Roots is an athletic and leather apparel store located in Canada. In keeping with current modes of social media use, dispersal, and involvement, they have branched out their customer support through twitter. With a quick scan and glance of the tweets on the companies tweet feed there are plenty of advertisements of new apparel and products, as well as customer questions thoughts, accompanied by a prompt response virally initialed by an employee. What this twitter feed successfully does is integrate social media into the company’s customer service providing feedback on both negative and positive comments. In addition to the comment responses are the digital initials of the employee who directly viewed the customers tweet. In some instances there would be a lengthy tweet between customer and employer, creating a user added value, as well as providing something unique for a customer to experience, taking full advantage of the feed capabilities. Aside from providing customer support through the twitter feed, the company also provides incoming apparel products, partner company deals, and employee thoughts and inside scoops/deals, as well as prize give away to followers.
What has made Roots’ successful is their attention to customer care and concerns with and about their clothing products through Twitter and Facebook. There are nothing but rave reviews and comments about the products and personal response interactions that go on between tweets and comments, even if the customers initial blurt was a negative issue. Dave Toliver’s mentions seven was in which companies can create memorable/effective customer experiences using social media. Social media being the new “grape vine” reflects and can determine the effectiveness of companies based on how well they integrate, use and approach social mediums in reaching out to clientele. Roots effectively provide, through twitter and Facebook, a place for customers to talk, as well as integrate these services into their customer support. Roots tweets contain compelling content from new apparel, updates on/of photo shoots, photos and comments from employees and partner comments and advertisements. In addition, they promote other events and groups they sponsor they have attracting taste to the “following” audience group. This provides an opportunity to reach out to existing customer bases through other manufacturers sponsored by roots. Having addressed these partnerships connects the viewers of those pages to the Roots twitter or Facebook creating an open doorway to new members who view one brand and see that Roots is a partner and take a minute to view the company’s products.
Most of Toliver’s seven steps in creating a memorable experience are implemented within both Twitter feeds and Facebook comment timelines. This is essential in maintaining the interest of the current customer support, and provide that positive social media feedback, which in turn can provide future customers. What Roots can derive from the current clientele base is used in reaching out to the wider audience, which in this case, is a global market for sporty clothing apparel.
Being a clothing apparel business, emphasizing in athletic wear, Roots tweets are aimed at the general audience, yet at times we can see an emphasis towards “athletic “members. Roots tweets contain Jodi Dean’s “ideology of publicity” in that Roots provides the right information that grabs the public audience’s attention. Example tweet of providing customers a chance to win a trip, the only question they leave for the customer is, who to bring:
What attracts me the most as a follower reading these tweets, are the personalization of the responses by Roots, signified by the initial so the employee who viewed the tweet. This brings the audience interaction to a more personal level of tweeting person to person, rather than person to computed corporation tweet. Having roughly 7.500 followers, appealing to every audience may seem like a daunting task and clog the twitter feed with clutter tweets. Yet Roots manages to maintain the promotion of theirs and similar products to the wide audience and allow those interested to pick up and follow. Allowing employee added tweets to the feed such as TZ who added a pic to pinterest.com, or an ad with Men's Health Magazine:
providing audience’s material to view or retweet something that is not a Roots’ product. When these occur they have broadened their name and company to a wider group from those who retweeted, and if there are followers of those retweeters who like what they see, they too will retweet, and the process goes on and on. This is an effective use of the twitter feed and system of retweets, providing material that attracts followers to retweet can lead non-followers back to the source, being the Roots home tweet page.
There’s a ton of active participation on the Roots twitter feed with content ranging from newly purchased products, to Hockey games and related apparels. Having an engaging audience helps to build the Roots viral credentials it has allowed itself in becoming an area for people to solicit and socialize with other that have similar interest in Roots clothing. It is important for any SNS or sub-site to allow audience members an area to gather an communicate, and the fact that Roots promotes and engages in the audience conversations demonstrates how aware Roots is as a company in using sms effectively.
With effective implementation of Toliver’s methods in creating a memorable experience, and an awareness of achieved audience and future audience members, Roots Canada as demonstrated successful use of SMS. I feel their strategies in tweet content are aimed well to the general audience, while at the same time retaining some specificity to address those already following. Providing incentives and rewards to followers helps to retain and promote active participation within the feeds, thus scuttling the Roots name out to those unknown of the brand. Roots as a strong grasp and understanding of effective use of SMS, and does so with the personal connection of each initialed employee you tweet/comment with.
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