Maersk Line doesn’t shy away from addressing bad news stories on its Facebook page and also makes good use of its images says Sarah Purvis, marketing and communications executive at Cube3
Maersk Line is the world’s largest container shipping company with 25,000 employees and 325 offices in 125 countries around the world. Its 600 ships sail every major trade lane on the globe. Maersk Line is reasonably new to the social media scene, only getting to grips with it in 2011. Up until that point Maersk Line had been going through a phase it described as a ‘listening’ period to help assess the worth of social media and how to move their content strategy forward.
Page: facebook.com/Maerskline
Number of likes: 1,118,740*
• Content is very image-led, creating a Facebook feed that feels more like Instagram. These photos also have very high engagement levels.
• Content for Facebook activity is shared from a variety of sources through a content strategy that is diverse and joined up.
• Maersk Line shares the good, the bad and the ugly. By being open in its communications it limits, or at least has more control over, negative publicity.
• The text for posts is carefully constructed and thoughtfully placed with relevant images using a personal tone of voice.
Engagement
Maersk Line has an extremely high number of fans to engage with and several social platforms to manage. With such a global brand there is potential for social platforms to be used as customer service forums. Maersk Line established from the start that this is not their main communication objective, highlighted in the ‘House Rules’ tab on their Facebook page. This points customer enquiries away from its Facebook page to designated channels. In addition to the ‘House Rules’ tab there are also tabs for photos, Pinterest, ‘Our Tweeters’ and Instagram. Although Instagram was not working at the time of writing, it does show an intention for close integration of its social platforms.
Facebook activity is extremely image-led, which creates high engagement levels with fans, resulting in an Instagram-style feel to the page. Maersk Line has really captured the idea of visual storytelling, key to communicating to customers, rather than distributing pushy marketing messages.
The shipping company runs competitions, links to blogs by its captains, shares videos from various platforms and stories from Maersklinesocial.com. It also takes a unique stance in B2B social media by being transparent and open with its communications, as far as possible. Even more negative stories, such as when one of its ships accidentally killed a whale, are documented, allowing it to take more control of the situation.
Direction
Maersk Line has successfully shown the power of visual storytelling on social media. It needs to continue to give fans an insight into the company and the industry. Continuing to put the staff at the centre of its campaigns will ensure content is engaging as it is the people that make a company interesting. Maersk Line is a great example of a huge international brand communicating with its audience on a small personal level. Moving forward it could put more of a focus on the destinations it ships to, the journey of those products and who they affect; adding an even more personal tone of voice to the international brand.
Overall rating: 8/10
