New Brandwatch Retail Report Finds Amazon, Etsy and eBay Lead in Social Intelligence

Research finds that consumers own 93% of the conversation on Twitter; brands must step up activity

NEW YORK, June 15, 2016 – Brandwatch, the leading social intelligence company, today released its Retail Industry report featuring social insights gleaned from the analysis of 43 high-profile retail brands. The report finds that many retailers do not engage optimally with their audiences over social platforms. Some brands that are getting it right include retail leaders Amazon, Etsy and eBay. For the full Brandwatch report, please visit: https://www.brandwatch.com/retail-report/.

Brandwatch’s analysis found that consumers are in the driver’s seat when it comes to engaging with retail brands on social, initiating an extraordinary 93 percent of social conversations. Compared to other industries, Brandwatch found that retailers are fairly responsive to their audiences, replying to @mentions 40 times a day (on average) via Twitter. Comparatively, television networks respond to @mentions less than four times a day on Twitter, and automotive brands just twice per day.

Brandwatch also found audiences are not engaging well with campaigns and content retailers are distributing via social: just 10 percent of audience conversation encompasses replies and retweets of retailers’ content. This signals a clear need for retailers to implement a new strategy for reaching audiences on social.

With Facebook’s algorithm changes, it’s no secret the platform is no longer the social marketing darling it once was. Still, retailers continue to leverage Facebook for its visual features. Photos dominate when it comes to pushing content (56 percent) as they receive the most likes and perform well on comments and shares. Still, videos are the most shared content format, even though videos account for just 13 percent of retailers’ Facebook content. Image links which direct traffic directly to websites make up 30 percent of the content, but brands should use that tactic sparingly as audience engagement levels fall according to the data revealed within this analysis.

Additional key findings include:

• Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart and Target all scored highest in overall score, while RadioShack, RiteAid and Ahold scored lowest.
• Sam’s Club ranked highest in net sentiment with a score of 100
• Retailers post an average of 63 tweets per day and post 1.45 times a day on Facebook.
• While women do reign supreme on social media, men tend to be more active than women in retail social conversations around videogames, hardware and sporting goods. For example, men accounted for 55 percent of the Twitter conversation around Home Depot and 65 percent of the Twitter conversation around GameSpot).
• Photos are the dominant content format for retailers – comprising 56 percent of brands’ Facebook content; video only accounts for 13 percent of Facebook content for retailers.

“Although retailers struggle to accurately measure the effect digital has on their business, most recognize its critical place in the mix; most notably giants like Amazon, Walmart, and Target,” said James Lovejoy, content and research manager, Brandwatch. “Brands that are lagging in the area of social engagement stand to lose more than just “followers” and “likes”; they’re forfeiting deep insights and a good knowledge of their audiences – both necessities to raising the bar and supporting the business holistically.”

Methodology:

The report was created by examining 10,822,531 online conversations across Twitter, Facebook, news sites, blogs, and forums from January 13 – May 13, 2016. Brandwatch measured retailers (excluding grocery and clothing stores) across five categories: social visibility, general visibility, net sentiment, reach growth, and social engagement and content. It featured 43 major retailers including Target, Staples, and CVS.

Download the full report here.

About Brandwatch

Brandwatch is the world’s leading social intelligence company. Brandwatch Analytics and Vizia products fuel smarter decision making around the world.

The Brandwatch Analytics platform gathers millions of online conversations every day and provides users with the tools to analyze them, empowering the world’s most admired brands and agencies to make insightful, data-driven business decisions. Vizia distributes visually-engaging insights to the physical places where the action happens.

The Brandwatch platform is used by over 1,200 brands and agencies, including Cisco, Whirlpool, British Airways, Sony Music, and Dell. Brandwatch continues on its impressive business trajectory, recently named a global leader in enterprise social listening platforms by the latest reports from several independent research firms. Increasing its worldwide presence, the company has offices around the world including Brighton, New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Singapore.

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