Every day, millions of social signals from ongoing conversations in the social web exert an ever-increasing impact on businesses worldwide. The Social Business Index helps focus these signals as related to top companies and their brands, ranking real-time effectiveness of social activity. On Fridays, the Atlantic Wire takes a look at weekly top movers in the Index. Each Monday, we’re digging a bit deeper to better understand the reasons behind these ranking changes.
This week saw some shifts at the top of the rankings, as several of the previous week’s top 10 companies made way for newcomers like Wal-Mart and Hansen Beverages. Most notably, Facebook fell to No. 21 – dropping out of the top 3 for the first time in over a month.
The reasons behind Facebook’s tumble in the rankings are fairly straight-forward. The company rode a string of product announcements over the last 2 months to earn a spot in the top 2 of the SBI. The reveal of Facebook Timeline at F8, the launch of the long-awaited Facebook iPad app, and improvements to Facebook Messenger gave the company plenty to talk about and an eager audience. After the last of the news-worthy events took place in mid-October, Facebook has had little to say, as evidenced by a lack of activity on their social outlets.
The conversation about Facebook diverged from the company’s own announcements, to talk of Asana, created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz, and discussions of topics such as the threat to Facebook from hacker group Anonymous. The lack of content and conversation originating from Facebook, and the noise spurred by external media led to what will likely be a temporary drop out of the SBI top 20.
DirecTV
Moving in the opposite direction last week was DirecTV. After weeks of heated public fighting between DirecTV and News Corp., the two companies signed a deal hours before a November 1 deadline to maintain Fox programming for DirecTV subscribers. In the weeks leading up to the deadline, DirecTV had been vocal and informative about the situation, offering regular updates to their online communities.
As the deadline approached, DirecTV stepped up its outbound communication effort, offering more frequent status updates across their Facebook and Twitter accounts and openly answering questions from customers and other stakeholders. This proactive effort helped to stem the negative commentary from worried subscribers. Social activity for the week culminated with the well-received announcement that the two companies had reached a deal the evening of October 31st. This put the finishing touches on DirecTV’s 42 spot rally in the SBI rankings to end the week at No. 65.
From Facebook’s quick fall from the top, to DirecTV’s strong push up the rankings, digging deeper into the Social Business Index can offer some insightful stories and learnings. Follow us each week as we take a closer look at the factors that influenced the companies making moves in the rankings.
Analyzing signals from over one hundred million social sources globally, the Social Business Index measures the effectiveness of strategies and tactics organizations employ to engage the market through social channels. To learn more about the Social Business Index, visit www.SocialBusinessIndex.com and follow @DGSBI on Twitter.
