Today’s post comes from Lauren Rigney, who’s an account coordinator in the digital department at Lippe Taylor.

When think tank L2 published a report on brands’ digital competence in the beauty industry, it was obvious that a blog post was called for. As a member of Lippe Taylor’s digital team, many of the social media accounts I work on fall in the beauty sector. Even more importantly…my nickname in the Lippe Taylor office is L2 (don’t ask).

L2’s aptly-titled “Digital IQ Index®: Beauty Study” assesses 55 top beauty brands’ digital efforts, and then ranks the brands according to their “Digital IQ.” The rankings take into account factors including digital marketing, social media, mobile presence, and the brand site. The full report is definitely worth a read-through (or in our case, keeping on our desks as a reference document), but here I leave you with some L2 takeaways from L2 herself.

• Estée Lauder is leading the pack. Estée Lauder-owned brands M·A·C and Clinique were the only two beauty brands ranked as “Genius” in the report. Move down the ranking and you’ll see that with the addition of Estée Lauder (ranked third) and Bobbi Brown (ranked fourth), Estée Lauder owns four of the top five brands in this report.

• Facebook still matters. A lot. Facebook is a top-eight source of traffic for 80 percent of brand sites, and it accounts for 11 percent of site traffic, according to L2. The beauty business is finally getting the hint, with beauty-only brands representing 14 of the 15 fastest-growing Facebook pages. Brands are also realizing that there’s more to Facebook than just likes and comments. CoverGirl, Olay and L’Occitane are three brands to fully embrace “F-commerce,” allowing users to make full transactions on Facebook. While 70 percent of the surveyed beauty brands at least incorporate product links on their Facebook page, 22 percent of brands have zero F-commerce features.

• The top beauty videos aren’t uploaded by brands. In L2’s report, the top 10 most-viewed videos that referenced beauty brands weren’t from the brands’ own YouTube channels – they were from online beauty gurus. Case in point, Mary Kay Cosmetics’ most-viewed video on its brand channel barely tops 188,000 views, while a Mary Kay-endorsed video from a beauty blogger received 2.6 million views.

• Consumers keep their mobile phones close – really, really close. According to the report, 50 percent of consumers use their phones while shopping, and half of Facbook and Twitter users are signing in from their mobile devices. With geolocation technology available, brands such as Kiehl’s are now sending messages and exclusive offers to consumers whom they detect to be physically close to a store location.

• Beauty is getting creative with customer service. Beauty brands are also getting experimental in their customer relationships, with Facebook and Twitter standing out as valuable tools. Was your favorite product discontinued? Just tweet the brand and ask for a recommendation! Bonus if you use a frowny face

• Top brand sites engage with innovative features. M·A·C’s site seamlessly incorporates social media channels into its layout, which makes it easy for users to navigate to Facebook and Twitter, or even live chat a customer service rep. The site also scored big for its “Shop Together” feature, which allows users to simultaneously shop the site with friends. Clinique.com’s highlight feature was its diagnostics tools that help users find the best products catered to them.