And the Winner of Social Media Is... Victoria's Secret [Study]

Looking at 50 major brands in various industries, Victoria's Secret was the only one to score top marks across all eight social media platforms analyzed by Spredfast.

Victoria’s Secret is the top brand using social media, according to new research by social software platform Spredfast.

In its recent Smart Social Report, Spredfast analyzed the social activity of 50 major brands on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr and Google+. Spredfast looked at each brand’s audience size and response time, as well as volume and engagement (comments, likes, shares, favorites) of posts. Victoria’s Secret was the one brand to have top marks across all eight social platforms.

“People seem to be laughing about [Victoria’s Secret] having an unfair advantage, as far as content goes, but the most interesting thing to me is that they aren’t actually resting on the strong brand that they have,” says Chris Kerns, director of analytics and research at Spredfast. “It’s not that they have a ton of people following them – that’d be one way to measure popularity, but not the best way – but they have huge engagement. They’ve obviously found not only a big audience, but a good core audience.

“A modern brand should be aware of every trend, but not jump on every trend,” he adds.

In addition to having 25 million Facebook fans and 19 million Instagram followers, Victoria’s Secret receives, on average, 2,300 notes for each of its Tumblr posts. The study’s overall winners – others include Mercedes-Benz, MTV and then NBA – tend to be on every platform. While every brand in the Smart Social Report has a Facebook presence, Tumblr, Snapchat and Google+ don’t have the same numbers.

With Snapchat growing so much in popularity, Kerns expects to see a much greater adoption rate during next quarter’s report. Regarding Tumblr, he thinks many brands find the platform overwhelming.

“Tumblr is such a blank slate, as far as the amount you can do, that it’s turned into a bit of a double-edged sword for brands,” Kerns says. “A lot of them might be confused with that amount of freedom.”

Among industries, retail, sports, and media brands generally earned the highest marks. For example, Tesco had the study’s fastest Facebook response time (16 minutes), while ESPN and Netflix were both lauded for their YouTube strategies, in particular. Kerns adds that sports brands do so well with social media because their content is based on the events they create themselves.

Notables in other industries include Apple’s Tumblr and Samsung’s YouTube in electronics, Pepsi’s YouTube and Dove’s Snapchat in consumer packaged goods, Ford’s Tumblr and Audi’s Instagram in automobiles, Verizon’s Tumblr in telecommunications, IBM’s YouTube and GE’s Instagram in B2B, and British Airways’ and American Airlines’ Instagrams. No brands in the financial services vertical had particularly strong profiles on any platform; on the flip side, retail was the industry the most brands utilizing all eight platforms.

“It’s a very visual medium so that gives [retail brands] a lot of ammunition to play with, whereas an insurance company will have a harder time putting stuff up on Pinterest,” Kern says.

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