AC Transit Facebook Page (Siyao Chen)

ASSIGNMENT #4 – Social Media Analysis-Siyao Chen

The Facebook page for AC Transit is not doing an effective job. When you first go to the page, you are likely to shut it down immediately, because the design of their page is really blank and boring and they have a bad looking cover photo.

For the contents, the page is just like a place for announcing their unattractive community events, but their official website is indeed serving for this function. The events they posted on Facebook seldom had any likes, so it seems that their Facebook page did not do a good job in promoting their community events.

They did try to use premiums to attract the Facebook users. For example, they had a raffle for those who like their page. I think this premium is the only reason why they have 1,603 likes. However, the post of this raffle—“Tell your friends! TODAY is the last day to like our page, for a chance to win a free 31-Day bus pass! Send them to facebook.com/rideact” just got 4 likes. The raffle could be an opportunity for creating participation, which is extremely important for Facebook marketing. Unfortunately, the AC Transit Company did not do well in attracting people to engage their friends and did not creating any shares in this event. There are two main reasons why this premium event is not successful. First, the prize was not big enough to grasp attention. Second, it did not have any catching slogan or interesting description. If they want to promote this raffle into a big event, they should find interesting ways to make people share the post of this event rather than writing such blank words.

They don’t have any participation or user-generated content on the Facebook page. The contents of the posts are boring and not engaging. They don’t ask fans questions, respond to any comments, or saying things in an exciting way. They do have a frequent content flow, but it doesn’t have any positive impact since the contents are not attractive.

Their page is used by people as a place to complain about their service. 13 out of all 22 comments on the page are negative comments. For the other comments, only 2 people wrote good things about it. The post that earned the most interaction on the page is the most negative comment of their service. The guy said “AC TRANSIT HAVE BAD SERVICE!!!!A BUS DRIVE KIKCK PEOPLE OUT OF THE BUSS JUST FOR BEING LOUD THATS HELLA STUPID...EVERY TIME I TAKE AC TRANSIT PEOPLE WERE HELLA LOUD I DONT SEE THE GET KIKCK OUT OF THE BUS. DONT TAKE AC TRANSIT ANYMORE THEY HAVE ANGER ISSUES DRIVER!!!!AC TRANSIT=BAD SERVICE!!!!!!” Thus, the AC Transit Facebook page is really against itself.