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It’s no accident, since Patel publicly supported healthy vending programs in schools. The blog was a place he could share the information he had about the subject, maintain his company’s health conscious image, and draw traffic to his Website.
While the need for information about healthy vending makes Patel feel the blog is worthwhile, he’s not sure social media has a great deal of business value. “We live in a society with information overload…simply having more is not necessarily better,” said Patel. He feels there is too much information for people to sift through on social networking sites, making the return on investment of time and money limited, at least to the vending and OCS operator.
“Success in the social media arena is built around personal connection with customers,” said Susie Weintraub, vice president, strategic marketing and communications, Compass Group North America. Because of this, Compass Group decided to lead its social media initiative with a campaign that would resonate with customers.
In December of 2009, Weintraub’s team developed a Facebook page focusing on its new “Flexitarian” campaign. The campaign calls on people to eat one less meal of meat a week. “It’s not a hard-line stance,” said Weintraub, “…but a choice for those looking for healthier or vegetarian meal options.” Compass Group is partnering with manufacturers to support meatless meals in foodservice accounts.
Compass Group has discovered a powerful ally in social media. When the Facebook page was established in October, it quickly gained 600 fans, people who commented on the page and wanted to be connected to it.
COMPASS GROUP WINS SUPPORT USING SOCIAL MEDIA
In January 2010, the Humane Society of the United States sent out a press release applauding Compass Group’s “Be a Flexitarian” initiative. In the week that followed, the number of fans increased to over 2,000.
“(The response) is what we’d hoped for and more,” said Weintraub. While the fans represent end-users of Compass Group’s services, Weintraub expects it will bring new business as well. “We hope potential clients will see what we’re doing,” she said. Weintraub’s team currently monitors and manages the Facebook site daily, commenting back when appropriate.
Compass Group also maintains a blog called Compass 360 which offers information about diet, food, and personal perspectives from corporate nutritionists. There’s also a Compass Twitter page, a site that lets users post a sentence or two called “tweets” from a computer or mobile phone to a personal Twitter site. Compass’ Twitter page announces company events and news.
B2B USING SOCIAL NETWORKING
One product distributor from Portland, Ore. loves being able to communicate with his vending customers via social media. Curtis Wokal, vice president of operations at Vend Northwest Distributing, signed up for a free blog at blogspot.com and writes almost daily about vending and personal topics. The blog helps him stay in front of his customers.
