By Melissa R.
We’ve put together a list of Canada’s top 20 malls, ranked by number of Twitter followers. Interestingly, one of these is a parody twitter account dedicated to a small, dated East Vancouver mall. Also, few malls in Quebec appear to utilize Twitter.
Besides Facebook, Twitter is an excellent source of information on malls and their new stores, promotions, sales, new merchandise, events and guest appearances. Some malls even include fashion tips and outfit ideas in their Twitter posts.
Here is our list of the top 20 malls by Twitter followers as of February 23rd, 2014:
- West Edmonton Mall, Edmonton, AB: 12.7K followers (Twitter rounds once an account reaches over 10,000 followers)
- Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Toronto, ON: 8,762 followers
- Chinook Centre, Calgary, AB: 8,485 followers
- Toronto Eaton Centre, Toronto, ON: 7,612 followers
- Core Shopping Centre, Calgary, AB: 6,398 followers
- Kingsgate Mall (parody account), Vancouver, BC: 6,001 followers
- Metropolis at Metrotown, Burnaby, BC: 5,392 followers
- Upper Canada Mall, Newmarket, ON: 5,352 followers
- Mic Mac Mall, Dartmouth, NS: 3,614 followers
- Conestoga Mall, Waterloo, ON: 3,603 followers*
- Oshawa Centre, Oshawa, ON: 3,563 followers
- The Bay Centre, Victoria, BC: 3,442 followers
- Vaughan Mills, Vaughan, ON: 3,086 followers
- Mapleview Centre, Burlington, ON: 3,036 followers
- Guildford Town Centre, Surrey, BC: 2,583 followers
- Square One Mall, Mississauga, ON: 2,535 followers
- Crossiron Mills, Calgary, AB: 2,492 followers
- Coquitlam Centre, Coquitlam, BC: 2,479 followers
- Bayshore Shopping Centre, Ottawa, ON: 2,435 followers
- White Oaks Mall, London ON: 2,358 followers
*CORRECTION: We missed Conestoga Mall in an earlier version of this article. We’ve therefore updated to include Conestoga as #10 on this list.
If you exclude the parody Twitter account for Vancouver’s Kingsgate Mall, #20 would be Toronto’s Sherway Gardens with 2,180 followers. Humour appears to play a role in getting Twitter followers: Kingsgate’s Twitter account surpasses any mall in the Greater Vancouver area, far above Canada’s most productive mall (Pacific Centre with 1,061 followers) and Vancouver’s popular Oakridge Centre, with 1,416 Twitter followers.
An honourable mention goes to Central CityShopping Centre in Surrey BC with 2,289 Twitter followers, which would have been #20 on our list (ahead of Sherway Gardens). However, since it also houses an office tower and a campus for Simon Fraser University, which could contribute towards the number of followers received, we left it off the list.
As with our list of top Canadian malls by Facebook followers, West Edmonton Mall and Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre are tops for Twitter followers. Both malls are extremely active on social media and post up-to-the-minute happenings on both Twitter and Facebook.
There don’t seem to be any trends when it comes to how many Twitter followers a particular mall has. Very few of these malls made our Top malls by Facebook likes list and some post on Twitter multiple times a day, while others only update a few times a week. While most of these malls are in major cities or located near tourist attractions or border crossings, a few of these malls (Upper Canada Mall, White Oaks Mall and Mapleview Centre) are located an hour or two drive away from the closest major city.
Interestingly, few malls in Quebec have Twitter accounts. While reseraching this article, we were only able to locate a handful that have Twitter accounts. These include Carrefour Laval, Laval (1,807 followers), Centre Rockland, Montreal (839 followers), Place Montreal Trust, Montreal, (402 followers), Les Promeades Gatineau, Gatineau (279 followers), Carrefour Angrignon, Montreal (229 followers) and Les Galeries de Hull (45 followers). We may have missed a few but overall, it’s surprising how many large Quebec malls lack Twitter accounts.
While we’re on the topic of Twitter, Retail Insider has a busy Twitter feed where we tweet and re-tweets Canadian retail news. Feel free to follow us on Twitter as well.
"However, since it also houses an office tower and a campus for Simon Fraser University, which could contribute towards the number of followers received, we left it off the list."
Using this logic many malls on the list hosting major office space would be disqualified. Downtown malls such as Eaton Centre have office above it, so does some suburban malls like Metrotown (dedicated level is office only + 3 office towers). Would West Edmonton mall be disqualified for hosting a swimming pool and amusement park?
We may have to agree with you there, Mike69. We’ll keep the article as it stands for now but we’ll reconsider the numbers when we publish a similar article in early 2015.
Slow news day?
Not really… at Retail Insider, we like to approach Canadian retailing from a variety of perspectives. We don’t just do news, we discuss different ideas, concepts and facts surrounding Canadian retailing.
Thanks for this! Not a lot of info on use of social media by malls out there! Much appreciated.