Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Shuzhen
Personally, I’m really interested in fashion and I also love shopping. Urban Outfitters is one of my favorite shops and I always love to go their stores and try clothes on. As I am taking strategic social media communication course at Drexel University, I chose to follow Urban Outfitters and audit their three main social media platforms. This article will mainly focus on evaluating three of their social media platforms, which include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Several questions will be addressed, like how often do they post on each platform? Do they successfully bring customers on site? What are their best practices in each platform?
How often do Urban Outfitters post on each platform?
Urban Outfitters is very active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Overall, their social media posts are very standard and consistent as they usually post one sentence with a link and a photo in every post, so it is easier for customers to click on the link and purchase from there. On Facebook, 2.1 million followers, they usually post four posts every day from 10AM to 4PM every two hours. On Twitter, 1 million followers, they post very often, eight times a day. On Instagram, 9.1 million followers, they also post an average of three posts every day.
Do they successfully get customers engagement on their online community?
Urban Outfitters has some complaints on their Facebook page regarding their bad customer services. For example, on their Facebook and Instagram, they post similar information. Even though they usually get over an average of 100+ likes on each post on Facebook, they rarely get comments from customers even though they own 2.1 million followers on Facebook. This lack of engagement also happens on Twitter. One reason why there is a low engagement rate across social media channels is because they do not reply to customers. Hootsuite, in their article “14 Social Media Best Practices You Should Follow in 2019,” suggest responding to all comments and @mentions promptly because “when you don’t, it makes you look lazy, unwilling, and all about you.” Urban Outfitters rarely replies to their customers on social media, so some people complained to them about their bad customer services. Sometimes, they do actively reply to customers on the same day, but it doesn’t happen very often. So, they clearly need to be more consistent with responding to their customers on social media.
What is their best practice on their Facebook page?
On Facebook, one post about a cute lip balm gets the most engagement among their other posts with 639 comments, 566 likes, and 30 shares. According to the article, “The Ultimate Social Media Best Practices 2019 [Infographic] Social Marketing,” Facebook posts under 40 characters receive up to 86% higher engagement. In this article, they also talked about “clickbait or engagement-bait language, like “Share this post,” “Tag 5 friends,” or “Comment with your favorite,” will be penalized in the News Feed.”
What is their best practice on their Twitter account?
Even though they do not have as many followers on Twitter as on their other platforms, they still post very often – eight times a day – on Twitter. This is to monitor their competitors, which is discussed in “The Ultimate Guide to Using Twitter for Business in 2020.” The article also explained that a company can use Twitter to increase sales and it’s a great source for free marketing. On Twitter, the post about BTS-Map of The Soul CD got 3.3K likes and 1.2K retweets, which is very surprising. Many people are still following them on Twitter.
What’s their best practice on their Instagram?
In contrast, on their Instagram, they posted a photo and asked people to tag their friends, so they would choose one winner to give a graphic t-shirt. This is an effective strategy to use to get engagement as they offer perks to the community. Who does not like free gifts? Why not give it a try? I think that if they post “Share this post, Tag your friends, and we will choose one winner of something,” on their Facebook, they will get even more engagement because they did so on their Instagram posts.
Conclusion
Overall, their posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are very consistent in terms of content, and they do good job on posting the same format posts which has a little description and a link of the product across these three social media platforms. They also actively post new and different information on each of these platforms and get some attention from customers. Instagram is their number one platform as they own over 9.1 million followers. The second one is their Facebook with over 2.1 million followers. Even though they post very often on Twitter, eight times per day, they do not get as much followers as their other platforms.
However, their customer service complaints are an issue. Some customers complained about their products on their Facebook page because they never reply to their customers, so it is necessary to train their employees to actively reply to customers on social media because it can bring more customers engagement. Do you follow Urban Outfitters on social media? Leave me a comment and tell me what you think about their social media.
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