Brandwatch’s Social Index Reveals the Winning Brands on Social

Amazon, Blue Cross, Chanel, Globe Telecoms, Lenovo, Lexus and NPR lead for strongest social performance in their industries

NEW YORK, August 2, 2016/PR Newswire/ — Brandwatch, the leading social intelligence company, today published a new Social Index, ranking the brands with the strongest global social presence. Brandwatch crowned Amazon, Blue Cross, Chanel, Globe Telecoms, Lenovo, Lexus, and NPR as social leaders in their respective industries after assessing the social performance of 500+ brands by analyzing over 130 million online conversations across 12 industries. The full rankings can be viewed here.

The Brandwatch Social Index, which tracks brands in the Consumer Tech, Retail, Automotive, Fashion, Food and Beverage, Healthcare, and Telecoms industries, provides marketing and consumer insights professionals with a measurement to benchmark brand performance on social.

Since launching its inaugural index in September 2015, Brandwatch has identified a few notable shifts in the brand rankings, including:

In the Consumer Tech industry, there was a change in the top five brands with Microsoft edging out Asus for the #5 spot (in-depth analysis can be found in the recent Brandwatch Consumer Tech Report). Lenovo performed best for social visibility with Nintendo trailing closely for social engagement. Surprisingly, while Apple has the highest ranking for general visibility, it ranks near the bottom for social engagement as compared to its 50 competitors included in the index.

In the Retail industry, Etsy fell dramatically to the #9 rank from its previous #2 spot, while eBay held strong within the top 3. (More analysis of social intelligence in the retail space can be found in Brandwatch’s recent retail report.)

In the Automotive sector, Tesla has moved up to the #2 spot in the ranking. This shift can be attributed to a number of factors including a focused approach to understanding the voice of the customer and expansion of social strategies in emerging markets.

“The goal of The Social Index is to provide brands with an accessible way of evaluating their online presence within their competitive groups across a broad range of social data criteria,” said James Lovejoy, content & research manager at Brandwatch. “While some major brands held on to their leadership positions, the shifts stand testament to a social landscape that’s increasingly competitive. Yet businesses still need to go beyond the index to better understand the nuances behind their online presence. Social leadership can be fleeting, and brands require a social strategy that is adaptable, strategic and data-driven.”

Methodology

The Brandwatch Social Index measures social performance across five fundamental criteria:

Social Visibility: The volume of conversation a brand generates across key social channels.
General Visibility: The volume of conversation a brand generates on blogs, forums and news sites.
Net Sentiment: The ratio of positive to negative statements surrounding a brand online.
Reach Growth: The growth of a brand’s social following over the course of a month.
Engagement and Content: How effective brands are at responding to their audiences and how well social content is received across social channels.

To create The Social Index, Brandwatch selected well-established and high revenue brands in their respective industries. The analysts at Brandwatch assess and add additional brands to the rankings quarterly, updating the respective industry Index based on the most current data and social performance. If you’d like to add your brand to The Social Index, please contact [email protected].

Discover the data by viewing the complete Brandwatch Social Index.

About Brandwatch

Brandwatch is the world’s leading social intelligence company. Brandwatch Analytics and Vizia products fuel smarter decision making around the world.

The Brandwatch Analytics platform gathers millions of online conversations every day and provides users with the tools to analyze them, empowering the world’s most admired brands and agencies to make insightful, data-driven business decisions. Vizia distributes visually-engaging insights to the physical places where the action happens.

The Brandwatch platform is used by over 1,200 brands and agencies, including Cisco, Whirlpool, British Airways, Heineken, Walmart and Dell. Brandwatch continues on its impressive business trajectory, recently named a global leader in enterprise social listening platforms by the latest reports from several independent research firms. Increasing its worldwide presence, the company has offices around the world including Brighton, New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Singapore.

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