Social Brands 100 winner revealed...

After close to six months of data collection and research, we can finally announce that food and drinks brand Innocent has ranked number one in the Social Brands 100.

Brandwatch have worked with Headstream for the second year to produce the definitive social ranking for brands . The ranking is produced through a combination of detailed tracking and detailed analysis of social media customer and brand interaction to a post level, combined with detailed desk research and a third layer of an expert judging panel.

The ranking measures social performance of brands through a series of markers that demonstrate that a brand is creating high level customer relationships, engaging in active listening and displaying appropriate social behaviour. Innocent is one of over 300 brands nominated following a crowdsourced nomination process on Twitter that took place in January 2012.

The top ten brands are:

Social Brands 100 Top Ten

Innocent
Starbucks
giffgaff
Cancer Research UK
British Red Cross
ARKive
Cadbury
ASOS
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
Met Office

The full report is SB100_2012_the_report. Within the report, brands are also ranked via sector.

Other notable findings:

With a 4% drop on use of foursquare since 2011, the use of geo-location platforms has decreased.
Charities and not-for-profit organisations are starting to make the most of social media, representing over 25% of the top twenty brands this year.
In the 10 months since it launched, 49% of brands have joined Google+ with the same number of brands now present on Pinterest.
YouTube appears to be a missed opportunity for many sectors, with the exception of technology brands. Sharing product and service stories on this platform could result in greater engagement.

http://www.contentandmotion.co.uk/blog/social-media-agency/ Roger Warner, C&M

Hey guys. Good work – nice report. Like the data and the methodologies.

Had a question ref slide 28 and ‘Big Issues’. From a marketing perspective, do you think that brands should really be investing in strategies to create ‘strong one-to-one relationships’?

How does this scale for Innocent, Starbucks, etc? Relationships, communication, engagement is a cost. I’m not a believer that 1:1 marketing is the right goal for mass market, consumer products. Social platforms let brands do this if they want to, but my feeling is it’s not very effective (and extremely resource intensive)…
http://twitter.com/DomSoar Dominick Soar

Hey Roger

Thanks for the thoughtful comment – glad you enjoyed the report.

My take is that while the big brands obviously can’t hope to build strong personal relationships with all their customers, doing so with those that engage most keenly allows them to demonstrate their personality to the rest of the community (i.e. those who might only interact occasionally or not at all). This is one of the lovely unique things about social meida: whilst they are one-to-one interactions, they are still in the public eye.

In other words – treat your biggest fans with a little extra deference (more personal responses, remembering past exchanges and so on) whilst still making sure to interact with the more casual members of the community, even if limited resources mean that’s with a slightly more formulaic tone. What do you think?
http://www.contentandmotion.co.uk/blog/social-media-agency/ Roger Warner, C&M

I think you need to rephrase p28. I agree with what you say above… but some of the broad brush content in the ‘Big Issues’ section makes my toes curl a little : )
http://twitter.com/DomSoar Dominick Soar

Well we wouldn’t want people’s toes to curl without good reason. I’ll pass your feedback on to the guys at Headstream who wrote these sections :)

Cheers

Dom
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