What is all the buzz about in the last 24 hours?
Why is Skittles getting coverage on
-CNN
It is the top trending subject on Twitter
So what did Skittles do?
This….
So, in short Skittles took their website and turned it into one big Social Media site. The homepage is nothing but a mashup of social media sites. The most popular is the twitter feed that shows anyone who uses the word Skittles. The thing to keep it mind, as far as I can see, is it has no filters. So you can say anything you want. It can be a positive comment about the Skittles brand. It can be a negative comment about the Skittles brand. Seems to me Skittles is just “putting it” out there and letting it happen.
That is not all they have done. They have created a:
-Facebook Fan page for Skittles
Again I can locate no filters on any of those pages. You can say, post, create anything you want on these pages and they become part of the Skittles corporate website.
You access the pages on the Skittles page by clicking the options on this logo:
I have to say to Skittles, way to go! Its amazing and gutsy what they have done. They are putting their brand out there to take both positive and negative comments from their customers. That is engagement right there for you. They have done something amazing in my opinion. They have reached out to where their customers are. They are engaging with customers with the tools they are using. As well as joining the communities their customers are in. This can become a very powerful way to engage with customers. Some numbers for you:
-The Skittles Facebook Fan Page has over 585,000 fans
-The Youtube Channel has over 26,500 views
-Flickr has over 16,500 items
Not bad…
What are your thoughts about the new Skittles Homepage and its use of Social Media sites?
UPDATE: Skittles has moved the Twitter feed to the back and now features the Facebook Fan Page. This is due to the spam it is getting. Read more here:
Bad Jokes Force Skittles To Dump Twitter For Facebook
Posted under Blog
This post was written by davepeck on March 3, 2009
As a buzz-creation exercise, I think the Skittles homepage is a great. But, as I said yesterday in a number of tweets, I don't think it will have much benefit for Skittles beyond the short term. The novelty will wear off and the traffic will die. I mean, who tweets about Skittles?
I agree that it is gutsy, but are you really sure they "get it"? Does skittles even have a twitter account? It certainly isn't @skittles. Great – people are talking about Skittles on Twitter, but without a presence there, how are they participating in the conversation?
do they really? I thought joining the conversation was crucial …. so far they are not joining the conversation, they are merely echoing it on their homepage. They did one thing right though, it has definitely created a whole lot of buzz ……
throwing up their twitter feed as their homepage is just pure and simple laziness, not Social Media. The only reason they generated any buzz was because they are already a major brand, and they simply implemented a feature of a hot trend in social media right now, which is Twitter. Combining the two will of course get them a lot of 'buzz' but nothing 'useful'.
I do think you may have a point. After writing this post, I have had many different conversations that make me think your right
I started with different titles for this post from "Taste A Rainbow of Social Media Tools" to "Skittles, The Rainbow of New Media". I decided on "gets Social Media" as I have used it before for other companies. That being said you have brought up some great points, that make me want to go back and change the title
Your right. As I stated above I think I made a poor choice in the title of the post. Though they are doing what I think is correct and letting users/customers create the message about skittles. Its pretty gutsy
Ben, your right about being lazy. With everything above being said, I do wish they had created a different way to present the twitter search feature. It was another lazy step
definitely agree with the gutsy, this is definitely a 'purple cowish' approach to a home page.
Bad, bad, bad, Skittles. They make me put in my birthday and make me agree to their terms and conditions but don't allow me to get to the T&C. That's just plain bad. This just goes to show how little people think about privacy in social media. Anyone who puts this information in and accepts the T&C without even glancing at it deserves to have it stolen.
They took it down yesterday!
Their Twitter page appears to be back up.