Chapter-18: Social Media and Marketing

Starbucks use some social media to facilitate conversation. 

         First of all, Starbucks have accounts on mainstream social networking websites, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Flicker group. And on all of these websites, Starbucks have a quite large number of followers, so they can communicate with their customers conveniently. 

            The most important one I want to mention is, on the official Starbucks website, there is a section called "My Starbucks Idea". People can leave his/her idea to Starbucks on the website. People can share the ideas that matter to them and they can find out how Starbucks are putting those ideas to work, to  shape the future of Starbucks. Any visitor can look at the ideas that have been posted and read Starbucks Ideas in Action blog. If people sign up to be a registered member of the site, they can also submit their own ideas, vote and comment on ideas submitted by other people.

Starbucks sometimes use social media to hold some special event. For example, few days ago, Starbucks hold a "tweet a coffee" event on Twitter. Tweet-a-coffee is a NEW way to send $5 Starbucks Card eGifts to Twitter friends and followers. It is very simple to tweet a $5 dollar eGift card to your twitter friends, or followers, just go to twitter, link it to your Starbucks account and tweet @tweetacoffee to @the one you want to give him/her a eGift card,  then you are all set, he/she can redeem the eGift card right on his/her mobile phone or at Starbucks participating stores.