The Top 100 brands in social media

Buzz and sentiment in Social media

There is a noticeable disparity between Interbrand’s top 100 brands and share of voice rankings. Economic success Offline does not necessarily translate to a strong, positive, share of voice Online. 

What is evident from this research is that consumers are discussing brands. Since last year’s Interbrand Top 100 in July 2006, social media has grown significantly. There are more network Groups, more blogs and new participative websites launching daily.

Conversations are spreading across the web. Opinions founded on a mixture of information, experiences and even rumour are growing, unfiltered, unsolicited and outside the control of marketers. Consumers are connecting with consumers, shaping the purchasing behaviour and attitudes to brands.

With the next Interbrand Top 100 on the horizon, it will be interesting to analyse how social media has affected brand equity and ultimately the rankings of the world’s global brands.

A fluid and growing media

This report is a benchmark for brand chatter in April 07. Changing every day, research into share of voice will always be dynamic and changeable. In the Blogosphere alone, bloggers are posting every minute. Technorati’s ‘State of the Live Web’   report specifies that there are 1.5 million Blog postings a day. That is seventeen posts a second: seventeen conversations that could include a brand. And that doesn’t include Social networks, Message boards or forums!

Throughout this report, it has been emphasised that this research presents a snapshot of social media. It is raw buzz and top line sentiment analysis. It does not take into account the detailed positive or negative conversations, or the influence of each communication.

Companies wanting to understand the conversation around their own brand must go further than measure share of voice and sentiment. They must delve deeper and isolate the buzz compared to influence. Influence not only plays an important role as a way of converting buzz to impact, it is also crucial to get a correct impression of the sentiment surrounding a topic or brand.

Social media conversation is not only about the numbers. Social media in itself has influence.