Tiffany's iconic blue box
With 1.4 million Twitter followers, U.S. jewelry brand Tiffany & Co. places first among the top 10 jewelers on the social media platform, per Digital Luxury Group.
Despite many industry insiders and consumers alike feeling that Twitter’s heyday is quickly declining, the platform presents brands with an opportunity to both inspire and inform, blending the strengths of Facebook and Instagram. Digital Luxury Group worked with Luxury Society to identify which jewelry and watch brands are excelling on Twitter based on community size and engagement.
Topping Twitter
Per the research, Tiffany boasts 1,430,648 followers on Twitter, with an engagement rate of 0.02 percent. The U.S.-based jeweler is an expert at culling followers, surpassing brands listed as number two and three by a margin of nearly a million.
Placing second was Italian jewelry brand Bulgari with 535,615 followers and an engagement rate that tied with Tiffany at 0.02 percent. In third place, but with a higher engagement rate of 0.04 percent was Cartier, which lists 318,660 followers on Twitter.
These leading jewelry brands were joined in the top 10 by Swarovski, Chopard, Van Cleef & Arpels, Harry Winston, Boucheron, De Beers and Blue Nile. Interestingly, Blue Nile, who placed tenth, has the least followers at 14,628 but ranks the best in terms of engagement with 0.09 percent.
Bloggers for Bulgari
Many of the aforementioned jewelry brands also placed on the top 10 watchmakers list. LVMH-owned Bulgari, which placed second in the jewelry category, was ranked first within this category.
Cartier moved up one position in the ranking to second when evaluating watches with Swiss watchmaker Hublot taking third with 294,607 followers.
The watch category top 10 was rounded out by Tag Heuer, Omega, Chopard, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai and IWC, respectively.
Digital Luxury Group's research can be found here.
In a statement, Genna Meredith, marketing and communications manager at Digital Luxury Group, said, “Twitter, although suffering from somewhat of an identity crisis, is a great medium for luxury brands to share relevant and timely news, particularly during key events and when fans want, or need, real-time bursts of information.”
With Twitter facing an ongoing challenge driving usage rates, the company is investing heavily in live-streaming platform Periscope to drive engagement and ad revenue as video use continues to grow.
While monthly active use was down in the fourth quarter, the total number of advertisers totaled 130,000, up almost 90 percent year-over-year and advertising revenue totaled $641 million, up 48 percent. Twitter has a number of new initiatives in the market or planned in an attempt to lure brands that are increasingly looking to spread around their dollars earmarked for social beyond just Facebook (see story).