BEGINNING BOUTIQUE RANKS NO. 1 IN AUS

AHEAD of Audi Australia and BMW Australia, Beginning Boutique has taken out the top spot in Australia for social media engagement, impact and responsiveness.

The winner of Brisbane Business News' Retail & Services category in the 2014 Young Entrepreneur Awards scored the highest for all three key performance indicators of Engagement Labs independent global benchmark for social scoring.

With founder Sarah Timmerman at the helm, the business prides itself on investing in its customer service, with almost two-thirds of staff being employed in this capacity including a dedicated team on social media.

Timmerman oversees all strategies and administrates all posts on company Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Beginning Boutique recently hit half a million followers on Facebook and has more than 430,000 followers on Instagram.

"Having a 50/50 split of branded and non-branded content is what I have found works best for BB," says Timmerman.

"Our followers want to see amazing holiday destinations, delicious food and hot guys, as well as our latest collection, current promotions and behind the scenes at BB."

Timmerman is eyeing YouTube and Pinterest for growth going forward.

Engagement Labs provides an overall measure of performance and effectiveness on a given social media channel that is determined by a patented algorithm and benchmarked against a database of 50,000 verified brand accounts.