Examples of Effective Community Management by Two Canadian Companies

Two successful Canadian companies, Molson Coors Canada and lululemon athletic, both have a presence on Twitter and through their use of the medium demonstrate effective community management that suits their brand and business models.

In both cases, the brand is represented on this social medium by multiple individuals that act as brand ambassadors, putting a face to the brand that is personable and approachable. 

In the case of Molson, there are five such people tweeting, all cross referenced in each other’s Twitter pages. Having multiple people tweeting is an effective use of the medium as it presents the brand via multiple touchpoints represented by a different face, increasing the chance that one of the faces will resonate enough that people will follow them. Each manages their own community and, after following their content, do not seem to specialize in any specific element of the brand. They are all brand ambassadors for all things related to Molson. They even have a French speaking community manager, which is important as Molson is a national company.

Similar to Molson, lululemon athletica uses multiple handles to allow them to spread their social net wide but keep the message localized and, like Molson, the lululemon brand marries well with the casual tone that twitter can handle. While lululemon also puts faces to their brand on twitter, the tweets are not centralized via community managers as in the Molson model. Rather, it appears that twitter use is based on location. By the nature of the business model, where lululemon associates are internally referred to as “educators,” all associates at the store level are trained to speak the ethos of the brand, therefore reducing the need to centralize twitter use to maintain consistency of brand voice. Further, the business model is premised on stores being a social centre for the community, to find out what’s happening, and the localized voice on twitter advances this concept to really target audience.

In both cases, the number of followers and the number of following were very close in number, suggesting that both Molson and lululemon athletic are following their communities as closely as their fans are following them, at least on the surface. It feels good to get followed, so the company following its followers gives goodwill to the brand and makes their followers feel good. Upon closer look at their twitter communications, there does appear to be an exchange of information in both cases, on a wide array of topics, from contests and customer service, to talking about the Maple Leafs (Molson’s sponsorship of NHL provides great twitter banter) and promoting an award the company won. Further, both sites seem to have significant numbers of followers who have listed them – an indicator that you are influential on a given topic that people have called you out.

There are other metrics that are important to look at as well, such as the number of tweets, in determining how effectively a brand is managing their communities. To keep relationships with people, which is central to social media, you must continually offer content. In both cases, the tweeting seemed to be on a regular rhythm and was reciprocal.  Both brands are also represented inTwitter as the brands alone, with no real face associated to it, and it is notable that number of followers on these corporate-type twitter handles compared to the ones where there are faces are significantly lower.

Since both Molson Coors and lululemon athletic are recognizable brands in Canada, they would inevitably have people searching them out on Twitter, but keeping them engaged is another matter. The indications overall suggest both Molson Coors and lululemon athletica have implemented an effective community management strategy using Twitter that suits their respective communities well and fits their business models.