back

H&M’s approach to social

View Comments View Comments Check out this blog article #neoco #crmtweet this

Posted By Neoco

Ok, go on and say that I’m bias because I’m Swedish and proud of it… but I do think that H&M are doing a really good job online. With 2,750,000+ Facebook friends surely they must be doing something right?

H&M have undertaken a very central-lead approach to social media that means that most of the activity and all of the messaging comes straight out of the head office in Stockholm.  This has also meant that instead of starting up separate Facebook fan pages for each and every nation where they have a presence they run an international fan page that brings together all nationalities (do I need to mention that the language used is English?).

High quality video content from H&M

However, the pictures is slightly different if you have a peak at Twitter, where they have multiple accounts representing different countries including Norway, Israel, Spain, Canada, US… the list is long.  If you look at these channels the following is very different, and the UK based page has only 2,500+ followers (much lower than rivals such as River Island, All Saints and Topman/Topshop).  Why do you think that this is?  My take is that they use Facebook as a hub for activity and information, whereas Twitter is a more tactical channel that will benefit from using the local languages of the different markets.

I especially like their approach to video, and how they update their website and YouTube channels with regular and high quality content (H&M Fashion Video’s) from around the globe.  By glancing at views these are much appreciated by the fans and followers.

Shop H&M online in the UK this autumn

This autumn H&M will start selling clothes online to the UK market, which currently is only available to a limited number of countries (Scandinavia and a few select).  Further, they will introduce a new collection called ‘H&M Home’ with affordable fashion gear for your home – leopard print towels, sheets and cushions in current colors, lace curtains and more.  Do you think it will be well received?

Tags  

  • http://www.tomandsteve.co.uk Steve

    Hi Lexy,

    An interesting read.

    I don’t know masses about Twitter so I won’t pass too much of a comment, other than to say I think what you write makes sense. Twitter is all about conversations, and allowing people to quickly discuss and message one another back and forth. Whereas FB pages for me personally feel more like a blog, allowing people to come and scan for specific details such as upcoming events, recent photos/videos etc.. Therefore it makes perfect sense to have one location for all of the info (FB), and independent twitter channels for each country, so that people can speak freely in their native tongue.

    Onto the section I feel I know at least a little more about.. video. As you already know I am a massive fan of H&M’s approach to video. They are constantly updating their youtube channel with high quality content. But it’s this later point that is the key for me.. if you upload often, but upload content that is of a medium or poor standard, I think people get bored very quickly. Users will watch a video that perhaps lasts 2-3 minutes, and if it is a poorly produced video, they will feel they have wasted 2-3 minutes of their time.. and lets be honest, there’s only so many times you’re going to do that before you think – “I’m not doing that again”.. These less well-produced videos effectively then also push the better produced content further down the page, until they are eventually buried and hidden from view, (unless somebody is really keen to click through several pages… but the majority of people aren’t).

    I really feel that for any brand looking to increase their social presence, video content is a must… so long as it is well-produced and topical, and regular! – It has to be almost everytime a user check back there is new content to watch, or at least more points of conversation about the video for them to get socially involved with.

    …Obviously being that I work with video, I would say that… but that’s my 2 cents worth of opinion! :-)

    Cheers,
    Steve.

  • http://www.facebook.com/benn.achilleas Benn Achilleas

    This is a hard one for me. 2,750,000+ fans is obviously an achievement but their fan engagement seems really limited. They also benefit from being a global fashion brand that reaches out across all audiences (female, male, kids) so the likelihood is they had to do very little to reach that level of fan – which lessons the impact of having that many fans.

    Yes, their Youtube does have good content on it but I can find several comments that call for boycotts on the brand or slag it off going back several weeks. It appears that content is not moderated or they have decided to let them stay on – which is not clear why they would do that.

    Finally, they have a wealth of Twitter profiles but the main one @hm (with 42k followers) does the thing that I hate… they only follow themselves. This is a personal hate of mine as it reeks of nepotism – it’s like saying that there is not one of their 42,ooo fans who are worth following back. It also gives the impression of Twitter being a ‘broadcast’ channel.

    So whilst I think they do a lot of things right (like you and Steve point out), and I like their clothes, I don’t buy in to them being a poster child for social. Yet.

blog comments powered by Disqus