TOPS Friendly Markets, a retail grocer in Western and Central New York and Northeast Pennsylvania, had no presence on social media channels besides a rarely used YouTube account featuring their broadcast commercials. Chatter on social channels about TOPS was present, but the company had no way to respond or to initiate conversation. TOPS main competitor, Wegmans, had a head start with an active social presence that generated extremely positive sentiment.

Unfamiliarity made TOPS upper management leery of entering into a social media campaign plus their perception that this did not fit the media mix for their core demographic. TOPS was concerned with the amount of effort required to maintain a social media presence. Additionally, there was no consensus for which department would manage the conversation and where the content would come from. Finally, since the TOPS demographic skews older, upper management felt its messaging would not resonate well online.

SKM began utilizing social media monitoring tools to observe the conversation occurring about the brand, competitors and the category in general. We mapped out a content calendar for the remainder of the year to plan the type of communications to distribute. We created a Facebook page with custom tabs to welcome new viewers (to push “Like” activation), and display upcoming events and promotions. SKM also identified a hierarchy for internal communications for customer service, marketing and promotions to determine who should respond to communications, and when.

SKM presented TOPS with our analysis of the conversations occurring on social channels, some of which were created by TOPS employees and were negative in nature. This helped TOPS executives understand that reputation management needed legitimate attention.Since launching the TOPS Facebook page in April, we secured 300 “Likes” the first day and have not looked back. In a short time, TOPS accumulated over 5,300 “Likes,” allowing for delivery of content to a brand new segment. Analytics into who is “Liking” TOPS and how they interact on Facebook has helped shift media buying practices. For example, we can target specific cities where penetration was previously low. Daily, weekly and monthly use has been on the rise since we began, showing that fans are returning to the page for new communications every day.

SKM continues to monitor social media channels for opportunities and has worked with the marketing and customer service teams to address issues and maintain a content calendar.