Facebook

ASOS is one of the most popular UK retail brands on Facebook, with 2.2m fans compared to Topshop’s 3.1m and New Look’s 1.9m.

As with Walmart, ASOS posts two or three visual updates per day, including on weekends.

Nearly all of the posts promote its new ranges or sales items, and tend to get a few hundred likes and a handful of comments.

The social team does a good job of responding to user comments, even when they’re just trying to blag a freebie.

Unsurprisingly, posts that include a question yield the most responses, with one ‘fill the blank’ query clocking up more than 200 answers.

Unlike Tesco, ASOS hasn’t created any apps but instead just links to its photos and Instagram account. This is more in keeping with the ASOS brand, as games are often quite gimmicky so might not appeal to ASOS’s target audience.

Twitter

Clothing retailer ASOS maintains separate Twitter accounts for fashion updates and customer care queries.

This is a strategy adopted by a number of brands as it means marketing messages and consumer engagement don’t get mixed up with responses to angry customers.

ASOS also maintains separate feeds for men’s and women’s fashion, though the latter is far more popular with 438,000 followers compared to the former’s 20,000.

The main account is hugely active, responding to hundreds of @mentions each day, mainly from customers who are excited about a recent purchase. It’s a terrific way of building a relationship with customers and improving brand loyalty, and is really just a new form of post-sales customer care.

Any product suggestions or marketing messages are largely lost among the huge number of @mentions, which means they don’t come across as spam (though obviously followers won’t see all the @mentions).

ASOS has also been quick to experiment with Twitter’s new Vine app, launching a campaign using the hashtag #ASOSUnbox.

The retailer is offering prizes to customers who post clips of themselves unpacking a clothes order with the new hashtag.

Regarding customer care, the ‘Here to Help’ account takes the same strategy as many other retailers in that all queries are dealt with via direct message and a follow up call or email from customer services.

Pinterest

ASOS seems to have completely overhauled its Pinterest presence, as its oldest board was created around six weeks ago even though when I reviewed it in July last year there were 35 boards.

The strategy has also changed, as previously ASOS did a great job of posting content that linked to other blogs and articles. However, now a majority of the pins link directly to the ASOS site.

Furthermore, the boards now all contain the ASOS brand name, whereas they used to have entirely different names.

The overhaul was presumably based on analysis of how users were reacting to its boards, or the realisation that what the brand was previously doing wasn’t having the desired affect. 

Even so, ASOS now has more than 25,000 followers, up from 7,735 in July.

Google+

While both Tesco and Walmart have neglected their Google+ accounts, ASOS posts one or two updates every day and uses unique content rather than repurposing Facebook updates.

As a result there is a decent amount of user activity on its page, with each post achieving around 50 to 100 +1s and up to 10 comments.

It has 1.4m followers making it the most popular UK brand on the network. In comparison, fashion brand All Saints has 1.2m followers while Tesco has just 2,294.