Social Media Monitoring: Victoria's Secret

For the monitoring report I have chosen Victoria’s Secret company. I can’t say I’m its fan, but I really like the products it offers. So it was interesting for me to study what people say about this company and how it interacts with groundswell.

There’s no need to say that I have found a great amount of talks connected with VS. I’ve started by reading through blogs and found out that VS is not discussed there a lot. Mainly people share links to the clothes they like without commenting them. And upon the whole having studied the sites advised to us I didn’t find much information.

On socialmention.com I studied mentions of VS:

What concerns the tone of mentions it was quite surprising for me.

As you see the tone is mainly neutral. I really believed that VS has a great amount of fans. What surprised me, is that people don’t actually discuss the products of VS. Their favorite topic is VS Angels and fashion shows. At first I thought that it was weird and considered it to be a disadvantage of the company. But then I realized that VS created a great community and it is a great tool of talking to the audience. Like in the example with beinggirl.com, people can discuss any topics they want but they are anyway connected with VS. Both girls and guys admire VS models and looking at them, people like things they wear.

As you probably know VS talks to its customers mainly through Facebook. It has about 18 mil fans on Facebook. And there is great level on engagement going on there. Mainly comments are super positive.

But no matter how hard I tried to find answers to at least some these questions I failed. And in general I’ve got an idea that it is one way conversation. VS initiated the conversation but doesn’t always give a feedback. 

I think that VS Pink community is a great idea. It targets younger (teenage) audience by uniting it by “beauty” concept, as well as attracting audience by offering special discounts, coupons and other bonuses. The relationship between customers and a brand is deepened there. You may see it on Twitter, for ex., where VS is eager to answer its customers’ questions.

Through PINK Nation and its Facebook fan page, fans and followers can join in the discussion of why they love VS PINK products and which ones are their particular favorites. So PINK nation is a wonderful social media tool for listening and talking to the audience. But it mainly targets teenagers. Though the main audience of VS in general are women 18-25. For them I would suggest organizing conversations with the models. I think that will be a good way for energizing the audience. As well as providing voting for styles and other offers. As far as I noticed VS doesn't do anything to "embrace" its audience, to involve it into its world deeper. For example, it would be great to give girls an opportunity to create their own lingerie or swimwear and organize kind of a competition to encourage them to suggest their ideas about perfect outfit.     

Both Facebook and Twitter pages enable customers share what they like with their friends and thus expand the audience.

On Youtube one may watch all Fashion shows, shoots, interviews with VS models. There are a lot of videos where simple girls show their purchases among which VS is constantly mentioned. This is a good way to share shopping experience with the friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVAG9WyYKl0&feature=related

You may find some videos on Facebook VS which are very popular among girls.