Burberry is most followed FTSE100 company
Burberry is the most followed FTSE100 company on social media with close to 7m followers on Twitter; its follower base has also grown more than any other in the list of the 100 largest business on the London Stock Exchange in the past 12 months.
Media agency Battenhall's annual's FTSE100 Social Media Report shows that Burberry attracted a further 2,291,643 Twitter followers in the past 12 months taking its total to 6,831,673. It is also one of only seven FTSE100 companies to have an official Snapchat platform, according to the report.
Burberry's reputation as a digital leader in fashion is well known but it is interesting to see it placed in the context of wider business. Its closest FTSE100 rivals on the Twitter follower chart are broadcast giants Sky and ITV with 4,196,410 and 1,891,885 followers respectively.
However when it comes to influence on the channel Burberry, which once topped the list, misses out to high street giant Marks & Spencer (499,017 followers) and draws parallel with Next (227,379 follower) when the Moz system of scoring is applied. Moz takes into account influence and engagement in relationship to follower size.
Brands are given a score out of 100 on the Moz system with M&S coming out on top of the fashion players (and third in the list overall) with 86 and Burberry and Next tied on 80. The top two FTSE100 Twitter influencers were Paddy Power (92) and Sky Sports (89).
This shift may however represent Twitter's waning importance to Burberry. Its recent digital initiatives have focused on other platforms. It recently became the first luxury brand to create personalised Pinterest boards for the launch of its Cat Lashes mascara, while it sponsored a Snapchat lens and employed Instagram's new Stories function to promote its new My Burberry Black fragrance.
Burberry's personalised Pinterest boards
The report suggests that while only seven FTSE100 brands have an official Snapchat platform (Burberry, Next, Reckitt Benckiser, Morrisons, Unilever via the Lynx brand and Whitbread via the Costa Coffee brand), it is growing in importance. Currently largely the preserve of young millennials who use the platform to exchange ephemeral messages Snapchat is growing at a huge rate and is predicted to hit 217m users by the end of 2017.
It also enables brands to get creative with promotions via functions such as its branded lenses, while its Stories function (which is a useful tool for quick behind-the-scenes video for instance) was effectively replicated by Instagram given its huge popularity.
In addition Snapchat is promising more business-like analytics dashboards and better targeting of promotions moving forward which will help it take on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, which is widely regarded as the social media network of choice in fashion.
Given all of this, Battenhall predicts that many of the common uses of Twitter will switch to Snapchat moving forward. So once again, while its Twitter influencer score may have dropped, it just appears that Burberry is ahead of the curve on this one.
