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. 

Living Deauville on social media

Living Deauville is an interior decoration store. They have an actual store in Naantali where customers frequent but also an online store. Their products vary depending on seasons. 

They are quite active on Instagram. They post pictures of installations and ideas. They keep up with seasons and holidays, and they post them often. They also make instant Instagram videos.

They have linked connection with Instagram and Facebook, so once they update one, they also upload the same message to the other. On Facebook they make also other updates, such as special offers and season sales. I like it that they start their sites with customer reviews. 

I think that this store is a good example of active social media usage.

Mentor Hirvensalo on social media

Mentor Hirvensalo is your basic neighbourhood gym with personal trainers for every customer. Their product is pretty much customer service, so they don't really have a product to sell on internet. The actual product that they sell is reputation. The better the feedback, the better chances they have to get new customers. 

On Facebook customers can contact the company by calling or leaving messages. They have opening hours on display and they make posts to inform if it differs from the usual. Their pages are open to customers to rate, to comment, to question, to like, to follow. They keep updates weekly for customers to stay in touch, to remind people to attend and use their memberships.

On Instagram they post pictures as expected. Their images consist of fit good looking people who are up to speed in bodybuilding, and of the gym itself. There are a few hazy pictures that don't seem to have any correlation to their products.  They don'd seem to bother posting on Instagram much. 

On a day to day activity an idea could be to a have a personal trainer, or a customer, blog or update his or hers progress through a period of time. This might give more kick to others to activate and try out different styles, weights or machines. To actually get inspired to actively move for a purpose needs a lot of effort. Following someone else's journey through difficulties and victories gives others hope. 

On Instagram they don't seem to bother at all. They seem to rely on customers using hashtags to link them, but there are no customer pictures on the site, nor any link to them. #mentorhirvensalo has more posts than their actual site. Maybe they could make a promotional campaign, where they ask people to hashtag them and reward customers with discounts or free passes.

Instagram as a new social media tool

Instagram is basically about photos. Social media users share photos or videos through this application with other users. This service is owned by Facebook, and therefore, posts can be shared not only in Instagram but also in Facebook, and other Facebook, Inc owned social media tools. 

Instagram is used mainly with mobile application, but can also be accessed through computers website interface. The application allows users to upload photos or videos, modify them with different filters and tag them. Theses tags enable other users to find photos. The application also provides a messenger type of communication between users. 

Users can keep their profile private and select their own followers, or they can make it public and receive information as an organisation as to who and where the followers are from. Users can choose to follow users and tags or locations. 

I like that I can post all my photos in Instagram and have them also posted in Facebook at the same time. What I would like more is to post my photos from my computer, and not through my phone application only. Also the 1:1 aspect ration on photos is annoying, so it's good that you can post other ratio too. Still if you want to post panorama view, then you have to use other social medias. When connected with Facebook Instagram will automatically reconcile if there are other sites you are upholding, and allows you to post photos, not only on your own Facebook site, but also on your companies site.

Compared to Facebook the services provided are quite limited, but then again if the service is focused on photos, then it should be enough. I have yet to discover wether they have groups or communities that you can join as private person, and share photos with those in the group, but not outsiders. Adding hashtags makes everything so public. Instagram is publicity.

Facebook as a service tool for companies.

Facebook provides same applications for companies as for single users. Difference is that everything a company posts is public. 

Companies can post comments, videos, photos, just like any other user. For companies there can be more than just one publisher doing the posts. They can create events, services and all sorts of advertisement. Companies can like different sites and pages just like any other user, or share posts. 

Companies posts are posted on the front page of those who follow and like their site. Companies receive information of their content users, post views, likes and shares. With these information Facebook offers services to widen the post receiving users audience.

Users can communicate with the companies with messages to the publishers. Users can rate the site and company. 

With my company we post critical information, such as holiday opening hours or information of new products procured for instant for mothers day. We create contest where people can partake by sharing, liking and commenting the posts. We also post timely comedy that might have been filmed on our store. 
Facebook is also a fast way for the customers to contact us and acquire information.

Facebook as a personal social media tool

Facebook is a social media tool which provides different services for users. Users can find friends, make friends, share photos or videos. Users can post motions, feelings, opinions or ideas. Facebook is an open online communication platform where users create their own content and be who they want to be. It can be accessed through different devices that allow usage of internet. 

Registration is free for anyone over 13 years of age. Once registered, users can create their own profile, customise it to their liking. After finding, friends users can group them in different categories. With these categories users can decide who can see their posts and activities. 

All the posts appear on the front page. With notification settings users can decide what alerts they receive. Facebook also calculates which persons users follow and whose posts they dismiss. This way they can single out whose posts single users like to follow and who to discard. That way the front page is full of information the users like to see and not cluttered with all the possible posts that could be there. 

Facebook actively recommends friends. It reminds you of your friends birthdays. It advertises activities near you and which your friends are actively participating in. It reminds you of your friends stories and your own old stories and posts. It lets you play with your friends in online games through Facebook.

Facebook also allows users to create groups with interests. They can be open to anyone or classified as private group with invitation only. Facebook also allows users to create accounts for companies and manage them through your personal accounts. 

Within Facebook is private messenger, through which users can send private instant messages to friends. It is a lot like old Microsoft windows messenger that allows user to exchange photos and videos, files and audio, react with emoticons. The service also supports voice and video calling. 


I primarily use Facebook to chat with friends through messenger application, post photos of my activities and follow friends with their activities. It is also a very good application to find background information on people, that allow their profile to be seen. 

I also follow different content providers, such as Unilad, who post users videos that are given to them. Or comedians, such as  Foil arms and hog, who provide users with a video a week to laugh.