I’ve been doing a lot of research on social media strategies by retailers recently:  Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, a bunch of others.   Mostly I’ve been focusing on how they are leveraging the power of their Facebook presences.  I’m surprised at the range of sophistication and creativity that I’ve seen, given that companies have been working at this for several years now.  There are a number of best practices in place that I think most companies should be pursuing (and which I won’t get into here).  Those that don’t just really come across as laggards at best, and uninspired at worst.

To make my point, I want to look at a couple cases here that I think illustrate this:  Best Buy and Zappos.

Best Buy has been getting a lot of kudos from it TwelpForce work, and well it should.  Through Twitter, they’ve been able to engage a passionate work force to help in-need customers with timely and relevant technical advice.  What a great way to drive loyalty and reinforce the brand.  Really good stuff.  But, let’s take a look at what they are doing on Facebook.  Here is a recent screenshot of their wall, which is the default for www.facebook.com/bestbuy:

They are following some best practices here, particularly through their use of open-ended questions in the posts.  However, with 4.7 million “likes” they have only been able to garner 88 comments for the Lion King promo, and 68 comments for NBA2K12 – both pretty light from an engagement standpoint.  Why?  Well, I suspect that it has to do with the fact that their strategy revolves around promotions, and less about what their audience really wants to talk about.  This page looks more like an in-store circular than a clever way to leverage their fans and their enthusiasm for the brand.

And, what’s more, do they really care who your favorite characters and stars are?  Not likely.  Moreover, this is not data that is useful to them.  They need to revisit their engagement strategies across their Facebook presence and see if they are aligned with their business goals.

Let’s look at Zappos…

With 166K “likes” they have a pretty decent fan base.  Their wall posts are a little random and unfocused, but they extend their engagement deep into their Facebook presence by creating some pretty great FB pages, like this one:

I like this for a couple reasons.  First, they are using this page to collect email addresses.  Nice work.  But what I really like about this is how they are using this polling feature to create engagement and gather relevant information.  Look at the visible data here on their VIP Stylelection page: the Posh Purple cardigan has generated twice as many style votes than the next closest option.  What marketer wouldn’t want this information?  Based on the banner above the voting area, they are clearly intending to use this data to drive a promotion on zappos.com.  Good stuff.

The point here is to remember that social media is about finding new and interesting ways to engage your customers.  When you do, you’ll find that you loyal followers are willing to work with you to create a better business.