Walmart uses Twitter as one of the important social media channels to engage with customers and also improve its brand reputation.

1. Analysis & Outlook
Case Study - Walmart Social Media Strategy – Engaging with customers on Twitter
Walmart uses Twitter as one of the important social media channels to engage with customers
and also improve its brand reputation. They have seven total Twitter handles with
@WalmartHub being the “parent” handle that only retweets the best performing content from the
other handles to its largest following. The primary Walmart Twitter presence is @Walmart,
which the Marketing team manages. The main Corporate Affairs Twitter presence is
@WalmartHub, with a variety of sub handles (@WalmartGreen, @WalmartHealthy,
@WalmartGiving, @WalmartNewsroom, @WalmartAction) for specific content areas.
@WalmartNewsroom is company official "corporate spokesperson handle" where it issue press
releases and other announcements. @WalmartGreen is channel for talking about sustainability.
@WalmartGiving is where company addresses the philanthropic efforts. The Walmart
Foundation gave over a $1 billion to worthy organizations in 2012 and we give grants in
communities across the country so this handle works very well for reaching those audiences.
@WalmartAction focuses on public policy issues and supports company efforts in the
communities they serve. @WalmartHealthy shares news about their ongoing efforts to help
customers get fresh and healthy foods without having to pay more. @WalmartVeterans is our
newest handle designed to support the ongoing conversation around veterans hiring and other
veterans-related issues.
Walmart primarily chose Twitter as it believes customers it wants to reach for corporate affairs
are mostly present on Twitter. Walmart Digital Communications team manages approximately
80,000 mentions of significance on Twitter per day that are specific to Walmart’s reputation or
two major missions —tweets related to its two primary missions first one informing the
customers about the lowest prices offered compared to competitors that will lead to savings and
better lives and second mission to enhance the company reputation.
Walmart understands it is impossible to handle a volume of 80,000 interactions daily and
respond to each, they have utilised data to target and respond to those that are important and
filtering through these missives to identify important ones to reach. The social team responds
selectively, pinpointing the tweets where they will most likely make a difference by responding.
Walmart promotes its best-performing tweets to extend their reach and story lifecycles. It also
promotes messages to counter negative mentions with the hope of putting an alternative view in
place. It also comments on negative stories to expose its own perspective more broadly. Relative
to answering questions, the response gap has been generally narrowed from two or more days to
10-15 minutes, especially on simple, fact-oriented questions. Underlying its social sharing
strategy is the idea that, “It’s not about when you want to send a message, but when the audience
wants to consume it.” In light of this, Walmart uses an application to handle and score content
while also assessing the company’s real-time audience presence.