Though overall online conversation doubled for both, Black Friday still leads Cyber Monday as the dominant holiday shopping tradition in social media conversation with 3.5 times more mentions. To kick off the holiday shopping season, the Porter Novelli Digital Analytics team measured public social media conversations to see how people talked about Black Friday and Cyber Monday online. For both shopping days, we looked at any mention of Black Friday or Cyber Monday on Facebook and Twitter on that day in 2010 and 2011.
Some of the key findings from our analysis:
- Despite widespread news coverage of in-store incidents on Black Friday, these incidents did not dominate online discussion on that day.
- Most retailers increased their coverage from last year. The growth in conversation far outpaced the increased sales.
- Walmart led conversation on Black Friday, while Amazon was the winner for Cyber Monday volume.
- Retailers with digital as a primary sales channel (Amazon, Apple’s iTunes and App Store and Groupon) had a higher share of voice on Cyber Monday than Black Friday. Conversely, for “big box” stores like Walmart and Target, more conversation took place on Black Friday than Cyber Monday.
- Barack Obama and Ellen DeGeneres’ Twitter accounts reached the most people with information relevant to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Barack Obama and Ellen DeGeneres led the list of top Black Friday and Cyber Monday tweeters for 2011 (by reach) with Ellen’s Cyber Monday tweets getting retweeted almost 1,000 times more than the President’s. Other celebrities and news outlets filled out the rest of the top five with Jimmy Fallon and CNN among leaders for retweets.
The team also identified some of the top retailers within the conversation. All of the top brands that emerged within social media conversation saw an increase in volume of Facebook and Twitter mentions on Black Friday and Cyber Monday from 2010 to 2011, except Groupon which was buoyed last year by Google buyout rumors. Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Target and Best Buy had the highest total volume. Even though its conversation volume was low compared to other brands, H&M had the greatest percent growth in post volume from 2010 to 2011 with an increase of 276%.