Overall Facebook has been, and continues to be, the strongest platform for promoting beer. It has solid age restriction barriers in place – unlike Twitter, which has a more freewheeling, unrestricted access, philosophy. However, in recent times the Beer companies have started to become more active on Twitter, perhaps in recognition of a characteristic that they with it… the ability to generate Buzz.

Here’s a look at the top 5 Beer Brands and how they are using social media:

We often see category leaders on Social win with dedicated cross-platform programs, and the Beer category is no exception. Heineken leads the other beer brands on both Twitter and Facebook by managing a consistent, professional presence across all social platforms we study.

With over 13 Million Fans on Facebook the Dutch Brewer attracts a lot of Buzz on the platform and is in our top 100 brands overall on Facebook. Heinekin also leads the competition on Twitter and, unlike most of them, maintains branded presences on each of other platforms we track: LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Plus and Instagram.

Budweiser leads our Engagement metric among Beer brands. It’s highly active audience of over 4 Million Fans keep the discussion going well into the early hours.

Budweiser’s presence on other platforms is not as strong and we believe they have been tentative to plunge headlong into the socialscape more broadly. The results on Facebook show that if you overcome your fears, and perhaps take a shot of yourself for courage, you can step out into the spotlight and the people will love you.

The leader Light Beer on Social Media, Coors Light has strong Engagement levels, coming in just behind Budweiser on that important metric. Most of the CL activity is taking place on Facebook, with their Twitter performance being rather underwhelming – we’re not sure if their preference for undiluted beers is a commentary on the sobriety of Twitter users. Coors Light does however have the leading YouTube channel among all Beer brands.

Second only to Heineken in our Presence metric, which tracks the level of activity, Sam Adams success is a testament to a solid underlying content program. They are especially prolific on Twitter, issuing over 20 Tweets per day.

Samuel Adams has a proportionally higher performance on Twitter than any of the other Beer brands in this top 5.

Corona’s social marketing focus largely on Facebook they have carved out a solid presence, helped by the recent Cinco de Mayo celebrations.

Here is the rest of the Top 10:

6. Molson Canadian
7. Newcastle
8. Guinness
9. Blue Moon
10. Sierra Nevada

Don’t see your fave brew in the Top 10? Check out Track Social’s Beer Zone!

Note: Track Social Leaderboards are live and changing constantly – the data presented in this article is as at 05/13/2013.

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

April was a month marred by a horrible tragedy that also showed how social networks allow a breadth of community empathy and support that has never before been possible. Witness over 600,000 Likes for ABC News’ simple post with a quote from the father of one of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing and a photo of the boy.

Track Social’s pick of the month: the irony of the UFC fighter, aptly named Bendo, ruthlessly beating his opponent to a pulp, only to fall to his knees before a cute girl with curly hair. Knowing when to fight, and when to kneel, is an important talent.

The Track Social  Top 10 Most Liked Facebook Brand Posts for March 2013*:

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

To get our Optimizing Facebook Engagement white paper, go here.

*Data is as of time of publishing. List is limited to 1 Post per Brand. Only Brands are included with recognized products, not celebrities or organizations.

Last year Track Social did a study looking at what types of companies lead the use of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, this year we extend our analysis to include YouTube and Google Plus. We find broad similarity overall with last year’s overview, but also some differences and surprises among the leaders on each platform.

The metric used to rank brands is Track Social’s Overall Performance score*, which incorporates audience size, posting activity, engagement level and buzz.

Facebook is for Consumer Brands

Since Facebook is where the most people are, it is not surprising that it’s marketing strength favors the big consumer brands, starting with Facebook itself. Notably this list has not changed at all since our previous study, indicating brands are maintaining, if not reinforcing, their strength on the platform as time goes on.

Facebook Top 5 Performers

1. Facebook

2. YouTube

3. Coca-Cola

4. Disney

5. MTV

For the full Facebook Leaderboard go here.

Twitter is for News and Internet Brands

Known for its spontaneity and buzz generating capabilities the previous Twitter leaderboard was dominated by news organizations. Certainly Twitter is still very popular with news related brands, and CNN and ESPN make the Top 5 here, however we also see internet based brands YouTube and Instagram doing well, despite Instagram’s recent falling out with Twitter.

Twitter Top 5 Performers

1. YouTube

2. CNN Breaking News

3. Instagram

4. Twitter

5. ESPN

For the full Twitter Leaderboard go here.

LinkedIn is for Professional Brands

LinkedIn has tended to used more by business facing brands: professional services or B2B companies that target the largely professional audience. This year, as with last, almost all the top brands were from this category.

At this time however we see a wider variety of companies developing a LinkedIn presence: Coca-Cola, BMW and Hilton all in the current Top 5.

LinkedIn Top 5 Performers

1. IBM

2. Hewlett-Packard

3. Microsoft

4. Google

5. Accenture

For the full LinkedIn Leaderboard go here.

YouTube is for Entertainment brands

Not surprisingly YouTube is a very popular platform for entertainment brands that are heavily involved with video production. Yet still it is interesting to see the type of entertainment brands that lead the way: IGN is a gaming portal/community that clearly creates a lot of engagement with its users via videos of the gaming properties it follows. National Geographic, on the other hand, is on the other end of the video spectrum, proving that there a excitable market for a variety of video experiences.

Additionally, non-entertainment brands such as Red Bull use YouTube to extract significant brand value from its advertising programs which lend themselves to popular video output.

YouTube Top 5 Performers

1. IGN Entertainment

2. Red Bull

3. National Geographic

4. Sony

5. ESPN

For the full YouTube Leaderboard go here.

Google Plus is for… Brands that use Google Plus

We haven’t worked out exactly what Google Plus is best at yet. Maybe if Google could do that, the platform would take off. Many companies ignore it entirely, or maintain a default presence. However the platform, while not exploding, continues to exist, and even flourish among some audience niches such as techies.

In general, media and publishing related companies dominate the current top performers, with Cadbury, the UK based chocolatier, showing how a consumer product brand does it.

Google Plus Top 5 Performers

1. The Economist

2. Cadbury

3. YouTube

4. ESPN

5. Food Network

For the full Google Plus Leaderboard go here.

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

*Data is as of time of publishing on 04/22/2013. Track Social leaderboards are updated continuously, so live data may not match data reported here.

March was the month of cars and style! BMW and Lamborghini touted fresh vehicles from their respective brands, while Monster Energy showed off its rather monstrously styled custom Ford. And with Chanel and Michael Kors proffering their self-styled fashion bleats, Macy’s jumped in on the action with a ghastly leopard-styled designer shoe.

Our favorite though is Intel’s pondering upon the nature of Chip – it’s certainly important to know the difference between a snack and an electronic component.

The Track Social  Top 10 Most Liked Facebook Brand Posts for March 2013*:

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

To get our Optimizing Facebook Engagement white paper, go here.

*Data is as of time of publishing. List is limited to 1 Post per Brand. Only Brands are included with recognized products, not celebrities or organizations.

Humans are peculiar creatures… what time they do not spend socializing, they spend monitoring themselves and collecting infinite volumes of data about their own behavior. The result is what we call the Vast Social Data Miasma…

The Vast Social Data Miasma

So how do we use this swirling data cesspool to provide meaningful business insights?

For that we use a general framework:

The Three Keys to the Gates of Data Nirvana

Since we already have #1 covered, it becomes Questions and Interpretation that are most critical in extracting value from social data. The challenge is however that every brand, every business, every product, every audience… is a unique snowflake floating in the endless social snowfield. And hence, although there are many useful generalizations, the precise best Questions to ask, and the exact Interpretation that applies, remains specific to every situation.

Key #2 is an often under-served aspect of data analysis. Sometimes people expect data to simply sing answers to them, without anyone having to think too much about it. Instead, deeply considering the questions that a business wants to answer is usually the most important part of the process.

We think of the Questions as residing on a Pyramid of Data Inquiry, with the deeper, more “existential” questions forming the base, through to the more questions at the tip.

The Pyramid of Data Inquiry

Interestingly, the evolution of inquiry about Facebook Posts also tracks the evolution of social media as a component of marketing budgets generally.

Next we can give some further insight as to how we use the Data we have to answer these various types of Questions.

What response do my posts get?

[From the white paper "Optimizing Facebook Engagement".]

Is the response to my posts good? 

[From a client competitive study. Brand names withheld.]

Are my posts worthwhile?

[From a client performance report.]

Don’t let pretty charts fool you!

Finally, we come to the third of our Keys: Interpretation.

You can make a sexy chart about anything. Well, we can. But data always requires context, always makes assumptions, always has uncertainty – and hence always requires Interpretation.

While this is a topic worthy of an entire website, our general guidance is that the more broad and general the questions (i.e. the further down the pyramid you go) the less certain the results become, and the more open to interpretation they become.

All inquiry is valid. We use Track Social to answer questions at all levels of the Data Inquiry Pyramid. However it is also important to understand that not everything is knowable… and at the level of Existential Questions, social data is sometimes only able to provide directional guidance to humans, that then have to make decisions with human brains.

This article was the topic of a webinar run by socialmediatoday.com on Tuesday March 19, 12PM EST.

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

In February we saw posts featuring the major events of the month such as Valentine’s Day (Walt Disney World) and the Superbowl (ESPN); posts announcing new products (Playstation); posts announcing deals (Subway, McDonald’s); posts suggesting we kiss the girl (Disney) and posts suggesting we avoid the girl at all costs (UFC).

Special shout out to Chanel for achieving over 140,000 Likes on a Video post – we know how hard it is to get engagement on videos, since they demand a significant commitment from your user.

The Track Social  Top 10 Most Liked Facebook Brand Posts for February 2013*:

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

To get our Optimizing Facebook Engagement white paper, go here.

*Data is as of time of publishing. List is limited to 1 Post per Brand. Only Brands are included with recognized products, not celebrities or organizations.

So who are the biggest, baddest celebs on social media?

We’ve seen a variety of lists that rank them by one simplistic variable such as audience size. For example, the Bieber/Gaga follower race on Twitter is the stuff of self-generating social media legend. For a deeper perspective, the Track Social Celebrity Zone aggregates data from all the major platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Google Plus – and scores celebs not only on audience, but on posting activity, engagement level and buzz.

The result is an Overall Performance Metric that gives the truest measure of who the best performers on social media actually are.

So here then are the Top Celebrities on Social Media:

The Biebs packs a big social punch spearheaded by an overwhelming domination of Twitter. And it’s not so much how big his Twitter audience is (33.64M at last count), but what he does with it. Averaging over 200,000 retweets per day, Bieber gets vastly more engagement than any one else on the platform.

And when he gets sick of tweeting his dreams he can always go back to his roots and upload a video to YouTube, where he leads the Video Views by some margin.

Rihanna is the celebrity Facebook leader and has the biggest aggregate audience across the major platforms with 66M on Facebook alone.

The Caribbean R&B diva may not quite have the level of insatiable mania following her as Bieber, but her fans certainly seem to know what they like.

Gaga has been locked in a follower war on Twitter with Justin Bieber for some time, however her other metrics are not as strong. Perhaps the Monster Army is more concerned with her artistic output than her social warblings? Still though, with an Overall Performance score of 59.9, Lady Gaga scores slightly better than Facebook itself in the social realm.

The Soccer superstar and generally fashionable superstud, Ronaldo is the only non-musician in the Top Ten. On Facebook he is second to only Rihanna and also maintains a presence on Google Plus.

The crossover Latin fusion artist is leading a busy life: recording and producing albums and babies simultaneously, while gearing up for a role in a well known reality singing competition. But, it seems she still has time to keep her massive social media audience entertained.

And now for those unfortunate celebrities that were outside our Top 5:

6 Eminem
7 Katy Perry
8 Taylor Swift
9 Selena Gomez
10 Michael Jackson

Check out the full list at Track Social’s Celebrity Zone!

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

So here are the “Top Fast Food Chains on Social Media” and how they made the list:

The world’s biggest fast food chain leads the way on social media, with large presences across all platforms. With a huge Facebook Audience of 27 million fans and almost 1 million followers on Twitter, McDonald’s leverages its notoriety to generate lots of social buzz.

Subway is close behind McDonald’s on most metrics, and is leading the chase for 1,000,000 Twitter followers. Subway also leads the Fast Food category in Social Presence, which is a measure of content production across channels. If content is king, then consistent content is a king that wins.

Taco Bell is the Engagement leader among fast food chains, drawing high response levels to its “outside-the-burger” content. For example, a recent Facebook teaser post for an upcoming variation of the Doritos Taco drew over 90,000 Likes.

America runs on Dunkin’, and the coffee/donut house gets a significant amount of fuel back from America through social media. Dunkin’ is especially strong on Facebook where its “DD”-themed posts achieve consistently high response levels from a large inbuilt audience.

Showing that a little philosophical controversy doesn’t necessarily hurt business, the rapidly expanding chicken-themed franchise is building a formidable presence in the social sphere.

Now for those chains that were just short of making our Top 5:

6. Burger King
7. KFC
8. Krispy Kreme
9. Dairy Queen
10. Wendy’s

Check out the full list at Track Social’s Fast Food Zone!

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

January was a month of winning, connecting with history and, as always, dogs. WWE challenged Disney for top spot with a beefcake explosion of Wrestling Fandom featuring The Rock. Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton and Starbucks both gave a retro shout out to themselves and Intel made a surprisingly artistic post with a notebook framing the Empire State Building.

But the viewer’s favorite had to be from Entirely Pets, featuring some kids sticking their cuteness (and social media savvy) to their Dad by scoring 1,000,000 Likes with their plea for a puppy. Dad must have thought he had a pretty safe bet… now parents everywhere will find their decisions being ‘taken to the people’.

The Track Social  Top 10 Most Liked Facebook Brand Posts for January 2013*:

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.

To get our Optimizing Facebook Engagement white paper, go here.

*Data is as of time of publishing. List is limited to 1 Post per Brand. Only Brands are included with recognized products, not celebrities or organizations.

Pro sports teams have a built in advantage over many brands on social media – the unquestioned loyalty of their fans… especially if they are winning. That doesn’t mean that winning games automatically wins on the social playing field. Here’s a look at how the top 5 NFL teams on Facebook are keeping their fans engaged:

Despite their on-field performance and not making the post season, the Cowboys massive fan base comes through for them online. Aside from being the leaders in Audience size, they have seen strong Engagement and Buzz right through to the Superbowl.

Our leaderboards have seen the 49ers fans coming on strong as the Superbowl approaches – jumping from 5th to 2nd overall in the last week. With their success on the field the 49ers lead the way in both Engagement and Buzz levels despite not having the biggest fan base on social media.

The Patriots have a strong overall social media brand and rose as high as #2 overall recently, until the loss to the Ravens took the gloss of the season for them. Still though, they remain at #3 and with superior Twitter performance than any of the other Top 5.

With the taste of what could have been still on their lips after losing a tough playoff game against the 49ers, the Packers are still a strong presence on Social Media with solid metrics across the board.

Like the Cowboys, the Steelers had a so-so year on the field, barely breaking even and missing out on the playoffs… but they can rest assured their fan base still loves them looking at their consistent performance on Facebook and Twitter right through to the end of the season.

For those wondering where the Ravens are, they came in 7th, with their performance improving but not as rapidly as the 49ers’ performance. The Ravens had a strong showing on Twitter especially, but not strong enough to get them into the Top 5.

For its superior social media performance Track Social is picking the 49ers for the Superbowl!

Here is the rest of the Top 10:

6. Washington Redskins
7. Baltimore Ravens
8. New Orleans Saints
9. Seattle Seahawks
10. Denver Broncos

Don’t see your team in the Top 10? Find out where it landed on Track Social’s NFL Team Zone!

Note: Track Social Leaderboards are live and changing constantly – the data presented in this article is as at 01/28/2013.

Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.