1. A Social Media Strategy Analysis
JORDAN JACOBSON
SMM- SPRING 2013
2. INTRODUCTION TO SKINNYGIRL
“The Cocktails”- began as just
Ready To Serve Margarita
• Low calorie
• Simple
• Easy
Brand extends from the
cocktails to serve as a
“friend” that promotes
health and overall wellness
for women including advice
for recipes as well as
fashion and makeup tips
4. SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
• Friendly
Facebook Socialite
• Polls/Question
• Lead to Other
Channels
Twitter
• Create
Community
• Capture the
“Lady”
Pinterest
• All-
encompassing
• Guides and
How To’s
YouTube
• Focus on
Insiders
5. OUTCOMES
• Facebook- Failure • Pinterest- Growing
• 800, 471 Likes • 5, 576 Followers
• High Engagement- • Low Engagement- not
Positive and Negative enough Followers
• Only responds to positive • Active on Channel
comments • Great Content- Clever
• Links to Blogs, Website Boards
• Twitter- Success • YouTube- Failure
• 52, 721 Followers • 663 Subscribers; 208,495
• High Engagement- Video Views
Positive • Low Engagement
• Strong Sense of • One Way Communication
Community
6. RECOMMENDATIONS
Facebook Twitter Pinterest YouTube
Respond to ALL Continue Seek Out
engagement- Building Influential Create Calls to
even negative! Community People to Follow Action
Connect Other Focus on Key Tag Them in Need Viewer
Channels Influencers Posts Participation-
Contest?
7. REFERENCES
• Happy Healthy Hip Parenting. (2012, May 12). [Web log message].
Retrieved from
http://happyhealthyhip.com/blog/2012/05/09/new-girl-in-town-
skinnygirl- cocktails/
• ISKAYA. (2013, February 24). [Web log message]. Retrieved from
http://socialmediadrivethru.com/tag/skinnygirl-cocktails/
• SkinnyGirl Cocktails. (2013). Community. Retrieved from
http://www.skinnygirlcocktails.com/community
• SkinnyGirl Cocktails. (2013). The Cocktails. Retrieved from
http://www.skinnygirlcocktails.com/the-cocktails
• SkinnyGirl Cocktails. (2013). About Us. Retrieved from
http://www.skinnygirlcocktails.com/about-us
• SkinnyGirl Cocktails. (2013). [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from
https://www.facebook.com/skinnygirl
• SkinnyGirl Cocktails. (2013). [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from
http://pinterest.com/skinnygirl/
• SkinnyGirl Cocktails. (2013). [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/skinnygirl
• SkinnyGirl Cocktails. (2013). [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from
https://twitter.com/Skinnygirl
Notas do Editor
Hi! Welcome to A Social Media Strategy Analysis of Skinnygirl Cocktails by me!- Jordan Jacobson
Skinnygirl Cocktails consist of 3 lines of low calorie, simplistic alcoholic options including premixed drinks, wines, and vodka. The entire empire began with the original margarita recipe from Bethenny Frankel several years ago. Sheembodies everything we love about the woman we want to be- healthy, strong, feminine, and fun! As you’ll see, this brand does a great job at consistently positioning themselves as that friend you most want to be like, the “lady” of the group. Skinnygirl Cocktails were acquired by Beam Inc. in March 2011 and since then have expanded from the margarita to what you see now-the “girls”. This expansion has been wildly successful particularly because of such a loyal following and fan base Bethenny and her margarita drink already had. But, with Skinnygirl being thrown in with the big league spirit companies, she needed more than just a loyal fan base to continue to increase sales across all 3 lines. This, social media.
Skinnygirluses their channels to increase awareness about all 3 of their lines of alcohol as well as a number of other ideas and concepts that the brand embodies. They want to increase engagement and get women to really focus on leading healthy, balanced, fun lifestyles. Skinnygirl wants to hear these women’s stories and build a community which in the long run will hopefully increase their sales of all product lines, not just the cocktails. One example of a really great way that Skinnygirl related to these women was their Oscar campaign. They were constantly Facebooking and Tweeting throughout the day and donated $2500 to Dress for Success each time someone wore a red gown on the red carpet. Click on the red circle labeled “Oscars” to see how they stacked up to other brands the day of the event.
The channels that skinnygirl uses in their strategy to increase awareness, engagement, and sales include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. Facebook is used to drive consumers to blogs that are written by the Skinnygirl “insiders”-a group of women who are experts in fashion, food, the social scene, and more that collaborate and give advice to consumers through the skinnygirl brand. There are a lot of polls and questions on the page that encourage viewers to engage with the brand. Twitter acts as a distributor, driving followers to other resources and information. Another way they use Twitter is to build a community through short interactions with consumers- they are really trying to build conversation. Pinterest covers a much wider range of activities than just the cocktails. They have 22 boards that all have specific themes ranging from “Shaken or Stirred” to “Words a Lady Lives By”, it acts as a one stop shop for any woman trying to become the friend you most want to be like- the “lady”. YouTube is compromised of almost completely commercials, guides, and How to videos, with little to no calls to action. They focus a lot on the Insiders, who lead most of their videos to instruct viewers on how to be more like the “lady”.
As you can see here, the only channel that I can tell that has really done a great job is Twitter. Although its following is low, its engagement is extremely high with skinnygirl responding to every tweet with custom responses. Their content drives followers to not just their facebook, but to their YouTube, blogs, and other websites for fun information and resources. This strong sense of community is only around 50,000 now but they can easily increase that number once the brand becomes more well-known. Pinterest has a high potential for success simply because I think both skinnygirl’s and pinterest’s main consumers are very similar kinds of women- adult aged early 20s-late 30s or maybe even 40s who enjoy fashion forward, healthy, busy lifestyles. Pinterest is one of their newer channels so it has pretty low engagement compared to how widespread their product distribution and fan base is. But, I think it has potential to be strong in the future if they continue the way they are going now. Facebook should be one of their successes with over 800,000 likes, and for the most part, they do a good job-they have a lot of pictures and links and high engagement. But, and this is the reason I failed them on this channel, they do not respond to any negative posts whatsoever-they only respond to positive ones. That is a big no no, and if they can come up with a good policy for responding to those posts, their facebook would be much more of a success in my eyes. YouTube is a channel that I feel they could do so much more on. If they had contests allowing fans to have a “day in the life of a lady” or anything like that, they could post tons of videos with consumers on there. But, as of now, they are only speaking at the consumer, not including them in the conversation.
As for recommendations,, skinnygirl needs to respond to all engagement on facebook- not just positive. They also need to focus on connecting more to their other channels, not just the insiders blogs. Twitter needs to build up their following through focusing on key influencers and even implementing the anthropological approach we discussed in class. Proactively seeking feedback and engagement from top influencers is going to be a big part of moving their twitter forward. They also needs to seek out big influencers on pinterest. Quad City Moms Blog is one of their Insiders and main influencers on pinterest, but they need to develop more and then tag them in posts to encourage engagement. Their YouTube channel could be increased if they actually encouraged viewers to comment or post, more calls to action are needed. Overall, the recommendations I have for this brand are very similar to any brand that is in the beginning phases of their social media life. Remember, this company didn’t really get big until March of 2011 so they are just now coming up on two years. Hopefully by the end of 2013, Skinnygirl will see a dramatic turn around in their social media.