Explore a Potential Violanta S.A. Social Media Strategy — AD&PRLab
Hello, we are ADvocado! We were asked to analyse a company’s social media strategy.
Our choice was Violanta S.A.!
So, who is Violanta?
Violanta is an internationally recognized company of premium quality cookies, biscuits and bars. Violanta was founded in 1975 and their headquarters are located in Trikala, central Greece. They are expanding & developing their products, adding variety of flavors to their cookies and other products. Violanta has a wide range of 130 products, gaining the reputation of a high quality and innovative producer of cookies, biscuits and oat bars that are characterized by the element of quality.
They export to 26 countries, expanding to international markets at an exponentially fast growing pace.
The question our assignment was revolved around was “how are they on social media and how can they be better?”
They have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn & Pinterest. The Violanta company is primarily active on Facebook & Instagram with visual content. On the other hand, the updates on YouTube are not as frequent as social media mentioned prior, since they upload in the span of 2–5 months and they are even inactive on Pinterest, having no posts up at all. Also, they seem to be new to LinkedIn since they have only a number of 2 posts in the span of 3 months.
The other thing is, Violanta doesn’t have a very big following compared to their competitors, Papadopoulou for example. The engagement they have with their audience on social media is non-existent, seeing as how they don’t like or reply to comments being made under their posts, either on Facebook or Instagram.
All in all, Violanta is a family-friendly brand, who values sustainability, innovation, premium quality of products & professionalism, which reflect their per-existing content, since it has a light-heart character and showcases the concept of sharing with others.
So, considering all the above, we got to work and analyzed how they could better their social media strategy.
First of all, on Facebook they upload general content that they repost on Instagram as well, meaning they also don’t have a specific theme to each social medium.
It’s important for a brand to follow a specific layout and pattern for feed consistency and brand direction & because it allows the company to gain potential audience and customers.
Considering this, we would recommend for Violanta to make more frequent updates on their Facebook about their new product releases, events, campaigns and such, focusing mostly on brand awareness.
Moreover, Violanta is doing something very important with its content, it’s trying to be engaging with the audience, seeing that humanized communication is very important in our day and age.
Moving onto Instagram, Violanta should switch to a business account, first and foremost and potentially collaborate with influencers and others to increase their popularity and traffic on their page. They should consider content that will increase engagement, such as interactive Instagram stories, original and playful posts.
Storytelling is another very important factor nowadays accompanied by authority ranking and social audio as well. They are the current trends that can drive a brand to success and set it apart from its competitors.
As for the Pinterest & LinkedIn, Violanta could become more active on those as well, updating their audience and getting them motivated to try new products and recipes including their cookies, etc. On Pinterest specifically, they could create their own aesthetic and motivate users be a part of it. With LinkedIn on the other hand, they have the opportunity to engage with other companies and broaden their connections.
Because, as it was mentioned before, humanized communication is everything.
What else is missing from Violanta S.A., then?
They should move to Spotify, TikTok and Twitter too, because it’s very important for a brand to expand and reach out to its customers as much as possible. Twitter has the ability to make the brand adopt the so-called inclusive influence. A lot of people can engage and talk about their opinion for Violanta’s products and for the brand itself, giving feedback for what they would like better, or what they don’t like.
Spotify might also be a great addition to the social media mix, since its basic and primary feature is audio, which is getting more and more popular as time goes by. It could be a powerful tool to add podcasts to the mix and add the radio session on there too.
TikTok is a very crucial social medium to have since it’s the app with the most downloads in the world and it gives the brand the advantage to be more liked and seem more up-to-date with trends, and therefore, more accepted by the general public. Also, following TikTok trends and using the platform correctly will set Violanta apart from its competitors and by taking on the strategy of storytelling, which is a crucial element, as mentioned before. It can bring a participatory and immersive experience to the audience bringing the language to life, correlating to the communication aspect.
Sustainability is also something that Violanta promotes with its products, creating vegan cookies, ecological packaging and addressing it in its “values” sector as well. Sustainability is correlated to innovation and redirecting philosophies into something completely different from what they used to be. The world is attempting to be more Eco-friendly (67% of people tried to have a more positive impact on the environment with everyday actions in the year of 2021) and more environmentally conscious, so Violanta is on the right path. In Greece, however, the environment is not as important of an issue as others, wrongly so, but brands like Violanta trying to propagate such a movement, is very much admirable and sets the right example for other brands.
To sum up, a brand’s social media strategy can say a lot of a company and its success, values and the path it’s choosing to go in. Even though Violanta is making great moves in some sectors, it needs to catch up and become more relevant with following trends and getting closer to its customers.
Photo sources; violanta.gr , pexels.com
Information Sources; Violanta official website, Reading Materials Ogilvy
ADvocado Team: Priya Kumar, Eleni Chaldeaki, Parskevi Nektaria Gad, Athanasia Oikonopoulou
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou
