The social media sphere is an increasingly noisy place, especially for brands. But hiding somewhere in the static are strong signals from companies reaching their customers in innovative ways. The Social Business Index from Dachis Group provides a (free) real-time ranking of more than 30,000 global brands based on their social performance. Every week we're taking a tally of who's getting heard, what they're saying, and why it matters.
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The top 20 this week remains quiet, but if you look closely NBC and Proctor & Gamble are slowly inching up the ranks. That would put them in a nice position to cash in on the social media jackpot when the Olympics begin. Here are some of the week's most interesting movers:
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"The Hershey Company fully embraced the themes of summer over the last few weeks and reaped the benefits with a 6 spot jump in the Social Business Index to 100 overall," the Dachis Group's Brian Kotlyar told us. What Kotlyar pins the success on is actually kids being at home for summer break and their parents' desires to keep them busy ... by feeding them tons of chocolate and inducing permanent sugar comas. No, we're just kidding. Actually it's a slew of kid-friendly recipes from Reese's, like this one, which got over 37,000 Facebook likes and over 11,000 shares. Kotlyar also points out that Hershey's main page is doing something similar in pushing camping and s'mores. "It’s a beautiful marriage of a beloved summer tradition and a pressing business need to sell. more. chocolate." said Kotlyar.
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Hello Kitty will never die, and this week Kitty and Sanrio proved their staying power with an assist from Sephora and Street Fighter. First the unlikely pairing--Sanrio and Capcom teamed up to create a clothing line of plushies with Hello Kitty dressing up like Chun Li, Ryu, and the rest of everyone's favorite characters. As Complex Magazine reports, the Hello Kitty/Street Fighter plushies were already sold out at Comic-Con last weekend. "Sanrio wasn’t solely playing to the gamer crowd, however," Kotlyar told us. "They also released a new Hello Kitty themed locket into Sephora stores that got more than 50,000 of their nine million fans liking, commenting, and sharing excitedly," he added. At $18 a locket and ... well you get the picture.
What you have to remember here is that Dunkin' owns Baskin-Robbins, and then the picture of how this brand zoomed up the rankings should make a little bit more sense (ice cream, heat waves, get it?). What also helps is National Ice Cream Day. Kotlyar explains that the brand "embraced National Ice Cream day this year with a Twitter campaign that gave ice cream lovers a chance to win a year’s supply of Baskin Robbins and that "they matched the Twitter promotion with multiple Facebook posts featuring mouth watering ice creams and promotional offers." To put that reach into tangible numbers, Baskin has around 32,000 followers on Twitter and over 5 million fans on Facebook. "When your brand naturally aligns to an important, and delicious, holiday it is absolutely critical to take advantage using social media," says Kotlyar. You hear that guys? Now all we can (and want) to do is just sit back and wait for National Cheesecake Day.
Methodology: A project of the Dachis Group, a social business professional services group, the Social Business Index analyzes the conversations on social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and others. The index, which currently covers approximately 25,0000 companies and 27,000 brands, detects behaviors and activities exhibited by these companies and analyzes their execution and effectiveness at driving outcomes such as brand awareness, brand love, mind share, and advocacy. The Atlantic Wire takes a snapshot of the rankings at the end of the day on Sundays