Social Media Analytics

Move over pumpkin pie: Black Friday fervor seemed to stir up more conversations on social media than the Thanksgiving holiday itself.

According to Salesforce.com, social media posts about Black Friday shopping numbered 2.7 million. Roughly 278,000 posts were stamped with the hashtag "#blackfriday" and another 8,000 were labeled "#deals," vs. just 85,000 with "#Thanksgiving."

There were also about 1.84 million holiday shopping posts on Thanksgiving Day, and about 719,000 posts the day before Thanksgiving.

New York - Nordstrom was the most engaged retail brand on Pinterest, followed by Amazon, according to Curalate, which collected more than 180,000 Pins and analyzed nearly five million interactions associated with the Top 100 brands from November 1st to November 21. Rounding out the top five:Urban Outfitters, American Eagle Outfitters and Zulily.

New York - A sophisticated marketing mix—one that includes social media, mobile and digital campaigns—is crucial in today’s fragmented retail environment. Twitter be can be especially helpful in targeting customers, according to one industry expert.

New York --Facebook, You Tube, Instagram and WeChat are the most important social media platforms, according to a new report by business intelligence company L2 Inc. The company's second annual Social Platforms Report, which assesses the social investment and performance of 382 brands across eight verticals and 17 platforms, finds that Facebook is the most dominant platform.

Seattle –- Amazon.com is reportedly using feedback collected from its “Amazon Moms” Facebook group and other corporate Facebook pages to help create promotional lists of holiday toys.  

Menlo Park, Calif. –- Net income soared 90% to $806 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014 from $425 million in the same quarter a year earlier, as part of strong overall performance by Facebook Inc. A sharp increase in operating income helped drive the net income growth.  

By Murali Nadarajah, Xchanging Malaysia   Consumers can purchase virtually anything they want anytime from anywhere, from the Internet to social media to mobile devices to good old brick-and-mortar stores. As a result of today’s omnichannel approach to retail, chain stores now have access to a massive collection of customer data that hasn’t existed until recently.  

Sears and Amazon.com both recently came under fire for allowing rings decorated with the Nazi swastika symbol to be posted for sale on their third-party seller sites. While both retailers quickly pulled the items down and issued public apologies, they received a large amount of negative publicity and surely damaged their brand image with many offended customers, perhaps to the point of permanently losing some of them.

Seattle –- VenueLabs is launching a free social listening tool geared for small businesses called AboutLocal. AboutLocal lets small retailers listen to and engage with customers in real time across hundreds of disparate channels.  

New York -- Twitter is giving over every message ever tweeted to the data scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s famed Media Lab. The social media giant is also giving $10 million (over five years) to fund the new Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), which will be based at the Media Lab.