Whether it was live-tweeting during the Grammy Awards or launching a new social campaign during the buzz of the Oscars, several of February’s Top 10 brands ran with the themes of the month, earning social “love” by successfully tapping into timely events in a relevant way. Positivity from loyal fans was also a huge factor in boosting several brands up in the Love List rankings, proving how big of a payoff active engagement with your social following can have.

Avon Cultivates a Loyal Fan Base to Earn Social “Love”

Avon took the number one spot in February, jumping up from its January ranking of 26. Avon representatives harness the power of social media to help them sell, which has helped create a big fan base for the brand. Beyond reaching out to target customers through its own social channels, Avon has done great work to enable Avon sellers to promote the brand’s products and sales. Fans helped spread the word for Avon in February, giving the brand a boost in the Love List rankings with mentions and the highest sentiment score this month! With sales reps running their own Avon businesses, it’s no wonder Avon’s social conversations are a buzzing example of word-of-mouth marketing success.

Top Influencer = Social Love for Starbucks

A clear fan favorite, Starbucks has performed consistently well in every month of our Love List rankings. This month, part of the brand’s success was due to a celebrity tweet and clever brand response. Many people on social have discussed Taylor Swift’s hit “Blank Space,” insisting one lyric sounds like “Starbucks lovers.” The ever-social Swift (she has 53.7M Twitter follows and 23.2M Instagram followers!) got in on the joke on Valentine’s Day.

Sending my love to all the lonely Starbucks lovers out there this Valentine's Day…..even though that is not the correct lyric.

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) February 14, 2015

Starbucks was quick to respond. Combine a timely Valentine’s Day holiday reference, a celebrity post for extra influence, and a quick brand response? Starbucks certainly capitalized on three key social media success factors to see “love” in February.

@taylorswift13 Wait, it's not?

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) February 15, 2015

The Media and Entertainment Industry Stays Engaged

Awards season took social by storm in February and several Media and Entertainment brands saw success with their engagement tactics around the Grammy and Academy Awards. From VH1 to BET, embracing brand-relevant and timely events kept this industry at the top of the Love List for the second month in a row.

Take a deep dive into how the top brands on February’s Love List tapped into relevant, timely events and collaborated with influencers to see more “love” on social in our upcoming webinar. We’ll cover key data trends and insights from the Love List rankings and highlight how you can emulate the success of top brands.

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Find out what top trends helped brands climb the rankings in February’s Love List infographic.

Jeff is a cartoon caricature of a diseased lung in a cowboy hat. He’s also the poster child of John Oliver’s (host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight) public campaign to take a stand against Big Tobacco in Uruguay and Togo.

If you have 18 minutes to spare, you can get the full backstory here:

The ultimate goal? Make a social impact in the affected markets by inserting Jeff in social and online channels as Marlboro’s unofficial new mascot, and amplify awareness of the health risks of smoking.

Driving a message in markets where illiteracy is a major obstacle takes a multi-pronged approach. #JeffWeCan is an integrated campaign that combines television, social media, and out-of-home placements such as bus station ads and even T-shirts. Leveraging the reach of TV to inspire the very engaged and influential audience of Last Week Tonight to take action online while simultaneously hitting the ground in the affected markets with simple yet impactful visuals, #JeffWeCan is bound to see some lift. And perhaps even some smoke…

With less than 48 hours into the campaign, how is Jeff doing? I’ve used Hootsuite’s real-time listening and insights tool (uberVU via Hootsuite) to get a quick read on how the campaign is currently unfolding online:

It looks like Jeff is taking the lead in terms of online buzz—here we can see that the proportion of global online mentions for #JeffWeCan is much greater than that of Marlboro and the Marlboro Man combined. Because Hootsuite listens in real time to over 100M unique online sources, including news sites, we can really see the impact as it happens: #JeffWeCan is moving the needle.

If Jeff is to successfully become the unofficial mascot of Marlboro, then more participants need to post his picture on Google+ and tag Marlboro, as instructed by Oliver in his broadcast. Above, we can see that while Google+ is the second largest source of #JeffWeCan related posts, only 241 pictures have been posted—hardly enough to surface Jeff in Google image searches for Marlboro.

What about those key markets mentioned earlier? Is the campaign being amplified in Uruguay and Togo? Perhaps it’s too early to tell, since the initial response online logically is taking place in primarily English-speaking countries. We’ll have a chance to revisit this in a future update.

Meanwhile, perhaps we can glean some insights into the impact on Marlboro’s brand perception in the strategic areas of the campaign:

Compared to Indonesia, which was featured in John Oliver’s broadcast but is not an area of strategic focus for the campaign, it appears that the Marlboro brand is taking a hit in Uruguay.

What are your thoughts on this campaign? Will #JeffWeCan take down the Marlboro man? What would you have done differently?

Stay tuned for an update!

uberVU via Hootsuite combines real-time social analysis with Hootsuite’s best-in-class engagement solution. Access actionable data from across the social web. Learn more here.

Special thanks to Colin Fenn and Alex Tyk for their collaboration on this post.

Several of January’s Top 10 brands got a little help from celebrity friends, earning social’s love with sponsorships and collaborations, proving that influencer marketing can have a big payoff for brands on social. Media and Entertainment brands especially saw success.

New Year, More Mentions

HGTV took the number one spot in January, shooting up from its December ranking of 27. The network saw a huge surge in mentions volume in early January thanks to the Rose Parade, which aired on HGTV on New Years Day. Following the live coverage of the parade, the network aired several premieres with the shows’ hosts getting social by answering questions from fans and encouraging live-tweeting with the hashtag #HGTVNewYear. These engagement tactics and overall positive theme for the new year helped HGTV earn social’s love in January.

Top Influencer = Social Love for HGTV

HGTV also got a little help from its celebrity Valentine, Ellen DeGeneres, who debuted a new show on the home improvement network. DeGeneres is extremely active on social (she has over 18 Million Likes on Facebook, 38 million Twitter followers and the most retweeted tweet of all time!) and her influence definitely helped HGTV earn the top spot on January’s Love List.

Seasonality Continues to Win

In December, we saw the effect the holiday season had on the rankings with Starbucks taking the top spot due to some Christmas cheer and seasonal items. Seasonality continued to have an impact on success in The Love List in January with the ever-popular New Year, New You theme earning attention for several brands on social. HGTV focused on how people could better their homes, the Travel Channel (#5) encouraged fans to expand their horizons with a Hawaiian vacation giveaway, and the fast food and snack brands that topped The Love List in December were noticeably absent in January.

Take a deep dive into how seasonal promotions and influencer marketing and sponsorships helped several brands earn more love on social in our upcoming webinar. We’ll cover key data trends and insights from The Love List rankings and highlight how you can emulate the success of top brands.

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Find out which celebrity Valentines helped other brands earn top spots, plus the biggest movers and shakers in January’s Love List infographic.

Our new social snapshot takes a closer look at the apparel industry to highlight what you can learn from social data of four of the biggest players: Nike, Adidas, Converse and Reebok. But you don’t have to work for one of these brands in order for this social data to be useful. Anyone in the apparel industry—from HR to Marketing, from a sales rep to the CEO—can learn important takeaways from these analytics behind social conversations around these top brands. Download the social snapshot now to learn important takeaways for your brand.

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Media and Entertainment brands dominated the November Love List, but in December, social’s love was directed at Food & Beverage brands with four landing in the top ten.

Starbucks took the number one spot thanks to some Christmas cheer. The brand has cultivated a passionate fan base by offering limited-edition and seasonal items, which results in spikes of excitement and sharing on social. From its adored seasonal “red cups” to holiday-themed drinks like the Peppermint Mocha and Eggnog Latte, Starbucks kept social merry in December, earning the number one spot on The Love List.

In October, we predicted that holiday wish lists might move aspirational and luxury brands up in the November rankings, but instead broadly popular brands dominated The Love List that month. With the December results the holiday season did in fact affect the rankings. While luxury brands overall didn’t climb the rankings, holiday shopping and gift-giving did help improve rankings for mid-range retail brands like Nordstrom and J. Crew. Straddling the line between aspirational and accessible, these brands pushed out some of the more accessible and budget brands that topped the list in months past.

Take a deep dive into how holiday-themed promotions and products helped several brands earn more love on social in our upcoming webinar. We’ll cover key data trends and insights from December’s Love List rankings and highlight how you can emulate the success of our top ten brands.

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Find out which other brands cracked the Top 10 in December 2014—and why—in our Love List infographic.

Find out what brands earned the top spots and why in Social Media’s Naughty or Nice List.

* The social data featured in this infographic came from the 26 social platforms and more than 100 million data sources the uberVU via Hootsuite platform monitors, including (but not limited to) Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit, Flickr, blog posts, blog comments, premium news sources (like the New York Times) and many others from September 16 to December 16, 2014.

As you prepare gifts for friends and family this holiday season, don’t leave your boss out! With performance reviews coming up in January and only a few more chances to make a good impression this year, why not give your boss the gift of “up and to the right” positive growth in the metrics you’re responsible for as a social media marketer?

If you think you deserve to be on your manager’s Nice List this year, show her these metrics:

1. Increased social engagement

Engagement: it’s your Facebook comments, Likes or shares; Twitter replies, RTs and favorites; RePins from your Pinterest boards; likes, comments and shares of your company’s LinkedIn posts; +1s, comments and shares on Google+… the list goes on. Engagement metrics measures how much and how often others interact with you and your content on social media, which showcases audience action—one very important aspect of social media health and growth.

If you can show your boss an increase in the number of people, or number of times, your social posts are driving engagement from the community, you’re golden! Focus on sharing metrics like Retweets and Shares, which represent when people amplify your content. These not only highlight the success of content, but show your ability to extend your content beyond your own audience, increasing its exposure.

2. Increased exposure

The number of followers you have matters, but what about the people who talk about your brand—how big are THEIR audiences? Exposure is the size of your brand’s potential audience, highlighting the estimated number of people that may have seen a mention. Use this metric to show your boss just how far your brand’s reach extends, and if that number has grown in the past year—perhaps due to that great influencer outreach campaign you did?—she can’t help but be pleased.

3. Follower growth

While every network has a different name for the Audience Growth Rate metric, the results your boss is looking for is the same—an increase in audience size to show you’re reaching more people and growing brand awareness. While some social media experts refer to follower counts as a vanity metric, what does matter is whether that audience, no matter how large it was to begin with, is growing.

Use your Audience Growth Rate to showcase the success of a certain campaign or other initiatives from this past year. Plus, dive deeper into the gender, age or location of new followers to showcase how you’re effectively expanding in the right demographic, helping your brand reach your target audience.

4. Increased brand mentions across the social web

Are people talking about your brand? Your boss will want to know that your company is a hot topic. Show a trendline of increased conversations over time and average conversations per day, week or month compared to last year. An aggregate number is a great starting point (for example, we monitor the number of mentions of “uberVU via Hootsuite” across all of the networks and data sources our platform tracks), and you can further impress your boss by breaking this number down to show exactly where those mentions are coming from. The more buzz, the better!

5. Increased Share of Voice

Share of Voice helps you understand how your brand or company is performing in comparison to your competitors. The metric details what percentage of mentions within your industry or space are about your brand and what percentage is about the competition. Showcase your brand’s increased Share of Voice to prove increased brand awareness and market share. Show your boss just how much of an impact you’re making in your industry!

6. Positive brand sentiment

Sentiment refers to the emotion behind a social media mention. It’s a way to measure the tone of a conversation without having to dive into individual mentions, adding important context to social conversations about your brand. Prove your brand’s positive brand health by showing your boss how your brand’s sentiment has risen over the past year. Make sure to compare your sentiment with that of top competitors so she can understand where you stack up in your industry.

What other social media marketing “gifts” will your boss receive from you this year? We hope you’ve got lots to share that will put you on the Nice list in no time!

Our latest social snapshot takes a closer look at the retail industry to highlight what you can learn from two major industry events—Black Friday and Cyber Monday—and top retail brands. Download the social snapshot now to learn learn important takeaways for your brand.

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CPG brands reigned supreme in the October Love List, but in November, social’s love was directed at Media and Entertainment brands with four landing in the top ten. MTV took the number one spot thanks to a boost from its EMA (European Music Awards) show that was held on November 9 in Scotland. The show had its own Twitter handle and hashtags and there was no shortage in of live-tweeting and engagement during, and leading up to, the event—the “Artist on the Rise” category winner was even determined by voting on Twitter. By actively using social to cultivate a passionate fan base and create interactive experiences, MTV saw major “love” on social, earning the number one spot on the second edition of The Love List.

Continuing the trend we saw in the October edition of The Love List, fan favorites performed well again in November. Brands like VH1, The CW and MTV have cultivated a passionate audience through a number of techniques like social contests, giveaways and tweet-to-vote-style competitions that have fans uniting around a shared cause. Another trend that extended through November was the lack of luxury brands landing in the top 50—only Chanel made the cut. Last month we predicted that holiday wish lists might move aspirational and luxury brands up in the rankings, but instead broadly popular brands once again dominated The Love List, indicating that brand accessibility rather than brand desire is a key component to cultivating social media love.

Find out why other brands earned top spots in the November and learn how you can benefit from the accessible social media analytics we’ve used to create The Love List in our upcoming webinar.

Register for the Webinar

Find out which other brands cracked the Top 10 in November 2014—and why—in our Love List infographic.

Our latest social snapshot takes a closer look at the insurance industry to highlight what you can learn from social data of four of the biggest players: MetLife, Mutual of Omaha, Prudential and John Hancock. Download the social snapshot now to learn important takeaways for your brand.

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