• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 21, 2015

How are social media trends shaping the beauty business?

Especially among millennials, the selfie is impacting the way women think of beauty, according to new findings from NetBase.

Celebrities and the “no-makeup selfie” are challenging the status quo, encouraging women to abstain from makeup in order to feel beautiful, the social quantifier reports.

At the same time, the selfie and other social photo opportunities are driving millennials to pursue always-on beauty through makeup and cosmetics.

Over the past year alone, social mentions of online retailers associated with beauty and skincare have increased 11 times faster than mentions of traditional cosmetics, NetBase found.

Non-traditional cosmetic retailers, such as eBay, Etsy and Amazon, ranked first, third and seventh place, respectively, as the top brands identified in NetBase’s study.

Of the top 15 most-mentioned brands in beauty and skincare, the online upstarts made up 53% of conversations on the topic between February 2014 and January 2015.

Conversely, traditional brands -- Mac, Sephora, Dior, Maybelline, Chanel, Revlon, L'Oreal -- all fell in the rankings during the same period.

What are the upstarts doing right? “Establishing a strong emotional connection with consumers is vital in today’s fast-paced, social-driven market,” according to Pernille Bruun-Jensen, chief marketing officer of NetBase.

For its findings, NetBase analyzed more than 200 million social conversations over a two-year period, between February 2013 and January 2015.