The most beautiful brands on Facebook

catherine.millar

Social media marketing has matured beyond recognition in recent years. For many brands, social is no longer just an afterthought or a bolt on to a big idea; it’s a channel with its own unique set of opportunities.

So, we decided that at this pivotal point in the evolution of social media, we’d take a look at some significant UK sectors to see what kind of strategies brands in the UK are employing to reach their fans and keep them coming back for more.

In this post we’ll be looking at the most engaging brands in the Beauty & Personal Care sector, using Socialbakers’ Daily Page Engagement Rate methodology, to see how they have fared over the last three quarters.

The data

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Analysis
For the UK Beauty & Personal Care category as a whole there are two key observations from the last three quarters.

Firstly, there has been a drop in posting frequency in Q1 from the last two quarters of 2013. This is a seasonal trend and not one to be seen as a retreat from of brands away from Facebook – after the busy Christmas marketing push, we always see fewer brand posts in the first quarter. All sectors will experience peaks and toughs throughout the year depending on marketing activity. Many sectors peak at Christmas when gifts are bought as treats. The beauty industry correlates with this trend.

Secondly, there has been a rise in engagement, with levels across the top brands consistently increasing over the past nine months. Engagement is less seasonal and the broad trend across Facebook has been a drop.

However, on average, the top UK Beauty & Personal Care brands have been able to continue reaching and engaging their communities. Here’s how they’ve done it.

Illamasqua has remained within the top three beauty brands on Facebook over the past three quarters, and topped the table in Q1 this year. One of lllamasqua’s most successful strategies is the use of user-generated content.

The brand actively seeks examples of stunning and innovative make-up techniques from its community, and posts these to their wall. Not only do these posts attract high levels of engagement, crucially they link back to the relevant products on the brand’s website so fans can recreate the look easily.

For example, Illamasqua’s most engaging post this quarter used an Instagram image from Los Angeles based makeup artist Mykie. The brand combined the image use with great, topical timing and a good understanding of its fans’ interests to generate strong engagement.

Also performing well is luxury fragrance brand Jo Malone, which topped the rankings in the last two quarters of 2013. It dropped to second place in 2014, but still increased its engagement rate throughout.

Its impressive engagement levels have been driven by consistently high quality visuals and the use of an evocative tone of voice to draw connections between seasonal experiences and Jo Malone products.  In addition, throughout Q1 there was good use of topical content, branding from piggybacking onto events like Chinese New Year, to Valentines and their #LondonRain campaign throughout March.

Third placed Barry M also uses consumer created content as a strategy to drive engagement. However, there is a relatively large proportion of meme content. While this also drives engagement one has to question what it’s doing for the brand.

Most of the memes do not relate to the product or give you an understanding of why the brand is different to any other make-up company. As a the example above shows, the memes feel more like fillers rather than adding value to Barry M’s overall marketing strategy.

Methodology