Week 2 - Businesses and their Social Media Presence

Whole Foods Market

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

Whole Foods looks to be deeply invested in Social Media Marketing. Their website contains links to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, and YouTube. Each link is well used, and very current. Having checked this company on Valentine’s Day, I was extremely impressed at how their use of marketing with social media seemed effortless. They had many posts, videos, and pictures with ideas for Valentine’s Day crafts, gifts, and food. Most of pics on Instagram had thousands of likes, their YouTube page had 28,000 subscribers, and their tweets are constantly retweeted. Overall, this company has an impressive social media presence and remains completely current.

Captain’s Helm

http://www.captainshelm.com/

http://blog.captainshelm.com/

I wanted to choose a local business for an example, and found a resale clothing shop that my wife loves to frequent. On their main page I found their Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram, but exploring further on their Facebook account, I found that they also have a very comprehensive blog, which I also included a link to. They have a significant amount of “Likes” on FB, and followers on Instagram, and get a lot of comments and feedback. The most recent posts, comments, and likes were made the day of the search. Overall, they seem to be doing a great job interacting with their community.

Local Tap House

http://localtaphouse.com/

Local Tap House is one of my favorite local eateries, and I was happy to see that they had updated their site and social media since the last time I checked a few months back. They have links to Instagram, Twitter, and Instagram. Instagram has a decent amount of followers with 500+, but Twitter has less than 100. Before a Valentine’s Day post, the most recent Instagram pic was late January, and Facebook was on the same timeline. Overall, they have a decent web presence, but it looks like their social media activity comes in waves.

Harvard Business School

http://www.hbs.edu/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.hbs.edu/about/social-media/Pages/default.aspx

Although this may not be considered a business in the traditional sense, I chose Harvard Business School for a few reasons. Initially, my interest was due to see how effective social media can be for colleges, being that I work at one. Secondly, I thought that choosing a well-known business school would have relevant information for this class.

When looking at the HBS main page, the first link above, I found the main social media accounts for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and Sina Weibo(Chinese microblogging site). However, I was so impressed with the second link above that I included for the readers who may not venture too far. What impressed me most is the sheer number, possibly 50+, of accounts that HBS has for many of their different affiliations, from school alumni to their Social Media Enterprise group. While some of these accounts are not as current as others, most seem to have significant followers. Additionally, this could also be a good study of how much is too much when it comes to social media investment. Most of the major accounts are current up to the day.

Tony Robbins

http://www.tonyrobbins.com/

While I admit to having little knowledge of this individual, aside from the infomercials promoting his work as a motivational speaker, he has built himself a powerful and popular brand. I wanted to see how somebody working without the traditional business, continues to market themselves using social media. This guy has followers in the millions on Facebook and Twitter, and close to that with Google+. His main page also has his LinkedIn and YouTube account, the latter of which has over 100K subscribers. He has for Facebook as recent as the day prior to searching, similar to his tweets and retweets, one of which was retweeting somebody’s joke about Tony Robbins.