Introuduction:
Two years ago, it was the time I took Megabus first time, from Philadelphia to DC when I travelled in US. This September. 21th, I went to Philadelphia to visit my cousin there, and took a Megabus from Philly to DC to visit my friend. That was my second time Megabus experience. Surprisingly, nothing have changed during more than two years, with same bus, same seat, same terrible restroom, same poor wi-fi signal, even same delay for nearly one hour. I am so curious about why everything still the same and no one want to fix the problem.
Megabus, a low-cost bus service in Great Britain, United states and Canada owned by Stagecoach Group, famous for its safe, convenient, and low cost starting from 1$ travel, with diverse featrues, like free wi-fi, restroom, accessible for mobility impaired, edc. On its official website, you can choose the place you're going to in nearly 80 cities where Megabus provides service, and buy the tickets.
Megabus provides customers from several different taking off times with different price to choose. Normally, depending on arrival times, you arrive much later, the price of ticket much cheaper. If you are lucky, you can get the 1$ ticket!
Target audience:
What we can find from the chart is that most audience of Megabus is aged from 18-24, most of whom are college students. Undoubtedly, this group of people want to save money when they travel by taking Megabus. Obviously, saving money is the biggest benefit Megabus can bring to its customers, especially to young people. From my own experience, I always meet many students on bus, such as some girls with a large Forever 21 bags just for shopping to a near city. However, there is one problem of Megabus. I can never find any news, information or annoucement which tell me that when the tickets are 1 dollar or at low price, so that I never see $1 tickets ever. If the goal of Megabus is to help people saving money, it should let people know.
Social media use:
Apparently, we have seen that we can contact with Megabus by three ways: Facebook, Twitter, and Tumlr. After the one-month monitoring, I find some problems showed in Megabus's social media utilize. It seems that social media dosen't work with helping Megabus energize its customers and thrive in the market.
1. Facebook.
(Screenshot on Oct.24th)
(Screenshot on Sept.30th)
(Screenshot on Oct.12th)
We can find out that the number of people who like Megabus is increasing, however, the number of people who are talking about Megabus is reducing. What's the reason for this phenomena? I checked the Facebook webpage of Megabus, and found the reason: Megabus hardly response and talk with people who participate in the communication on Facebook. Megabus always just post some topics, inquires, champions on Facebook, and leave. People who are engaged in those, writing opinions and reviews never got response and reflection from Megabus. Gradually, people lack interest.
There was a campaign hold on Oct.5th. There were 324 of comments showed people took part in this campaign, all the people got the right answer. However, Megabus had no response to anybody to inform they and other spectators the results. It was so disappointing.
There is no doubt that the campaign will be helpful to Megabus letting people know more about the bus and energizing them to be with Megabus. The chart on Icerocket shows that the campaign draw an increasing number of people' s attention. Nevertheless, people were losing interest in talking about Megabus due to the silence of Megabus.
If I were the executive who mastered the Facebook of Megabus, I would open the result of the campaign which showed that people who won the tickets, especially those who got tickets by answering the question on Facebook. I believe this action will energize people's enthusiasm and trust leading them to take part in next campaign.
Let's see another campaign hold by Megabus showed on Facebook, which tells us the impact of social media to increase people's attention and interest. This was a campaign happened on Oct.17th, Nascar Nationwide Series Sponsorship, a football game as well, Megabus uploaded a great number of materials to Facebook, including some pictures and posts. There were 100 people who like those post in total and also some comments.
On the day, the chart on Icerocket shows that the highest peak of blogs referring to Megabus. The point I circled in green round.
Many people on Facebook express their affinity to Megabus, and most of those comments and posts uploaded by people are positive. However, Megabus hardly response to those appreciation. Customer will feel disppointed when they are ignored by what they like.
What's more, to those who are anger with Megabus due to its services, Megabus lose the opportunity to fix its mistake and lose its customers.
In conclusion, the more you engaged in groundswell, the more attention you get from people. The conversation between you and your customers cannot be stopped when it began. Therefore, taking part in the conversation with passion and humble is necessary to build a healty and long-term relationship with your customers.
2.Twitter.
(Screenshot on Oct.24th)
(Screenshot on Oct.9th)
(Screenshot on Oct.16th)
Obviously, we can find out that the number of tweets posted by Megabus on Twitter is increasing so slow. So dose the number of followers of Megabus.
let me tell you what happened to Megabus's twitter.
From Sept.27th to Oct.24, there are 98 tweets in total posted on to Internet, and there are only 27 original posts composed by Megabus. The others are the response to people who @ Megabus. A serious small number of people participate in the conversation and topic hold by Megabus. You can see from the following picture showing that nobody join the topics.
During one month observation of monitoring Megabus, I find a interesting phenomena, which is that the sentiment of netural to Megabus showed on Social mention always take big part of the whole. And the passion is very low.
(Screenshot on Oct.24th)
(Screenshot on Oct.9th) (Screenshot on Oct.16th)
During one month, nothing have been changed of people's attitude toward Megabus. I believe there is something wrong with the social media use of Megabus.
Let's take a look of Megabushelp on Twitter. This is associated with Megabus, in order to provide customers with help and convenience when they meet problems and troubles.
After reivewing many tweets on Megabushelp, I find that it always use three answers to response customers:
1. My apologize for the delay. Can you please DM your contact info&we will reach out to you?
2.We're sorry to hear about this. Can you please follow and DM your contact number?
3. We apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced with you services.
Megabus always use same answer to respond different people.People must have be bored with those answers,and begin to dislike Megabus. Many people will meet same problems in a day. What Megabus do is just waiting people tell them that they are in trouble and solve the problem after it happened.In my opinion, Megabushelp on Twitter is a good solution to talking to customers, however, what's more, Megabus should carefully consider to fix the same problem before it happened next time, which will give customers more concidence to take it.
Besides, there was no any response to show that whether those problems have been solved successfully. Lacking of these response, Megabus will lose customer's trust gradually. You can help people by Internet to express your humble, what also you need to do is show your customers and others you have the capacity to solve the problems in fastest way.
3. Tumblr.
Tumblr is a social network I never heard before. It is a website associated with Twitter, where you can post blogs and pictures.
Megabus will post all the campaign with pictures and detials and Tumblr, and post its link on Twitter.Also, people can enter the webpage of Megabus's Twitter through Tumblr.
During the last one month, there were only 29 blogs posted by Megabus onto Tumblr, and there were only 14 notes showed people view those blogs. The attention is too low!
In my opinion, there is no need to use Tumblr at all. Seldom people knows Tumblr, and seldom use it. Those blogs posted on to Tumblr, are posted on to Facebook as well. What Megabus should do is posting the link of Facebook onto Twitter, because there are much more information, materials, conversation, and participation on Facebook, which can help Megabus activate the popularity of its Twitter.
4. YouTube
Depending on one month observation, I find out that YouTube is a social media being less focused on, even ignored. Until Oct.24th, there are only 6 videos uploaded by Megabue and shared on Facebook.
However, after checking the website of YouTube, and typing into the key word "Megabus", there are nealy 2000 videos by people who have ever took the bus before.
From my point of view, those videos are great resourese to Megabus which can be used to energize its customers. The company can uploaed thoe video onto Facebook and post the link the Twitter, which will attract people's attention and interest. In addition, those videos are taken by customers and passengers, which seems much realer and more compelling.
Conclusion:
Megabus uses several social media to energize in the groundswell. However, there are some problems that need to be solved. Otherwise, those social media strategies will be useless to the company. In the next few weeks, I will contiune to observe the Megabus's utilize of social media, and check the problems whether have been noticed by their executives.
I love Megabus! Good luck to him!
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