ADroits — IKEA

Having been assigned from our ADandPRLab to select a brand and create a social media strategy, our team the ADroits, select the IKEA to present a social media strategy for that brand.

First and foremost, it is worth mentioning that IKEA is a Swedish-founded, Dutch-headquartered multinational conglomerate that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances and home accessories, among other goods and home services. IKEA has been the world’s largest furniture retailer since 2008. The company’s vision is “To create a better everyday life for the many people.” As the company mentions “This vision goes beyond home furnishing. We want to have a positive impact on the world — from the communities where we source our raw materials to the way our products help our customers live a more sustainable life at home. By sharing what we do, and speaking up for what we believe in, we can be part of positive change in society.” This goal can easily be brought to reality only if we succeed to create a dynamic social media strategy. Why? It’s simple! It is widely known that social media have an important impact in a brand’s sales. That is why we picked some ways to make this vision as close to true as we can. Thus, we suggested to the company to interact with their audience so as to understand what they want and fill any gaps left between them. The company will accomplish this by creating a dynamic social media presence that will engage to its audience and will not only make them feel heard but also will respond within few hours (or better minutes) to any questions made. Furthermore, creating awareness via personalised banner ads and press releases that will underline every innovation,social presence and campaign which the brand will be made. However, as important as the awareness is the social listening that will increase the brand perception and the customer loyalty.

When comes to social media, IKEA has its own social media accounts on many platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn. On Spotify as well as on TikTok, which has become one of the most used platforms during the pandemic, IKEA still does not have an official account. The most successful and active ones seem to be Facebook, Instagram and definitely Pinterest since the whole logic of IKEA fits perfectly with Pinterest’s aesthetic. We came to this conclusion this not only from the number of followers on those accounts, but mostly from the frequency of the posting, the daily activity and the real number of people who actually interact with the company based on the likes, follows, daily views etc.

On Facebook and Instagram the likes and the interactivity are high and the posts are similar so the company doesn’t follow a specific theme for each social media account.

Twitter and YouTube on the other hand, haven’t been a top priority for the company when it comes to social media activity. On Twitter there hasn’t been a single new post since September 2021 and it seems that they are only interested in posting when in need of new staff, which does not fit in Twitter’s context. On YouTube, the number of subscribers is pretty high, but it seems that the actual views are really low, usually below 1.000 and new videos are being posted a month/few months apart.

When talking about the competitors’ social media accounts, with the top 3 competitors being Praktiker, Jysk and Leroy Merlin, their social media “game” isn’t as high as IKEA’s. In general, the biggest part of the competition follows the strategies of IKEA, which leads to a movement like the Swedish company’s inside the market.

Knowing our audience and by firstly addressing to the right group of people and secondly interacting with them so to engage to them, we will be able to reach users on social media. Moreover, we will collaborate with influencers that will not only promote the brand’s products but also will organise giveaways and contents, and will be present in special events or campaign releases. Our posts, will be more reachable by hashtags, tags, location mentions, push advertising etc.

Moving to our target group, we select a wide range of ages, because as a brand we address to much and different group of people. Hence, our target audience is between 16–60. Nevertheless every social media the age ranges in every social media are differentiated.

For content that will be posted we aim to have the same pattern, same colours and style. The basic pillar will be ideas for the brands and how the user can decorate them. The sub-pillar will be funny time relevant videos and posts. However, as it is clear every social media needs its way to develop them.

More specifically, on Instagram we are aiming in becoming the absolute aesthetically pleasing brand, maybe by also adopting a theme on our Instagram page, by posting with a pattern. We’ll definitely keep up with the daily activity since Instagram is one of the most used platforms globally and our target audience is going to be teenagers and young adults. When it comes to Facebook the primary target audience changes to people between 40–60. We will be their safe and trustworthy choice when it comes to redecoration and making home changes. Using a more typical and inspiring language we’ll focus on our usual post choices combined with smart stories, IKEA news and links for our products. We insist on improving the YouTube game with daily YouTube shorts about DIYs and small decoration ideas, while videos will be uploaded weekly and won’t last longer than 5 minutes. On Pinterest we want to be able to answer to the needs of every single aesthetic when it comes to inspiration. We will approach our target audience, teenagers and young adults, with a playful and inspiring way. On Twitter, we thought that as it being a brand that is up to date with the latest global news and cares/works on important topics (such as the climate crisis) to improve the brand’s social image (Twitter is a platform where everything happens drastically, news spread fast, opinions are being expressed fast and hashtags can become viral in a second). We need to be serious when it comes to expressing opinion and taking sides on important topics, chill and humorous when it comes to daily uploads, following the tone of voice of other brands that have become viral at times on Twitter, due to their funny responses (we want an approachable image, to be close to the customers). Last but not least, on LinkedIn we believe that the content needs to be more focus on the achievements of the brand, some social work and work opportunities.

The goal that we want to achieve through social media is to create awareness and then loyalty, create social media profiles that the users will want to follow thence to get them inspired. We want to our audience to associate IKEA with their home, make IKEA the first place to go when there is something missing from their home and we hope that by making shopping easier for the users this will be achieved.

We believe that if the above will be accomplished we will have successfully fulfilled our goal. Nonetheless, we will be able to track this success through some special ways:

· Track brand awareness, a growth in followers and increased reach.

· Increased clicks, bounce rate, shares, likes, number of visits from each channel etc.

· Increased numbers in leads our social media channels will bringing in and which channel is bringing in the most leads.

· Likes, shares, comments per posts, mentions and replies, i.e. engagement rate.

· Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) — Average Time To First Reply.

· Metrics that measure social listening.

Outreach — “How many people are asking your company about industry-related questions? How many journalists are asking questions about your company through social media?”