Sunscreen: not on the Radar of US Beauty Bloggers
Did you know that May is National Skin Cancer Awareness month in the US? I didn’t. Interestingly enough, neither do the country’s most vocal ambassadors of skin care and cosmetics: the 1200 American bloggers in eCairn’s Beauty/Cosmetics tribe.
How much talk is devoted to sunscreen, sun damage and sun protection in the US beauty tribe? Who are the bloggers who talk the most about it? Since a lot of cosmetics contain some level of sunscreen, the topic we created requires more than just an SPF index.
The share of voice graph over the past six months shows that less than 1% of all 100,000+ conversations in the beauty tribe match our sunscreen topic, with an increase from about 0.75% to 1.25% starting in the spring.
Do the share of mind numbers make up for the low share of voice? Not really. Only 24% of all influencers in our US Beauty/Cosmetics tribe mentioned sunscreen and sun protection over the last six months. What’s more, the influence level of these bloggers is not likely to help the message spread too far in the network of US beauty bloggers. As shown in the table below, the people with the most conversations matching the sunscreen topic (highest relevance scores, 10% to 30%) have very low influence in the tribe. Conversely, the most influential bloggers in the tribe have very low relevance scores to the sunscreen topic.
| # bloggers | average influence level | average relevance to topic |
| 14 | high (100) | low/none (0.6%) |
| 13 | low/none (1.2) | medium (15%) |
Our quick study of the US Beauty/Cosmetics community of bloggers shows that awareness about sun protection and indeed skin cancer has a great potential for growth in the tribe and in the general public. As with any other social media marketing campaign, one secret is to identify and engage the people with the most influence among their peers, i.e. the ones who are the most likely to help spread the message and raise awareness in their circles and beyond.
The month is still young, and things could change rapidly with the right strategy. In the meantime, let me share some Australian wisdom: “Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat!”
