Overview
iHeartDogs is private company that donates to various causes using profits from merchandise. iHeartDogs creates products that dog lovers would enjoy owning from t-shirts to practical items that every dog owner needs. Each product has it’s own cause tied to it such as providing food to a certain amount of shelter dogs each purchase.
iHeartDogs is a very recent organization that started on social media, so it has a very strong social media presence all around the internet. Facebook, where iHeartDogs started, is currently it’s strongest platform followed by Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Those are the big 4 tools linked on the iHeartDogs website(iheartdogs.com). There is a YouTube page but it is very small and the videos get a very small percentage of views as the same videos on Facebook do. Social media made iHeartDogs and social media will play a large role in continuing to grow the organization.
The Platforms Today
The iHeartDogs Facebook page currently has over 3,621,000 followers making it the strongest social media tool. The Facebook page is the most frequently updated page, with posts being made almost every hour during the day. Most posts are not trying to sell you merchandise as many are news articles either hosted on the iHeartDogs website or from other outside sources. Posts range from comedic posts to heartwarming stories. With a page that has over 3.6 million people following it, and over 3.7 likes, you would expect every post to get at least over 1k likes. This is not the case as most posts average around 600 likes with the more popular posts not able to break 3k likes.
The iHeartDogs instagram account has over 207k followers making it the second most popular social media tool that iHeartDogs owns. The Instagram account creates posts around 5-6 times a day and has a very different feel than Facebook. Posts here heavily focus on promoting the merchandise on the iHeartDogs website. Every few posts there will be an image of a dog containing a caption which has a hashtag such as #PuppyFriday, #SundayFunday, and other fun/searchable hashtags. The Instagram account also has the same issue as Facebook by having a very large following but very few likes on each post. It’s not as bad as Facebook, but could still use a big improvement.
The iHeartDogs Pinterest is the third most popular social media tool that iHeartDogs owns with over 155k followers. Pinterest being a unique social media platform iHeartDogs uses it in complete different way than Facebook or Instagram. Using the boards feature on Pinterest iHeartDogs had created different boards for different topics. Some of these boards are ‘What We Believe’ with 94,487 followers that contains many images of quotes many dog owners would agree with and has the iHeartDogs branding on almost all posts in this board. Another board is ‘Impact Updates’ with 94,453 followers and this board contains numbers of meals donated in each month ny iHeartDogs. One of the most popular boards by iHeartDogs is ‘Pics, Videos, & Articles for Dog Lovers’ with 108,361 followers and this board shares a lot of content with the Facebook page by containing a mix of different types of content.
The iHeartDogs Twitter has 17,000 Followers making it the least popular iHeartDogs social media tool. The Twitter account gets updated very infrequently with only 4 posts so far in 2017(as of December 2nd). This is a huge difference in comparison to the other social media accounts that post multiple times a day. The amount of likes a post gets vary widely from under 100 to over 1,000. Most of the content is the quote type posts from Pinterest with some donation updates and merchandise posts. The iHeartDogs Twitter account is very underutilized and can see the most improvement.
The Plan
Objective
Create and maintain a relationship between the brand and the consumer
Goals
- Increased engagement with posts on social media
- Faster customer service response time
Strategies
- Check social media frequently and respond to comments along with posting
- Respond to many comments appropriately
- Prioritize responding to customer service comments while still maintaining a human side
- Use more hashtags
- Improve the content
Target Audience
Dogs are a large part of American culture as is iHeartDogs:
(Source: Google Trends “iHeartDogs”)
iHeartDogs is a US organization so much of the data will be focused on the US such as the pet ownership in the US:
(Source: 2012 U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook)
Dogs are the most popular pet and out of those 43,346,000 pet owning households the iHeartDogs Facebook page having over 3 million follows doesn’t look so bad, but that also means there is still a large potential audience to reach.
(Source: pewsocialtrends.org 2010)
Some info on dog ownership in the US should give a look at the demographic that iHeartDogs should target on social media.
- Both Men and Women
- Younger
- Upper-middle class
Implementing The Plan
Start responding to comments to make posts more lively. For example, if someone responds with a comment describing their dog iHeartDogs should respond with “your dog sounds lovely, we’d love to see a picture”. Also Facebook posts need to be cut back and replaced with 3-5 quality posts a day instead of a post every hour. The few likes and comments could be due to people ignoring the posts because they were overwhelmed by them. Less posts will equal more interaction. More interaction will lead to more sales and more dogs fed.
Instagram needs to cut back on the merchandising posts. They already have what works. Pictures of dogs get thousands of likes on the iHeartDogs instagram. Instead of posting a picture of a dog every 5-6 merchandise post. Do the opposite and post 3-4 dog pictures and then a post about a product. Hashtags also need to be used especially on instagram. Hashtags as simple as #Dogs, #DogLovers, #GoodBoy could get the 6 posts seen a lot more. Also, same with facebook, responding to comments would help a lot. Lastly, Instagram stories is not being used and should be used as a way to show the personality of different employees and their dogs and other human things.
Pinterest seems to be being used effectively. Continue as is.
It seems like iHeartDogs doesn’t know whether to keep posting or let the page go. There was an entire year without any posts between October 2016 and August 2017. If anything iHeartDogs should just post the exact same things they post on Instagram to Twitter. Although Twitter can be used for much more. First, it can be used for customer support. Just have the already existing customer service agents check twitter. Twitter can also be used as a way to interact with others in a snap. Search for people posting about/pictures of their dog and give other peoples post a compliment like “that’s a very good boy” without trying to sell anything. Twitter should be used as a platform where the brand acts the most human.
Conclusion
Almost everyone likes dogs and most people like to see happy dogs. That is iHeartDogs. IHeartDogs wants to make dogs happy. They have the foundation to have great social media accounts with lots of daily interaction. It’s just that they are not using the tools correctly and reaching their full potential. Using the info from this plan all the social media accounts can be turned around and have tens of thousands of people helping dogs every day instead of just a few hundred.