donuts’ social media platforms, I think Dunkin’ Donuts still need to enhance this part. 

First, “one-way” community defection. Based on Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s theory: Your brand is what your customer says it is. If Dunkin’ Donuts wants to do better and have bigger improvement on its field, it is really necessary for Dunkin’ Donuts to start listening to groundswell well. In my perspective, if Dunkin’ Donuts open its “one-way” community to the groundswell and let the groundswell declares itself in the community rather than company controlled community, Dunkin’ Donuts will find its disadvantages immediately and benefit from community members’ brilliant idea in many perspectives. 

Second, Dunkin’ Donuts should pay more attention to brand monitoring. Regularly monitoring its online customers and making a monitoring report is really imperative. It helps companies know better about themselves and makes the senior level managers of companies have a better view of their trademark, products and social status. Another advantage of social monitoring is that it will help companies examine the effect of its social media campaign-when the social media campaign gets to the top, which aspect the social media campaign has better performance and so on.

2. Talking to the groundswell. Talking to the groundswell makes the marketing you do have a better result. During the monitoring, I found Dunkin’ Donuts did a lot of social marketing campaign, from basic hashtags posted on Twitter to Facebook “Dance for DD” video upload. But if you observe carefully, these campaigns do not last long and usually end very quickly. In this situation, to get a better ROI, Dunkin’ Donuts can try to talk to the groundswell in a better way. 

First, based on my monitoring, Dunkin’ Donuts barely reply its followers or fans on social platforms. If Dunkin’ Donuts’ Twitter can reply some of the related Tweets or replies, it will help the groundswell form a discussion and will increase Dunkin’ Donuts’ frequency of occurrence on different online social media. 

Second, through talking, Dunkin’ Donuts can keep changing its strategy on its social campaign. Immediate feedback from the groundswell will help Dunkin’ Donuts have the initiative in hands. Whether to keep promoting the social campaign or not, becomes easier to Dunkin’ Donuts. Sometimes an active talking to the groundswell will help Dunkin’ Donuts’ social campaign go as it wants. 

Third, do not just reply the same content. If you look most of Dunkin’ Donuts’ Twitter reply you will find replies like:

They are just like routine, dry and boring. People want to solve the problem directly rather than wait or dial the phone number Dunkin’ Donuts list above. I highly recommend Dunkin’ Donuts learn from Dell.

3.Energizing the groundswell. On energizing the groundswell aspect, Dunkin’ Donuts does better than other aspects. However there are still some details need to be changed. 

First, DD perks promotion. Because DD perks is a combination of App and Coupon, it limits target customers into people who buy the perks card. Nevertheless Dunkin’ Donuts did not have a constant promotion on DD perks online which makes this campaign not popular enough. 

Second, coupons should be available in a variety of tunnels. Inspired by the DD perks App, Dunkin’ Donuts should let its customers use coupons more rather than limit time special offer. This energizing strategy will “force” the groundswell keeps focusing on Dunkin’ Donuts social media accounts and creates a win-win result.

Conclusion

Groundswell is really a “double-edged sword”. It can help a business success and can also destroy a business. Companies which care about the groundswell will benefit from it and create more value beyond their imagination. Dunkin’ Donuts, pioneer of social media marketing, its successor is a good example. Because of the advantage of early entering social media marketing field, it has already created a very popular and good imagine on most of major social media platforms. It shows the power and the benefits from listening, talking and embracing the groundswell.