Welcome to The Retail Power List for September! This is my list of the Power accounts on Twitter for the retail industry. The Power List will be updated once a month.
Sponsorship options are now available for The Power List for Retail! If you want to sponsor this month’s list, click here for prices and info on sponsorship levels.
There’s two main reasons why I decided to do The Power List:
1 – I wanted to help give exposure to people who are doing a good job of using Twitter in a corporate environment. It’s damn hard to build a following and even any semblance of traction on social media for an account while also doing your core job functions. I wanted to build out The Power List as a platform to help give more exposure to others, and make it just a little easier for them to build a following and engagement around their content.
2 – I wanted to highlight the best use of Twitter, and use that as a way to show others how to improve their own use of Twitter. The Power List will become a way to showcase the best of the best, and also show all of us how to learn from the best of the best and improve our own efforts.
If you want to be eligible for The Power List, do this:
1 – Follow me on Twitter. Make sure you have your position and the technology company you work for listed in your profile.
2 – If you want to nominate someone else to be on the Power List, tweet me their username on Twitter and I will be happy to check them out.
Here’s where you can find all the candidates for the Power List for Retail. If you’re on that list, you are eligible for the Power List.
The Power List will rank the Top 10 Power users on Twitter. That number may expand past a Top 10 as the candidate pool becomes larger. In fact I hope it does.
How is the Power List ranked? How do I get to be #1?
I’ve been working with corporate teams to help them leverage Twitter as a communications tool for about 15 years now. So a lot of the Power List rankings is simply based on my experience working with people in a corporate setting and understanding what works and what doesn’t.
In short, there are two main consideration buckets I have when I rank the Power List:
1 – Posting frequency. I need to see enough content on your Twitter feed to see that you are making an effort to use Twitter to communicate with others. You don’t have to tweet every day, but if your last tweet is from December of 2022, you won’t be on the Power List.
2 – Original content. What I mean by that is I want to see content that’s written in your own unique voice. I get that working in a corporate environment comes with certain ‘challenges’ in regards to the tone and voice of your content. But that doesn’t mean that you should simply use your Twitter feed to repost your company’s press releases. Go behind the scenes, give us a sense of what your daily work day is like. One of the thoughts I should have when reading your Twitter feed is ‘Wow, that looks like a cool job, I wouldn’t mind working there!’
Before I get to the first Power List for the Retail sector, I wanted to share some general takeaways on what I learned from spending a LOT of time the past few weeks looking at Twitter profiles in the space.
1 – As with the Power List for Technology, I noticed a LOT of retail pros have left Twitter over the last few years. One of the rules I had for inclusion in the Power List is that you must have left at least one tweet in the year 2023. That rule zapped a LOT of candidates. I lost count on how many retail accounts I saw with a last tweet in December of 2022.
2 – Pros in the retail industry love LinkedIn. I saw so many candidates that weren’t on Twitter, but were on LinkedIn.
3 – Much smaller candidate pool for the Retail Power List than Technology. I’ve already started working on the Power List for Tourism for next week, and its much easier to find candidates for it as well. Finding candidates for the Retail list was simply brutal at times. Please nominate yourself or a peer if you work in corporate retail!
The Retail Power List for September:
1 – Lou Dubois, Senior Director, Content and Creative – The Home Depot, Power List Score – 92. Lou is #1 with the highest score so far on any Power List. Lou is very active, and his profile has a good mix of personal and professional content. Well done indeed.
2 – William White, CMO at WalMart, Power List Score – 85. Purely looking at posting frequency, William probably has the best profile I’ve seen so far on any Power List. He’s averaging a new tweet every 5-7 days like clockwork. The only slight downside I saw is his content is 100% corporate and focused on WalMart. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I think if he wove in a few ‘behind the scenes’ types videos of what a ‘Day in the Life’ of a WalMart CMO or employee is like, I think that content would really help round out his profile. Nonetheless, he has a really good profile.
3 – Hal Lawton, CEO of Tractor Supply, Power List Score – 83. Hal has a pretty solid profile. Decent frequency, a lot of reposts and pointing toward content others have created that tell the Tractor Supply story.
4 – Emmalee Smith, Social Media Manager at Kroger, Power List Score – 79. So I struggled a bit with where to rank Emmalee’s profile. She’s fairly active, but her content is far more personal than focused on Kroger. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. She does have some interesting thoughts on working in corporate social media that I think a lot of people in the space can relate to.
5 – Sumit Singh, CEO of Chewy.com, Power List Score – 75. So from this point forward, all profiles left on this edition of the Retail Power List will have some serious frequency issues to address. Sumit’s last tweet is May 4th, and up till that point he was doing a pretty good job with his profile. Hopefully he will return to the same frequency he had earlier this year, and his score will rise considerably if he does.
6 – E. Blake Jackson, Global Communications, WalMart, Power List Score – 74. I struggled a bit with where to rank Blake’s profile on this list. His frequency is not bad, especially for this list. Almost all of his content is personal, there’s very little about his employer. I think if he upped his frequency about 20% and had that additional content be focused on WalMart and some behind-the-scenes info, that his profile would really take off.
7 – Keith Daily, Group VP Corporate Affairs, Kroger, Power List Score – 73. Keith is sharing decent content, just not much of it. Only a few tweets so far in 2023. I checked and he’s far more active sharing content on LinkedIn, I think if he could post some of that content as well on Twitter, it would help build his following there as well.
8 – Dan Bartlett, EVP of Corporate Affairs, WalMart, Power List Score – 72. Very little content from Dan, it is updating us on what’s happening at WalMart, which is nice. But I would like to see more.
9 – Keegan Shoutz, PR, Best Buy, Power List Score – 71. Very little content so far in 2023. I hope that changes.
10 – Tony Lemma, Regional VP, The Home Depot, Power List Score – 70. Same thing, very little content in 2023.
One final note: Notice that 3 of the members of The Power List are from WalMart. I looked at almost every major website for a company in the retail industry over the last couple of weeks. WalMart was the only one I found that clearly listed the social media accounts for each member of its executive team.
So that’s the first Power List for Retail! Please follow the people that made this list, you can click on their name and it will take you to their Twitter profile so you can follow them. If you would like to nominate yourself or a peer for inclusion in The Power List for Retail, please follow me on Twitter, and make sure you have your position and the company you work for clearly listed in your Twitter profile. That’s it! All candidates for the Power List are on this list.
Would you like to sponsor The Power List for Retail? Here’s information on available options as well as prices.
