La Bouche Rouge Lipstick: Social Media Study

The objective is to observe the number of social media platforms the company is active on, posting habits, interaction with their audience, content, and overall social media success. Yves Saint Laurent is active on several social media platforms with separate accounts for Yves Saint Laurent and their cosmetics segment, YSL Beauty. They can be found on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Yves Saint Laurent is much more active on their official company pages for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube than they are on their YSL Beauty accounts. They usually post on Facebook once a day, and post videos of beauty tutorials and makeup trends on their YouTube channel several times a month. They appear to be most active and effective on Twitter and Instagram, tweeting and posting numerous times throughout the day. These accounts generate the most likes and engagement compared to their other social media pages.

The company tends to base their content on trends, celebrities, and promotional material. The purpose of their content appears to mainly be for promotional purposes, to create buzz among users.

Comments from users oftentimes appear irrelevant to posts, not necessarily engaging in the content they see. There does not seem to be many product/company reviews or feedback. Yves Saint Laurent seldom replies to user’s comments when a question is asked, or a suggestion is made. Below is an example of YSL Beauty responding to a question about the colour of a lipstick on Facebook:

YSL Beauty responding to a user's question

Yves Saint Laurent exhibits poor posting habits on their YSL Beauty Facebook and Twitter pages, only posting twice on Facebook this year, and having not tweeted since November 2015. They are more active on their Instagram and YouTube accounts, posting daily on Instagram, and weekly on YouTube.

Overall, Yves Saint Laurent has a good social media strategy, however must pay more attention to their YSL Beauty accounts on Facebook and Twitter. It makes the company look bad and negligent of their social media presence. It is especially important to post more on their beauty page because the cosmetics industry is large, with people looking for frequent updates on the latest trends. An alternative to that would be merging the official company and beauty pages, meaning less work on maintaining so many social media accounts.

Yves Saint Laurent Official Accounts – Figures collected on February 27, 2016.