WHITE PAPER SUBMISSION

SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT OF AMAZON

Submitted by :
Dhruv Panicker
E049, Group 4, SMWA (B)
Industry: Ecommerce

Company: Amazon

The following paper aims to answer the following questions :

What is their social media objective?

What is their social media strategy?

What is Amazon’s online persona?

What is Amazon’s posting frequency?

What is their content like?

Do they perform social media audit?

Which tools does it use?

Which parameters does Amazon assess?

What is their critical response plan?

Are they able to draw inferences out of this data?

How does amazon improve it’s social media strategy?

Amazon’s Social Media Objectives

1. Increase web traffic

2. Increase sales
3. Increase twitter engagements by atleast 2%

Amazon’s Key Performance Indicators

1. Number of likes, retweets and responses on twitter

2. Number of visual posts per week
3. Fraction of website traffic from twitter.

Online Brand Persona and Voice

Adjectives describing the brand

 Innovative
 Unique
 Fast
 Gratifying
 Sleek
 Minimalistic
When interacting with customers

 Friendly
 Accommodating
 Speedy
 Intelligent
 Witty

Tools

1. Hootsuite
2. Buffer
3. Vimeo
4. Afterlight

Amazon’s Social Media Policies

 Be Positive
 Use common sense
 No inappropriate posts
 Wit and sarcasm allowed, but never in a malicious way
 Respond to customers in a time efficient manner

Amazon’s efforts on social media

Facebook

Official page : Amazon.com

Number of followers : 30 million +

Mainly used for : Company updates and product promotion through a comprehensive video strategy

Amazon has over 30 million likes on it’s facebook page. However, there is a reason as to why it is so
popular as a social media savvy company. The company replies to a very high amount of comments
left on its posts. It does so quickly, and provides useful links and information. It also adds the human
touch, by addressing commenters by their name, and each Amazon employee signs off their
comment with their first name. Here are some examples :
When anyone asks a question or expresses a frustration, Amazon’s response is helpful and swift. It
also creates conversations, which is required for brand success on social media.

Customers with facebook connected accounts, can see reviews written by their facebook
connections on their feeds. Promotions wise, Amazon uses Facebook to highlight products and
offers discounts to encourage sales.

When festivals such as Diwali and Christmas are around the corner, the page becomes full of gift
suggestions to be purchased from the website directly.

The official Amazon Facebook page seems to also be a crucial customer touchpoint, with tens of
thousands of external posts and comments being published every month. Amazon uses their official
Facebook page to promote their company news, and feature product promotions through
influencers of all sizes.
The social media managers do not post very frequently (8 posts in the last 30 days), but seem to
have a strong predilection for videos on this specific platform (75% of all content published in the
last 30 days).

Twitter

Main twitter handle: @amazon

Twitter followers: 3 million +

Mainly used for: engaging with customers.

Amazon's Twitter campaign is today less heavy on promotions than it used to be, and instead serves
as a vehicle for driving its 3 million followers towards Amazon's additional services such as Prime
Video and Amazon Music. The Amazon Twitter feed is also used to promote the company's blog
content - a lot of which offers small business advice to those selling on Amazon - and deliver news
about the various things and innovations the company is involved with and up to. Essentially a
platform for content marketing rather than driving direct sales, Amazon's activity on Twitter
nonetheless serves to create and nurture an engaged community of customers, and encourage as
many as possible towards Prime membership.

Aside from the company’s main account, which counts over 3 millions followers, the e-commerce
platform has literally dozens of official accounts for different purposes (e.g. @AmazonHelp for
support questions, @AmazonNews for company updates, etc.), for different products and services
like Amazon Pay or Amazon Echo, as well as for different geographical markets (@amazonmusicjp
for the Japanese market, @AmazonMusicIN for the Indian market, etc.).
Instagram

Official page : @amazon

Number of followers: 1.8 million+

Mainly used for : interviews with artists and authors & product promotion through video content

Amazon’s strategy on Instagram is very similar to how it uses Facebook, except for company news
updates. However, their creative use of Instagram stories also allows them to promote interviews
with artists, authors and influencers, with the option to swipe up to purchase their music, books or
other items on Amazon.
Pinterest

Main account: Amazon

Number of followers: 79,686

Mainly used for: product promotion through thematic mood boards.

Pinterest for Amazon is essentially an extension of its main online store. Pinterest is of course the
one social media site where a significant percentage of users go to browse for purchase ideas. But
when they find a Pin from Amazon, they can simply click on it and are taken either straight to a page
on Amazon.com where they can purchase the product directly, or otherwise to the seller's own
website from where the customer can complete the purchase via Amazon.

Amazon also uses Pinterest to promote bespoke lines, such as Handmade at Amazon, Amazon Home
Services, and Amazon Style for Women. It's all very carefully set up to drive Pinterest users towards
Amazon purchases.

On its Pinterest page, Amazon groups a selection of its best products in several thematic lifestyle
buckets such as Back to College, Wedding Registry Finds or In the Kitchen to attract different
consumer groups back to its own product listings. You’ll note however that Amazon’s community is
significantly smaller than on other networks. Also, when compared to some direct retail competitors
such as Target (over 792,000 followers) or Walmart (over 295,000).

Spark

Last year, Amazon even went so far as to launch its own Instagram/Pinterest-like Amazon Spark,
which could be described as a social network for shopping.

Residing within the Amazon app, Spark is designed to create social engagement that will lead directly
to product purchases.

When users sign up, they are asked to identify topics of interest from an extensive menu, which
includes product categories as well as lifestyle areas such as travel, art & design, fitness, and so on.
Users then receive images of products and other items of interest in a shoppable news feed, where
they can leave comments, make recommendations, and of course click through to make a purchase.
An Overview of Amazon’s key metrics in the month of June
Crisis Management

The Amazon team has a crisis scenario contingency plan.

Here are two examples:

Scenario 1: Inappropriate tweet sent

1. When tweet is detected, take screenshot, delete tweet and alert social media manager and
marketing director
2. Assemble the social media team and marketing director to discuss the next action to be
taken
3. Follow up tweet to be created by the team
4. IF media has picked up on the story, assemble PR team for an official statement.

Scenario 2: Natural disaster hinders delivery

1. Ensure employees and facilities are safe.

2. Send out mass email explaining the situation to all customers
3. Release statement about resources available to employees and customers.
4. Post about the potential relief efforts on all social media platforms.

Thus, it can be seen that Amazon is indeed a leader in this increasing connected world of social
media. It regularly audits it’s social media, finds flaws and has emergency procedures in place in the
case of any untoward incidents.

By being proactive, and pushing the envelope when it comes to social media strategies, Amazon is
leveraging it’s social media presence to it’s highest degree, and is well placed amongst its peers.