A report entitled Social Media in the City, based on research by social media consultancy Sociagility, has found that two-thirds of FTSE 100 companies perform below average on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Co-author of the report and Sociagility principal, Tony Burgess-Webb, said: ‘Social media are playing an increasingly important part in the daily struggle for stakeholders’ confidence and support.
‘How well a company engages is therefore a competitive issue internationally – both as a risk to be managed and an opportunity to gain advantage. This is as important for the C-suite as it is for corporate comms professionals.’
Burgess-Webb also suggested that there is a ‘significant correlation’ between the SPI score and market capitalisation.
Shell, AstraZeneca and Sainsbury led the rankings of best-performing companies. While the top 20 also included non-consumer-facing brands such as mining firm Vedanta, chip manufacturer ARM Holdings and BAE Systems. Only one bank, Barclays, makes the top 20 group.
The highest performing FTSE sector was pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, followed by retailers.
Sociagility reported that the insurance sector as a whole scored well below the FTSE 100 average and only one of its constituents, Aviva, even makes the SPI top 30.
The research was conducted in November this year in association with the PRCA. Performance scores were derived for each social network based on more than 50 metrics combined to create a ‘Social Performance Index’.
