By Lisa Barnett, Community Manager at eModeration
Socialbakers (the global social media and digital analytics company) monitor and rank the Facebook activity of the world's leading brands. But just how good are those brands across the other social media channels - Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube - and what exactly are they doing right (or wrong) in Facebook?
I decided to lift the bonnet and give five highly ranked US/UK retailers a good poke with my social media spanner to see what makes them tick, and award them my own social media scores.
Here are the brands I chose and their Socialbaker ranks at the time:
- Converse (#1)
- Walmart (# 2)
- Amazon.com (#3)
- Nike Women (# 24)
- M&S (Marks and Spencer) (# 40)
When reviewing all the retailers' presences, I took into account what they were doing for each of the following:
- content strategy
- community engagement
- moderation/UGC
- customer service response times and how they dealt with it
- design/look and feel
So let's start with the social network Facebook. Firstly, some general observations which apply to all the brands:
1. No response time expectations were set. It's quite obvious the pages are only being moderated during office hours, as many comments went unanswered for a number of hours. While the brands may only have staff available during office hours, most consumers want to interact outside of those hours and at weekends. If you can't be 24/7, then to manage your customer's expectations it's far better publish your 'office hours' and the timezone on your company information.
2. Not enough "hey thanks!" We also try and encourage our own clients to acknowledge positive feedback. Brands are quick to respond to the negative comments but shouldn't forget to thank fans who post positively. Being thanked by a brand it likes makes a consumer feel special and can turn your fans into ambassadors.
3. No easy-to-answer questions. For the content strategists among you, I was surprised pages are not using polls much. I know polls dipped in popularity before the timeline but I see them as a quick and easy way for brands to interact with their fans. Most pages concentrated on only getting likes.
Out of the five retailers, I thought that M&S was doing it the best:
Cover image: I love the way its cover image reflects what is going on in British life at the time: prior to England's recent ousting from Euro2012 (and I don't want to talk about it, thanks), it was the England footie team:
.. and now with the advent of Wimbledon, it has changed:
Call to action: The first thing you see is a call to action "win a new wardrobe worth £500" in the about section. The UK retailer shows a warm human personality by answering comments with full name acknowledgement and signing off as a person. And it has even turned on the direct messaging ability. (Only M&S and Nike Women had this facility on their pages).
Apps and promotions: M&S is running a recycling clothes campaign (M&S Schwopping) and there was a well thought-out content strategy across the page, in terms of videos and a series of status updates. A promotion for a live chat with Joanna Lumley was well managed: questions asked beforehand and the recording provided afterwards.
Engagement: A nice engagement tactic that both Converse and Walmart employ is to pick a photo uploaded by their fans as their monthly cover photo, encouraging people to post a picture onto the brand's timeline - or tag one on their own - in the hope it is used.
Moderation: Although Converse boasts the most likes (over 31 million), it doesn't appear as though it moderates any comments. I found a lot of spam and completely irrelevant comments, although there were few - if any - customer complaints about products ...
Frequency and content of updates: Walmart seemed to get the number of status updates right with its fans. It starts off the week with three posts and rises to four posts and then five posts a day at the end of the week and weekend. It uses a mixture of videos, 'fill in the blanks' posts and good topical issues. Surprisingly I found that Amazon.com seems to ignore status updates at the weekend; surely a peak time for the retailer?
Twitter
How do these five retailers fare across Twitter? It was interesting to see how brands dealt with customer engagement on a more informal platform.
Walmart: I chose the @walmartspecials account as this was dealing with customer support issues. A really positive experience with Walmart - pro-active, thanking consumers, asking about the issues and requesting further feedback to an email address.
The account strikes up conversations with its followers and reaches out to new people to ask them if it can help. I saw one promo tweet on its page but the main activity is befriending and engagement: reaching out to tweeters on popular subjects such as Justin Beiber and Kenny Chesney; even talking to someone about buying a new laptop.
Nike: @NikeWomen is of necessity a more reactive Twitter account as there are so many inbound messages: women, it seems, just love to tell the brand what they are doing training-wise. Much of the time @NikeWomen was replying rather than initiating conversations: over a 10 day period, I spotted about four 'marketing' tweets only - but even then, there was no hard sell, just running and eating tips. A really engaged, friendly account, very much focused on the brand's raison d'etre.
M&S: @marksandspencer (once I found it, as it took me a while) follows the Facebook topical theme - currently strawberries and cream. This was another engaging and proactive account with 'real people' answering any queries. When a matter required more attention than the channel could offer, correspondents were invited to emails via the website or phone instead. Compared with some of the other supermarket retailers active and successful on Twitter (for example, @UKTTesco) M&S gives a good example of how tone of voice should match the brand, being, appropriately, slightly more formal.
Amazon: Amazon.com's official Twitter feed @Amazon is a company promo Twitter account that doesn't seem to deal with any customer queries. The content was slightly sporadic in terms of timing - 14 June, 12 June but then not one until 2 June. (@AmazonUK posts more frequently, but is still only a broadcast medium.)
YouTube
All of the retailers allowed comments on their videos, but there didn't seem to be a policy of moderating any of the content or even responding to questions when asked by users. As we know, YouTube is the wild west of the internet as far as comments are concerned: while it takes considerable resource, we would always advise clients to moderate in order to protect both consumers and their reputations.
Again it was M&S that came out as one of the strongest. It was the only channel to upload new video content during the period of my visits. This is obviously a key social media channel for M&S and it shows. The wallpaper and featured video reflects its recent campaign "Shwopping", with the same look and feel of Facebook that also featured Joanna Lumley. With different 19 playlists, it would be hard not to find one to interest some consumer.
Nike: NikeWomen's YouTube channel looks good and I was expecting a lot of videos and activity here; the Facebook page promotes a lot of good training videos. And indeed there is a dedicated channel called Nike Training club, with a lot of views but very few comments. On the NikeWomen's channel there were questions being asked that went unanswered, and the customary YouTube colourful language: a real shame that lack of moderation spoils the space. Another disappointment was prominence on the background of a male basketball player on a site aimed at women, tssk. And a real bugbear of mine: sloppy hosekeeping; I noticed there were deleted videos in the playlists.
Amazon: Amazon again appears to be not that bothered about its presence. This is clearly not a channel that Amazon sees as key for its customers. Only 15 videos - with only six in the last two months. I don't think that Amazon has decided what it is going to do with this channel as there was no clear content strategy to reflect the wide spread of the retailer's product offering (of the six videos for 2012 , three were about books - and two on the same book at that). For an example of what Amazon should be doing, there was a film demonstrating how to prepare a meal using only an Amazon retailed utensil. Amazon asked for people to share their uses for the tool but to date (one week later) there are no videos up there. I guess Amazon customers aren't really up for it on YouTube, but it would be good to see this channel being developed further.
On to the platform du jour ... Our retailers seem to be taking a more measured approach to this network than many, despite its obvious link to fashion retail (of which, more later in our forthcoming white paper on social media fashion). Of the five retailers we are looking at, for only only two could we find an official account - although of course the missing brands are well represented by their fans on other boards. In the main here, I thought there were some wasted opportunities. eModeration's white paper 'The Complete Pinterest Guide for Brands' would show them how to create a link between your boards and your business, how to engage consumers, demonstrate your core values, use your boards as a focus group and so on. We recommend it ;)
Amazon has a Pinterest presence which at least covers a wider range than its YouTube channel, though it's hardly a busy place. The boards seem rather random and the link to the retailer hard to ascertain.
Walmart has a good use of boards (22) to capture every day activities such as Easter, Mother's Day, meals and crafts, cleverly encompassing the breadth of its range.
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There were no comments, but with 2283 followers already and 354 pins, Walmart is definitely building up a good fan base here. Not to be confused, by the way, with People of Walmart: best not go there ...
Google+
And finally Google+. I'd say all of the retailers (except NikeWomen as there is only a Nike page) have made the classic mistake of rushing to have a space on a new platform and then neglecting it. Bagging your brand name is important of course (as the recent @natwest debacle proved), but if you don't have the resource to devote to it, or want to see what direction a channel is headed in, perhaps the best thing to do is take (another UK retailer) Tesco's unique approach and put a disclaimer up there: "Tesco is not yet on Google + . When we do get started this is where we will be!". Note that Tesco does also include a 0800 telephone number for customer services in the About section.
The other retailers are finding themselves being criticised by users for setting up the presence and then not doing much with it. M&S appears to have forgotten it set up the account: the last post is Feb 24 with comments criticising the brand for its neglect and comparing it unfavourably with its competitors on Google+. Oops.
Amazon does seem to be taking Google+ a bit more seriously: posting up once or twice a week with deals of the day and getting around 30-40 comments. Its last post was on 7 June with deal of the day - a Star Trek Blu Ray receiving three comments. Although one post was heavily criticised as it asked people to share their favourite song on Facebook to get $2 in amazon music credit.
The Scores
Now to those all important marks. For ease I amalgamated the social media platforms and gave each retailer marks out of 5 for each criteria.
So, for me, M&S come out on top - although they are the lowest ranked with Socialbakers. As a Community Manager, I am particular to having nice clean pages with no spam, customer queries being answered in a practical and timely fashion and lots of lovely community engagement. And this is what I found with Marks & Spencers' presences. The repurposing of its campaign across its platforms was good to see.
Nike Women has created a good loyal community presence, especially on Facebook and Twitter. The approach to dealing with queries, criticisms and comments showed that it has put the procedures and resources in place. If that approach were replicated across other platforms, they'll score more highly next time.
So what do you think about my ratings for the retailers? Am I being a bit harsh or was I too fair to them? I'd love to hear what you think and if there are any other retailers out there that you think do a good job with their social media presences.