Social Media: Objectives Strategies, & Tactics

by

Lingyi Hou

Maria C. Nevett

Anjana Vasan

Fall 2014

Part - 1: General Information

Background Information

Founded in 2009, Uber’s ridesharing service has revolutionized transportation across the world. Within six months of

its launch in San Francisco, the company had between 3,000 to 6,000 users and had already done around 20,000

rides. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Uber been launched in over 200 cities across the world and 1

continues to expand its market.

Brand Name & Manufacturer

Uber Technologies, Inc.

Address: 1455 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phone:(415) 986-2104 2

https://www.uber.com/

Brand Analysis and Positioning

Uber filled a gap in the market that people weren’t aware existed, hence reinventing the transportation sector.

Public transportation, while convenient, isn’t reliable in most cities and countries. Uber has removed the struggle of

payment (cash and credit), and the effort of trying to find a cab.

“By seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through our apps, we make cities more accessible, opening up more

possibilities for riders and more business for drivers.” 3

Convenient, collaborative, and affordable. These are the words that come to mind when one thinks of Uber. The

company's goal is for customers to have an experience, rather than just a ride.

There are three key aspects that Uber wants to be known for are providing its customers the following benefits:

1. Emotional benefits such as safety and a memorable experience.

2. Consumer benefits such as ease of use, convenience, and hassle-free experience.

1 "Uber - What's Fueling Uber's Growth Engine? - GrowthHackers."GrowthHackers Uber Whats Fueling Ubers Growth

Engine Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. 2 Unverified. 3 "Uber." About. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2014.

3. Product benefits and attributes such as a variety of travel options — UberT, UberX, Black Car, Rush — based

on cost, comfort, and need.

According to Infotrends , brand perceptions are generally developed over time through various sources: 4

● Previous experiences with the brand

● Interactions with the service representatives

● Recommendations from friends, family, and colleagues

● Reviews by reputable sources such as the media, opinion leaders, and influencers

● Advertising

Uber has been pretty good at getting its name out in the market. They’ve built strong relationships with the local

communities, and word of mouth is Uber’s strongest source for attracting new customers. However, although

company has been noticed by the media and the public, it hasn’t always been positive.

The Gap

● With safety being one of the key elements that Uber claims to offer its customers — through multiple

background checks and verifications of their drivers — there have been incidents where customers haven’t

been safe, and Uber drivers have been the biggest threat to their safety (case in point: Robert Chicas ). 5

● There have been multiple incidents where Uber drivers have publicly protested against the company’s

policies and treatment.

● Additionally, there have been cases where customers’ have been overcharged for their fares.

These things contradict the brand image the company’s trying to portray.

Target Market

Uber’s success initially began with event sponsorship in the San Francisco/Bay area, specifically at technology and

venture-capital events, providing free rides for attendees to and from the event venues. Uber identified the right,

well-connected customers, and gave them a “wow” experience, especially in a city with spotty transportation. Some

of the market potential for Uber include people at large events, sport events, restaurants and nightlife, holidays, and

cities with unpredictable weather.

4 "Brand Perception & Decision Making." Brand Perception & Decision Making. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2014. 5 "Uber Rider Might Lose An Eye From Driver's Hammer Attack. Could Uber Be Held Liable?" Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Uber’s target market, particularly in New York, can be segmented based on certain attributes:

Demographic:

● Generation “Y” — Single men and women between the age 20 and 39

● Generation “X” — Single men and women from the age 40 and above

● Newly married couples with no children; medium to high annual disposable income

● Middle income adults and families with an annual disposable income of $50,000 and above for Uber’s

non-luxury Sedans and SUVs (Uber X and Uber XL)

● High income adults and families with an annual disposable income of $150,000 and above for Uber’s luxury

Sedans and SUVs (Uber Black and Uber SUV)

● Corporations and business executives for Uber for Business

● Drivers who own appropriate vehicles, with a clean record

Psychographic:

● Tech-savvy, extremely social individuals

● New Yorkers, tourists, and business executives on a hurry; those who prefer convenience over the subway

● People with busy lifestyles or people who favor luxury

● Businesses which involve frequent travels around the city

Part - 2: Analysis

Although Uber has an active online presence, it isn’t necessarily engaging. In this part, we’re going to go into detail

and analyze Uber’s presence on various social media platforms, with specific focus on New York City.

Website Analysis 6

Uber’s website (http://www.uber.com) has the following features:

● Extremely appealing to the eye, especially to the younger generation.

● Every page has an invitation for visitors to sign up for an account, thus encouraging

engagement.

● The pages are detailed and informative, for customers

as well as drivers looking to join Uber. It lists:

○ The cities that have access to Uber’s services

○ App Features

6 Statistics pulled from Alexa.com on 10/30/2014.

○ Safety Measures

○ Information on Uber for Business

○ Company Information on the “About Us” page

○ Help Center

○ Career

○ Legal Information

○ Blog

● The pages are easy to navigate.

However, having said that, there’s still room for improvement:

1. The social media icons are not visible -- they’re located at the bottom of the page, and the links to all the

major platforms where Uber has its presence are not provided.

2. No contact information for the company is provided anywhere on the site.

Social Media

Facebook 7

Uber has a Facebook account for the company as whole, which is https://www.facebook.com/uber, and currently has

742,463 likes, as on 10/31/2014.

Additionally, the company also has Facebook accounts for each city it has a presence in. The page we were able to

find for New York is https://www.facebook.com/pages/UBER-New-York/799022973472432. This page was created on

10/22/2014 (just 9 days ago) and doesn’t seem to be verified, hence we’re unsure if it’s an official page. Assuming it

isn’t the official page for Uber New York, we’re going to analyze Uber’s official Facebook page instead.

The data on the right was obtained between the

dates September 16, 2014 to October 16, 2014. As

you can see:

● On 10/16, Uber had 688, 039 fans; on

10/31, Uber has 742, 463 fans, and 26,430

people talking about this. In 10 days, Uber’s

Facebook fans have increased by 7.91%,

i.e. 54,424 fans.

7 Data obtained from Quintly.com

● The number of fans were increasing at the rate of 11.4% in the previous month.

On the other hand, Lyft’s social media statistics during the same 30-day period (between September 16 to October

16) are as follows:

● Fans: 221,883

● People talking about this: 4,700

● Own Posts: 48; User Posts:663

● Likes: 11,686

● Comments: 1,046

● Shares: 544

● Interactions total: 13,276

● Interaction Rate: 0.1283%

● Response Rate 7.9%

Content Analysis:

● Overall, Uber posted only 11 times in the previous month, less than 0.4 posts per day, and 45.45% of them

are photos and 54.55% are links.

● User posts are 890, but most of them are complaints.

● Uber has done a very good job with visual content and sharing interesting information related to making

travel fun.

Some of Uber’s posts are more popular than others:

● Uber’s PR initiatives such as Uber Health, Uber Kittens, Uber Veterans, Uber Voting, Uber Experience, and its

launches -- Uber Everywhere, have been highly successful. Generally, community-oriented posts have been

popular, in comparison to product/company oriented posts.

On 11/4/2014, the engagement rate on Uber’s

latest Facebook post is 57+12+12/757,125 x 100 =

0.01%

With total 1,593 interactions through 949 likes, 484

comments, and 160 shares, Uber’ s interaction rate is 0.09% in the previous month.

While Lyft, which is Uber’s competitor, has an engagement rate of 0.02%, despite having much lesser fans.

According to Michael Leander, an international marketing expert:

● An engagement rate above 1% engagement rate is good.

● 0.5%-0.99% engagement rate is average.

● An engagement rate below 0.5% likely means that you need to realign your messages to that of your

audience’s expectations and in the process attract more compelling and engaging messages from your

community members.

Uber’s response rate is only 30%, which is very low and indicates that most customers don’t receive a response for

their post on Uber’s Facebook page.

Based on the above two factors, we can say that Uber’s engagement level on its Facebook page is very low, and it

has a lot of room for improvement.

Twitter

● Uber has a main account -- @Uber -- on Twitter, which is the central account for the brand, and has

followers from all over the world. Currently, the main account has 183,544 followers . The account was 8

created in 2009, and has posted only around 12,000 tweets, which isn’t a great amount of activity.

● Uber follows a strategy where it has a separate account on Twitter for each city, and currently has over 200

accounts on Twitter (one for each city with Uber’s presence) New York’s Twitter handle is @Uber_NYC.

Currently, the New York account has 23,507 followers , making it the second largest Uber account on 9

Twitter, following the main @Uber account.

● This strategy of having a separate account on Twitter for each city is good for Uber, because it allows

personalized and relatable content catered to each city/country’s audience.

● However, the engagement level for Uber, specifically Uber New York, has been very low. On average, the

retweets Uber receives are as low as 3, and favorites are around 10.

8As on 11/2/2014 9As on 11/2/2014

● The content is mostly product-centered, and it’s not working for them, not taking into account occasional

initiatives such as Uber Health (flu shots), and Uber Voting etc. which have been more successful.

On 11/4/2014, the engagement rate on Uber

New York’s latest tweet is 2+25/23,577 x 100

= 0.11%

On 11/3/2014, the engagement rate on the

Uber’s latest tweet is 5+21/184,210 x 100 =

0.014%.

Lyft, one of Uber’s main competitors, has an engagement rate of 0.0096%.

Taking the above two things into consideration, it is clear that Uber has a better engagement rate on Twitter,

especially Uber New York.

YouTube

● Uber currently has only one account on Youtube . It can be 10

found at https://www.youtube.com/user/UberWorldwide/

● As the name implies, this account is for the brand as a whole,

and unlike its strategy for other social media platforms, the

company doesn’t have one account for each city on Youtube.

● Currently, Uber has 1,869 subscribers on Youtube, and 548,858

profile views. The account was created on Feb 15, 2012.

● As with Uber’s accounts on other platforms, the engagement level on Youtube isn’t stable. On average, their

videos only receive around 100 to 200 views. Some videos, such as Uber Kittens, and Deadmau5 taking

Uber, have been much more engaging (7,988 views, and 332,358 views respectively) in comparison to videos

about their products or employees.

10 "Earned Media Drives Brand Awareness for Uber on YouTube." ReelSEO RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2014.

● “Just 12.5% of Uber's YouTube views come from its own channel, with a majority of those views coming

from paid promotion. The vast majority of views about the brand, 87.5%, comes from videos created by

the YouTube community.” 11

● Videos are generally more engaging than text because social media strategies with visual appeal have in

general, been more successful. People prefer content that’s more visual as they feel more involved when the

come across the content. Uber shares these videos across other social media platforms which help them

reach more audience, but the content itself needs to be improved.

● The trend that can be observed here is content that’s more personal, relatable, and current -- such as

pop-culture references, and topics people love talking about like kittens -- are more appealing to viewers

than content about Uber and its products. It is clear what works and what doesn’t, and Uber needs to do

more of what works.

● Content Analysis: Uber’s videos can be classified into three types: entertaining, emotional, and

informational, as the chart below indicates:

i. Among them, the entertaining videos are the most popular and engaging ones. Uber partnered with

famous music producers and DJs who are avid car enthusiasts to create cool and inspiring videos.

ii. Emotional videos are the second most popular content on Uber’s Youtube account. Human elements,

such as cute cats, lovely children, warm families, and honorable veterans, make the videos touching

and engaging.

11 "Earned Media Drives Brand Awareness for Uber on YouTube." ReelSEO RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2014. 

iii. Weakness: most of the videos about Uber’s drivers have received very limited views, around one or

two hundred. It’s mainly because their stories are not that interesting to Uber’s audience.

Blog

● Uber has a main blog, which can be accessed through Uber’s website. The URL is http://blog.uber.com/

● Additionally, Uber also has separate city blogs, for each of the cities where it has its presence. Uber New

York’s blog is https://blog.uber.com/nyc

● The topics covered have been the same across most social media platforms, but the blog provides further

information regarding Uber’s initiatives, the most recent being Uber Kittens, in partnership with

Cheezburgers and ASPCA. The main focus has been about Uber’s products/services, trying provide as much

information as possible to readers. In their view, it probably increases credibility of the company.

● While the main blog provides further information through pages for events, people, press, product updates,

and data, Uber New York doesn’t have any additional information.

● The biggest drawback here is the layout of the blog. While pleasant to look at, the blog doesn’t provide

readers with the option to subscribe, or comment on posts, thus forcing the engagement level to be nil.

Additionally, the blog is a great platform to direct readers to your social media accounts as well, but Uber’s

layout lacks a sidebar, and there are no links to its social media accounts.

New York’s Blog Content Audit

Topic Date Content Notes

The Weekender Nov 7 Activities in New York City this

upcoming weekend

Very comprehensive. Covers topics

ranging from from Veteran’s Day to

New-York taste.

Behind the Wheel

with…Pin

Nov 4 Personal story about top-rated

Uber partner, Pin, in NYC

The story is special, because Pin is deaf,

but smart and handsome. Emotional

appeal.

Three Septembers of

Uberx in New York City

Oct 29 Uber’s three-year progresses in

NYC since launched in 2012

Includes infographics. Clear and visually

appealing.

Uber Kittens is back Oct 29 How Uber delivers kittens on

demand on National Cat Day

Includes an Uber kitten video. Cute and

informative.

On the Road with…

Shaprece

Oct 24 Profile an artist, Shaprece, in a

Q&A format

Includes quotes about her experience

with Uber.

Content Analysis for Uber’s New York Blog:

● The contents are localized both culturally and informationally, tailor-made for New York City.

● The content can roughly be categorized into four types:

1. “Weekender” Series: lists all special activities happening in NYC during the upcoming weekend.

2. “On the Road with…” Series: Profile of a celebrity in NYC, such as musicians at NYC music festivals,

entrepreneurs at NYC food festival.

3. “Behind the Wheel with…” Series: Profile of an Uber partner in NYC with a special story.

4. Uber Special Events: Introduces Uber’s latest special events, making the most of current trends and hot.

For example, Uber Kittens at National Cat Day, and Uber Health during flu season.

Other Platforms

Google Plus:

● Uber has a profile on Google Plus -- https://plus.google.com/112684473482252498171/posts and it’s

extremely inactive.

● The account was created on March 8, 2013 and despite the 940,047 profile views (as on 11/4/2014),

currently has no followers. The last post made by Uber was on November 19, 2013.

Instagram:

● Uber’s instagram profile can be found at http://instagram.com/uber. The account was created in October

2013, and as on 4/11/2014, Uber has 39,710 followers. They’ve made 61 posts, and receive 461 likes on

average. As on 11/4/2014, the engagement rate on Uber New York’s latest post on Instagram is 134 likes +

7 comments /8,405 followers x 100 = 1.67%.

● Uber’s main account has an engagement rate of 2.7% on Instagram. On the other hand, Lyft has an

engagement rate of 2.31% on Instagram, despite having much less followers, which means Uber has to

change its strategy to improve social media engagement.

Strategies to Improve Uber New York’s Social Media Presence

● While having localized Twitter/Facebook accounts is a great way to personalize content, we find it

counter-productive to have one for each city, due to Uber’s rapid expansion. Managing many accounts (for

each city) takes up too much time, energy, and resources. Instead, we recommend an account for each

country, where the content is still personalized to the local community, and it also provides the company

with more material to post creative content. We have the same suggestion for Facebook as well.

● Integrate customer service with the FB and Twitter accounts by responding to queries in a timely manner.

While Uber does this, it isn’t consistent. Also, they divert each query to the appropriate city’s social media

account, and they’re unable to answer queries made to Uber’s main account on FB or Twitter in a helpful

manner.

● We have observed that the only time customers love talking about Uber on social media is when they

receive/gain something, or if the topic is of interest to them, personally or due to the community. Hence, we

have also developed some content strategy suggestions taking advantage of this.

Sample Content Strategies:

● A “peer reviews” page where customers can share their experiences and provide feedback.

● Establish an Uber community page within the website so fans/customers can have discussions there.

● Create content that don’t mention Uber in every post, but talk about what’s interesting to their target

audience. For example, Uber can make their posts more relatable by featuring their riders, instead of just

the drivers, and portray their voices through aggregated or crowdsourced content from its large fan base

on an interesting topic to its users to make their content across all platforms more interactive and relevant.

● To target college students, Uber can highlight Uber Split Fare using fun college stories from its customers.

Something along the lines of “Go out and have fun with your friends, Uber’s got your back”

● One of Uber’s biggest criticisms has been the issue of safety. Some people perceive that it’s not as safe as

the company says it is. Also, women tend to feel less safe if they’re riding alone. To target these two issues,

the brand can launch an #UberKickass campaign. Similar to Uber Kittens, and Uber Health, this campaign

can provide free self-defense classes for a day, and provide free rides to and from these classes for Uber

customers. To make this campaign more interactive on social media, Uber can ask the question, “What

makes you feel safe?” to its users and they can respond using the #UberKickass hashtag.

● Uber Hero Campaign: Share stories about how Uber drivers help the community and change the world.

Stories could be from Uber drivers’ personal lives, or things that take place on-the-job. The goal is to inspire

the community, and spread positivity with these stories. Emotional appeal is key. For example, "John Shan, a

Uber driver, drove a woman in labor to the hospital, and was a part of the beautiful moment" etc.

● Additionally, Uber could host a campaign to understand customer perception where customers can share

their experiences and provide feedback using the #UberExperiences hashtag.

● “Uber Loves You” Campaign: To generate loyal fans and customers, we recommend Uber points. This

creates a more community feeling among its users, and generates a loyal set of fans. For every $100 a user

spends on Uber, they receive a $5 or $10 credit to use on a ride.

● “Gift an Uber” Campaign: Order an Uber for someone else. By promoting Uber as a gift, you add value to the

experience. It’s a chance to create a memory. The campaign can provide on the emotional appeal to its

audience. For example, gift an Uber for Mother’s Day, let her catch up with her grandkids. The campaign’s

focus should be on getting loved ones together by closing the distance between them.

Part - 3: Public Relations

The influencers that have contributed to Uber’s success are mostly celebrities who have used Uber’s service and

talked about it on social media, such as Lindsay Lohan, Neil Patrick Harris, Snoop Dogg, Serena Williams, and Soulja

Boy. However, we’ve identified three primary influencers who have contributed to Uber’s popularity :

Primary Influencers

● Ryan Sheckler: Ryan Sheckler is a 24-year old professional

American skateboarder, entrepreneur, and former star of the

MTV-produced reality television series, Life of Ryan. He was

listed in “15 Most Influential Skateboarders of All-Time” on Fox

Weekly.

Sheckler is a strong influencer because he’s the perfect

reflection of Uber’s target market: a 24-year old who travels a lot and looks for convenience. His celebrity

status has given him many followers around his age with similar interests. He’s cool and relatable -- his

followers are eager to listen to what he has to say.

Ryan Sheckler is not a leader for the competition as he has repeatedly endorsed Uber on social media

(mainly Twitter) and has not done the same for the competition.

● Peter Diamandis: is an engineer, physician, and

entrepreneur best known for being the founder

and chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation, the

co-founder and chairman of Singularity

University and the co-author of the New York

Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better

Than You Think . 12

Diamandis is an expert in technology, has given Ted Talks, writes for Forbes magazine, and was named one

of the world’s 50 greatest leaders by CNN Money. These attributes give him credibility with the target

audience, especially with Uber for Business. People trust him. The fact that he’s an expert on the subject,

and that he’s a successful entrepreneur creates faith among his followers -- they believe he knows what

he’s talking about.

Peter Diamandis, although not an influencer for the competition right now, could be thought of as an

influencer for this new industry -- one where “riding is made easy.”

● Nomadic Matts, the blogger of “Nomadic Matts Travel Site” which has been ranked top 3 in general travel

blog . 13

● Central theme of the blog: Learn how to travel cheaper, better, and

smarter

http://www.nomadicmatt.com

● His blog has 24,284 Feedburner RSS membership, 85,167 unique

monthly visitors, and 27,446 Google indexed pages. He also has a

Facebook page with 69,912 fans, a Twitter account with 70,000

followers, a Google+ account with 1,101,261 followers and a Pinterest account with nearly 900

followers.

● He has a huge fan base, loves to travel, and

discover new/cool things. It makes him an ideal

potential influencer -- if he travels with Uber and

shares it with his fans, it would help Uber reach a

large number of travel-lovers, who could potentially to be regular customers. He is currently not a

thought leader for Uber’s competitors, but he could be.

12 "Peter Diamandis." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Oct. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. 13 Blogmetrics.org

Part - 4: Conclusion

● Uber has several competitors in New York City:

○ Get Taxi (Gett), offers the same service, and was founded in 2010, but it just started in New York

City (Uber offers it services throughout New York, not just Manhattan.) Their social media is not

very developed, not close to Uber’s work.

■ They promote on social media that all rides, no matter the length are $10.

■ They just have Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, as well as a website.

■ They have 104,000 page likes on Facebook and 4,525 followers on Twitter.

○ Hailo, also offers the same service, the possibility to get a car ride through an app.

■ They have Facebook and Twitter account, as well as the website.

■ Within the U.S. it’s only in New York, but the website is not specific as to if their services

are limited to a certain part of New York.

■ It’s hard to find social media within the website. They have 2,700 followers on Twitter

and 79,151 likes on Facebook.

■ Their website has more visits and time spent per view that Get Taxi, but still a lot less

than Uber.

○ Lyft, is Uber’s greatest competitor in New York. It was launched in New York very recently on July

11th 2014. Their services differentiate from Uber in that people catch rides with strangers and pay

them for it. It’s about sharing a ride.

■ It offers its services in all boroughs, as does Uber.

■ Even though it’s newer in New York than the other two competitors, given that is a bigger

company overall it has more muscle and strategy to compete against Uber. Specially since

it offers better prices.

■ Uber’s website is better ranked and it has more visits that last longer time. Which means

that Uber’s website is getting visitor more engaged than Lyft’s.

14

14Alexa.com

■ Lyft’s social media strategy is good and improving, for example on Facebook the

engagement for Lyft (on any given day) is 0,02% and Uber’s is 0,01%. Meaning that Lyft

has a better rate even though it has less followers.

■ Their engagement rate on Twitter is lower that Uber’s and Uber New York, but is

important to state that Lyft’s followers have been growing exponentially as is shown in

the charts below.

Although Uber seems to be the winning brand, the company should definitely be aware of Lyft. They’re

growing at a fast rate and they’re social media strategy seems to be good and engaging. So, although Uber

has better rates, more followers, etc. this could be for not too long.

For example, the following charts shows how six months ago Uber’s followers growing rate was bigger than

Lyft’s, and how today they are growing at the same rate.

15

15 SocialBakers.com