Best Buy: A social media case study / we are social

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Best Buy: A social media case study

by Robin Grant in News on 28 May 2009 at 17:10

Amongst the famous examples of Dell, Ford, Zappos, Skype and the like, Best Buy may not be the first company that comes to mind when thinking about which companies using are using social media well.

They’re also not the sort of company you would immediately assume would be ahead of the curve in terms of social media – they’re the world’s largest multi-channel home electronics retailer (similar to Currys or Comet in the UK) who have recently made moves into Europe with the acquisition of 50% of Carphone Warehouse’s European stores (and with rumours they may go further than that).

However, in reality they’re as advanced as any of the examples I give above – let’s start with a short introduction from Best Buy’s Chief Marketing Officer, Barry Judge:

And then move onto this presentation from Gina Debogovich, Best Buy’s Community Manager:

It’s also worth finding out more about Best Buy Connect, Blue Shirt Nation (a community for Best Buy Employees), how they use customer reviews, their recently launched API and looking at how they use their own forums and Get Satisfaction to support their customers.

Let’s finish with a 4 minute video looking at Best Buy’s internal use of social media followed by a 20 minute interview with Best Buy’s CEO Brad Anderson talking about the issues in detail:

Update: The New York Times covers some of Best Buy’s more recent social media initiatives.

tagged: advertising, Barry Judge, Best Buy, Blue Shirt Nation, Brad Anderson, Carphone Warehouse, case study, Comet, conversation, conversation response, Currys, Dell, Ford, Gina Debogovich, listening, presentations, Skype, social media, social media marketing, Zappos

yuri debura

I heard Mike speak at the Atlantic Internet Marketing conference in Halifax this morning.

Fantastic. What a great business story. Imagine making money and giving service.

Thanks Mike, your talk was very motivational for business owners who are feed up with big companies idea of service.

Cheers,

wireless internet

bill

Why would you not think an electronics company that sells computers and other connectivity devices would be ahead of the curve in social media? Seems more likely than Ford.

Carole Baker Hicks

Congratulations to the internal grass-roots people mentioned by T. Shelton. I'd love to hear more about what they did. Now THAT would make for an interesting story.

http://twitter.com/carole_hicks

Jennifer Caukin

Great social media case study on Best Buy. Really liked seeing how its actively embraced by their CMO.

Håkan Thyr

Best Buy works with several agencies. In regards to the user-generated content side of things, they use Bazaarvoice. They have Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer and MobileVoice to capture and amplify the voice of their customers.

tshelton

Hi Philip! Best Buy with $40 billion in annual revenue is one of the biggest retailers in the world. So it would be no surprise to you to learn that they have LOTS of help. I am happy to say that since 2007 the team here at The Conversation Group has been working closely with Best Buy. That having been said, the amount of work that they have done themselves, grass roots internal people getting great stuff done, should not be underestimated. In our view this is really the ONLY way to succeed -- as an agency we try to serve as a catalyst for internal champions to make real change happen. I would be happy to discuss further with you.

Philip Buxton

great - do they use any agencies to help them with all this?

Gina

Hi Phillip,

My team and I manage and moderate many of the Best Buy's social media engagements. While we have vendor partners who help with some aspects of our engagements, much is done on site.

Gina
Manager, Communities
Creating meaningful communication in a virtual world
My blog: forums.bestbuy.com
My Twitter: twitter.com/Gina_BestBuy