How Top Sports & Outdoor Brands Structure Social Accounts For Performance at Scale

There are 5 types of social accounts employed by most brands: 

Main: Brand accounts with no outside parameters, such as Osprey Packs.

‍Regional: Accounts focusing on regions, such as Merrell Chile.

Discipline: Accounts focusing on activities, such as Nike Football.

Store: Accounts dedicated to specific retail stores, such as Arc’teryx BC. 

Other: Accounts that fall out of the norm, such as Adidas 10K Paris.

The purpose of this report is to determine the most effective balance of structuring these account types, depending on the level of social media resources at your disposal.  

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Key Takeaways

Discipline accounts see 78% of engagement for brands with <1K employees.

• Recommendations
  When resources are limited, consider building a community through a focus on disciplines you offer.

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Main accounts gained over 65% of engagement for medium, large, and mega brands.

• Recommendations
  (i) Post more frequently on main accounts upwards of 3 a week to daily based on your company size.
  (ii) Push your brand purpose and values through themed content, and bio messaging.

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TikTok & Instagram drive more engagement for all company sizes by over 131%.

• Recommendations
  Prioritize TikTok and Instagram when making a cross-channel post strategy.

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Burton prioritizes main and discipline account strategies,  together they represent 98% of their engagements.

• Recommendations
  Limit main accounts to two channels and focus on building an audience on discipline accounts.

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It appears that Burton hands off social account management for regional and store accounts.

• Recommendations
  (i) Consider handing off regional and store accounts to local offices or store management to keep content relevant.
  (ii) Use Instagram collaboration post tools to share main page content across regional accounts.

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Discipline accounts drive the most engagement for small brands.

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Focus on TikTok and Instagram, they generate the highest average engagement for small brand discipline accounts.

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Publish about 2 to 3 posts a week on prioritized platforms.

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Give audience members with specific interests a place to engage.

Bios focus specifically on what discipline will be covered on the account.

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Main accounts drive engagement & following for medium brands.

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Prioritize Instagram and TikTok. They generate the highest average engagement on main accounts for medium brands.

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Post every other day (or even daily).

Brands make 58% less posts on TikTok than Instagram and see similar engagement on both platforms.

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Communicate your value proposition through main accounts.

Use bios to share brand purpose with a range in content across sports & disciplines on one account.

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Main accounts have more engaged audiences for large brands.

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Instagram and TikTok generate the most engagement on main accounts for large brands.

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Keep posts going at a cadence of 3 to 4 a week.

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Show branding through colors and themes for main accounts.

Brands build cohesive feeds with posts featuring similar color tones and angles even if the subject matter varies. 

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Main accounts see the most focus & engagement for mega brands.

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TikTok and Instagram are top performers for engagement on main accounts for mega brands.

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Aim to post 3 to 5 posts a week on your top platforms.

Mega brands are the only ones that push out more average content on TikTok than any other platform.

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Use main accounts to focus on people, and share big messages.

Main accounts have content patterns featuring close-ups of people. Emphasize storytelling instead of hard product pushing.

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Burton has the biggest audience compared to brands with <1K employees...

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...And 81% more average engagement.

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Why Examine Burton For Insights?

• ‍Company Size. As of May 2023, Burton is a moderate size with 941 employees.‍
• ‍Relevance. Burton is a leading brand in the outdoor space, with an average of 2M website visitors per month.‍
• ‍Performance. Burton has garnered 4M followers across their accounts with 568K average engagement, 81% more than the other brands in their size range.  

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Invest in discipline and main accounts, they drive the engagement.

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Prioritize one main discipline account across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter. 

Burton does this with their Snowboard account. 

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Consider re-focusing resources by running a main account on only your top 2 platforms.

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Consider letting major regional accounts be run by local offices. 

Give partners specific parameters such as following the same username and bio conventions.

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Use these accounts to:  

• ‍Bridge the gap between opposite seasons, winter in Chile is Summer in the States.
• Highlight region-specific events, such as a local demo schedule with a local retailer.

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Brands included in the competitive set:

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Engagements: Data collected from May 2022 - April 2023.

Engagements consist of likes and comments on posts made by analyzed brands.

Followers: As of May 2023.