Maybelline New York Social Media Case Study INTRODUCTION Maybelline New York is an American cosmetics company. It was established in 1915 and has been committed to making high-quality, affordable cosmetics ever since. It thrives on setting trends in the world of makeup, a world that is cutthroat when it comes to trends and adapting to customers. Since Maybelline wants to stay relevant in an ever-changing marketing landscape, it needs to stay up-todate on social media. Maybelline already has a strong presence in the social realm, but there is always room to improve so it can stay on top of its competition. Maybelline can learn a lot from listening to what it is posting and listening to how customers react to its posts, measuring how much interaction with the public its accounts receive, and engaging its followers effectively to increase interaction. Maybelline can also learn from listening to and measuring a competitor, such as Covergirl, and listening to and measuring the industry. LISTENING Maybelline Listening Where They Are On the Maybelline New York website, www.maybelline.com, there are links to all of Maybelline s official social media pages. They are active on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, We Heart It, and YouTube. What They re Doing Facebook Maybelline New York has 4,789,704 likes on its Facebook page. The page posts every day or every other day between 11:30 and 1:00. The most common posts are pictures of products or products in use. They sometimes post articles about makeup or from magazines using their products. Maybelline s Facebook page is full of photos, videos, tutorials and links. On Facebook, Maybelline interacts directly with customers who comment on posts, but does not offer customers a place to leave reviews. Twitter On Twitter, Maybelline New York has 579,000 followers and posts multiple times a day. Most posts are retweets of fans and magazines, content from other platforms about makeup, and pictures of products. Maybelline also posts questions, videos, and polls. Most of the content, since there are multiple posts every day, is shared with other social media accounts such as Facebook and Instagram. Maybelline interacts with customers by retweeting their posts and directly talking with customers who ask questions or complain.
Google+ Maybelline s Google+ account has 985 followers. Maybelline was very active on this platform about 35 weeks ago, but there are no recent posts. This account is very inactive. Pinterest Maybelline has 86,900 followers on Pinterest, and it pins frequently. Maybelline has 19 boards with titles such as Maybelline Beauty Guides, Get the Look: Bold Looks, and Spring Beauty. Interaction is difficult over Pinterest, but Maybelline does actively pin ideas about beauty trends and products. Instagram Maybelline s Instagram account has 4,100,000 followers and posts multiple pictures every day. Posts are pictures featuring followers using the hashtag #mnyitlook, content shared from Facebook, and original content for Instagram. Most posts get likes in the thousands. The posts that seem to get the most likes are pictures of the products themselves, but pictures of impressive makeup techniques receive a lot of attention as well. A lot of the comments on the pictures are fans looking for followers themselves and asking for people to check out their pages. Maybelline doesn t post any content that doesn t showcase their products. They do use a lot of hashtags and tag featured fans or models in their captions. Maybelline follows 600 other Instagram accounts, likes fan photos, and features customers. Tumblr Maybelline s Tumblr consistently posts multiple times every day. The posts include pictures featuring fans, gifs, quotes, and products, and most posts are shared with other social media accounts. We Heart It Maybelline has 797,793 followers on We Hear It and posts multiple times a week. The content is directly pulled from other social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. YouTube Maybelline s YouTube channel has 121,920 subscribers and posts about once a week. Videos posted include tutorials, commercials, and interviews with models and sponsors. Most Relevant The most important social media accounts for Maybelline New York are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These are the sites where they see the most activity and interaction with customers. The other accounts are good, but most content Maybelline originally posts comes from Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Because these are the three best and most important accounts for Maybelline, I will be focusing on them for the rest of the study. How They Interact on Social Media Complaints Maybelline doesn t receive as many negative comments as they do positive comments, but the complaints it does see are either about the products themselves or the post itself. For example, most of
the comments on a controversial post (such as support for transgender individuals in the makeup industry) are actually negative such as this comment: However, even these controversial posts get a mostly positive reaction, based on number of likes or retweets. This shows that those who agree with the controversial posts are more likely to simply like or retweet and don t feel the need to comment. Maybelline doesn t usually respond to complaints about controversial posts. The most common type of complaint on social media, however is about products. Complaints about products range from complaints about a product s lack of availability to a product s lack of quality. This is an example of a customer upset about a product s lack of availability. Another example would be when a customer in a foreign country complains that the spotlighted product is not offered in their country. Other complaints are about negative experiences customers have with certain products. Maybelline usually responds to customers complaining about products and tries to make things right or to offer information about substitutes. Compliments Most comments from customers are compliments. Customers comment to praise the spotlighted product or to support the tutorial s ideas. Customers also tag friends in the comments to share the post with others.
Maybelline usually likes positive comments, and it will sometimes try to offer customers additional information about product lines or other posts to encourage engagement and answer possible questions. Questions Maybelline gets questions about its products: where to get them, what product is used in the picture, in which countries products are offered, what a good substitute product would be, etc. Maybelline is good at answering these questions on Facebook. On Twitter, it doesn t answer every question, and it never answers questions (at least never publicly) on Instagram.
Leads/Inquiries The top hashtags that Maybelline needs to look out for are #maybelline and #mnyitlook. These are both prominent hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. In fact, a lot of the content for Maybelline s Instagram comes from #mnyitlook. Maybelline needs to continue to monitor and advertise this hashtag. Competition: Covergirl Listening Where They Are On their website, covergirl.com, Covergirl has links to all their social media pages at the bottom of the homepage. They are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and Vine. What They re Doing (Most Relevant for Maybelline: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) Facebook 4,744,591 people like Covergirl on Facebook, and Covergirl posts infrequently. Most posts are of products, campaigns, photos, videos and tutorials. Since Covergirl posts infrequently, it is able to respond when customers comment. Also because they post infrequently, most of their Facebook posts are more like ads, promoting products and campaigns instead of interacting on a regular basis. Covergirl interacts with customers who compliment their products by thanking them for reaching out and for being a fan. Most of the comments sound like they follow a strict format; when they receive a question, they thank the customer for reaching out, tag the customer by first name, then answer the question, provide a link if necessary, and then wish the customer luck. Recently, Covergirl has posted about its equality campaign that has generated many comments both positive and negative. Covergirl does not interact with customers on these posts. Twitter Covergirl has 601,000 followers on Twitter and posts multiple times daily. Posts are mostly retweets of fans and magazines, content from other platforms, polls, pictures of products and makeup looks, questions, and videos. The content of Covergirl s Twitter is very interactive and engaging, spotlighting fans and asking followers questions. The posts that get the best fan reaction are posts about Covergirl s Lash Equality campaign and posts about products (lipstick and mascara particularly). Covergirl retweets content from fans and interacts directly with customers answering questions and complying with polls. When fans positively interact with content such as the Lash Equality campaign, Covergirl posts more about it. It is really good at giving the fans what they want on Twitter.
Pinterest Covergirl has 57,100 followers and pins frequently on Pinterest. It has 38 boards ranging from What s Hot to Eye Inspiration to Award Winning Products. Instagram Covergirl has 1,000,000 followers and consistently posts multiple pictures every day on Instagram. Posts are mostly pictures featuring professional makeup artists, pictures of products, original content, short videos of promotional material, and campaigns. Covergirl follows 439 others and likes fan photos. Covergirl answers some customer questions by tagging the customer in a comment on the post. It seems random which customer questions they answer, but they interact publicly with the customers they do interact with. YouTube Covergirl has 233,941 subscribers and posts at least once a week. The content on YouTube is tutorials, commercials, and interviews with models and sponsors. Industry Listening Where They Are NYX Cosmetics has accounts on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+. Their most active account is their Instagram. Revlon has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. Their most active account is their Twitter, but they are most engaging on Facebook. What They re Doing The industry is very active on social media, which should be expected of an industry that thrives on setting trends. The social media platforms that everyone seems to have are Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. They all also seem to have a YouTube channel, but none of the YouTube channels are updated regularly. The industry, like Maybelline and Covergirl, posts pictures of their respective products both on and off customers and models. Across the board, the posts that seem to get the most customer interaction are pictures of the products themselves and any how-to-create-a-look content. Revlon is particularly savvy at Facebook, and NYX has a lot of followers on Instagram. The customers are speaking to the rest of the industry as well. NYX is the only of these large cosmetics companies to allow reviews on their Facebook page. Because of this, they get a lot of nasty reviews, but most comments on the actual posts are positive. People would rather take their nasty remarks to a review than to a comment on a post. One benefit to this is that there are not a lot of nasty comments to manage on public-facing posts, but a huge pitfall is that now NYX gets a rating of only 3.4 stars which isn t great.
Revlon does a really good job of responding to most customers comments on Facebook and tweets on Twitter. This is great because every comment gets a response both nice comments and unfriendly ones. However, since they respond to almost everyone the comments seem artificial and automated and actually confuse some customers who ask, What did that mean? after the comment. MEASURING Maybelline Measuring Facebook Maybelline posted 18 times in October. Each post got an average of 171 likes (range from 85-250 likes), 31 shares (range from 3-115 shares), and 8 comments (range from 4-44 comments). The majority of comments were positive; people mostly commented to express love for a product. Only about 38% of comments were negative in October. Content that got the most likes were posts that tagged other platforms (like magazines). Content that got the most comments were tutorials and videos. Anything with how-to content got the most shares. Instagram Maybelline posted to Instagram 126 times in October. There were an average of 58,750 likes per post (range from 24,000-70,000 likes) and 177 comments per post (range from 45-330 comments). The majority of comments were positive, and most comments were followers tagging their friends or expressing love for a product. Content about eye makeup or lipstick gets the most likes, and pictures of products get the most comments.
Twitter Maybelline posted to Twitter 155 times in October, between three and seven times each day. The average post got 142 favorites (range from 25-250 favorites) and 27 retweets (range from 2-114 retweets). Pictures of products (both on and off customers) got the most favorites, and tweets like I m 104% tired or Oh, hi November get the most retweets, and they oddly have nothing to do with makeup.
Covergirl Measuring Facebook Covergirl posted 4 times in October. The average post got 393 likes per post (range from 125-620 likes), 38 shares (range from 0-223 shares), and 27 comments (range from 17-38 comments). The majority of comments were positive and supported Covergirl, but about 46% of comments were negative in response to Covergirl s new and controversial campaign. Tutorials got the most likes, and tutorials or campaign content got the most shares. Covergirl released their Lash Equality campaign and spurred a lot of conversation. Most comments are either strongly opposing the campaign or fearlessly supporting it, but the reason there are a lot of comments is the campaign turned into a debate. Instagram Covergirl posted on Instagram 42 times in October. The average post got 23,177 likes (range from 8,000-51,000 likes) and 1,600 comments (range from 37-10,000 comments). The majority of comments were followers tagging their friends or expressing their view on Covergirl s equality stance. Content from equality campaigns and pictures of eye makeup get the most likes while content that could be controversial such as their newest Covergirl (James Charles) gets a lot of comments.
Twitter Covergirl tweeted 124 times in October. The average post got 147 favorites (range from 49-220 favorites) and 47 retweets (range from 18-111 retweets). Pictures of products get the most favorites, and content about equality campaigns get the most retweets.
Industry Measuring NYX On Twitter NYX has 714,000 followers, and on Facebook NYX has 1,447,484 likes. NYX has 8,400,000 followers on Instagram and 90,400 followers on Pinterest. Revlon Revlon has 371,000 followers on Twitter and 993,000 followers on Instagram. On Facebook, Revlon has 8,106,493 likes, and on Pinterest it has 36,400 followers. Industry Comparison This chart compares how many followers or likes the industry has among its top four platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. With this information, Maybelline can see who has the most followers and mimic their content to generate more followers and more interaction on its own pages. Maybelline isn t the best in any one social platform, but it comes in second place for followers on every platform but Twitter. Maybelline should look to Revlon for ideas on how to produce more interaction and more consumerdesired content for Facebook, and it should look to NYX for ideas on how to generate more followers on Instagram. Other than that, Maybelline should know that it is generally keeping up with the industry and staying on top of social media trends.
ENGAGEMENT What Maybelline is Doing Maybelline has a thorough social media strategy. In an industry that has traditionally relied on exposure and media, Maybelline has been quick to get on board and start engaging their audience on social media. As the social media market expands, Maybelline needs to stay on top of trends, but it should also focus on improving the social pages it has now to better improve its customers experience and keep bringing the public the trends Maybelline is known for setting in the world of makeup. Who to engage Maybelline already knows who its main audience is: women interested in makeup. Maybelline knows that this audience group wants to know about new products and new trends and also wants to see how to mimic the looks they see on social media. Maybelline should be quick to thank their compliments, quicker to answer their questions, and even quicker to respond to their complaints. What to say To engage its audience on social media, Maybelline needs to provide content that encourages conversation and engagement, and it needs to be present to answer questions and complaints. When customers complain, Maybelline should respond by saying, Sorry to hear about that, we understand, then it should work to resolve the problem with the customer individually. To answer questions, Maybelline should start by thanking the customer for their loyalty and question, then it should provide materials and sources to answer the question. When to engage Maybelline needs to prioritize its engagement with consumers. Complaints need to be answered first, then questions need to be answered, then compliments need to be acknowledged. Where to engage Maybelline is most prominent on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, but it has accounts on six other platforms. Maybelline should focus on sites where most of its users are participating. The best platforms to directly and publicly engage with customers are Facebook and Twitter. Instagram is also relevant to Maybelline because it has a lot of followers there. Having other social accounts is good because it shows that Maybelline wants to reach out to everyone and wants to be everywhere, but it is more important to be engaging on the sites where there is already a strong fan-base that wants to engage. Why engage Maybelline has nine social media accounts. To maintain a good public image with its customers, it needs to focus on the social platforms where its customers are and where they are engaging. Then, Maybelline needs to engage well both by posting relevant content and by responding to consumer comments so their customers remain loyal and interested in their social media. What to Learn from Covergirl There are two big lessons Maybelline can learn from Covergirl. The first is how to dominate on Twitter. Maybelline does a good job on Twitter, but Covergirl does an all-around better job engaging its consumers on this platform. Covergirl posts more frequently, has substantially more followers, and conjures more favorites and retweets per post. The other thing that Covergirl does better on this platform is direct interaction with customers. Covergirl interacts with more customers who are unhappy
on this platform. Maybelline does a great job of keeping up with customers comments on Facebook, but falls short to Covergirl in this area on Twitter. If Maybelline learns from Covergirl and posts more content that is interesting to its followers and then responds quickly to all negative customers, Maybelline s Twitter account would see a lot more success in interaction. The second thing Maybelline should learn from Covergirl is how to take calculated risks. Covergirl uses its social media accounts as a secondary platform to spread its marketing campaigns, the past few of which have had some controversial but largely well-accepted content. Its last campaign was for Lash Equality which essentially called for all races, religions, and genders to be accepted in the makeup industry. This was a risk, and Covergirl saw some backlash in comments and posts on social media, but the campaigns generated a large buzz and ignited conversation on the company s sites. If Maybelline took more risks with content meant to purposefully engage its audience and spark conversation, it would see a lot more traffic on its social sites. However, Maybelline needs to be cautious with the types of content it chooses to highlight. Covergirl picks subjects that coincide with its company values and ideals that the general public agrees with already, and Maybelline should follow that guide when calculating its risks. What to Learn from the Industry The industry shows Maybelline where it needs to be to engage with the audience base. The industry shows up in virtually all social media platforms, but the most important for the industry are Facebook and Instagram. Most of the industry also has active and engaging Twitter pages and Pinterest accounts. Maybelline should be focusing its main strategy on these platforms as well. CONCLUSION What Maybelline Should Be Doing Maybelline New York needs to continue to actively post content that matters to its consumers, and it needs to engage the consumers who have compliments, complaints, and questions. Maybelline needs to stay on top of trends in social media, and look to the industry to see where makeup companies are starting new social media accounts and what kinds of new content the industry is posting. Maybelline also needs to look at its competitor Covergirl to improve its Twitter account and interaction. Maybelline also needs to consider taking risks on promotional campaigns that will spark conversation and show that it is a company that is up-to-date and interested in what its consumers are interested in. If Maybelline does this, it needs to largely stay out of the conversation it starts, so that it does not offend any of its consumers. With a good social media strategy, Maybelline will be able to interact and have meaningful conversation with customers. It is a great way to maintain positive public relations and to reinforce loyalty.