The Top 100 brands in social media

The impact of Online conversation on the Interbrand Top 100 global brand survey  

Every day people are having conversations online. Forming around passions and interests, millions of blogs and hundreds of Social networks, Message boards, wikis and media-sharing sites are discussing a vast array of subjects.

Facilitated by technology, often referenced as Web 2.0, voluminous amounts of Content are uploaded daily to participation sites. These sites, collectively known as Social media, make it easy for consumers to connect seamlessly with those around them: publishing their views openly, often for all to see. And conversations regularly revolve around brands.

As audiences seize control, attention and influence shifts outside of a brand’s immediate control. Companies need to recognise that people are engaging with brands with or without them. This presents both a risk and an opportunity.

The rise of social media is not only changing the relationship between brand and audience, it is affecting the traditional marketing and PR metrics. Social media offers insights and understanding never before achievable.

Before the internet, people talked about brands. Usually one-on-one or in small Groups, they exchanged stories about brands, products, shopping experiences, politics, recommendations, sports, jokes etc. Conversations, previously out of site of marketers, are now freely available online.

Today, brands have unprecedented access to powerful audience information. The question is, how does this affect the traditional methods of detailing brand positioning?

This report investigates the share of voice and reputation of brands in social media, comparing the data with the Interbrand Top 100 to understand how social media changes the dynamics of this well respected global brand leadership board.

The rise of social media

According to Datamonitor, in just three years time 70% of online content will be user-generated. Technorati now monitors over 81 million blogs and it is estimated that there are 171 million blogs worldwide.

“I think news organisations need social Networks as information sources, especially Niche groups, for discussion, dialogue and news.”

Richard Sambrook
Director, BBC global news

Facebook is adding more than 100,000 users a day and already has 2.7 million active users, with more than half of those returning daily. MySpace is considerably larger, with 6.8 million users in the UK alone.

Social media is now a mainstream phenomenon.

What is social media

Social media is the term used to encompass the technology and practices people use to share thoughts, opinion, information and perspectives online. Social media takes many different forms and can include content from video and audio to graphics and text.

Typically, content is generated by people (sometimes referred to as User Generated Content - UGC, or citizen journalism). However, the adoption of social media technology by the mainstream media and brands is also turning it into a communications tool. In this situation, professional content producers such as journalists or employees create social media.

Sites often considered as social media include:

• Blogs
• Message boards
• Forums
• Social networks (MySpace or Facebook)
• Video sharing (You Tube)
• Picture sharing (Photobucket)
• Podcasts
• Vidcasts
• Wikis
• Groups
• Virtual words or communities (Second life)
   

All share common traits: they are editable, they are participative, they allow audiences to add content and they connect people.