How the world’s 50 most valuable brands are faring in social media [Infographic]

A new report ranks the social media performance of the world’s top 50 most valuable brands, and it seems that Google fared pretty well.

Google was the clear leader overall, with Disney, Apple, Starbucks and BlackBerry next in the ladder. The bottom five social performers from the top 50 most valuable brands were Marlboro, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and China Mobile.

The study was carried out by social media consultancy Sociagility, applying its social media performance measurement methodology, which was drawn equally from established independent studies by Millward Brown and Interbrand.

The ‘social brand value’ ranking, which it calls ‘the PRINT Index’, measures five attributes of social media performance: popularity, receptiveness, interaction, network reach and trust, across multiple social channels like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

It found that Google came out on top by a long way as the best performing ‘social brand’ from the top 50 companies, although the report found that Google has yet to fully embrace Facebook, and it scored poorly on the PRINT receptiveness attribute.

Disney and Starbucks both scored well overall, with the former attaining the highest trust score. Johnson & Johnson had the highest receptiveness score but was 13th overall in the chart.

Apple, Blackberry, Google and Microsoft all had below-average receptiveness scores with above average popularity scores, which Sociagility claims risks ‘a perception of arrogance’. Telecoms and financial services brands were the worst performing on average.

Sociagility says that as audience communication preferences shift to the social sphere, their importance in creating the ‘intangible value’ assigned to brands is already being felt and this can only increase.

“The highly personal way that people engage with each other via social media has redefined their expectations of how brands should engage with them – and vice versa,” said Anthony Burgess-Webb, co-founder of Sociagility. “The indications from this report are that an organization’s use of social media can have a real impact on brand value.”

Here’s how the top 50 most valuable brands are performing in social media: