What big brands do the best job with social media? A new study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint ranks the top 100 brands by social media engagement. You can find the report embedded below or on ENGAGEMENTdb, which was presumably created with Wetpaint’s site-creation software.
The study scores the engagement level of each of the top 100 brands across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. Starbucks scored the highest, with 127 points. The top ten brands are:
1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)
The report categorizes brands into one of four types, depending on how many social media channels they participate in. The most engaged are “mavens,” while the least engaged are “wallflowers” (McDonalds and BP are examples). The study claims a correlation between social media engagement and revenue growth. The “mavens” saw revenues grow an average of 18 percent over the past 12 months, while the Wallflowers saw revenues drop 6 percent. I really doubt that their level of social media engagement had anything to do with their revenue growth, it is just that the strongest brands are the most engaged.
“The study scores the engagement level of each of the top 100 brands across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. ”
i dont know how wikis are social, yea there are discussion pages but come on thats pushing it
A wiki is a social document, I guess, since anyone can contribute to it (including the brands being talked about
Techcrunch would be doing everyone a big favor, and itself, if it would reverse the posting order of comments so that the most recent shows up at the top. Check out TED. It’s more fun.
But it does confuse many people since we are all used to this current format!
It democratizes commenting. Everybody gets a little airtime. The way it is now, on highly commented blogs, the first comments get all the attention and the end comments get no attention.
But with First In First Out, everyone gets about the same attention, plus they get the gratification of seeing their post at the top for a little while. Everyone gets a little. The way it is now, the first commenter gets is all, and doesn’t care. Its like one guy gets all he can eat, and the rest get to watch while they go hungry.
It’s just something that highly commented blogs have not thought through well. Dumb blog management.
Excellent, lets hope others do too.
>I think I have to agree.
>> Because it it darn confusing to adopt from bottom-to-up discussion order, as it messes up the basic rules on how to read.. anything. Same thing why top-replying to emails is evil.
>>> Why do you oppose the proposed change so much?
i like that idea.
Not wordpress plugin to just let you toggle sort one way (ascend or descend) from top of list? Would be easy, no?
might be interesting to show not just “Top 100″ overall but “Top Movers”.
Starbucks may be #1, but probably more interesting to see who is rising / falling and why, whether or not they’re in top 10 or lower.
starbucks #1? that’s odd..
I thought so too, until I realized how much they were doing across the Web…. Fbook, video, Twitter, idea generation. They’re definitely “engaged.”
Well, Starbucks is a well established and strong brand supported by the youth of America. I guess it does make sense that its no# 1 on the list.
I find Starbucks to be nearly a wallflower. So so so many other brands engage better via social media, across several channels, than Starbucks.
I’d like to know specifically the metrics and analyses were compiled.
It doesnt surprise me that Starbucks is #1. They are big when it comes to engaging with users online via social platforms.
How?
Because of presence or because of actual engagement?
Apple not in top 10?
Strange…
How strange? Apple don’t exactly get out there and engage in social channels. They get a lot of coverage, but that’s users/fans not the company itself.
Charles, I agree! I would really like to see Apple getting more socially active online, heck if Microsoft can do it, why not Apple?
You always do wonder if perhaps the company who often may be likely to acquire another is simply just aligning itself with that company.
But I think Microsoft is simply seeing the error of it’s way from the past few years!
Just quickly looking at various brands, it seems that the rankings are not based upon actual engagement levels, but rather number of channels the brand has created.
Starbucks has a Flickr site.
What’s relevant is not that Starbucks has a Flickr site, but the depth and scale of Starbucks’ social-influence marketing and use of social media.
I don’t really see this in EngagementDB’s listings, unless I’m missing something.
Well, from the report:
“…the number of channels in which a company participates was evaluated in conjunction with its respective level of engagement in each channel.”
I think people are missing the scope of this project. She used 40 different metrics. Just because you have an iPhone or follow a particular company on Twitter doesn’t mean that company should be #1 in this list. I would like the see the spread sheet with all 40 of the metrics though. I don’t believe that strong social media engagement brings strong revenue growth, but I would be interested to see what the revenue would be if one of these top companies stopped social media engagement for an entire quarter.
Hmmm….I wonder where, or how, the social spaces created by brands are considered? McDonald’s and BK have launched virtual worlds, Coke has in the past and so has Barbie, Disney’s Club Penguin…all have very long average sessions with millions of registered and active users. The 40 criteria, OK, but I’m note sure it is thorough enough.
I’m surprised Comcast isn’t on that list. Although they’re just really on Twitter, they are utilizing the social web really well to offer real-time customer service without waiting on a phone. Frank Eliason and team has really made Comcast stand out in that way
Any company whose customer service is so bad that people end up having to use twitter to bitch has to get their act together and start providing good customer service through their direct channels.
Providing customer service at 140 bytes at a time is beyond restrictive.
I’ve gotten faster and more comprehensive service in 140 characters than I have at any other large company.
Then you are dealing with companies with pretty crappy customer service. Any company that cannot provide better customer service outside of twitter is just not trying very hard.
First, when I said “any” I should have said “many”. I have dealt with some great cust svc depts.
However, my statement doesn’t so much mean that I have dealt with so many “bad” cust svc departments as I find Comcast’s use of Twitter so engaging and innovative. By using social media for actual troubleshooting, they are able to be more accessible to customers and respond quicker to their problems. Plus, many of the issues that they are presented with (in my casual observation of the CSR’s in action) seem to be one-off issues that would otherwise tie up phone lines.
I think that making yourself more available to your customers can only help and Comcast (at least Frank Eliason) has seen the value in this.
Any company with decent technology can provide a far superior support experience using online tools than twitter ever will.
The stories where a Comcast customer gets tons of attention by bitching in twitter ultimately creates a totally unscalable and unrealistic support channel for Comcast.
At best, twitter can be used to initiate contact and get notified of responses, but in the end all the real customer support will be done outside of twitter.
Twitter is good for many things, customer support is not one of them.
So Mike, are you one of the many consultants that makes money from advocating use of social media channels for things they are ill equipt to deal with?
Hahaha not at all. Just a normal ole webdev that had a good customer experience with Comcast + Twitter. Trust me, I’m not a ‘flavor of the week’ pusher
Comcast = not top global brand, so not on list. They didn’t boil the ocean, but just took a top list and ran with that.
That’s a shame then.
Looks like a BS report with no real methodology.
Exactklee!
I like the destinction between the most being “mavens,” & the least engaged being “wallflowers” (McDonalds and BP as examples).
Strong media engagement…what does that really mean? I suspect that over the next few years it will become clearer what real impact these early “engagement” measures have on the business and on the customer’s engagement and buying decisions.
Author: “Grow Your Business using Social Media. A Guide 2009″
Interesting data. I’m not sure if the title of this posts fits the post, though, perhaps it needs to be “100 most socially engaged brands on the web”?
@erick:
Correlation is purely factual. It does not imply any kind of consequence whatsoever.
So social media engagement and revenue growth ARE correlated.
Great results often accomplish great result. Dell has learnt lesson through hard way so its effort is now yielding result
Interesting to see that the most “engaged” brand (Starbucks) has lost a lot of his engagement in the real marketplace.
Social media will become much more of a factor going forward… These companies which are getting an head start on their social media presence will have much more leverage in the future.
“Social media has become perceived as an indispensable marketing tool…”
I definitely agree that social media will become increasingly important to marketing initiatives and revenue growth in the future, but I think calling it a “tool” isn’t exactly right. Social media is a platform that gives these companies a unique opportunity to reach new customers and make measurable progress towards real business goals (i.e. build mailing lists, generate fresh buzz, increase sales, etc.). Social media “tools” will enable these companies to make the most of that opportunity.
So, the question becomes…which tools are the best at that? And who makes them?
Brendan
http://wildfireapp.com
Coca-Cola just joined the ranks of affiliate marketing
Interesting point that the strongest brands are the ones most engaged in social media. Miles Technologies helps businesses to strengthen their brand and increase their online presence with Social Media Optimization.
Thanks for the information
I think the methodology they used to create this report is a little suspect. They don’t give a lot of detail in how they measure “engagement” and it seems like they have left out a lot of brands like Southwest that are very engaged but might not fit into their whole financial results conclusion very well. It’s too high on consulting speak, too low on content.
Well assuming the information is true it’s quite interesting that over in the UK that the trend are a little different.
i would say
1. Dell
2. eBay
3. Google
4. Microsoft
5. Amazon
6. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel
7. Blackberry
8. Nokia
9. MTV
10. ITV
imho i thought Starbucks had gone quiet
I am a but confused at this report. Why is Starbucks #1. Didnt they post very poor earnings the past 2 quarters and close a bunch of stores?
I would love to see a report like this for small to medium sized business and how it affects their bottom line, perhaps a small to mid size business can attribute the revenue more effectively.
As for Google and Yahoo… i Highly doubt their social media strategy had any impact of their revenue. I will also say the same for Microsoft. Microsoft has hundreds of divisions, just recognizing Microsoft as a top performer does not tell the story. Getting back to small / mid size business… the retail community is very tribal, I would bet they would see bigger revenue increases and have a bigger effect against their bottom line than any of the top 10 on this list. I understand and appreciate this report and have just an incredible amount of respect for Charline. But i think this report has only scratched the service on the power of Social, and those brands that are socially committed win. big brands or small. Its open for the taking.
@davehonig
These companies are engaged simply in marketing bullshit. where is the engagement with the amazonfail and kindle delete problems? they respond via email? that’s being very engaged? um, no.
I have gotten more social media out of brickfish.com, they have introduced me to many more sites on the web than I could have found on my own. Not to mention all the products that I have come to know about. It’s like a operator for the web line.
DELL #1? Ugly!
They made so much error on their web site and dishonest.
There are many methodological points I’d like to have some clarification on, one being the financial performance: is that with the studied peer group (an arbitrary selection?) or industry averages?
A second and more important point is that IMHO this study pretends but fails to derive a causal relationship between social engagement and profitability. Which comes first, egg or hen? Is it maybe not because a company is better managed that it has more budget to invest in social media?
I’m looking forward to reading the details to this report.
I did some brand investigation myself last week when I wrote this – 10 big brands on Twitter.
Unfortunately I didn’t get quite the comment engagement that Tech Crunch got!
But I didn’t even encounter Starbucks when doing my research, although I have to admit I did pick specific brands that related more to me and then go from there.
I did however check out Nike, and correct me if I am wrong, but they don’t even use the Nike Twitter account? With Adidas far more involved.
Anyway, I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve read it.
I like the democratic discussion on comments going on at the beginning of the comments.
But what difference does it make if I like it, no one’s ever going to read my post!
What happened to Zappos?
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