BSBMKG537: Develop Social Media Engagement Plan for Waterfords

This report outlines a comprehensive social media engagement plan designed to widen and diversify Waterfords' market in the water and beverage sector. The plan leverages a creative social media brief, using an animated dialogue to introduce Waterfords Iced-Water. The report identifies the target market, recommends the use of Facebook and Twitter, and details a 6-month strategy. It emphasizes the importance of natural ingredients and zero percent sugar content in Waterfords products, aiming to attract customers. The plan includes strategies for monitoring and review, with a focus on likes, comments, retweets, and follower growth to measure the effectiveness of the social media engagement. The assignment incorporates research on social media habits, organizational requirements, and relevant legislation. The plan also provides a detailed overview of social media platforms, target markets, and monitoring processes.

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Social Media Engagement Plan 2
Name
Institution

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Social Media Engagement Plan 2
Creative Social Media Brief
In an attempt to widen and diversify Waterfords' market in the water and beverage
market, social media will likely play a great role. We propose a very intense campaign aimed at
familiarizing the water brand to target customers. We used a dialogue between an athlete and
one member of his team's staff to design a social media brief.
“I am dying of thirst,” says the athlete in a desperate tone.
"Oooh, I got you covered, have this!" Replies the member of staff handing a bottle of unbranded
water to the athlete.
“No! I need the other water, the original water. I rather die of thirst,” demands the athlete.
“Ahhh, you mean Waterfords! Here we go!” Says the team staff, handing the athlete a
bottle of water branded ‘Waterfords’. From the visual appearance, the water is iced. The athlete
picks the offered bottle hurriedly and swallows the water greedily down his throat.
This funny animated conversations would be actively circulated through Waterford’s
social media platforms. Considering that Facebook and Waterfords websites are the major social
media used by the brand, the two platforms should be the first to show this social media brief to
prospective customers.
Waterfords exists as a beverage brand that produces sugar-free beverages to its esteemed
customers. Historically, through customer feedback, our customers have ascertained that our
products claim higher degrees of legitimacy in the beverage market. Moreover, many beverage
companies use social media to clarify issues regarding their brands and get feedback from the

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customers (10). Legitimacy can be attributed to the company's commitment to ensure quality
products to its customers. The brand's mission is to continue selling quality beverage products to
its deserving worldwide customers. Although the brand has not yet gained worldwide appeal, the
brand's strengths are major indicators for the company's success. Moving towards the mission,
Waterford has branded a new brand of their products namely ‘Waterford Iced-Water'. The brand
is actively marketing for this product in social media to increase the public's awareness about it.
According to Glucksmann (2017), social media marketing strategies are meant to reach new
markets by creating awareness about a company's brand, reminding prospective customers about
the brands and informing customers about new changes on the brands.
The breakthrough of the Internet has provided a new market niche to businesses. In the
modern world, many businesses utilize social media platforms to gain large market shares in the
market. Companies in the beverage sector, for instance, have primarily utilized these new trends.
These companies have utilized social media to advertise new products in the highly competitive
beverage industry (4). Whereas clarifications remove doubts about a company’s brands in the
market, customer feedback enables a company to know the position of the company in the
market as well as necessary areas and process that require improvement.
In 2017, about eighty percent of Australians used actively used social media (6). The
statistics provide that 99% of Australians youths in the age bracket of 18 to 29 are active social
media users. 96% of Australians aged between 30 to 39 also use social media. Middle-aged
Australians between 40 and 49 also spend considerable time on social media. It is therefore apt
for Waterfords to increase its activity in social media to reap optimal benefits. Recently,
marketers have been using social media platforms to recognize their potential market bases (7).
Information derived from questionnaires revealed that Waterfords target markets (ranging from

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21 to 45) are not very active users of Facebook. The brand is thus recommended to consider
shifting its social media platform from Facebook to Twitter. According to Light (2014), many
adults prefer Twitter to Facebook. The brand should, therefore, consider utilizing social media
platforms that are mostly used by adults. These are not exclusive of Twitter and LinkedInn.
Social Media Platforms to Target Markets
In the current world, there exist hundreds of social media platforms that can be used by
companies to reach to their prospective customers. Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram,
WeChat, Tumblr, Telegram, QQ, QZone, Pinterest, Skype, and Viber are some of the most
common of the platforms in a sea of many social media platforms. Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram are the most widely used social media platforms by beverage companies for their
advertisements (Strikland, et al., 2016). Soon, Waterfords is poised to optimize its customer base
by utilizing Twitter. Huang (2019) associates the growth and success of many beverages
companies situated in Britain and Australia to optimal use of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
In addition to the Waterford’s website, integrating the three social media platforms would
optimize the numbers of customers that Waterfords have in the market.
To effectively compete with the other brands in the water and beverage market,
Waterford is recommended to combine Facebook and Twitter as their chief social media
strategies. This is because the two social media platforms are mainly used by individuals
belonging in the brand’s target markets. Although some of the elderly members of the utilize
group are not very active users of their smartphones, individuals ages twenty-one to thirty-five
are constant users of social media. Recently, a significant number of individuals aged forty and
above are also reported to have increased their awareness and consciousness to social media.
Most of the customers in the brand’s target market have active social media accounts in these

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social either Facebook or Twitter. Those lacking accounts in the two may have active accounts
on LinkedIn. Some of the youths in these age bracket have accounts in all the three social media
platforms. To attract its diverse customers, Waterfords may include pictures of their happy
clients or Waterfords products in all of their social media accounts. Pictorial appeal function very
well to convince customers about a product (12). Hitherto, the brand has posted numerous
pictures of their pictures on their Facebook account.
For now, Waterfords only exploits Facebook and its websites as their social media
engagement panels. The brand does not lay a lot of reliance on social media to reach its market
targets. Considering their target markets age and profiles, the brand thought that it was more
prudent to shun social media as a key marketing strategy. According to Waterford's earlier
misconceptions, most of the customers in this age bracket are rarely influenced by social media
advertising. Besides, many individuals in their forties were thought to rarely use social media.
Moreover, considering the brand’s products, the wide use of social media was considered
irrelevant. Selling iced water does not require vigorous social media techniques. The nature of
this product disqualified the product from rigorous social media advertising.
Some social media platforms are rarely used by beverage companies. For instance,
Whatsapp, despite its popularity among the youth, is seldom considered a viable social media
marketing platform. Whatsapp operates mainly as a messaging platform and rather, not for
sharing photos, opinions and comments like Facebook and Twitter. A company can only reach
many customers via Whatsapp if and only if it forms many groups which would function to
promote the company's products (11). Nonetheless, the number of members in Whatsapp groups
are restricted. This limits the number of people a company can reach through the social media
platform. It is thus not viable for a company to use Whatsapp to reach its target markets.

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Social Media Engagement Plan for 6 Months
The primary purpose of developing a social media engagement plan is to specify the
procedures to be used to attract new customers and reach expansive markets over some time.
Social media engagement plans can be long term, medium-term or short term. Long-term
strategies are aimed to maintain a brand's customer's for a time ranging from a longer time, for
instance, five to ten years (1). Medium-term strategies usually aim at attracting and retaining
customers for a year or two. Short-term social media engagement strategies are employed to
attract new customers for short periods, usually a couple of months.
This project is a short-term engagement plan because it attempts to develop a social
media engagement plan for six years. This strategy can be applied by any beverage brand which
wishes to attract and retain customers for a short time. Many brands prefer using the short term
social media engagements due to their effectiveness in attracting new customers (2). A six-month
social media engagement plan would be very viable for the Waterfords brand. The plan
engagement plan would greatly use Facebook and Twitter for the next six months.
For the six months, Waterfords would aim at diversifying its social media marketing
platforms. As aforementioned, the company is likely to incorporate Twitter in its social media
engagement plan for the next six months. The social media platforms would stress the use of
natural ingredients used to make Waterfords products. This message should be instilled in the
public within the first weeks in the six months under study. Waterfords brand too would focus on
enlightening its customers about the ingredients that are used to produce the Waterfords'
products. In the six months covered by the social media engagement plan, the brand will
convince its prospective customers that Waterford products consist of natural lightly carbonated
water with only five percent fruit juice. The engagement plan should also stress that Waterford

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products have zero percent sugar. This would function by persuading the customers that
Waterford products, despite their sweetness, are from natural products. In many countries,
products made from organic ingredients are highly venerated (9). Customers tend to prefer
products that are created from organic sources to those from inorganic sources. Pictures of
satisfied customers drinking Waterfords products posing near Waterfords stores and outside
Waterfords’ territories would be circulated in Facebook and Twitter platforms.
Monitoring and Review Process
The effectiveness of a social media engagement plan will be determined by various
evaluation methods. The effectiveness of Facebook as a social media engagement strategy will
be measured by the number of likes and comments that would be seen after posting pictures or
informative posts about any of the brands. This would also apply to brands that use LinkedIn.
For instance, a Waterfords post that would attract many likes and comments would mean
effectiveness of the social media platform. For Facebook and Instagram, the more a product
attracts likes and comments, the more the product is popular among the public. Likes and
positive comments on Facebook and Instagram also mean reliability and loyalty of the customers
towards the brand (8). Brands that will use Twitter will test the strategy’s effectiveness by the
number of reactions, comments and retweets their posts would receive from the customers.
Moreover, the overall effectiveness of all social media engagement strategies will be based on
the frequency their messages get a response from their customers. The number of followers on
each brand will also determine the social media platform's efficiency to market the brands'
products to prospective customers.

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