Social Media Monitoring for Sephora--- Part Two

Let's review from previous part one:

Previously on part one, we got closer to Sephora's social media activities and how they responded to their groundswell on the social media platform, as well as some data to show their social media performance on the internet.

Today, we will continue to make a  SWOT analysis and give some recommendations based on the analysis to help Sephora do better on social media in the future.

SWOT Analysis for Sephora Social Media Monitoring:

• Strength

1.  The biggest strength of Sephora is that they owned almost social media platforms' accounts or official pages, and they often update frequently. This will give customers more chances to get information about new products releases or any big announcements. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Not only did Sephora owned main social media accounts, but also did Sephora owned a lot of followers. 17,167,750 followers on Facebook, 2.38 millions followers on Twitter. This showed that people are willing to pay attention to Sephora's social network. "Existing social media accounts mean that Sephora is willing to take part in a social network, but a lot of followers mean that Sephora did a good job to attract people's eye." The statistics on the social mention, 86% strength, can also show that people's high passion of Sephora on the social network. 
   

3.  The attitude and emotions they showed to their customers are pretty sincere and positive. After I went through all the replies that Sephora did, I have never found out any negative reply they do to customers' comments. They always started with "sorry for your problems' and ended up reply with "thank you". Nowadays, none of the customers is willing to get replies with just simple few words or with negative emotions. So Sephora did well in this part. (More information and details on part one).

4. Sephora made the best use of different social media platforms to publish different kinds of announcements. For Facebook, they share a lot of ideas about how to use the products. For Twitter, they usually publish the new products releases and also simple interactives with customers. For Pinterest, they share a lot of pictures to show the products. People can find different interests in different platforms.

 

• Weakness

1. Sephora replied to the comments on Facebook very frequently, but they did not reply very often on other social media platforms like Twitter.
   
   
   
   
2.  What Sephora posted on social media platform became less attractive. Why? Because they always share the new product releases and big announcements but seldom did they share or link down below some interesting videos about how to do makeup tutorials or the user experience of the products from their customers. This might make people feel "aesthetic fatigue" about monotonous posts' content. 
   
   
   
   

• Opportunity

1.  "Influencer" on the internet shared and posted a lot of content about Sephora, which brings a lot of opportunities to corporate with these influencers. This step is similar to what Li&Bernoff suggested as "energizing the groundswell".  For example, a lot of Youtuber shared videos about "Sephora Haul" about their shopping experience and their favorite products. Sephora can corporate with these influencers to energizing their groundswell. 

           When searching on the Youtube about "Sephora Haul", it showed 1.950,000 results.2.  Sephora still shares a huge market for cosmetics in US market; people still pay a lot of attention to Sephora. Even with several competitors, Sephora still owned most attention in the cosmetics market. 

• Threat

1. Competitions from competitors

 In the past few years, Sephora seemed the only cosmetics retailer that people know. Nowadays, there are more and more cosmetics retailer appeared in US market.

For example, Ulta Cosmetics, a recently huge competitor of Sephora.

According to Google Trends, people pay more interests in Ulta than Sephora in past 12 months. Sephora now is not the only "superstar" in the cosmetics industry. 

Other cosmetics companies like Ulta beauty are also pretty active on social media to energizing the groundswell. If you search "Ulta Haul" on YouTube, it also shows a lot of videos from influencers.

2. Threats from the products

 In the past, some unique brands and products are only released in Sephora like Anastasia Beverly, Fenty Beauty, Tom Ford. However, nowadays people can get these products from a lot of other cosmetics companies.  Customers now pay more attention to new products releases wherever on any website instead of "Sephora". Sephora is generally losing the leadership in the cosmetics industry.

Conclusions:

Sephora remains an overall active trend in social media. Doing well responds and replies on the social media website are their virtual strengths. However, with sever competitions and less attractive on social media, Sephora still needs to energizing their groundswell to keep their strengths to remain and win more market.

Recommendations for Sephora Social Media Monitoring

1.  More engagements in groundswell: Sephora should pay attention to manage the replies on some social media platforms like Twitter. They did well on Facebook with frequent replies. They should also manage their replies more frequently on Twitter.
2.  Energizing the "content" on social media: Sephora should create and share more interesting content like videos or pictures to attract more attention instead of simply announcing the new products releases.
3. Cooperating with influencer to boost the groundswell: Sephora still wins the preference attention of many influencers. Seeking more cooperation with these influencers can boost the groundswell.
4. Build a different style with other competitors on social media: Trying to find a different style of social media management can be another way. For example, Sephora used to be "the only new popular product releasing" website on the internet. Nowadays, Sephora generally loses this strength. However, they can change their style. For example, they can change the style from "new products releasing" to  "how to use the new releasing products", which can bring more practical experience for customers on the social network.