Beauty is a saturated, evolving market, and even more so post-COVID-19 — so it follows that brands have turned their attention to helping the consumer navigate the space as it continues to flourish.
To home in on pivotal aspects of beauty consumer behavior, Antonia Baker, head, conversation and interests marketing and Alex Osberg, beauty industry lead, Twitter, led the “Connect to the Real Beauty Conversation” discussion at the Beauty CEO Summit, focusing on the company’s strategies to communicate with consumers in the segment.
“Twitter is the heartbeat of society,” Osberg said. “We are the pulse of every single community and culture that your customers care about — and the beauty community is no exception.” He added, “Every single day, millions of consumers, from average consumers, daily consumers, to the most influential, the loudest voices in the room, they’re coming to Twitter to be a part of that beauty community.”
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From questions, tips, advice, hosting tutorials and support, the beauty community produces 7 million tweets a month. For example, every single second there’s a tweet about skin care and the same can be said for hair care — you get the picture.
Baker said when Twitter innovates, it thinks about how to help users thrive on the platform in three ways: exclusive content, easier consumer engagement and brand connections.
Exclusive Content
This year, Twitter partnered with the Met Gala to provide content and livestream from the event, as well as exclusive content for its users; the annual occasion is a big moment for the beauty community. “Aligning with these iconic cultural moments throughout the year drives our strategy to provide content all around,” Baker explained. “A recent study revealed that when cultural moments happen in the world, people turn to Twitter 22 percent more times [than anywhere else] to learn about what’s going on.”
Easier Consumer Engagement
Recently released products from Twitter that are helping drive the beauty conversation forward include No Crop, which allows greater flexibility for posting photos and enhances the beauty experience, and Spaces, “an evolution of the conversations” being had on Twitter right now.
“Spaces provides an opportunity to talk about any topic of conversation and offers brands a unique opportunity to talk to their consumers direct one-to-one. Think about it as an informal focus group, but in a safe space,” Baker said.
Baker also mentioned the growing popularity of communities, and said beauty consumers are very active on Beauty Twitter. “We opened up the beta to them first, and of course, they’re the most engaged,” she said.
Brand Connections
Osberg said brands lean into Twitter because “they know there’s a very receptive audience. For the brands, they get it right. They understand the culture, they’ve taken the time to listen, and there’s a warm, welcome audience at Twitter.”
Brands turn to Twitter to launch something new, and when they want to connect with what’s happening, Osberg said. “When you harness the power of [Twitter], it’s going to kick your launches into high gear and take you from being part of that cultural moment to turning one of your brand launches or equity moments into the cultural moment itself.”