HootSuite launches the "Love List" identifying top brands seeing "love" on Social Media

Vancouver based HootSuite, the world’s most widely used social relationship platform, today launched The Love List, a recurring monthly report which ranks more than 450 of the world’s top brands on which are seeing the most love on social media.

The Love List uses data provided by uberVU via HootSuite, a robust listening, social monitoring and advanced analytics solution, to pull in hundreds of millions of publicly available social media posts.

Brands are ranked in order on The Love List using three key data points, including the total number of brand mentions received, the sentiment score for the particular brand and the percentage of social conversations about the brand containing the word “love” over a month period of time. Using this formula, each brand is assigned a score between one and 100.

October 2014’s Top 10 brands seeing the most love on social media, compiled using data pulled from October 1 to 31, 2014:

1. Dove
2. Friskies
3. Kohl’s
4. Avon
5. Renaissance Hotels
6. The CW
7. TripAdvisor
8. West Elm
9. Twitter
10. Nordstrom

The No. 1 brand seeing the most love on social media for October 2014 is Dove, who have successfully optimized their Real Beauty campaign to gain traction on social, which is known for encouraging women to take a positive stance on their bodies. According to a 2014 Pew Study, women are the more active gender on social media and the Dove brand campaign encourages positive social conversations among this audience. In fact, 78% of the conversations about Dove are had by women.

“Brands that have found successful ways to cultivate a passionate fan base did well in October’s Love List,” said Mark Pascarella, General Manager of uberVU via HootSuite. “The top brands ran inspiring or amusing campaigns (Dove, Friskies, Renaissance Hotels), creating buzz and fan engagement through contests or giveaways (Kohl’s, West Elm, TripAdvisor), and targeting an outspoken audience that feels invested in spreading the word for their favorite brands (The CW, Avon, Twitter).”

Many brands are still adopting social media across their business, and often struggle to understand how their brand stacks up against their peers. With The Love List, brands across industries can benchmark their success against top competitors. The top three performing industries across the full list of over 450 brands include (1) food & beverage, (2) media & entertainment and (3) consumer packaged goods. Other brands ranked in the top 10 fall into travel and hospitality, retail, and technology industries.