Facebook

John Lewis has 608,000 fans, which is a decent number but someway behind Walmart’s 26m and Tesco’s 1.1m.

Its timeline is fairly sparse as well, with only a handful of milestones included despite the fact that the company history dates back to 1905.

But obviously social media isn’t just about the number of ‘likes’ a brand has managed to attract, and John Lewis does a good job of interacting with its community of fans.

The social team post three or four updates each day, however it appears to take weekends off, which is a strange tactic as it’s easy to schedule posts to go live even if the social team isn’t in the office.

Nonetheless, the team do a decent job of answering questions from users, and when responding to comments the social team always identify themselves by name.

Since the beginning of February the content has almost been entirely focused on Valentine’s Day, including product suggestions and giveaways, but prior to that there was a mixture of seasonal posts including the New Year sales and promotions around fitness gear.

As always, the posts that attract the most ‘likes’ and comments tend to be competitions and pictures of food or pets. 

A good example of how John Lewis engages with its fans was a recent campaign that asked people to post pictures of their well-worn sports kit and then provided suggestions for new alternatives. Admittedly it attracted more jokey and sarcastic responses than it did genuine photos, but it was still a good way of encouraging users to comment.

Interestingly, John Lewis also used its Facebook timeline to solicit user feedback on its new website.

Like Walmart, John Lewis also has separate pages for a number of its local stores, most of which are updated several times a day.

But as they tend to have around 500 to 1,500 fans the posts get very few ‘likes’ or comments.

Twitter

For a major brand with some 47,798 followers, John Lewis’ feed isn’t particularly active.

As with its Facebook account, the Twitter feed shuts down over the weekend, and during the week it rarely tweets more than 20 times a day.

In general, the tactic seems to be to post two or three promotional tweets each day and a couple of questions. The social team then only answers four or five of the responses, meaning that most of the answers are ignored.

The social team also avoid getting involved with any customer complaints by simply ignoring any negative sentiment.

Instead all customer queries are dealt with by a separate customer service account, which is the same tactic employed by most major brands on Twitter.

However this account has only 1,850 followers and only responds to about 10 customers per day. 

The other brands I’ve looked at, including ASOS and Tesco, respond to hundreds of customer queries every day, so it’s surprising that John Lewis’ feeds appear to be so inactive in comparison.

It could be that John Lewis’ customers aren’t as active on Twitter, but then this seems unlikely as it does have a similar number of followers to Tesco.

Interestingly, John Lewis is currently displaying the hashtag #shareyourlove across all its social networks, but there is no other promotion or instruction or as to why customers should use it.

This could be because another website, MedPlus Beauty, is also currently using the same hashtag to run a competition, so any tweets relating to John Lewis would be drowned out by competition entries.

Pinterest

John Lewis has come up with some really creative pinboards and attracted 1,764 followers, but has then refused to include anyone else’s content.

All the boards promote a particular product range or theme, and include some excellent images, but it’s essentially just an extension of its product catalogue.

John Lewis has also steered clear of using the social network to run any promotions or competitions, which are a common feature of its Facebook page.

It’s strange that a brand with so much experience of community management on Facebook could totally miss the social aspect of Pinterest, but it could be that it doesn’t want to dilute the brand or that the social team have been ordered to avoid the murky waters of copyright infringement.

Creating an island within Pinterest that doesn’t link to anyone else completely misses the social aspect of the site, but that said, John Lewis does have many more followers than Tesco (655) even though the latter brand does post third-party content..

Google+

Unlike Tesco and Walmart, John Lewis maintains an active Google+ and post daily updates. Some of the content is repurposed from Facebook, but it’s mostly unique to G+.

As is common with this network, the amount of user interaction is limited, with no more than a couple of comments and around 10-20 +1s per post.

When responding to comments, the social team identify themselves by name, which is the same tactic used on Facebook and adds a personal touch to the conversations.

As a result of the effort put into the platform, John Lewis has clocked up 105,479 followers, which is a healthy number but way off ASOS’s 1.4m.