FreshNetworks Blog

This year, Wired magazine hosted their inaugural conference to bring together a community of innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs who are defining the future.

Speakers covered a mind-bending range of topics from  robotics, behavioural economics, product design and 3D printing. Unsurprisingly, social media was a hot topic and on the second day of the conference. Joanna Shields, VP of Facebook EMEA,  talked to us about social media and the future of Facebook:

Facebook – privacy concerns

One of the greatest criticisms that has been directed at Facebook is its handling of members’ data and the risk of private information being used without permission for commercial gain. Shields argued that Facebook is a unique piece of innovation and that,  “there is always anxiety about innovation”. In the same way that consumers were originally uncertain about the use of caller ID on phones, so it is that ideas and attitudes about transparency change over time.

All Facebook can do, said Shields, was to ensure that it is as open and transparent about the way that it handles members’ data – which is why they made their privacy settings more accessible last year.

Of course, with the conference based in London, another issue in many minds was the relationship between social media and the recent riots in the city.

Shield’s response was somewhat predictable – that Facebook needs to make sure it can educate people on how it works and how it doesn’t. And that ultimately, as it is based on true identity, Facebook cannot be a mass organising tool for the anonymous – if people try to use it in this way, they’re going to get caught.

The next big thing? It will be music

Facebook is in the middle of some if the biggest changes it has ever made to the user experience. The introduction of the timeline means that members’ personalities will be able to shine through on their timeline like never before. This means opportunities surrounding very specific Facebook apps which can be used by the individual to contribute to and reflect their personal passions.

Of course, with all the data on Facebook, the lucrative enterprise opportunities have previously been focused on gaming, however Shields gave us some insight that the next big ‘thing’ would be music. With the integration of music apps into Facebook, the social media platform aims to make music more engaging, more fun and more personal.

A recent report has revealed that social media adoption by the fashion industry has exploded over the last three years. The latest L2 Luxury Digital IQ Index report which was led by Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern, reveals that there is now widespread adoption of social media channels by fashion brands.

The 49 brands studied in the report were given a Digital IQ according to how they scored in four areas of digital; their websites, digital marketing, social media and mobile capacities. They were then ranked “genius”, “gifted”, “average”, “challenged” or “feeble”.

Here are the top 20 luxury brands:

As you can see, there are some unsurprisingly big names in the top twenty. However, interestingly Kate Spade – ranked number 2 in the report – is a relative new-comer in the world of fashion.

As the report reveals, there is less correlation between Digital IQ class and the size of a brand’s offline business, suggesting that if you use digital and social media strategically, you could potentially have the same capacity for success as some of the main players in fashion.

So why has interest in digital increased?

Simple – because brands have discovered just how essential it is for their shareholder value. Have a listen to what Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry (ranked with the highest Digital IQ) has to say:

“To any CEO who is sceptical at all: you have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand. You have to. You have to create a social enterprise today. If you don’t do that, I don’t know what your business model is in 5 years.” – Angela Ahrendts

More and more data is becoming available to support Angela Ahrendts’ statement. The Digital IQ report reveals that 67% of EU consumers and 50% of American consumers say that they research luxury items online before they buy them – which suggests that if you can influence that audience online, it can have a positive effect on your sales.

Which social platforms are luxury brands using?

Whilst many brands have established Facebook and Twitter accounts, it is interesting to note that a number of big names have been keen to adopt other platforms.

Tumblr
Only eight brands in the Index are on Tumblr, yet anecdotal evidence suggests that engagement rates surpass those on other social media platforms. Not only can it increase consumer awareness, but it is also a great way to establish and develop relationships with key fashion bloggers. Currently leading the way on Tumblr in terms of reblogs per post are Alexander McQueen with 520 and Oscar de la Renta with 313.

Instagram
Instagram is perfect for an audience which is passionate about beautiful images. More than 20 percent of brands in the Index are use Instagram to filter and share photos from fashion events and editorial shoots. As with most other social networks, Burberry is currently leading the way in terms of numbers, with almost 85,000 followers.

Polyvore

Almost a quarter of the brands surveyed have an account on Polyvore (22%), although only 5 of the 11 are deemed to be active users.

Polyvore offers brands in-depth analytics, which enables detailed measurement of success. The platform is well suited for special events and contests – Michael Kors’ contest to create a holiday look generated 280,000 impressions, 46,391 likes and 2,921 created sets.

What’s next? E-commerce and further social integration

Interestingly, the report highlights that 20% of the studied brands still don’t sell online, and that brands who do offer e-commerce gain 19% more visits per user on average.

A key opportunity is for brands to offer sharing features on their individual product pages, as those that do register more than twice the traffic growth (year on year) than those who don’t.

Here at FreshNetworks we’ve always argued that engagement is a much more interesting metric than popularity, which is why we’re big fans of Socialbaker’s Engagement Analytics tool, as it provides granular information on a variety of  Facebook related engagement statistics.

We used Socialbakers to compare two large rival Facebook pages (both are approaching 2 million fans) for two similar consumer products – Unilever’s AXE and P&G‘s  Old Spice – in order to test the tool and compare the different strategies employed by each brand during September.

1. Content strategies

A comparison of both AXE and Old Spice Facebook walls show the different content strategies that the brands are using:

AXE’s landing page is their ‘Premature Perspiration’ tab, which plays a video and links to an app, which certainly diverts fans from their wall.

Clicking through to AXE’s wall displays all posts, meaning that a first time visitor is unlikely to see any of the brand’s posted content; this is bound to be detrimental to engagement levels.

Old Spice, on the other hand, give priority to their own posts. This not only means their latest post is always prominent, but so too are older ones, making them “stickier” in the eyes of a visitor. Old Spice have clearly worked with their recognisable tone of voice of the “Old Spice Guy”, which is reflected in the nature of their updates. AXE’s updates are much more eclectic, designed and intended for a specific young, male audience.

Winner: Old Spice

2. Post frequency and variety

Aside from the different ways of displaying their walls, AXE and Old Spice have a pronounced difference in terms of how often they post, and what types of content they share.

Throughout September, Old Spice made 20 posts, while AXE bordered on three times as much activity with 54 posts, often posting twice daily.

In terms of the breakdown of content, Old Spice made 16 text updates, 2 links and 2 videos (Socialbakers analysed all videos for both pages as “links”).

AXE on the other hand, has a much broader approach with 42 photo updates (including albums), followed by 7 videos, 3 links, 1 poll and just 1 text update.

Winner: AXE

3. Engagement

At a first glance, you would imagine the variety of updates posted by AXE to offers deeper engagement, yet this is not reflected in Socialbakers’ calculation as it takes into account the number of posts being made.

By posting less frequently, and drawing more attention to their posts, Old Spice are able to leverage a greater rate of engagement from a lower amount of posts.

Winner: Old Spice

4. Response rates

While Old Spice is able to remain highly engaging, it is significantly weaker than AXE when it comes to responding to fans.  AXE’s two community managers, Dan and Laura, sign off each post personally and even appear in various photos and videos. This gives fans an opportunity for a dialogue with real people, whereas Old Spice posts remain in the tone of voice of the Old Spice Guy and are rarely followed up.

Old Spice are clearly successful with their ongoing use of the Old Spice Guy’s persona, while AXE has two real people acting as the contact point for the fans. It could be argued that Old Spice’s engagement is mostly passive, while AXE has actual interaction between their fans and community managers.

Winner: AXE

Conclusions

It’s  not simple to say that one page is superior to the other.  Old Spice is way ahead of Axe in terms of engagement, but according to Socialbakers’ metrics (in the table to the right) they are not doing anything exceptional.

What is clear, though, is that merely looking at the prominent numbers on a Facebook page will not give much information as to its effectiveness.

According to IBM‘s new, inaugral Global Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Study, 68% of CMOs are underprepared to manage the impact of key changes in the marketing arena that relate to social media.

The survey, based on face-to-face conversations with more than 1,700 CMOs worldwide, highlighted that CMOs see four challenges as pervasive, universal game-changers in the world of marketing:

1.The explosion of data
2. Social media
3. The proliferation of channels and devices
4. Shifting consumer demographics.

When it comes to social media, CMOs are acutely aware that social media is challenging older, mass-marketing assumptions, skill sets and approaches, and while the most proactive CMOs are mining new digital data sources to discover what individual customers want, relatively few CMOs are exploiting the full power of the digital or social media.  In fact, only three-quarters use customer analytics to mine data, only 26% track blogs, only 42% track third-party reviews and only 48% are tracking consumer reviews. The reasons behind this are attributed to the fact that the tools, processes and metrics that CMOs are using are not designed to capture and evaluate the unstructured data produced by social platforms.

More than half of all CMOs think social media is a key channel for engaging with customers and four-fifths of respondents plan to use customer analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), social media and mobile applications more extensively over the next three to five years.

Of the top 10 priorities for managing the shift to digital technologies, 4 relate directly to social media, with another 3 potentially being impacted by social media. It’s also interesting to note that social media metrics appear as one  of seven important measures for gauging marketing success – two years ago this would never have been the case.

The fact that so many global CMOs are concerned about the impact of social media, and how they are going to resource, manage, analyse and measure it, highlights that social media is finally moving beyond the numbers of views or fans on various channels. CMOs are starting to realise that social media can help achieve strategic objectives and transform their business if they invest in the right resource and planning and set metrics that match their key business goals.

Earlier this week Facebook launched a new page measurement which looks at the number of fans who “are talking about” a branded Facebook page.

The ‘People Talking About’ metric is a rolling average of the last 7 days of user-initiated activity on a specific page, which includes posting to the wall, “liking”, commenting or sharing one of the posts or a piece of content on the page, answering a Facebook Question posed to fans, or mentioning a page in a status update.

Here at FreshNetworks we’re very pleased with this new metric as it indicates a move away from measuring a page’s “success” through the number of likes or fans, and a move towards measuring real engagement  – something which we’ve always advocated.

With this in mind, we thought it would be interesting to use this new metric to assess which are the Top 100 most engaged pages on Facebook*. We think the list below sheds new light on which brands are achieving the most success with social media:

It’s interesting to note that Starbucks, who would be the number one most ‘successful’ page based on the traditional “like” measurement has now dropped to 58 based on this new engagement metric. Another example of this would be Coca-Cola. Mashable have posted a list noting the most talked about Facebook Fan pages by volume, in which Coca-Cola’s page appears #2. In our list above you don’t see Coca-Cola because, although they have an astonishing 34M fans, only 0.25M are engaging with the page on a weekly basis – i.e. they have a low engagement ratio for their number of fans.

Further, suspect that the extremely high “talking about” figures of Oreo India and Sony Ericsson India are the result of current Facebook advertising campaigns (see Famecount). And we can see from Louis Vuitton’s success in making it to #3, that a big event (their stunning fashion show last Monday at Paris Fashion Week) can have a fantastic impact on page activity.

*This list covers Facebook brand pages with over 500,000 fans, based on data from social analytics company Social Bakers. The calculation was made by dividing the total number “people talking about” a page by the number of page fans.