Social Media Monitoring Project#2

At the beginning of October, I did a monitoring project of Toyota's social media and gave some analysis. This time, I will continue to do further monitoring and analysis on the social operation of Toyota Motor Company, and express some of my own opinions. 

Data comparison and content trends:

According to the Social Mention website, Toyota's strength is 37%, while as its competitor, Volkswagen's strength is 27%. Toyota has every 28 minutes on average to be mentioned on social platforms, compared with every 25 minutes for Volkswagen. Toyota’s passion that shows about 32% is twice as much as Volkswagen’s. The Sentiment of the two auto companies is mainly neutral, and supplemented by positive news, but Volkswagen’s positive news is a little bit more than Toyota’s. Thus, when we look at the data from Social Mention website, the activity, popularity and heat of Toyota on the social media platforms is higher than that of one of its competitors: Volkswagen. 

According to the data provided by Google Trend, the heat of Toyota has exceeded that of Volkswagen by three times in the past month.

First of all, from the heat distribution map of the two brands, Toyota's search scope accounts for two-thirds of the world's scope(a large number of searches are from Indonesia, the Philippines, Nigeria, etc.), while the scope of competitor Volkswagen only accounts for a small part of Europe (mainly from the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, etc.). It can be seen that the heat distribution range of the two automobile companies has a huge gap.

Secondly, the search volume of Toyota on social platforms mainly comes from: Gymnaste Pub Toyota, New Toyota Venza, 2021 Toyota Highlander, while the search volume of competitors comes from: Volkswagen Magotan. Although the search volume growth rate of Volkswagen is ten times that of Toyota, in terms of total search volume, Toyota still occupies a favorable position.

Third, when I search for the term "Toyota Customer" and “Volkswagen Customer”, Toyota has far exceeded its competitors in terms of total heat and distribution. Only on October 4 and October 10, these two time points, were overtaken by competitors. Netizens pay attention to Toyota Customer mainly in three aspects: Toyota Customer Service, Toyota Customer Service Number, Toyota Financial Customer Service, while competitors only occupy one aspect: Volkswagen Customer Service. 

According to Twitter and the content on the official website, Toyota's media marketing prefers to take the lifestyle route. As far as Twitter is concerned, Toyota is good at adding family factors when promoting a new car. Take corolla as an example, Toyota calls its customers family members, and new users are welcome to join the family. On its official website, Toyota prefers to release news on the keynote of environmental protection, such as environmental protection and social responsibility. 

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: 

1. Toyota has a large number of accounts on multiple social platforms (mentioned in the screenshot in P1), which is easy to form a perfect social network.

2. Toyota has a large number of models, so it is easy to take models and a large number of user as topics, thus driving the media heat of Toyota.

3. Toyota has a wide range of sales, which promotes the expansion of media coverage.

4. There are a lot of people searching for Toyota Motor on the media platforms.

Weak:

1. Toyota rarely has a typical car club. There is a lack of organizations like MINI Group that can hold various activities and have high reputation.

2. Toyota is mainly based on family cars. It has few performance vehicles, so it can't attract more young users, who are the main force to promote the popularity of social media.( Young people dominate social platforms )

3. Toyota rarely invited big stars, through the media popularity of stars to drive the heat of automobile topics.

Opportunity:

1. Toyota can sponsor new energy vehicles to environmental protection organizations or famous international environmental protection conferences, and gain higher media popularity with the communication power of these organizations and platforms.

2. Toyota's daily advertising is a good opportunity. Through the use of family stories, green life and other network topics, increased the exposure rate on the media platform.

Threat:

If there is a major recall of the vehicle, or a series of accidents caused by vehicle defects, it will cause great damage to the media of Toyota. 

Recommendations and conclusions:

In my opinion, I think Toyota can learn from MINI automobile and establish a large association or community, so that more users can participate in the communication and activities. 

Take competitor Volkswagen as an example. In China, there is a famous organization called Volkswagen commune. Within one year, this organization will go to many places to hold exhibitions focusing on all kinds of Volkswagen models, such as new cars and old cars, modified vehicles, which attracts many car enthusiasts. After the event, the organizers will publish various pictures and videos on social media to expand the influence and appeal of the automobile brand. At the same time, as an official organization, Volkswagen China also regularly holds football matches, invites customers to visit factories, and organizes some well-known media teams to hold new car experience and other activities to maintain customer relations. In fact, when we learn more about automobile brands’ marketing, it is easy to find that European automobile manufacturers are more willing to spend energy and time in building customer communities to cultivate customer loyalty. 

If Toyota is willing to work in this area, its social media marketing will take a new height.

No matter what brand it is, it’s very important to establish an effective club if organizations want to have a good heat and popularity in the society. Because the community is like a gathering point of information, once a new crisis occurs, it can play a predictive role. At the same time, the association is also oriented to the new products of enterprises, and manufacturers can produce according to the needs of customers.

Of course, the marketing department and the top management also need perfect communication. The marketing department can propose to how to plan social and public relations programs, but the real decision-makers are the senior leaders, who are the important guidance for the positive development of the enterprise.