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Report: Home Furnishing Brands Find Increases In Social Engagement During Quarantine

Furniture World News Desk on 5/22/2020


ListenFirst, a social analytics company, recently published a report on the social performance of home furnishing brands during the coronavirus. In the report, ListenFirst found that with people spending more time at home than ever before, there's been an increase in social media engagement around home furnishing brands, with Established Furniture & Décor Retail in particular being the standout category. 

Tracy David, Chief Marketing Officer at ListenFirst states, "As people have been stuck at home and are trying to make the best of a bad situation, social media engagement around posts by Home Furnishing brands have been increasing during the pandemic". "To keep that momentum going, Home Furnishing brands should focus on the social media tactics that will best help build brand equity and drive consumer loyalty. We've found that around people's new lifestyles, posts that focus on ideas around family time, advice around self-care, offer free Zoom backgrounds, and provide home-gym tips is all timely content that's performing well for Home Furnishing brands on social media."

Highlights of the report found:

  • During the first 8 weeks of people starting to shelter in place, social engagement around Home Furnishing brands increased by 18.65%, comparing March 16 - May 10, 2020 to January 6 - March 15, 2020. That engagement peaked during the first week of mass social distancing, meaning March 16-22, 2020, when the social engagement score of Home Furnishing brands was 4,326,479, a 20.79% increase from the previous week.

  • That's despite Home Furnishing brands sharing only 17,928 posts on social media during March 16 - May 10, 2020, which was a  -22.20% decrease from the volume of posts that Home Furnishing brands shared in the pre-quarantine period of January 6 - March 15, 2020.

  • Established Furniture & Décor Retail has been the Home Furnishing category that's been responded to the most so far in 2020 while Soft Home Decor brands have seen the largest YOY decrease. There were 27,893,058 responses on social media content shared by Established Furniture & Décor Retail brands between January 6 - May 1, 2020 which was an increase of 10.76% compared to the volume of content responses those brands received during the first 16 weeks of 2019. On the other hand, Soft Home Décor brands only had 17,748,903 responses to their social media content during the same time period, which was a decrease of -22.57% compared to the volume of content responses they generated in the first 16 weeks of 2019.

  • By percentage, Ralph Lauren Home was the Home Furnishing brand that generated the largest increase in social engagement since people started staying at home, looking at March 16 - May 15 compared to January 15 - March 15. RLH’s path to success was a combination of addressing the pandemic and more evergreen content. For instance an Instagram post about a book nook setup generated 13,372 responses while their post with the second most responses talked about Ralph Lauren manufacturing and donating masks and gowns.

  • By percentage, Lowe's has been the Home Improvement brand seeing the most social growth during the pandemic, with their social engagement score of 284,994 being a 126.47% increase, comparing March 16 - May 15, 2020 to January 15 - March 15, 2020. Their top performing post during that time period, generating 18,868 responses was a Facebook post expressing pride around their teams deploying N95 masks to support medical professionals.

 

Home Furnishing Brands With The Biggest Increase In Social Engagement During Quarantine

 

Methodology: ListenFirst Social Engagement Score measured the volume of post responses (likes, reactions, comments, shares, retweets, replies) and fan growth on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for 157 Home Furnishing brands during March 16 - May 15, 2020 in comparison to January 15 - March 15, 2020.

 

To read the full report, click here.

 

 

About ListenFirst:  Founded in 2012, we have a dedicated focus on consolidating all of your social data into a single analytics solution so you can make the right decisions quickly. And, we arm you with an expert team of social media strategists who put you in a position to win. Unifying all of your social signals in a single solution saves you time and gives your small team the capacity of an army. We identify the metrics that matter most, allowing you to fully optimize your social media to deliver positive ROI. For more information, visit www.listenfirstmedia.com