D pershad the 6 leading global brands and their social media use
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D pershad the 6 leading global brands and their social media use
- 1. Deepak Pershad’s Blog The 6 Leading Global Brands and How They use Selected Major Social Media Channels How visible are the top global brands in the social media ecosphere? Is there a clear link between their brand ranking and their social media visibility? What drives their unique, individual use of the different social media channels? I took a look at the top 6 global brands (as ranked recently by Millward-Browni) to glean some answers. First, there is some but not too close a correlation between the brands’ rankings and their social visibility scores as measured by HowSociable. While the latter tool has a hard time reporting any Google images, pages, or blogs, it does provide some directional data. o Unsurprisingly, Google (ranked 2nd by Millward-Brown) led in visibility by far, given the very nature of its business on the web (Table 1, below) Table 1: Millward-Brown and HowSociable Brand Scores Brand Millward-Brown Rank HowSociable Score HowSociable Rank Apple 1 6949 3 Google 2 12949 1 IBM 3 1948 5 McDonald’s 4 1485 6 Microsoft 5 7211 2 Coca-Cola 6 3487 4 All the top 6 brands are engaged in the major social media channels, defined for this post as being Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Blogs (Table 2, below) Table 2: Millward-Brown Top 6 Brand Social Media Presence Brand Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Blog Apple Google IBM McDonald’s Microsoft Coca-Cola However, the way they use each channel is driven a good deal by the businesses they are in, for example: o On Twitter, brands like IBM, Microsoft and Google literally have dozens of Twitter accounts, belonging to specialized technical and support staff Page | 1
- 2. o For the same reasons driving its Twitter use, Microsoft has over 200 blogs, but does have an “official” corporate blog as well (all links are provided at the end of this post). IBM similarly has a veritable universe of technical, support and product-specific blogs o While their LinkedIn pages are fairly standardized, the top 6 brands take varying approaches to their Facebook pages, with greater creativity being shown by brands such as Microsoft (It went to the trouble of creating a Welcome page), Google, and Coca- Cola. Microsoft and Coca-Cola in particular had robust Video pages o Coca-Cola led the Facebook “Likes” race by far, with over 30 million “Likes” (See Table 3, below), followed by McDonald’s (8.9 million), and Google (3.2 million) o Apple, interestingly, did not have a “Like” button that I could see, and the creative look and feel of its pages did not live up to the class-leading design and aesthetics of its products o However, All the top 6 brands had a dedicated YouTube Video channel Table 3: Number of Facebook “Likes” Brand # Facebook Followers Rank Apple 100,674 members (“Likes” not 5 reported, and so may not be a valid comparison) Google 3,239,724 people like this 3 IBM 59,469 people like this 6 McDonald’s 8,948,471 people like this 2 Microsoft 695,299 people like this 4 Coca-Cola 30,806,998 people like this 1 So what does it all mean? Some key takeaways are fairly obvious, i.e. The top 6 global brands have a robust social media presence in the major channels Their individual channel use is driven to a fair extent by the nature of the businesses they’re in, e.g. the high use of Twitter and blogs by IBM and Microsoft All the top 6 brands had a YouTube Video channel, indicating their recognition of the growing importance and power of on-line video in social media content sharing Some of them might have tried harder to create an exciting and engaging Facebook presence The Facebook “Likes” numbers lead one to speculate whether it’s easier to “Like “products or services that are easily understood and used more frequently by consumers on a day-to-day basis – Hence Microsoft’s sterling effort not quite translating into the food and beverage companies’ numbers In summary, a good mix of social media channels in sharing your presence on the web will be driven by such criteria as: How complex are my company’s interactions with my communities? What is this complexity driven by, e.g. technology, customer support, and number of products and services etc.? What channels will help me best manage my social conversations with my communities? Which channels will help me best connect with my core fans? What balance of effort will I need across my channel mix? Page | 2
- 3. How centralized or decentralized do my overall strategy, execution and management need to be? In practical terms, how will my internal and external resources drive my ability for long-term channel development? There are no doubt many other considerations, and I’d love to hear from you about them. Provided below are numerous reference links that were accessed for this post, in case you’d like to dig deeper. i Millward-Brown, 2011 BrandZ Rankings - http://www.millwardbrown.com/BrandZ/Default.aspx 6 Leading Brands and Their Social Media Presence – Relevant Links: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204622626&v=wall#!/group.php?gid=2204622626&v=wall http://www.facebook.com/Google http://www.facebook.com/pages/IBM/107572525938726#!/pages/IBM/107572525938726?sk=info http://www.facebook.com/mcdonaldscorp http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft http://www.facebook.com/cocacola#!/cocacola?sk=wall LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/apple-inc http://www.linkedin.com/company/google http://www.linkedin.com/company/ibm http://www.linkedin.com/company/mcdonald's-corporation http://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-coca-cola-company YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Apple?blend=3&ob=5 http://www.youtube.com/user/Google Page | 3