Did social media play a part in Clinton’s downfall?

Jamie Riddell, creator of BirdSong: Social Media Reconnaissance, uses the new BirdSong system to analyse Clinton Cards Twitter account…

With news of Clinton Cards move to administration, we consider whether the lack of engagement in social media had an impact in its demise. For the record, we understand that social media plays a small part in the overall business for Clintons and that high rents and a challenging market weighed heavier on the company. However, by looking at their social media presence we can perhaps tell a little about how the brand was harnessing new channels for consumer engagement and growth.

Using BirdSong: Social Media Reconnaissance, we analysed the Twitter account for Clintons and their online competitor, MoonPig.

At the time of writing, Clintons were actively promoting Twitter from an icon on their homepage and had achieved a reasonable 5640 followers since creating the account in April 2010. Any consumer looking at the Twitter account would have seen the logo but no biography. A simple ‘the official Clintons Cards Twitter account’ would have sufficed. An explanation of the company and benefits to following this account would have been better.

Of the 5,000 + followers the majority of followers were female with a small number of male followers. We assume this was in line with the brand target audience.

The brand itself was following over 3,000 Twitter accounts, which shows a good attempt at following customers and good step towards engagement. However, the account tweeted on average once per day, making the visibility of the tweets very low. This in turn leads to reduced potential for clicks to drive traffic to the site or for consumer engagement.

When the company did tweet their content had little relevance to the core product lines. If this was an SEO or PPC campaign we would expect to see mentions of ‘Birthday cards’, ‘personalised cards’ or similar. With Twitter the biggest frequency of mentions was ‘Week’, ‘Happy’ and ‘Day’ – no mention of birthday cards at all.

Despite this seemingly negative review, there is still potential for Clintons Cards. Moonpig, the online only card company has created two Twitter accounts. @MoonpigUK and @moonpigUSA.Despite gaining 546 followers, the UK account has never tweeted! Not even a message to say, “we’re over here”pointing to the US account, which is actively tweeting six times a day, but has yet to reach follower traction with only 517 followers.

With news coming that suitors are circling, there may be an opportunity for redemption. For potential suitors or competitors, there is an opportunity to engage with the Clinton Cards’ audience. While in administration, the public Twitter account is still active in much the same way as SeaFrance and Focus DIY still maintain a Twitter page. Competitor brands could look to engage with the audience by following them and boosting their content.

Should Clintons Cards return from administration they could benefit from improving their Twitter presence. An improved presence on the homepage would help boost follower numbers. Taking the time to explain the consumer benefits of following them on Twitter would offer more value than a small Twitter link and set it more in line with the encouragement offered to sign up for their newsletter.

Picking up the frequency of tweets, combined with a richer stream of Birthday Card or core business message tweet would also help improve value from the account.