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What can we learn from the top five retail brands on Twitter?

Twitter is a fantastic way for brands to communicate with their customers, though all too often they overlook the social element of social media.

We’ve all seen companies that just use Twitter and Facebook to churn out marketing messages, but generally they are short lived experiments that fail to deliver any real value to the business.

But rather than dwell on the failures, I thought it would be interesting to investigate the social strategies of some of the most successful retailers on Twitter.

According to eDigitalResearch, Topshop, ASOS, Net-A-Porter, Harrods and Selfridges have the highest number of followers among UK retailers, so here’s a look at what makes them so damn popular.

And for more information on this topic, checkout our Twitter for Business Best Practice Guide and this infographic that shows how @Econsultancy managed to attract 100,000 followers.

Article Digital Advertising

Tips for journalists and PRs working with Econsultancy

2013 is the year of content marketing, and that means an increase on eye strain and inbox space for the editorial team here.

As Econsultancy’s Content Marketing Executive, I schedule and source content from contributors that might align well with our reports, and there are a few things I’d like to highlight as tips for both PRs and journalists working with Econsultancy.

This includes what we do and do not cover on the blog, and pitching best practice outlined below.

Article Social

Tell me you love me: use of ‘favouriting’ on Twitter soars

Do you favourite tweets on Twitter? Has your use of this feature increased over the last year?

If the answer is yes, then you are not alone.

Article Social

Small Australian businesses and social media [infographic]

It seems small and medium businesses are still neglecting social media, with only 27% and 34% respectively having a presence on social networking sites.

These figures come from the Yellow Pages Report, which looked at the social media habits of nearly 2,000 Australian SMEs and puts forward a case for why Australian businesses need to invest more time and funding into their social media strategies.

Article SEO

12 things every freelancer should have

Being a freelancer can be a fulfilling and profitable career path.

In digital industries, where job mobility is high and five years with a single employer is ‘a long time’, many professionals view freelancing as a viable and attractive career path.

But make no mistake about it: freelancing is a business and as with any business, starting up, surviving and thriving can be difficult to do.

Here are 12 success-promoting things every freelancer, new and experienced, should have in place.

Article Mobile

Australian marketers should make mobile their New Year’s resolution

In the next five years, Experian predicts more than 50% of marketing budgets will be associated with mobile, as above-the-line channels continue to become more interactive and engaging – but it’s a far cry from where Australian marketers are today.

A recent study conducted by the CMO council and Adobe found only 41% of Australian marketers are spending 25+% of their marketing budgets on digital activity as a whole – and there is little doubt in my mind that mobile investment is barely more than a blip.

With consumer consumption of mobile internet growing at a rapid rate, Australian brands can no longer ignore the importance of mobile as a key channel within the marketing mix.

Article Customer Experience

Social media spread-betting: Can DCM Capital turn tweets into gold?

Back in 2011, sentiment analysis for Twitter was just beginning to phase into mainstream business conciousness.

So, when London-based DCM Capital announced a hedge fund based on Twitter sentiment it was a bold move that ultimately didn’t gain the exposure the company were looking for, and the project closed after a few short months.

The company has continued to refine its algorithms however, and recently spoke to Bloomberg about their latest project: A spread-betting platform based entirely on social media sentiment…

Article Strategy

Post-Christmas sales and device trends: stats round up

With the festive break all but a distant memory, we have taken the opportunity to look back at our stats across the network for the run up to Christmas as well as the post Christmas sales.

As a company running affiliate campaigns for around half of the UK’s largest retailers as well as over 1,000 SMEs, we are able to interrogate our data to provide some insights into general retail trends over the Christmas and New Year period.

There were a number of predictions and subsequently reports of the largest online shopping days and in this post we are able to look across our advertiser base to identify the peak trading periods.

With consumer behavior shifting and mobile commerce playing a more prominent role, we also look at the device trends during this time.

Article Content

Content marketing in 2013: what the experts think

Since the launch of our Content Marketing Survey Report, produced in association with Outbrain, the topic has continued to fuel discussion throughout the industry, as brands struggle for the attention of consumers and marketers find it ever more difficult to reach the top of the search engines.

As 2013 begins, we asked a series of marketers for their thoughts on where content marketing is going and what brands and publishers have been doing particularly well.

Their insights are below, along with some video shot by Outbrain at the launch of the Content Marketing Survey Report late last year.

Article Content marketing

In epic Wall Street battle, hedge fund manager turns to AdWords

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman believes that Herbalife, a multi-level marketing company, is an illegal pyramid scheme.

And he says not just talking: he’s shorted Herbalife stock, which is publicly-traded, to the tune of $1bn.

Article Content marketing

Tech companies still failing to engage on social media: report

A new report into the use of social media among the UK’s top 50 tech companies has found that while usage has increased since 2011, engagement levels have actually fallen.

EML Wildfire’s study found that LinkedIn proved to be the most popular social network, with 98% of companies in the study having registered an account, compared to 82% on Twitter and 68% on Facebook.

Interestingly, Facebook usage has actually dropped slightly from 70% in 2011 and would have fallen further had it not been for B2B businesses.

In the 2010 and 2011 reports 100% of B2C companies used Facebook, however this fell to 83% in 2012, while B2B usage increased from 32% in 2010 to 65% this year.

Article Mobile

Get close and personal with your customers

At the end of every year, executives and pundits put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to project how their industry will change in the months ahead.

Some years that change is downright incremental. In others, there’s a significant shift in how people do business, reach their customers, and make money.

2013 is one of those years.

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