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The social media sphere is an increasingly noisy place, especially for brands. But hiding somewhere in the static are strong signals from companies reaching their customers in innovative ways. The Social Business Index from Dachis Group provides a (free) real-time ranking of more than 30,000 global brands based on their social performance. Every week we're taking a tally of who's getting heard, what they're saying, and why it matters.
The Social Business Index is getting a good shakeup as 2012 leans into spring. The top twenty is seeing some new companies, including World Wrestling Entertainment. There's otherwise big movement in the bottom half with companies like Time Warner, Discovery and Mars slipping half a dozen ranks. Otherwise, the warm weather is leaking into marketing campaigns, as consumers start to think about fun sun activities, like sports and ice cream.
Remember wrestling? The fake sport company WWE (formerly WWF) that hit its peak popularity in the 1990s is surging in social media this week thanks to innovative uses of the theatrical elements that make wrestling entertaining in the first place. WWE jumped 16 spots on the Social Business Index this week and is now in the top ten. "This week’s lift was catalyzed by two television events (Wrestlemania and Monday Night Raw), but what really caused the rankings shift was the interplay of current and past wrestling legends on the screen combined with an online content blitz," said Dachis Group analyst Brian Kotlyar. And blitz is a perfect word to use, as WWE didn't necessarily do anything particularly innovative in order to build buzz around their events. Their social media team was just plain diligent and efficient. The company tweets roughly once an hour -- a mix of links back to photos and videos and retweets of WWE wrestlers' content -- and updates its Facebook page at least half a dozen times a day. The frequency and well balanced variety end up giving voracious fans just the excitement they crave.