(Anon, 2017)
I guess this is it, my final blog… who would’ve thought at the age of 16 when I first started to get an interest in beauty that at the age of 20 I would be in university blogging about and analysing a makeup brand that I love? I personally didn’t know I would be in this situation and learn this much in a period of 6 weeks… The amount I’ve learned in this short amount of time is amazing and I’ve been very proud to share it with you. So for my final blog, I thought that it would be a good idea of summarising everything that I’ve learned throughout this process, my findings and my personal experience.
Let’s start from the beginning. MAC Cosmetics is a makeup brand, targeting middle class 16 to 30 years old city goes, that are fond of makeup and keeping up with the new trends, by reading magazines, or following famous brands/bloggers on social media. Any sex, age or races, MAC has something for you and they like making that their mission statement. They are established across all four social media zones (Tuten and Solomon’s, 2013) and very regularly share content in order to increase their brand awareness, engage with their audience, and enhance their strategy in generating more sales. MAC may struggle in the upcoming years as peoples’ expectations are getting higher and MAC might not be able to follow if changes aren’t being made. However, being part of the Estée Lauder family, a big budget is allocated to them, and future plans for improving and expanding the brand will be coming. Their big range of products, fit for every skin type, good long-established customers and a good ethicalness linked to the brand will prove to be an advantage in the upcoming years and changes they will have to make.
When blogging, I have learned a few things about MAC and its digital communication, that I wasn’t aware of in the past. MAC has always emphasised on how diverse their makeup was and how it is fit for everyone. They have clearly shown this through their pictures, and tutorials where they have used various different models and influencers- female and male, of all ethnic backgrounds. This is one of their strengths as not many makeup brands have included male influencers, yet MAC has. They also have a lot of followers, however not a lot of interactions… before studying digital communication, I believed that the more you post, the higher interaction rate you would get- however, MAC has unfortunately proved to me that this isn’t the case. Unfortunately, yes they regularly post online, however, their content isn’t high quality and therefore people aren’t interacting with them as they are not interested. This is one big disadvantage as their competitors do not post regularly but have a higher interaction rate. However, when they do get interaction with their audience, and it is unfortunately negative, MAC does not appear to value two-way communication as they very rarely reply back. Additionally, I have discovered that MAC has less of an engagement rate on their mobile website as it has proven to be very slow, which nowadays isn’t ‘acceptable’. The beauty industry has proven to be very competitive, and if MAC does not improve on what I have just mentioned, they could struggle in the future.
From my experience and findings, what would I recommend to MAC….? Without a doubt, the first thing I would recommend is concentrating on the content they share online and making sure the content they share targets the right audience by using the right platform to share it on. This will automatically create more engagement as for the moment, there is near to none. They also need to understand that creating content regularly isn’t going to create more engagement rate, but if they create high-quality content, it will. Another thing I would recommend, which could be linked to the fact that they do not have a lot of interaction, is the fact that they only have one Facebook, Instagram etc. page for all their customers coming from the US, Italy, India etc. which is a big disadvantage as not everyone speaks English and understand what they are talking about. And finally, they should also improve the speed of their mobile website as it might not seem like it, but it does penalise them A LOT, as talked about in my previous blog called “speedy or not so speedy”.
(Anon, 2017)
Whiles reflecting on everything that I’ve learned for the past six weeks, the first thing that comes to mind is the amount of content I’ve learned. I strongly feel like I have gained insight into every stage of the communication process. From knowing what content to write, where to share it, how to get people engaged or understanding why people aren’t engaging with certain content, how to analysis engagement, a website etc. I have also gained skills and knowledge on how to use analytic tools such as SimilarWeb, a website that I have used for one of my blogs, and understanding how SEO worked and knowing what was currently trending by using google trends. I also feel like my confidence in digital technology has grown which helped me understand the “backstory” of a website and how to make and analyse a customers’ experience by using certain analytic tools. However, I have struggled when writing this blog sometimes due to the lack of free resources when wanting to analysis certain things. This has resulted in me assuming certain things, which therefore means that certain of my information is based on assumptions only.
My blogging experience was very enjoyable and I will miss it very much! Some people may say that blogging was hell for them and it made them realise that they absolutely hate the industry that they have chosen, but for me, it has made me like it even more and I can’t wait to put forward the skills that I have learned in practice! For the time being, that’s it from me- I hope to write blogs in the future as I’ve enjoyed it very much so don’t worry….
(Anon, 2017)
References:
Anon, (2017). [image] Available at: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3omo1n [Accessed 5 Nov. 2017].
Anon, (2017). [image] Available at: https://memecrunch.com/meme/751XX/terminator-i-ll-be-back [Accessed 5 Nov. 2017].
Anon, (2017). [image] Available at: http://memegenerator.net/instance/64773870 [Accessed 5 Nov. 2017].
MAC Cosmetics – Official Site. (2017). MAC Cosmetics. [online] Available at: http://www.maccosmetics.com/employment [Accessed 5 Nov. 2017].
SimilarWeb.com. (2017). Similarweb.com – Digital World Market Intelligence Platform. [online] Available at: https://www.similarweb.com [Accessed 3 Nov. 2017].
(Socialbakers, 2017)
Number of interactions shows how your community is responding- (Socialbakers, 2017)
Chloe Tomasin 