Social: It's never too late to get started!

This week saw an interesting survey from Business Insider Magazine - "The Top 20 Brands on Twitter".  A quick analysis of it both stresses urgency for a move to The Social Enterprise; and reassures that it's never too late.  

There are many organisations out there for whom a combination of other priorities - especially in the current economic malaise - and strategic paralysis has meant they have not been able to seize the Social opportunity as quickly or as decisively as they know they should.

Top 20 lists and their ilke offer varying degrees of value but what is useful about this list is that it charts not only the degree of success but to some extent the journey and learnings also.  Its criterea is interesting also, looking not at those companies who use Twitter merely to push out a message, but those that actively engage their customer base: 

"We narrowed the list to only those brands that interact with followers—meaning that some major companies, like Apple, aren't on here."

For the most part, the brands included in the list have about half a million to one-and-a-half million followers and have been tweeting since between 2007 and 2009.  This is by far the majority of the 20.

However, those companies that have not yet begun their journey to the Social Enterprise can take heart from two very prominent brands in particular.

Both Nike and Samsung have only begun formally engaging on Twitter as brands in the last year. Nike began last November and already have 475,000 followers and have ranked 16th.  Samsung, more impressively, began only last May and already rank 3rd with more than two million followers!  

The message here is clearly that it is never too late to get started - the key is to actually engage.  The Social Web is two-way, not just another marketing channel.

Learn more about how to begin your journey to The Social Enterprise by taking this assessment or learn about how local brand CommBank have begun their journey.