With 2012 officially closed, it's time to announce the 2012 Track Social Awards, acknowledging the Brands that topped our metrics based on 12 months of hard data.
In this article we look at the Facebook Category, which is for performance by the individual Facebook Pages of Brands. Note that by including "Brands" only we are excluding celebrities from these awards.
In the near future we will release awards for Twitter and other platforms.
So let's get to it, starting with the award for Facebook Overall Performance.
Overall Performance
Facebook - Average Daily Score: 54.4
With an IPO and significant expansion in its advertising platforms and other revenue targeted offerings, Facebook Inc had a busy year by any measure.
Facebook may not not maintain the most creative, active, or interesting Facebook presence, but it does out-muscle its competitors by sheer scale and notoriety. Overall Performance is Tracks Social's summary metric of all data related to brand activity. It incorporates all the data we collect from Facebook, weights it, and puts the result on a scale where 100 represents a notional optimum performance. Scoring 54.4, with the next best being YouTube at 34.6, the Big f is hard to beat on it's own platform. |
Overall Engagement
Subway - Average Daily Score: 16,012.9
Some would argue Engagement is the most important metric in social media marketing, given that social networks are all about interaction. If you can't compete on Audience and Buzz with larger brands, Engagement is about using the audience you have effectively. Track Social's Engagement scores are a measure of response per content item per audience member, so in theory a smaller brand can get great results without a massive audience (see the Engagement Top Ten of our full Track Social Awards page for some examples).
The Engagement Leader for 2012 is Subway: a large brand that does an incredible job at getting their audience to respond to them.
A combination of strategic product related posts, zen-vibe lifestyle images, "sub humor" and direct promotional marketing gets the social mix right for Subway. But perhaps the biggest secret to their success is consistency - posting throughout the year, hitting every important cultural and calendar event, and understanding what their audience wants to hear.
Isn't this baby cute enough to eat?
Overall Buzz
Facebook - Average Daily Score: 402,254,499
Track Social's Buzz score incorporates a variety of metrics from Facebook that relate to how much discussion about a Brand is taking place, including Facebook's own Talking About score. Not surprisingly Facebook itself generates a lot of buzz on Facebook. The Top Ten reveals other big brands such as Disney, Walmart, MTV and Coca-Cola also do well in this category.
Most Likes Per Day
Disney - Average Daily Likes: 74,211.4
With a veritable universe of content to choose from, Disney has some built-in advantages in the Likability game.
However they follow through with great success, producing consistently viral posts throughout the year, that focus largely on their popular characters, movies, games, and theme parks.
Clearly Disney fans have an insatiable appetite for cuteness, quirkiness and wholesome rascaliness, allowing the entertainment mega-brand to rack up more than 74,000 Likes on their posts per day.
Most Comments Per Day
Fox News - Average Daily Comments: 7,443.5
Buoyed by a major political event, the fans over on Fox News were fired up throughout the year, inspiring extremely high levels of post commentary.
This post was not one of the more popular with their fans:
Most Votes Per Day
Subway - Average Daily Votes: 2,503.5
Contributing to their overall success in the Engagement category, Subway was a Brand that used the sometimes ignored Facebook Poll to great effect throughout the year.
Most New Fans
Facebook - New Fans (Page Likes): 26,712,117
Most Likes On A Post
CoverGirl - Likes: 1,278,492
This feel-good gesture from Covergirl caught a sharing wave, perhaps fueled by a TV tie-in, ultimately scoring the crown for the most liked post by a Brand on Facebook for 2012.
Most Comments On A Post
Facebook - Comments: 130,066
Who's a popular little birthday network?
Most User Posts Per Day
YouTube - Average Daily Posts: 440.0
While some companies still choose to close off their pages, not allowing users to post publicly to them, YouTube has an open door policy that is highly trafficked.
What it all means is another question.
With everything from important commentary like "YouTube is the best of all people", to people stopping by to say "Hi", to people stopping by to say "Hello" to people that said "Hi", we are betting on it all being a sophisticated stream of consciousness experiment by YouTube management.
If this wasn't enough for you Track Social has even more Facebook Awards as well as a Top Ten for each award on the Track Social Awards page.
Stay tuned... in the near future we will release awards for Twitter and other social platforms.
Track Social, the leading social media analytics platform and consultancy, offers extensive social monitoring and reporting solutions for small businesses and enterprise clients.