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Walmart's Local Facebook Approach Not Cutting It

October 1, 2012Written by Tom Ryan

At least when it comes to Facebook, local businesses are significantly better at engaging with customers than is Walmart, according to a new study by social media metrics firm Recommend.ly.

In October 2011, Walmart partnered with Facebook to create 3,500 Facebook Pages for its local stores across the U.S. The goal of "My Local Walmart" was to drive its more than nine million Facebook fans at the time to its local store pages and build brand loyalty with "enhanced local interaction at an unprecedented scale."

Nearly a year later, however, Recommend.ly found that Walmart's local Facebook Pages are faring poorly on key fan engagement metrics.

Of the 2,800 Walmart stores that have their own fan pages, only four percent have more than 1,000 fans. The store pages posted an average of only 1.24 updates per day, and 85 percent of Walmart's local store pages didn't respond to any fan comments during the 30 days of the study. On average, the Walmart local store pages had an average of 563 fans, 5.2 percent of them active in some way during the 30 days of the study.

By contrast, a sample of just under 1,900 local business pages on Facebook found that 22 percent had more than 1,000 fans. Local businesses had an average of 4,207 fans, 12.2 percent of them active.

Speaking to allfacebook.com, Recommend.ly's CEO Venkat Ramna gave Walmart credit for trying to start conversations through shared photos and other efforts, but said Walmart's local pages don't ask enough questions, provide much call-to-action, and seem to be too controlled by a central team. Recommendations included empowering store managers to generate local content, including local promotions or responses to nearby events, activities or weather.

"In Walmart San Francisco, maybe a guy sitting in San Francisco could be expecting some kind of content relating to San Francisco, not a generic discount that you have anyway on the Walmart page," said Mr. Ramna. "There's nothing unique about local pages that Walmart is doing currently, and if you look at the responsiveness of the page owners when it comes to the main pages and the local pages, the local pages really don't give any feedback or response."

On the brighter side, Walmart's flagship Facebook Page leads the retail industry with nearly 22 million fans and scores high, according to Recommend.ly's analysis, across content sharing, content virality and page responsiveness.

Outside of Barnes & Noble, which has localized pages serving key college campuses, Walmart is reportedly the only national chain with Facebook pages for individual stores.

In a statement provided to Advertising Age, a Walmart spokeswoman said the chain is encouraging store managers to post to their pages. It also gave local store 'fans' early access to the holiday layaway program to drive local engagement. She said the effort is "still in their very early stages," and "we're proud to be the only retailer to have launched this kind of innovative social-media effort."

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