I completed a social media on the online streaming service, Netflix. I know I’m not the only one who loves watching Netflix for hours on end, and we all love the viral memes that come out of Netflix shows. Those memes are super easily accessible on their social media platforms, and users love engaging with it. While I love using their services, I observed some pretty interesting social media habits the brand has.
Best Practices
Netflix does a great job at increasing engagement for the social media accounts of the shows they have on their website. On “Instagram Likes: How to Get More and Why They Still Matter”, it mentions that tagging the right account is so important to increase engagement. Netflix does a thorough job with this. They tag all the relevant actors and shows on their posts, which can cause the show and actor to share the post, and gain more attention to Netflix, the show, and the actors. In Sprout Social’s “10 Ways to Increase Facebook Engagement that Work“, one of the ways that’s mentioned is to make sure to try to make your fans laugh by including some funny posts and content. Netflix is king when it comes to this.
What Netflix Gets Wrong
While Netflix has some great social media practices, they also have some really bad ones, which neither you or I should be following. Netflix loves to do this thing on all their platforms- when their users are mad, they suddenly go missing. During my audit, there were plenty of users who were upset about cancellations of their favorite shows, particularly a show called “Anne with an E.” These replies consumed Netflix’s Twitter and Facebook, and as a result, Netflix posted less, and did not at all acknowledge their users anger.
Imagine getting super upset with someone and they just didn’t acknowledge your existence, but they avoided you. That’s sort of the same thing. When we interact with companies online, we look forward to responses, and as social media users we should be sure to reply to users who count on us to!
The next Netflix social media practice that you should avoid repeating is never responding to users. Users tweet at Netflix, and comment on their Instagram, and while it wouldn’t be possible to respond to everyone, it’s a show of good faith to reply to some users, or the particularly funny comments. People love brands like Wendy’s, DiGiornos, and Dominos since they’re so active on social media, and people can expect a response. A response to someone on social media can make their entire day.
On Bonfire Marketing’s Article “The Ultimate Social Media Best Practices 2019” some of the best practices include making sure that posts stay under 40 characters, and they receive the most engagement (up to 86% more!). Another suggestion in the article is to use engagement-bait language like “share this post” or “tag a friend” and Netflix doesn’t use either of these practices, even though simply adding “tag a friend” to a post could make engagement skyrocket for some of their content.
Overall, Netflix has some really great strategies, and some really poor ones. When looking up to companies for the social media examples, it’s really important to make sure what they’re doing will have a positive impact on your social media engagement, and not to just trust it blindly, since not every company has the best techniques.
Let me know what you think! Leave a comment below.
Social with Nelly 