The most engaged brands on Twitter

Twitter for business

 

Nestivity, a social media startup developing community software tools for Twitter, released a list of the top twenty-five brands with the most engaged Twitter audiences. I have been made aware of Nestivity very recently, thanks to a post by Jure Klepic, Feathering Our Community With Nestivity.

According to the start-up, Nestivity turns your Twitter handle into a “Nest”, a place for you to connect with your followers in a more organized and structured way. It sounds promising and if it lives up to its promise, Nestivity would rank as one the solid solutions out there. I am trying it so I will be able to talk to it after I have given it a test drive.

It is only natural for a tool promoting its ability to help you organize, build and grow your Twitter community should have a privileged insight into the most engaged brands. In their recently issued list of the 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter, Nestivity has analyzed more than 739,000 Tweets found some pretty interesting data. 6 points worth looking into :

  1. Followers count do no count. We knew that but hearing it again will not hurt and might help shift the dialogue to more important aspects of community building.
  2. Frequency of tweet doesn’t matter, relevance to your community does. This is one of the most asked question out there and yet, it seems that whether you tweet every hour like the @NBA or every month, if your audience cares, they’ll engage with you. Show them some love with content they want to see
  3. However, it seems that Timing is everything. Find you sweet spot and leverage it.
  4. Quality over quantity. No surprise there but always good to remind brands that point 2 is even more important (ref : Frequency of tweet doesn’t matter )
  5. Multimedia is best. There again, studies have shown that people react more and better to images, videos and visuals, in general.

On a personal level, this list makes me ponder. Why did I ever waste my time trying to engage with @Starbucks (As you can see I may be hurt because on top of spending time tweeting them, I’ve spent insane amount of money at the cafes, I feel, in vain. Good, I quit coffee). @Disney never tweeted me back and that would have made a couple of little people in my house pretty happy. And I need to start to tweet @Chanel.

Check out Henry Min’s blog post over at Nestivity and the list of 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter (Click to enlarge)

Top 25 engaged brands on Twitter

So, what’s you take on the top 25 and the honorable mentions? Would love to hear your experience and thougts.

Karima-Catherine Goundiam is a Toronto-based consultant in digital and social media. She can be reached on Twitter,  LinkedIn or on her blog.

Initially published on www.3angelsmarketing.com
 

 

Will Canadian retailers survive?

Motivated employees make a huge difference in service”  says David A. Aaker in his book, Strategic Market Management

Mind the gap

Like many busy moms, I willingly and sometimes, forcefully, take on everyone’s shopping in my family. This year, more than ever before, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the limits of customer service at retailers, more particularly, at Canadian retailers.

This has given me a pretty good insight in their practices and what the end user, the customer deals with. I will use this “experience” to bring you a series on Canadian retailers; the first topic is pretty general as it sets the tone and give you a fair idea of the landscape.

Read more

Social Media ROI : Sink or Swim

Altimeter Group recently revealed that, for an overwhelming proportion, corporate social media strategists report to Marketing and Corporate communications departments. In the same report, it was confirmed that the main concern of the corporate social strategist for 2011 is to create ROI measurements.

It was already Marketers’ main preoccupation last year , as it was detailed in the eMarketer Online Brand Measurement Report, 2009

Read more

It’s not about collecting, it’s about connecting!

As a social media practitioner, I find inspiration in the social world, not just in marketing and advertising. I wish I had come up with this phrase but I owe it to an episode of Arthur, the PBS series for kids.

Arthur’s friend, Muffy, an avid collector, sets to buy out as many dolls as she can in a place mirroring American girl; on the other hand, her friend only wants to buy an accessory for her one and only doll that she nurtures. I had watched the World Girl’s episode several times before with my daughter, but that sentence never stood out until that day where I heard Sue Ellen say to Muffy : It’s not about collecting, it’s about connecting.

I had an *Aha* moment. This short sentence has a very significant meaning in my social media practice. It is that sentence, sounding like a mantra, that should be the core mission of companies; instead, most set out to collect as many fans and followers as they can in a very short time. Therefore, Collecting is done with little to no regards to the value they bring to their following. Of course, collecting a fan base is not the only objective of social media initiatives. Many other marketing initiatives, such as email marketing campaigns, greatly focus on this notion that a success is measured by the number of people one can collect.

Brands, companies, marketing departments, digital agencies and entrepreneurs are all guilty of promising their clients the holy grail of social media: voraciously amassing as many unsuspecting people on their social pages as possible; some brands manage to commit friends/fans/followers into liking them, thereby, building a base of relatively qualified prospects. Some companies even go as far as buying friends for their Facebook account or followers for their Twitter account. I would not see anything wrong with it if it wasn’t for a smalldetail: Once people like you, then what?

Social media has smashed the door open for people to take back some control; now, consumers don’t only want to like your brand, they want to emotionally connect with your brand personality and identity, pretty much like with friends. Yes, people want to have a relationship with your brand. This cultural change within the business and social worlds reflects a shifting balance of powers; the nature and level of the interaction between a brand and a person has totally changed.

Having a huge fan base on your facebook page or twitter account doesn’t reflect the relationship with your audience. Whichever way your fans and followers are acquired – whether you buy their affection by giving them free stuff, tease them with a contest or just because you are such a strong brand that it is alright to like you – the staying power of friend/fans/follower is reflected by how well and how deep you connect with them. And this requires the RIGHT strategy for your audience. Duplicating what another company does and succeeds in, doesn’t cut it. Each audience requires a custom message and interaction from a brand.

Brands are still measuring the traditional way, they are still equating success with impressions and eye-balls; Decision-makers are not fully comprehending that social media is not about campaigning only. Social media is about long-term relationships. Unfortunately, most brands and businesses are still in the race to collect and convert and totally overlook the connect part. The three Cs of social media business Collect, Connect, Convert are each equally important, as part of the brand management.

Brands who consciously make the decision to dip more than one toe into the social media arena, have to make that same conscious decision to start connecting with their people in a way that is true to the brand and to the customer, to allow the relationships to develop and grow; this includes assigning an appropriate budget and empowering the resources.

Collectively, brands have to start treating people as informed, connected, and savvy consumers who clearly demand more than just a business transaction.

What do you think?

Karima-Catherine Goundiam

Creating Multilingual Content on Facebook

English being the de facto standard of today’s communication, building a multilingual presence is quite challenging, particularly in the social media landscape. It takes time, resources and budget to ensure excellent quality.

Traditionally, a company is able to control its online presence by driving its customers and prospects to its corporate website. For over 15 years, companies have been able to host a website, build a community in the form of a message board and customize the online experience for visitors to the max. Personalization actually has become quite sophisticated. Content can be adjusted to a particular audience and language preference is a given – language is determined from the visitor’s browser or selected by users and saved in cookies for future access. Visitors tend to expect the same behaviour on these new platforms.

Read more

Is social media the great equalizer?

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for “Liberty, equality, fraternity“ – is the French national motto that has inspired this post: Is social media the social equalizer?

Events such as the French revolution, leaders like Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, make us all wish these three words were true.

Social media seems to congregate intellectual freedom, equality and fraternity. Sure, we will tend to lean towards people like us, sharing the same values as us, the same ideals; however, mutual respect and acceptance will come from our thoughts, output and virtual manners.

The 3 words resonate as follows:

Liberty of thoughts, of information; liberty to share what we are about. It is really up to us to decide if we want to put it all out there, whether we are a hotshot offline or a regular person trying to make it;

Equality – whether, we are a woman, a man, disabled, black, white or blue, we have the possibility to build a share of voice as much as another. We establish our credibility with our hard work .

And finally, fraternity, because, social media has managed to break down, at least, a few barriers – social and physical. The importance is that We are humans and we care!

Am I too optimistic to think that our physicality is not as important anymore? Most of us have a profile picture that gives a limited glimpse into our being, some will use avatars, and also others will use company logos. Whatever the decision, visualizing who we are talking to remains of small importance in building meaningful relationships.

I deeply hope that social media will succeed where politics, society and religion have mostly failed. I believe social media can bring us together on a more noble level where indeed, it is What we are, Who we truly are that matters.

Why Facebook Should Quickly Improve Business Pages

Social media is radically changing the way we relate with our environment, at large. People, brands, companies all want to communicate with their ecosystems. Amongst social media platforms, Facebook is the heavyweight, whether for individuals, brands and companies.

Facebook has been initially developed for individuals and business pages were first intoduced in 2008. Now that brands and companies are flocking onto the social network, they must adapt the platform to their business needs if they want to remain relevant.

A recent article from Jeffrey Cohen detailing why Facebook is doing it wrong for B2B businesses makes me want to extend the thought and say that they are doing it wrong for all businesses.

Read more

Costco and social media: Where are they?

As a business consultant, I always look at Costco with a lot of interest. It took me a good 2 years to be convinced that I needed a Costco membership card.
I used to piggyback once or twice a year with a privileged family member. Now, I am a member and I enter Costco feeling special, as if I belong to a privileged club of bulk buyers! Well, at least, that’s the perception most people have!

For those unfamiliar with Costco, it sells a variety of products from a multitude of brands including its own private label Kirkland. One can buy from the bricks and mortar warehouse stores or online. At Costco, you are not just a customer but a member; even if it’s partly semantic, the word makes a difference.

Don’t expect to be pampered at the door and to be able to a ask staff member information about a product at every corner of the immense warehouse. However, you are greeted at the door when you present your membership card, and then you are pretty much on your own. I think the mere fact of showing a membership card unconsciously makes us feel special – we are part of this gated community, we get access to what other people don’t

Read more