Social Media Marketing

Under Armour is nipping at Nike's heels in apparel sales. Now, with its latest product, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on Tuesday, the Baltimore company is going after Nike on another front. UA Record, Under Armour's new health-tracking software, pairs with a bevy of wearable devices. Its dashboard allows the fitness obsessed to interact with others by sharing results and posting photos and videos. "It's a social network for activity," said Senior Vice President Robin Thurston on the CES show floor where the company claimed a central space.

Twitter is especially geared to help retailers target customers. With keywords, geo-targeting and smarter tech, brands can find out who is looking for their merchandise via tweets. When they find someone, they can tweet directly back with an offer or discount to get that shopper in the door. Many small business owners know they should be on social media, but are befuddled about how to connect the dots between posts, tweets and new customers. However, with the right tools, business owners can find potential customers on Twitter who need a product or service at that moment.

Social login — the ability to use social network profiles from Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and others for online registration in a few clicks — is gaining momentum despite some public relations and implementation hiccups. If you aren't on the bandwagon, now is the time to hitch up.

Should Target put "Alex," the Frisco, Texas, kid getting a lot of Twitter love because of his Bieberish mug and the pure randomness of the internet, in an actual ad campaign? "Why not?" answered Will McInnes, chief marketing officer of Brandwatch. "Social media is a powerful and direct avenue to consumers. Given the velocity and reach of the #AlexFromTarget hashtag, there are a number of marketing and ad campaigns that Target could execute. For example: store appearances by Alex or Alex's picks for clothing and seasonal items. Target could even use Alex to showcase its corporate culture."

As the holiday season arrives, Banana Republic is rolling out 15-second, content-rich video advertisements through Instagram, connecting to the brand's female millennial customers. Instagram users can expect to see the short videos appear on their news feeds. Banana Republic is among the first of leading companies along with Lancome, Disney, Cosmopolitian and Activision to incorporate Instagram videos as a way to interact with consumers. Jonathan Anastas, head of digital and social media at Activision, stated, "Our audience is becoming increasingly mobile centric, and Instagram is a mobile-centric platform. So it's an important part of the marketing mix."

Learn how the world’s best brands engage with consumers on a new level, extending conversations to get customers and influence revenue.

Follow Banana Republic or sister brand Old Navy on Twitter or Facebook and you'll be taken behind the scenes on ad shoots or offered styling tips. Theirs are typical fashion brand feeds, albeit produced with more sophistication and digital savvy than some competitors. But take a look at the social media accounts of parent company Gap and you'll see the 45-year-old retail giant has been carefully cultivating a web presence focused on feminism, equal pay and progressive values.

The data for this list was collected in August by Social Annex, a social commerce platform provider. Companies included on ROI's 100 fastest-growing retailers' list were compared. Scores were based on a scale of zero to 100, using a weighted average of the percentile scores to arrive at the overall score. Final rankings reflect the retailer's audience reach across the most popular social networks. 

Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook last weekend called the introduction of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus the "best launch ever." He may have spoken too soon. Just three days after announcing that Apple had sold a record 10 million new iPhones over the opening weekend, Cook was faced with multiple snafus related to the bigger-screen handsets. The company pulled a new mobile software update, dubbed iOS 8.0.1, after the program caused some people to lose cellular service yesterday, and promised a fix soon. 

It's ironic that one of the oldest brands in America, King Arthur Flour, is reliant upon one of the newer digital marketing channels — social media — to help it find and acquire new customers. In a keynote presentation yesterday at the NEMOA directXchange Fall Conference in Groton, Conn., Bill Tine, King Arthur Flour's vice president/general manager, detailed how the 225-year-old flour company is using social media to find customers.