Grocery stores on social media

I've always wondered what can a grocery store do in a social media. As long as people need to eat, groceries will exist. The stores however might not be there. With Kesko buying all the stores from Suomen Lähikauppa, the competition has grown. There are stores in every corner, and the question is, which store to choose. So how do you distinguish yourself amongst the others?

Social media is a good place to advertise your store. Running your own facebook-pages gives you free advertisement, but wether the content is good is a different matter. What is good social media content for a grocery store?

There are stores that mainly update their sites by posting sales and offers. Many times I've seen them only copy Keskos weekly advertisement letter to their pages. As good as that is, it is not really sociable. I knew one Facebook-site like this once, but couldn't find it anymore.

Then there are those who advertise their personnel, rather than their stores. Jounin Kauppa is a good example of this. I don't know how much business is booming in Äkäslompola, but it seems that they have a lot of time on their hands to post all sorts of things throughout the day. There is a limit to how much people want to have posts from someone. They do make posts from their store now and again, but mainly to my eye the store owner Sampo is advertising himself. Video of Sampo taking a shower at home is not something I would consider a good social media content for a grocery store.  However they do have more than 500 000 followers. Is their content good or bad? Has their content reached their main customers?

There's been political happenings all throug this spring, and during that time we've had communications from political parties. My own boss has made it clear that it is crucial to stay politically impartial. Using contemporary political issues might make your social media status drop, and make users void your store altogether. Personal opinions are good enough on your own social media status, but it shouldn't be posted on company sites. 

We've made it a point not to delete any criticism the social media customers might post. Social media is for users and in a country with freedom of speech everyone should be allowed to voice their opinions. While writing a post I always try think what is the appropriate thing to say and how to voice things without giving offense. Also checking typos is a good thing. Even though  posts are allowed to be changed after posting, it the changes not necessarily updated to the mainstream posts.

In general social media is like social communication without actually speaking face to face. We have the freedom of speech, but we should still consider what to say and most importantly, how to say it. In social event when you make a mistake or make a bad remark you can always apologies later on. On social media when you make that bad remark, things will hit the fan pretty fast and apologizing might be impossible in the end.