The research looked a total of 413 posts on Twitter and LinkedIn, analysing the volume of posts, quality of results-related outputs and the number of interactions. It showed that while BP posted just nine times across both channels, it had a total of 532 interactions.
After BP, the top five companies with the best social strategy included Anglo American, Tesco, SABMiller and Aviva.
FTI said that as BP demonstrated, the findings show that sending out lots of posts on social media did not guarantee high levels of engagement and impact.
The best performing companies included links, hashtags and multimedia content, to increase the quality of social media posts.
The research found that there was a positive relationship between content quality and user engagement, as five of the six companies that came top of the overall ranking scored the maximum number of points for post quality.
The study also showed that a large following did not automatically result in increased impact. Shell and Unilever were the only companies with more than one million followers, with 1.58 million and 1.35 million respectively – Shell came eighth, while Unilever was 54th.
This year, 62 per cent of the FTSE100 companies shared results on social media, which was an increase on last year, where only 52 per cent of companies shared financial results on Twitter.
Despite this, the research suggests that most FTSE100 companies used pre-planned messages on social media, rather than responding in real time by interacting with stakeholders, replying to questions or retweeting commentary.
