The Monthly Social Index Spotlight: Petco, PetSmart, Sprint, T-Mobile

The Monthly Social Index Spotlight is a new ROI Report column that features a monthly update from Media Logic’s Retail Social Juice Index, a daily ranking of social engagement scores for hundreds of national retailers. Media Logic distills data from Facebook and Twitter daily and turns it into a score which represents the effectiveness of a brand’s interactions with its fans and followers. This monthly column will highlight specific Retail Social Juice index scores for a given month, along with commentary about the findings.

One of the key features of Media Logic’s Retail Social Juice Index (RSJI) is its ability to compare retail scores. Holding up brands side-by-side reveals interesting points of differentiation.

The RSJI’s top 10 list almost always includes a pet brand. Petco and PetSmart consistently score well above the Index average, meaning both know how to engage fans. In March, the brands’ fan base sizes were similar — 855,000 for Petco, 829,000 for PetSmart — but RSJI stats showed Petco outpacing its rival when it came to engagement. In fact, Petco placed in the RSJI's top 10 nearly every day from mid-February through mid-March; PetSmart appeared about half as much. A quick look at Facebook’s “talking about” insight tells a similar story: the number of fans talking about Petco was twice that of PetSmart.

Both brands posted adorable animal photos, and presumably customers of each brand are equally passionate about their pets. Each has cute names for things: Petco says “caturday” instead of “Saturday” and PetSmart calls it a “pawfice” instead of an “office.” Both retailers post at about the same frequency. So what’s going on? What's Petco doing to get an advantage over its competition?

Overall, the photos posted by Petco are of better quality than those shared by PetSmart. Within a day or two days of one another in March, each brand posted bunnies. They earned an equal number of comments, but the Petco photo had two times the number of "Likes" and four times as many shares. Furthermore, roughly three-quarters of Petco’s photos included a call to action (CTA). Comparatively, fewer than half of PetSmart’s photos contained a CTA.

There are other nuances as well. In general, Petco’s approach focuses heavily on community. It regularly runs just-for-fun caption contests and features the winning caption by superimposing it on the photo, posting it as a brand post and crediting the fan who authored it (Meme, anyone?). The pets in its photos could be anyone’s pets, while PetSmart identifies the majority of its pets as residents or visitors to its “pawfice.” The instinct is good: show fans the brand loves pets too. A smattering of these posts is a great idea if they’re cautiously mixed in with posts that have little or no obvious brand message.

Don’t count PetSmart out, however. In a sampling of posts from March, Media Logic noticed Petco jumping into the comments rather infrequently — and almost always on its own posts, restricting its remarks to clarifications/updates. PetSmart, on the other hand, joined conversations much more often on fan posts as well as its own. It congratulated new pet owners and posted oohs and aahs appropriately at fans’ pet photos. With a few quick fixes, PetSmart could gain some ground.

The RSJI data this month also revealed another interesting matchup: Sprint vs. T-Mobile. Both of these national retailers had fan bases in March between 500,000 and 750,000, as well as RSJI scores that soared above the Index average. However, there was a distinct difference in engagement. T-Mobile appeared in our top 10 a total of nine days from mid-February through mid-March, compared with three days over the same time period for Sprint.

T-Mobile posted, on average, one to two times each day. Sprint didn't post every day. This alone isn’t enough to put Sprint at a disadvantage, however (we’ve seen brands like Dior use absence to make the fan heart grow fonder). While both brands promoted products and apps at a rate that represented nearly half of each brand's posts, the nature of those posts differed dramatically.

Sprint’s posts read like ad copy filled with product and brand jargon. Even the videos it posted were commercials. T-Mobile’s posts, however, were much more conversational. They included less brand verbiage and more personality, and very often T-Mobile posted just for fun (like this: “dfkjffksjf ... Oops, sorry, our pocket typed that. What was your most embarrassing accidental call or text?”). One in three T-Mobile posts invited fan confessions on things like autocorrect mishaps, texting addictions and whether they’ve used their smartphone as a pocket mirror.

Both Sprint and T-Mobile shared “how tos” and tips with fans in March. T-Mobile smartly included the tips within the text of its status updates. Fans (and friends of fans) who saw the post in their news feeds had a conveniently packaged bit of information to use (immediately!) and share.

Takeaways from this month’s Retail Social Juice Index spotlight include the following:

• Retailers, are you ready for your close-up? Images showcase who you are. Just as important as the photo’s subject is attention to detail. Everyone’s a photographer these days. Your photos have to stand out. (This is even more crucial with Timeline!)
• Be cautious about relying too heavily on the same shtick. Fans may dig "pawfices" and "caturdays" for a while and respond at first to quickie questions such as “Agree?,” but make sure to have new content ready to roll when interest begins to fade in what’s currently working.
• Imagine your content not only on your page, but also in your fans’ news feeds. Know the difference between how a photo looks and how a link looks so you can focus attention in the right place. Know what your fans like in their news feeds and what they pass over. Know what makes sense to share with friends and what feels too much like advertising.

Carolee Sherwood is the conversation manager at Media Logic, an integrated marketing services and social marketing solutions provider. Carolee can be reached at csherwood@mlinc.com.