Nina Tarkkonen is responsible for both organic and paid advertising content at Foodora, but in this article we will focus on organic social media.
Retriever provides Foodora with a complete social media monitoring and management solution through its listening tool Listen and social media management tools Publish, Engage and Measure.
In Listen, Foodora has built a comprehensive solution for both industry monitoring and benchmarking. Projects include accounts from other Foodora countries as well as competitor and benchmark companies in the food delivery, grocery and transport services sectors, as well as broader industry monitoring, such as platform economics and consumer behaviour.
– The monitoring helps me keep up to date with what's happening in the world around us. I find industry news and see trends. I read through the email reports every morning and also immerse myself in conversations via the platform about once a week and make comparisons between us and other players. With Listen, I can see what is being discussed at the moment, what others are publishing and what is working for them and what is not. It gives me ideas for my own work, what to highlight and how," says Tarkkonen.
Tarkkonen uses the social media management tools on a daily basis to plan and publish social media posts and monitor conversations on her own accounts.
– I have been very happy with Retriever's social media management tool as it allows me to use one tool to do so many things. I use it to create all my content for Instagram and Facebook and follow all the comments from there - including those from ads. I use the publishing calendar to plan the whole thing and use a wide range of features like notes and tags," says Tarkkonen.
Engagement more important than number of followers
Foodora has been using Retriever's social media solution for about six months and the experience has been positive. In addition to daily monitoring, Tarkkonen will delve deeper into the data by compiling a more comprehensive half-yearly report.
– Soon it will be time to create such a 'deep-dive' report for the first time using the Retriever tools. In that I will collect more detailed information on all our channels, such as number of posts, engagement, follower development and most popular posts.
Tarkkonen has noticed that the number of followers is often considered the most important metric, but he encourages people to focus on engagement instead.
– For me, the engagement rate is the most important metric for evaluating social media efforts. The number of followers says something, of course, but it can include passive followers who do not react in any way to posts or do not even see them. Personally, I prefer to focus on engagement and visibility." Engagement helps Tarkkonen better see what people are interested in and how to engage them.
– Competitions draw well across the board, but the content can't just be competitions, they can also provide lessons for other posts."
As an example, Tarkkonen mentions a post about a giant lasagne bun, where the invitation to guess the weight of the bun and the chance to win a Foodora gift card inspired the audience.
– The post announcing the weight of the giant bun also reached out and engaged well, even though it no longer had a chance to win."
Niina Tarkkonen's four tips for social media monitoring and evaluation
Start by defining your goals
You cannot judge your success until you know what you want to achieve with your account. For example, is it sales promotion, brand awareness or advocacy? Only when you know your goals can you set metrics for what you are doing.- Learn from others
It is worth following your competitors and your own industry, but also other success stories on social media. It is a characteristic of social media that you learn by following others. You can apply lessons learnt from others to your own industry and accounts. - Be brave and experiment
It's such a fast-changing environment that it's not worth getting stuck in a rut. I encourage you to experiment with different content and approaches - there's not much to lose by trying. If you find that something doesn't work, adjust it! - Follow trends, but remember the basics
Short videos like TikTok, popular on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts among others, are currently trending. But I also want to remind you of the original purpose of the channels. On Instagram, for example, I think we should not forget the importance of high-quality visual content, which is what the channel was originally created for.
