Organization Name: Blendtec
Industry: Manufacturer of Blenders
Web references: http://socialmediatoday.com/heidisendible/357931/social-media-success-stories-blendtec
Description of how social media is used for business performance:
If you want people to notice you, you need to do something completely unexpected. With a little bit of creativity and out of the box thinking, companies like Blendtec have been able to reach millions and create buzz about their products through the use of social media. The first step to getting people to buy a blender is getting them to click from YouTube, Facebook or Twitter to Blendtec.com, that’s one of the primary measures the manufacturer tracks to gauge its social media marketing success.
The company’s YouTube channel has 441,991 subscribers and it’s Will It Blend videos have been viewed more than 189 million times. This is where Blendtec’s founder tests whether their blenders can turn items like iPhones and rubex cubes into dust. In addition to the Will It Blend videos on YouTube, more than 90,000 shoppers have “Liked” the Blendtec’s Facebook page and over 700 are talking about them through the new “People Talking About This” metric. After an initial Facebook Like, Blendtec is able to engage with consumers by providing information, such as a recipe or an additional giveaway. Blendtec also uses Google Analytics to track its traffic from social sites and also analyzes other metrics, such as the conversion rate of shoppers who click through and the percentage of shoppers who use coupon codes shared on a social network, to get a sense of whether its social media efforts lead to sales. Blendtec’s biggest measure of success is that sales are up by 700%
Lessons for others:
As social media continues to evolve into a mainstream marketing platform, companies need to ddetermine their overall business objectives and how social media will be used to drive those business objectives. This information provides them with a set of clues as to what they need to measure to determine the level of success of their efforts. Companies will then use these clues to see how metrics fit in to those success measurements and track them over time.
Submitted By: Jennifer Vivian
To contact the author of this entry please email at: jvivian@uwaterloo.ca
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.