The Coca-Cola Company is an extremely successful multinational corporation that produces and sells beverages such as Coca-Cola, Sprite, Minute Maid, Simply Juice Drinks, and etc… Their products can be seen all around the world. Regardless of where you are, Coca-Cola or one of their brands can be found in grocery stores, convenience stores, or restaurants.
The Coca-Cola Company has maintained its brand awareness by utilizing multiple social media platforms. Consumers are able to recognize The Coca-Cola Company’s product by identifying the color of their packaging, the font that they use or simply the brand logo itself. This is a result of its tremendously successful social media marketing strategy and The Coca-Cola Company has maintained its top position in the beverage industry.
Some examples of The Coca-Cola Company’s social media presence can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. (Active links are embedded). By judging their subscriber and interactive numbers on each platform, it can be seen that their social marketing strategy is successful when comparing the subscriber numbers on each social media platform between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Coca-Cola has about 70 million, 0.33 million, and 2.32 million more subscribers respectively to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
https://www.facebook.com/CocaColaUnitedStates/ 
https://twitter.com/cocacola?lang=en 
https://www.youtube.com/cocacola
The Coca-Cola Company uses Facebook to interact with its consumers. The meaning of interacting with consumers is to encourage subscribers to “like”, “comment”, or “share” their posts to increase engagement rates for each post. The higher the engagement rate, the more exposed the brand is to the media environment. An example would be posting promotion videos to inform consumers about this event and encouraging them to purchase their products. Another example would be posting videos to “connect with consumers.” This particular video is about prom, and when consumers see posts that relate to themselves, it would increase the engagement rate of these posts.
In terms of Twitter usage for The Coca-Cola Company, the intent is also to interact with subscribers but the posts that they share are more pictured based and fewer words. The content on Twitter is more “fun” and casual rather than formal and serious. As you can see in this post, having more of a “fun” visual relating Coca-Cola to skateboarding. The post is also asking subscribers to tag their friends to increase exposure to the media environment! Another type of posts Coca-Cola is making on Twitter is by making polls to interact with subscribers. The purpose of this post is to tie Coca-Cola to something fun and interesting so that consumers can relate to the product more!
The Coca-Cola Company’s YouTube Channel, they would post the content of their commercial commercials usually shown on the television. Most of the times, Coca-Cola would make funny TV commercials for sporting events, and if people want to watch it again, YouTube would be the platform that people go to watch the videos. One example would be the commercial video for the Super Bowl 2019. This commercial is about inclusion and that everybody would enjoy Coca-Cola and they should enjoy it together.
With the increasing popularity of mobile applications, Coca-Cola created their own to enable consumers to personalize their experience with Coca-Cola. With all the coke flavors available in Coca-Cola Freestyle fountain dispenser, consumers are now able to mix and personalize their own drinks, and the app will remember the customization so consumers can enjoy the same drink next time. Although the mobile application is not directly related to their social media presence, it allows consumers to relate to Coca-Cola more and personalize their own drinks. The application contributes to the success of connecting Coca-Cola with its consumers.
With the tremendous success that The Coca-Cola Company is having on their social media strategy, people are posting blogs to summarize what Coca-Cola has been doing. The first blog (https://www.pagemodo.com/blog/5-social-media-strategy-lessons-from-coca-cola/) that I found was posted by Alfredo in social media strategy tips. The author summarized Coca-Cola’s social media success is to understand your audience, remember social media is a two-way conversation, leverage crowdsourcing, to be different, and be true to who you are.
The second blog (https://blog.printsome.com/coca-cola-marketing/) that I found was about Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy. As mentioned before, one of the reasons why the Coca-Cola company is extremely well-known around the globe is because of its marketing strategy. For marketing campaigns, other companies have a lot of things worth learning from the Coca-Cola company, so this blog that I found illustrated a few points. To summarize the blog post, one of Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy worth learning is inclusion. A lot of Coca-Cola’s products allow people to feel connected with the brand. Some examples are Coca-Cola bottles with personalized names printed on the packaging or Coca-Cola t-shirts.
The success of the Coca-Cola Company’s inclusion marketing strategy can be seen on Twitter. Below are examples of people tweeting about Coca-Cola. The first twitter post I have selected is about someone drinking Coke on fathers day. This is a result of the consumer feeling connected with the brand and decided to share it on social media. The second post that I found was a consumer sharing about his thoughts on the new Coca-Cola flavor. Coca-Cola has not introduced a new flavor in a significant amount of time. A few months back, they introduced a new flavor and advertised this new drink heavily. This particular consumer decided to share his positive thoughts and reviews.
On top of the social media platform that I talked about above, Coca-Cola also has an Instagram and Pinterest page. Browsing through their Instagram page, most of the posts are about inclusion and allow consumers to relate to the product. The page includes numerous creative artworks or images to expand their social media exposure and stimulate engagement rates. Their posts are not necessarily related to any of the products directly, but it uses a similar color scheme so when consumers would recognize their products immediately. In terms of Pinterest, Coca-Cola posts about food options that consumers can have with their products. It allows Coca-Cola to visually share and discover new combinations of food and their drinks.
In all, the Coca-Cola company has an extremely successful marketing campaign managing their community outreach, media environment exposure and keeping their consumers informed about their new products or just let their consumers feel included. The strategy they have been using has put them in the top position in the beverage industry for numerous years. By looking at the number of blogs about their marketing and social media marketing strategy, it can be seen that people are trying to use the same strategy to achieve success in different industries.
MI 201 Assignment 3 