What Makes Brands Social

Brands being social and brands being in social media are two different things.

A ton of brands are exploring and using social media as a means to deliver content where people are spending more and more of their time (i.e. Facebook). Starting with valuable content is not a bad strategy. 

Outbrain published a survey on brand content strategy they did around an Effie awards event. Two datapoints stand out:

"99% of overall respondents answered that content is important to their overall brand marketing strategy and...94% intent to increase output in 2011. 

Social media is the largest channel for content marketing and distribution, used by 88% of the respondents."    

 

Qualities of Being Social
Headstream, a UK firm, created a new index of brands active in social media, the Social Brands 100.

This ranking is based upon three criteria:

"The first is a willingness to actively listen and respond to what people care about. The second is a demonstration of appropriate social behaviours that are compelling, true, authentic and transparent. Finally, is an ability to create a win-win relationship with individuals, where the reason for doing something s driven by what the community needs, not simply by what the brand wants" 

There are some great qualities implicit in their view. I appreciate that in their analysis, they attempt to look at the quality of platform-use not quantity. If a brand uses one platform well, they may still rank high in comparison to the brand on four platforms just using them for content syndication and promotion. 

They also looked at consistent behavior over three months which would theoreticaly reward those brands with a persistent commitment vs. a campaign approach. And brands that respond well rise to the top.

"Whilst the top 20 brands achieved scores 29% higher than the other brands in the ranking for ‘starting conversations’ and ‘engaging content’, the most significant differentiator for appropriate social behaviour was in ‘responding’ scores. These scores related to the consistency of how the brand replied to questions, comments and suggestions made by members of a community."

I am certain we can all challenge the list and the complete methodology used. They did engage panel to add their own scores to the mix. Still, their criteria is what I find intersting and useful.

While there is nothing wrong with using social media to deliver valuable content (valuable to the user), there is a deeper opportunity for many brands when they adopt other social behaviors like those evaluated in the Social Brands 100.  

Comments

[GabrielleNYC]

Good solid comment and content as always John. Will be directing people to read this.

[Buddy Scalera]

Excellent post. Those stats support the basics of human communications, specifically that content matters. People socialize based on the content of conversation and shared experience they get from other people. In other words, it's more fun to hang out with interesting people than with dull people.

Social media has always been about the content. People want to share good content with their personal network. If there's nothing worth sharing, they're going to move on to something more interesting.

Buddy
http://www.wordspicturesweb.com

[PeopleBrowsr]

Fantastic post. Absolutely agree that “brands being social and brands being in social media are two different things.” Social media platforms should be considered as forums for conversation and not as a means for brands to push their message. Community building has always been pivotal to brand strategy and the companies that were ranked on the “Social Brand 100 Report” clearly understand that social media enables brand marketers to nurture and contribute to the dialogue happening within their communities. At PeopleBrowsr, we provide intelligent analysis of social media streams and a strategic response for brands and agencies interested in tracking the real-time conversations had about their brands or products online.

Our congratulations go out to everyone who made the list.

Cheers!

Jen Charlton and the PeopleBrowsr team