The Monthly Retail Social Index Spotlight: Cheaper Than Dirt, DSW, Yankee Candle

The Monthly Retail Social Index Spotlight is a ROI Report column that features a monthly update from Media Logic’s Retail Social Juice Index, a daily ranking of social engagement scores for hundreds of national retailers. Media Logic distills data from Facebook and Twitter daily and turns it into a score which represents the effectiveness of a brand’s interactions with its fans and followers. This monthly column highlights specific Retail Social Juice index scores for a given month, along with commentary about the findings.

Cheaper Than Dirt sells everything from pool toys to wool socks, but when it comes to a social media presence, the brand sticks to its guns. If you assume a Facebook page filled with posts about ammunition and firearms represents the wrong kind of engagement, you’d be mistaken. Fewer brands know their fans better than Cheaper Than Dirt, which has amazingly good sense about the kinds of posts — a mixture of humor, advocacy and education — that inspire conversation and participation.

In the most recent four-week data set from Media Logic’s Retail Social Juice Index (RSJI), Cheaper Than Dirt appeared in the top 10 for highest scoring brands all but two days. Its scores ranged from 171 to 319, averaging 227. To put that in perspective, the daily average score of all retailers listed on the RSJI remained in the 40s throughout the same period.

So what’s this online sporting goods retailer doing right? For one, it's created an oh-so-wrong sense of humor that thrills its Facebook fans. An image with this text: “I changed my car horn to gun shot sounds … People move out of the way much faster now” was liked by nearly 3,400 fans and shared by more than 1,750, for example.

There’s more to the brand than an irreverent sense of humor though. Its status updates also include a diverse mix of links and photos highlighting everything from trivia (e.g., “What’s It Wednesday,” a name-that-gun-part guessing game), legislative updates, safety reminders and survival tips. No matter the presentation, however, every bit of content demonstrates clear personality and a core philosophy that appeals to fans.