Fashion On Facebook - An Analysis Of The Top Ten Clothing Brands

The internet and, of course, the rise and worldwide adoption of social media and mobile surfing revolutionized a lot of industries. Also the fashion world got strongly disrupted. Through social networks and the exploding number of fashion blogs the world of clothing got into hot discussions and feedback by millions of customers and fans. Since fashion is a really image-driven topic there are uncountable photos and videos, which are getting shared, liked, commented, pinned, reblogged and so much more.

There is hardly another topic, which is on the one hand so emotionally charged and on the other hand totally individual. Sure, there a people who are really not interested in fashion in any way. But nowadays you can find clothing that matches also your very special personal style within seconds. Never before it has been so easy to set up even your own fashion label in minutes and distribute your self-created clothes worldwide with virtually little expenses. In addition to this very large number of small and micro labels, the worldwide biggest and established fashion brands are now facing the mammoth task to keep existing customers at the bar and also finding new fans with appropriate marketing strategies.

But how do they do this? Currently, there isn't any better way to check the social media marketing strategies of fashion brands than on Facebook. Therefore we created this industry analysis of fashion on Facebook.

Fashion On Facebook - The 10 Biggest Fashion Brands

For a quick and basic overview here are the 10 biggest fashion brands on Facebook sorted by the number of fans:

Pos.	Picture	Brand	#Fans	PTAT
1.		Converse	36,511,935	231,127
2.		Victoria's Secret	22,354,505	275,200
3.		adidas Originals	20,332,192	177,023
4.		Nike Football	18,550,943	171,227
5.		Zara	18,457,059	102,710
6.		Levi's	18,099,606	161,751
7.		Burberry	15,165,004	82,992
8.		H&M	14,779,085	194,403
9.		Louis Vuitton	13,792,031	371,024
10.		adidas	13,580,457	138,160
			Date of Analysis:	21. May 2013

In this illustrious fashion circle adidas is even represented twice, with Nike Football and Converse there are also two more sports brand, luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Burberry, the iconic Jeans brand Levi's and Victoria's Secret - probably the best-known underwear brand. Furthermore listed are the clothing brand chains H&M and Zara.

It is in the nature of things that static or moving images are working best for fashion on Facebook. This gets proved by our post type distribution chart. Analyzing the data of the last two years photos are the most shared content types of the fashion brands. H&M ranks first with 1371 photo posts and is followed by Levi's with 1185 updates of one or more photos. With 262 videos Victoria's Secret had posted the most fashion films. When it comes to links, Victoria's Secret leads again with a number of 262 link posts, but followed closely by H&M with 249 links. For the content type miscellaneous, which includes questions for example, Nike Football leads the top ten with 46 updates. Music and Flash seems not relevant, in fact there are zero updates for these types by all brands.

The Interaction Rate - How Active Are The Fashion Fans?

Since only a large number of Facebook fans only shows how well-known a brand is, it is the activity of these fans that really counts. As it is commonly known, that it isn't easy for really big Facebook pages to keep the fan activation on a high level, we take a deep dive into fashion on Facebook. The interaction rate gets calculated by adding the number of comments, likes and shares divided by the number of postings multiplied with 100 divided by the number of fans.

The interaction rate is a great indicator because it gets measured irrespective of the amount of fans. Therefore a high interaction index indicates a relative high amount of active fans and vice versa.

The chart shows an analysis of the last 2 years with a monthly interval. Obviously Burberry has the most active fans and thus probably also a very good community management. Checking the key metrics table for fashion on Facebook for the last 2 years the more than 100 years old British fashion brand reaches an interaction rate of 0.183%, followed by the French luxury goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton with a rate of 0.168%. Bottom of this group is Levi's with a rate of only 0.010%.

Social Support - The New Core Of Social Media?

Next to plain marketing social media rises to become a preferred support channel for customers. At a first sight, this trend wasn't really planed by the most brands. But as social networks are enabling customers to interact a lot faster and also more powerful, since all other fans, followers, subscribers and so on are able to see the support request, it's quite a big task for the most brands to respond quickly to avert any possible brand damage.

Hence we analyzed the response times for fashion on Facebook. The reponse time is the time difference between the creation of the user post and the answer of the page owner to this post. Of course, not every user post is a question. quintly is using an intelligent algorithm to identify real questions using a variety of indicators.

It should also be noted that two years ago only Luis Vuitton blocked user posts. All other brands allowed their fans to publish something. This has changed somewhat today. Meanwhile also Nike Football and adidas are blocking user postings. But since they had allowed user posts earlier, there is still data for response time measurement.

Although H&M and Victoria's Secret are the most active brands in responding public user questions, they have also the highest amount of not responded user questions. In summary it looks like that only the mentioned brand chains are interested in giving support via Facebook. The figures confirm this assumption. Within the last 2 years H&M had a Response Rate of 57.53%, followed by Victoria's Secret with 32.96% and Levi's with a rate of 22.81%. Louis Vuitton, adidas and Nike Football never responded to any user post.

What do you think about fashion on Facebook? Are the biggest fashion brands following the right strategy?