Google+ | Internet Marketing Blog

How H&M uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

H&M is rated as one of the world’s top 25 brands, so it’s a great candidate for one of our posts looking at how brands use the four main social networks.

It follows on from similar blogs looking at the social strategies of major brands including Nike, Red Bull, Walmart and John Lewis.

H&M has actually gone to the trouble of publishing the basis of its social strategy online. It states that through social media “millions of H&M fans and followers share ideas and opinions and get quick answers to their queries.”

It has official accounts on almost every major social network, including Chinese platforms Youku and Sina Weibo.

Unfortunately my Mandarin is a bit rusty, so for this post I’ll just focus on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+...

by David Moth 03 April 2013 10:35am 7 comments

How Nike uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

Sports are an inherently social activity, so brands like Nike are a natural fit when it comes to social media marketing.

To find out how the sports giant makes the most of this opportunity, I thought it would be interesting to see how it uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

This post is the latest in a series of blogs that have taken a similar look at major brands including ASOS, Tesco, Red Bull, Cadbury and McDonalds...

by David Moth 27 March 2013 13:22pm 7 comments

Are the top 20 UK online retailers bothered about Google+?

According to a recent report three quarters of the worlds top brands have Google+ pages, with a combined following of more than 20 million fans.

This is a massive 9,400% increase since December 2011 when only 222,000 people followed them collectively.

But while writing a recent series of posts looking at how some of the world’s top brands use social I noticed that the amount of effort put into their G+ pages massively varies, while user interaction with content and posts is almost non-existent.

So to find out whether this is a common theme, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the UK’s top 20 online retailers use G+ and the levels of engagement that they achieve.

Just to clarify, this post isn’t about the SEO benefits of G+ or the potential for +1s to become more important in future, it’s an evaluation of how brands use G+ and how their fans respond...

by David Moth 26 March 2013 10:42am 12 comments

How Cadbury uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

Cadbury appears to be readymade for social marketing as it is a historic brand with products that people love.

However it hasn’t simply rested on its laurels and expected the ‘likes’ to come rolling in.

In the past year we’ve reported on Cadbury’s use of Facebook and Google+ for product launches, as well as its shift away from traditional media thanks to its success in social media.

Therefore I thought it would be interesting take a closer look at how the brand uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

This post is the latest in a series that has already examined the social strategies of several other major consumer brands, including ASOS, Tesco, McDonald’s and Red Bull.

by David Moth 20 March 2013 10:43am 6 comments

How McDonald's uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

In the latest instalment of our blog series looking at how brands make use of the four major social networks, I’ve decided to take a closer look at McDonald’s.

McDonald’s is one of the most recognisable brands in the world, yet also has to battle a fair amount of negative publicity, so one would assume that its social accounts would be extremely active.

This blog follows on from similar posts looking at the social strategies of ASOS, Walmart, Starbucks and Red Bull, among others.

And without further ado, here is a quick look at how McDonald’s uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+...

by David Moth 13 March 2013 10:39am 10 comments

Pinterest proves to be a fruitful network for Topman

Despite its reputation for having a predominately female audience, Pinterest is proving to be a successful hunting ground for menswear brands.

New research shows that Topman has more than double the follower count of any other UK retailer and is also adding to its community faster than its competitors.

The eDigitalResearch Social Media Benchmark found that Topman has 87,959 followers, compared to 26,594 for Net-A-Porter and 24,847 for ASOS.

Pinterest has developed from a niche social network into an important marketing tool in little more than 12 months, with its focus on striking visuals and imagery making it the perfect platform for retailers and lifestyle brands.

To help brands take advantage of this opportunity, Econsultancy has published a new Pinterest for Business Guide aimed at companies and individuals who are thinking of joining Pinterest and want to find out more about the social platform, as well as people who are currently using Pinterest and want a deeper understanding of best practice.

by David Moth 25 February 2013 09:45am 0 comments

How Red Bull uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

Red Bull is a great example of a brand built almost entirely on social media, with some mind-blowing PR stunts thrown in for good measure.

Therefore it’s a great case study for our series looking at how different brands use the big four social networks.

We’ve previously examined how Walmart, ASOS and John Lewis use social, with Google+ generally proving to be the weak relation compared to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

But does the same prove to be true for Red Bull?

by David Moth 21 February 2013 10:24am 3 comments

TD Bank bets on Google+ as a search play

For all of the time and money companies are investing in social media, marketers continue to grapple with basic questions about ROI. Is the investment worth it? Can the potential pay-off ever be measured accurately?

Progress in answering these questions varies from business to business, but at least one company has decided that its latest investment in social is really an investment in search.

by Patricio Robles 15 February 2013 15:29pm 1 comment

This week's top six infographics

Once again we round up six of the best infographics we've seen this week.

The topics include Google+, how women endorse brands, online video marketing, triple screening and mobile search stats from the UK and Eurozone.

by David Moth 15 February 2013 10:58am 0 comments

Can social identity improve ecommerce?

A recent Gartner press release suggested a major change in the way we might interact with ecommerce in within the next few years. Their prediction is that by 2015 fully half of retail customer identities will be based on social network identities. The report’s main thrust is on the impact of this shift on IT and security infrastructure, but what is much more interesting is the potential for a more direct connection between purchase and social identity.

The logic behind this potential growth is the frictionless “log-in with Facebook or twitter” option that allows customers to skip the laborious sign up or registration process. But the obvious question that arises is: What happens when social identity becomes purchaser identity? When you consider the potential meshing of purchase data with social data there appears to be a huge opportunity here for e-commerce sites to improve sales and build loyalty.

by Dan Weingrod 13 February 2013 15:58pm 2 comments