Deepak Pershads 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 Apple Google IBM McDonalds Microsoft Coca-Cola Millward-Brown Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 HowSociable Score 6949 12949 1948 1485 7211 3487 HowSociable Rank 3 1 5 6 2 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 Apple Google IBM McDonalds Microsoft Coca-Cola Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Blog

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

o 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 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 CocaCola. Microsoft and Coca-Cola in particular had robust Video pages Coca-Cola led the Facebook Likes race by far, with over 30 million Likes (See Table 3, below), followed by McDonalds (8.9 million), and Google (3.2 million) 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 However, All the top 6 brands had a dedicated YouTube Video channel

Table 3: Number of Facebook Likes Brand Apple # Facebook Followers 100,674 members (Likes not reported, and so may not be a valid comparison) 3,239,724 people like this 59,469 people like this 8,948,471 people like this 695,299 people like this 30,806,998 people like this Rank 5

Google IBM McDonalds Microsoft Coca-Cola

3 6 2 4 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 theyre 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 its easier to Like products or services that are easily understood and used more frequently by consumers on a day-to-day basis Hence Microsofts 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 companys 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

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 Id love to hear from you about them. Provided below are numerous reference links that were accessed for this post, in case youd like to dig deeper.

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

http://www.youtube.com/user/IBM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhzRr87oD_0 http://www.youtube.com/user/Microsoft?blend=3&ob=5 http://www.youtube.com/user/cocacola Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/applespotlight/lists/apple-twitter-accounts http://www.techzons.com/google/official-google-product-in-twitter.html http://www.idonotes.com/IdoNotes/idonotes.nsf/dx/ibm-is-on-twitter-forty-billion-times-who-do-ifollow.htm http://twitter.com/#!/ibmtweets http://twitter.com/#!/mcdonalds http://justlikeamagic.com/2010/10/02/all-microsoft-twitter-accounts-in-one-place/ http://twitter.com/#!/COCACOLA Blogs: http://www.apple.com/search/?q=apple%20blog&section=global&geo=us http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ http://www.ibm.com/search/csass/search?sn=mh&q=IBM%20blogs&lang=en&cc=us&en=utf http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/csr/blog.html http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/ http://blogs.technet.com/b/blogms/archive/2010/01/19/directory-of-microsoft-team-blogs.aspx http://www.coca-colaconversations.com/

Page | 4