Like many brands, we're always seeking to explore the possibilities of social media.
We established a dedicated internal team to focus on emerging media. Interestingly,
this is an extension of our ongoing efforts to make our stores faster, friendlier,
cleaner and to generally improve the overall shopping experience.
We've spent lots of time interacting with and seeking to understand how people use
these tools and in what ways the Walmart brand can be relevant and provide value.
It quickly became obvious to us that many communities exist that focus on saving
money which is core to our brand promise. We felt we could best participate in the
conversation by helping to foster the growth of people and forums in this space.
For many months, we've been engaged in social media platforms that generate discussion
about money saving products and services. Sites and services such as Walmart's
Checkout blog, Customer Ratings and Reviews, and MakeYourDollarStretch.com have
given our customers a forum to learn about products and share ideas for saving money.
The question was, how do we support and build upon existing money saving communities?
Soon it became clear that we should reach out to the many great writers who are
already blogging about great money saving ideas.
We began slowly, making contacts in Twitter, leveraging Facebook profiles, viewing
related YouTube videos, and trying to understand how we could participate. And
not just by adding more messaging. We made friends. We heard from our critics.
And we began to interact as both Walmart associates and as people.
We began to reach out to some of the bloggers we had been following to find out
if they would be interested in building a connected money saving community.
In all we invited eleven Mom Bloggers to participate and began to refer to the group
as "elevenmoms." Several Moms strongly suggested that we add another Mom Blogger
that they regarded highly so we did. Hence, we have 12 "elevenmoms", a great
value as well!
We are honored to be able to work with this great group of Moms.
We have continued to grow the community by launching a
YouTube brand channel
with the sole focus of saving money. We felt this genre would be most helpful to
our customers especially given all the economic challenges that many of us are facing.
To help build and test this idea, we worked with our partner Pure Digital
to get Flip video cameras into the Moms' hands to give them a great tool
to create content.
And create content they did.
Videos began to arrive with great ideas about saving money. The group actually
became quite competitive and in the spirit of true social media, an idea sharing
and tip resource for each other.
The YouTube program launched in early September, and our customers have begun to
see many new tools on a new community area on walmart.com/community that connects
this money saving resource with expanded new platforms to engage more of our customers
in areas where we have seen they are very passionate,
from saving money to learning about new products.
Elevenmoms update - December 2008
Today the elevenmoms group is more vibrant that ever. The original group of
eleven has now expanded to twenty-one including a green focused mom and the first elevenmom
in Canada. We continue to learn more about communicating with moms on a one
to one basis every day. The elevenmoms group and hundreds of other Moms, Dads
and people of all types are now actively helping us shape our business through sharing
their stories and videos on Walmart.com's connect & share platform. Thousands
of customers are getting their questions answered by other customers, Walmart Associates
and even suppliers through a single tool.
Additionally, we've launched a Spanish language money saving community on our
Hispanic website and have created many new tools on elevenmoms.com including
a moneysaving tips page, a featured guest Blogger section and even seasonal tips
for saving money. We're continuing to launch new tools like our holiday specials mobile alerts and budgeting tools.
So what's next? We want to keep learning and evolving and fostering a platform
of money saving communities. Have a tip? Leave it to help others.
Have a suggestion? Let us know.