Green Mountain Coffee Takes Headfirst Approach to Social Media

October 8, 2009 By Paul Miller, editor-in-chief, All About ROI

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* Blogging: Because it offers so many different flavors of coffee for the K-cups that are used by the Keurig, a common blog theme for Green Mountain, Crites said, is a discussion with consumers on what the next K-cup flavor should be. But Green Mountain doesn’t simply leave its blogs on its site expecting all to find them; it emails links to its blogs to about a half-million customers.

*BizRate: “A great social media tool for us,” Crites said. “We get great quotes off it daily.”

Give Consumers Easy Access
Green Mountain’s overall approach to social media is to make it easy for consumers to access, rather than expecting them to go find it. With that in mind, the company soon will launch a microsite off its homepage that'll consolidate all of its social media endeavors, including Facebook, Twitter, its blogs, YouTube and others. “We’re trying to mush all the social media stuff to a single page with reviews, endorsements and tweets,” Crites said.

Above all else, social media “removes our webmaster from being the bottleneck,” he said. “It also empowers our employees to be the experts.”

In a follow-up interview, Crites laid out details on how Green Mountain staffs its various social media endeavors, noting that no one person handles everything.

Although Crites hopes that over the next 12 months he’ll hire a single, full-time staffer to coordinate all of Green Mountain’s social media endeavors, for now, “we really just have existing staff adding one or two social media tasks to their duties and haven’t hired a special person to do it,” he says.

• Two staffers in Green Mountain’s customer care department answer emails, search Twitter and respond to BizRate comments full time, which in total takes about 5 percent of their time.
• A different staffer on Crites’ team spends 5 percent of her time checking Green Mountain's Facebook page.
• Some 15 staffers write stories for Green Mountain’s blog — each spending less than 5 percent of their time on this. “This team is growing,” Crites said, “the more contributors the better.”
• The HouseParty.com initiative is a special marketing project led by a single marketer on Crites’ team, and it takes up about 5 percent of the staffer’s time. “These events occur at specific times,” Crites pointed out, “so it’s not an ongoing job.”
• PowerReviews is managed by two staffers from Green Mountain’s web team, each of whom spends less than 3 percent of their time on it.
• YouTube video posting is handled primarily by interns; one full-time staffer contributes as well, taking 3 percent of that staffer’s time.