Amazon and Ebay are the most socially savvy retailers according to new report
Social intelligence company Brandwatch has released its social outlook report. It looked at 15 different industries and watched the social interaction of 450 brands.
It wanted to find out which brands have the strongest online presence. It looked at over 115 million social conversations recording data across different channels.
It measured social visibility -- how strong the brand's presence is across social media. It also looked at presence across non-social channels, tone or mood, audience reach, engagement, and content.
Organizations were ranked according to their following on Twitter and Facebook. Likes, @mentions, replies, comments, page shares, and page likes were analyzed.
Across all industries, brand owned accounts accounted for only 4.2 percent of the conversation around the brand. Brand audiences accounted for the remaining 95.8 percent of conversation.
Airlines accounted for almost 20 percent of the conversation, whereas luxury fashion brands comprised 3 percent.
The retail industry itself held the number five position out of all the industries it analyzed. The report noted that companies need to understand where and how customers make their purchasing decisions to stay in tune with their customers.
Online retailers are prevailing when it comes to social savvy. Amazon, with a retail social visibility score of 77 and eBay (69) respectively hold the top two spots.
The report showed that about 80 percent of consumers research products online before purchasing in store. Conversely, the report noted that 41 percent of consumers look at products in store, and then purchased the products online.
Across the tech industry, the brand with the highest social visibility score is Lenovo with a score of 100. This is followed by Intel (73) and Samsung (69). Nintendo (social visibility score of 52), and Microsoft (49) also appeared in the top five brands in terms of online conversations.
Most technology consumers use words like cool and innovative when mentioning the brand.
Tellingly, the word 'affordable' is bottom of audience mentions.
Response times need to be fast if the industry is to socially thrive.
Six industries responded within five hours. However consumer tech and healthcare took over 15 hours to respond to customer comments.
The report showed "numerous" organizations across almost every industry who failed to respond to a single audience @mention across the three months analyzed.
Sadly, in these enlightened days some companies still do not get, nor more importantly, value social. Fortunately the consumer has many other brands where they can spend their online dollars.