The Top Beauty Brands on Social Media

Social media is highly visual by nature and tends to be dominated by women, making platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter the perfect places for beauty brands to tell their stories and promote their products. Last week, Toronto-based social-technology marketing firm Engagement Labs released a ranking of the top hair, skincare and cosmetics brands on social media based on their eValue score, which measures user engagement, impact and responsiveness on a scale of zero to 100.

The results may surprise you, so we asked Engagement Labs CEO Bryan Segal for his insight on why some brands (and categories) outshine others and what social media managers can do to improve their presence across all platforms.

To determine the eValue score, how do you weigh engagement, impact and responsiveness? Engagement, responsiveness and impact are weighted differently across media channels. For instance, responsiveness counts for more on Facebook and Twitter, whereas impact is more important on YouTube and Instagram.

In the three categories of hair, skincare and cosmetics, is there one where brands typically perform better on social media? On Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, makeup brands perform better than hair and skincare. This is because of the more universal nature of makeup and the higher levels of investment in content creation.

Is there one social platform where beauty brands perform better than on the other ones? Beauty brands performed better on Instagram, in part due to the visual nature of the platform and the skew toward a younger female demographic. Brands were able to leverage Instagram’s platform to really demonstrate the look and feel of their products. To no surprise, their average eValue score is much higher than on Facebook or Twitter.

In general, what type of brand does better on social? Brands focused on one line of business, such as CoverGirl, tend to report higher scores, especially on Instagram. Magazine-quality imagery paired with the frequent presence of celebrities and brand partnerships drive up performance scores.

What are some tips you learned from this study that would help brands perform better on social media? We would recommend posting user-generated content to help boost engagements with posts. Keeping in touch with communities by developing mass one-to-one relationships can drive loyalty, engagement and sales. Naturally, consumers have an affinity toward brands that value their input. [A company’s eValue score would also] be improved by more quickly responding to people, and creating responses that get shared and draw more people into the conversation.

Here is Engagement Labs’ breakdown of the top five beauty brands in each category (click here for the full list), with links to each of their accounts:

Start your week off so #fresh and so clean. Our anti-residue shampoo removes 90% of dulling excess, for vibrant #hair when used just once a week.

"Start your week off so #fresh and so clean. Our anti-residue shampoo removes 90% of dulling excess, for vibrant #hair when used just once a week."

Top Haircare Brands on Facebook:

Top Haircare Brands on Twitter:

Top Haircare Brands on Instagram:

Taking it back to the old school with Estée's first 4 products from 1946-want some more #TBT in your life? Visit #TheEsteeEdit to explore all of Estée's story: we're so obsessed.

"Taking it back to the old school with Estée's first 4 products from 1946-want some more #TBT in your life? Visit #TheEsteeEdit to explore all of Estée's..."