Maersk Line (Part 3): Maersk’s Community Engagement Strategy Sets Sail

With an original mission to get closer to its customers, Maersk’s social media strategy has centered around communication over marketing. Subsequently, Maersk has successfully fostered engaged social media communities on several platforms using this approach.

Social Media Community Engagement

Data and user behavior support the success of Maersk Line’s social media community engagement efforts. On Facebook, the company built a fan following of 400,000 in just 11 months (Katona & Sarvary, 2014). The rate at which users liked and commented on company content, such as photo posts and stories, clearly indicated an interested and engaged audience. On Instagram, Maersk tapped into “container spotters” already photographing and sharing the brand, inviting an outside audience to share in a branded community experience. Twitter fostered strong engagement with shipping professionals, customers, and employees retweeting Maersk’s content. Maersk’s segmented platform strategies indicate an understanding of each community’s motivations.

Wichmann believed metrics such as followers and fans should only be part of the calculus when measuring successful engagement, instead preferring to focus on authenticity and creating “bottom value” (Katona & Sarvary, 2014). Wichmann argued that,

“It is impossible to quantify a value that is not just about customers and sales, but about employee engagement, customer insights, innovation – we have gotten ideas from shipping experts and what’s the value of that insight that will influence a management decision?”

Ever the pioneer, Wichmann invented a formula for measuring engagement where a sample of the company’s latest ten posts was taken, adding up the likes, number of comments (multiplied by two to reflect their higher weight), and shares (multiplied by four to reflect their even higher weighted value). The resulting score would then be measured against the scores of other multinational brands, such as Lego, Disney, General Electric, Shell, Ford, and McDonald’s (Katona & Sarvary, 2014).

User and Group Motivations

Maersk cultivated its social media communities by crafting successful, segmented engagement strategies for each platform that leveraged its understanding of user and group motivations and utilized the technological functionality available on each network. On Facebook, fans were attracted to the insider view of ships and operations. Followers on Twitter and LinkedIn valued industry news and insights. Instagram container spotters simply enjoyed photographing Maersk ships. Maersk employees also became enthusiastic about sharing their experiences and pride for the company through content and shared posts.

Benefits and Risks of Engagement

The benefits of this engagement came in the form of increased brand awareness, positive brand sentiment, customer insights, and employee pride. Maersk’s ability to nurture social media engagement...

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