UK’s Top 100 most influential Retail Twitter accounts

There are 15 accounts still at the top out of top 20 last time. The top three places remained same for the second consecutive year. Neil Saunders – now an expat, still influential within the UK retail community stays at 2nd position, sandwiched between Retail week at 1st position and its executive editor George MacDonald remains at 3rd position.

As far as newbie’s are concerned, there are 22 new Twitter accounts have been entered (or re-entered) the list this time, though you have to go down to number 40 in order to find first of them. Some are brand new and others were returned after a period of dormancy.

The interesting point in particular is that journalists and media outlets seem to have gained in twitter prominence over the last 18 months. Retail Focus has leapt 12 places from 17 to 5, Retail Gazette up by 2 at 6, and talking Retail climbs 12 places to enter the top 20 for the first time. In an era of “fake news”, more twitter users seeking reassurance by the trusted names in journalism?

In mean time battle between Moz versus Paddington, John Lewis remains the most influential retail brand, down one at 7. M&S has risen by eight places to 10 and narrow the gap.

The effect of being leapfrogged by M&S and a few others drops retail gazette from 12 to 15. Splendid Steve Dresser, up six to 14, tweeting about his restored pole position in our light hearted battle for Twitter pre-eminence!

Lissted analysed Twitter relationships and interactions within the UK retail community. These results are based on a sample of over 3000 UK’s top retail related Twitter accounts. These are mostly UK based individuals or organizations and other included who have a strong UK connection.

Lissted’s algorithm’s analysed over 2.7 million follower relationships and thousands of replies, mentions and re-tweets generated by these accounts. There are 3 key elements in the analysis which differ from most other approaches to ranking online influence.

Firstly it takes a peer-based approach, rating an account’s potential influence on the extent to which it is followed, mentioned or re-tweeted by peers from within the community. It is not the metrics based on total Twitter followers or reaction in general. Second, looking to all interactions within the relevant community, not simply the one that mention a particular keyword. In retail community it is related to one another we are interested in and not simply mentioning a list of terms. This helps in dealing tackling accounts that try and game influence systems by posting frequently with certain keywords.

Finally, Lissted’s algorithms seek to take account of the apparent real world influence of individual accounts within the community. This is done by looking at data indicators that we have identified over 4 years of development.