company monitoring assignment · 2018. 1. 3. · average likes 24695 240 0 total posts 1612 243 0 0...
TRANSCRIPT
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
Introduction
Founded in 2008, Airbnb is an online marketplace and hospitality service that allows
people to rent or lease home properties and vacations for either short or long periods.
Accommodations include apartments, villas, condos, castles, tree houses, vacation
rentals and farms in over 65,000 cities and 191 countries across the world. Despite the
company not owning any of the properties, Airbnb profits by charging customers a
percentage service fee from both the guests and hosts.
Recently they offer an “Experiences” service where customers can purchase activities
or excursions provided by the host. The company allows the host to set prices and
customize service fees in addition to their standard percentage service fees. The hosts
and guests rely on positive reviews for one another to continue using the service. Airbnb
offers a sense of freedom, flexibility and community when using their services.
Social Media Platforms
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
Airbnb is highly active and engaged with most social media platforms. Based on the
analysis from Klear.com, the order for highest to lowest number of followers is
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Airbnb’s blog and YouTube. Each platform offers a
variety of content to showcase their customer’s home and experiences.
Ranking top for most followers is Facebook but least engagement in terms of likes and
comments. Although Facebook is not the targeted audience, with 9.87 million followers,
this platform is ideal to reach the most of their customers. Majority of the content
focuses on their blog and promoting events. Ideally Facebook could be beneficial in
targeting the 30 to 60 age group but Airbnb is using this platform for customer support.
In contrast to Facebook, Instagram has six times the average likes and the most
average comments. Majority of Airbnb’s targeted audience utilizes this platform and
therefore will be most engaged in the content. Students, couples, families and
customers who want affordable travelling costs while maintaining quality and secruity
fall under this category. Based on the overview above, Airbnb is correctly investing their
time into Instagram.
As well, they also have two additional accounts @AirbnbDesignTeam and
@AirbnbExperiences for behind the scenes of the company. There is potential for a new
audience but these accounts are used for a different service.
These two accounts fall behind from the official Airbnb and lack engagement in
comparison.
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
Airbnb Airbnb Help Airbnb Citizen
Followers 632000 53700 24000
Tweets 35,800 186,000 2763
Likes 23600 1049 727
0100000200000300000400000500000600000700000
Comparison Between Twitter Handles
Followers Tweets Likes
Airbnb Airbnb Design Team Airbnb Experiences
Followers 2500000 18985 15400
Average Likes 24695 240 0
Total Posts 1612 243 0
0
500000
1000000
1500000
2000000
2500000
3000000
Comparison of Airbnb Accounts
Followers Average Likes Total Posts
Twitter is another platform used for customer support that similar to their Facebook
page. Due to Twitter’s word character limitations, Airbnb has to be more calculated.
They created a #BelongAnywhere tag to allow customers to interact with the brand and
drive traffic to their blog. Since their audience are within the 18 to 29 age group, Twitter
is another effective platform.
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
They also created two official handles called @AirbnbHelp for customer support and
@AirbnbCitizen for customers “who wants to learn about and advance home sharing as
a solution” as a sub group of Airbnb.
The remaining platforms are Airbnb’s blog, Linkedln and YouTube with followers of
130.6K, 430K and 93K respectively. Airbnb’s personal blog content cannot be analyzed
by third parties and therefore no engagement can be reported.
LinkedIn has an average of 300 Likes and 8 comments per post and 1-2 posts per
month. Unfortately as the lowest number of followers, they lack interaction with their
audience. The platform is typically a B2B to connect with other businesses and vendors
and little B2C. Therefore Airbnb has avoided time into this platform since the targeted
market is not using LinkedIn.
However, their YouTube channel has 114 videos and 117 million views since March
2015. Airbnb’s aims to give a sense of community, adventure, secruity and affordablity
for their travelling customers. Influencers are dominating social media and impacting the
marketing industry through their own blogs. Since Airbnb’s targeted audience can also
be found here, they should take advantage of YouTube by creating video blogs called
“vlogs” to generate more engagement.
For the purpose of efficency and convience, only Facebook, Instagram and Twitter will
be the main focus of this report.
#BelongAnywhere campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMITXMrrVQU
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
Audience Engagement
Facebook has the most followers but falls second to Instagram for audience
engagement. Interestingly, Airbnb uses this platform to handle their customer service
and compliments. As noted by the example below, their prompt responses to their
customers are done within the same day. In an industry that relies on transpency,
interacting to customer reviews is beneficial to Airbnb to maintain their reputation.
External factors can also affect how a company is viewed. June was LGBT Pride Month
and highest number of audience engagement for Airbnb. The company released six
posts regarding LGBT rights that received positive and negative responses. Creating a
reaction or an emotional post allows the audience to express their opinion and increase
engagement.
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
Male24%
Female76%
Dominant Gender for Instagram
Male Female
In terms of improvement, Airbnb should post content that pertains to the age group of
30 to 60 such as security and convenience. A tutorial on how to use their booking app
or the process of using the company from start to finish would be useful on this platform.
Instagram is a more aesthetics-based platform for a younger audience. Not surprisingly,
the majority audience will be females from ages 18 to 29 who are interested in
travelling, interior designing, lifestyle, gardening and photography.
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
There is little interaction between Airbnb and their customers since Instagram is not
used to handle customer support. Instead, engagement is C2C by tagging, liking and
commenting on Airbnb’s posts. Instagram is able to manage their account positively and
actively to attain and gain new users. Improvements are difficult to comment on.
Twitter has more age range than Instagram and Facebook. This platform is used for
convinencetly in connecting with brands and people, sharing information in real time
and marketing for B2B, B2C and C2C. Female users still dominate but only 16%
difference to male users.
With a limited character count,
Airbnb is more stragetic with their
posts. Simplicity is key for Twitter
and creating hashtags that is
easy to follow and understand is
important.
Lack of hashtag clarification will
involve less interaction and user-
generated content as shown by
the analytics for #airbnbmag,
#rowanontour and
#thriceasnice. Hashtags need to be clear and simplified to encourage users to
engagement with Airbnb on Twitter.
Male42%
Female58%
Dominant Gender for Twitter
Male Female
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
Creating different photos or posts would be beneficial to the company and avoids
overlapping between social media platforms.
Content Review
Airbnb’s Facebook offers similar content to their Instagram and Twitter but has a
narrative component. Unlike Instagram, Facebook has no limitation with adding photos
to their page. Since Airbnb sells a service rather than a product, branding can be
difficult when they do not own materials. Instead the company relies on user-generated
content to market their services. As previously mentioned, the content is related to
community living, travelling, interior designing, lifestyle, gardening and photography.
Their content is appropriate to both Airbnb and the Facebook audience. The first
example is from their Facebook page and the second from Instagram. Although the
photographs are the same, different captions are used to tell different stories. Facebook
is a simple narrate of the home while Instagram is rich in storytelling and more
elaborate.
For the Twitter, which is the third example provided, a video and a concise caption was
used. As a short character handle, the content works for the type of platform and
audience. Less detailed as the other two posts but the video is straightforward but users
are more intrigued.
In all, majority of their photos or content is consistent through each platform but
expressed differently depending on their audience. Facebook being more of photo
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
album style, Instagram is more storytelling and Twitter is a concise and forwarded way
to send different messages with the same content.
Facebook post
Instagram post
COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017
Twitter post
Conclusion
In all, Airbnb manages their social media platforms very well since being launched a
decade ago. From asetheticly-pleasing photos to capturing the right words, the
company understands who and where their audience are located. Airbnb has a strong
sense of identity in the travelling industry and shows consistency throughout their
content. Utilizing their user-generated content, Airbnb strives to being transparent to
everyone using their service. Being a decade old, the company has managed to survive
by strageticly and investing their time on who their consumers are.
References
www.facebook.com/airbnb/ www.klear.com www.keyhole.co
www.instagram.com/airbnb/ www.twitter.com/airbnb