There’s little question that for many companies, Twitter is good for business.  With more than 300 million user accounts and about 13% of online adults in the U.S. using Twitter there is increasing potential for companies to build relationships with customers, increase brand awareness and drive revenue.  Twitter has become a hotspot for social media-savvy brands, and the best-of-the-best use creativity and a customer-centric focus to engage their audiences and cultivate true brand ambassadors.  But for a brand to truly succeed on Twitter, they must look beyond the number of followers and retweets, and instead focus on the level of engagement they have with the stakeholders who can – and do – impact their bottom line.  Take a look at ten brands that are doing it right.

So how’d we come up with our list?  Rather than just search out a common list of brands who lead on Twitter based on number of followers alone, we dug deeper for a sampling of companies across industries ranging from sports and retail, to media and more.  We next looked at Twitter engagement and an assortment of metrics, including online sentiment courtesy of Sysomos MAP.  Here’s our short-list:

• Cisco Systems
• The NBA
• Mashable
• E! Online
• Breaking News Worldwide
• Whole Foods Market
• Etsy
• Ustream Video
• Lennar Homebuilder
• Solazyme

It’s easy to get blinded by the big numbers you see on Twitter.  But we like to find companies like the ones here that are really leading the social media charge in their respective industries and having two-way conversations with their Twitter followers. We like it when brands engage. We like it when they talk to us, or better yet, with us. We like it when we can feel the personal connection. Those are the brands that make us want to be their fans.

This post is part of The Pulse, an ongoing series in partnership with our good friends at CommPRO.biz. Each week, we feature trending topics, rankings and industry “bests” across a wide spectrum of communication disciplines. We’ll post a new “Pulse” each week through 2011 here at Channel M. Next up: “Show Me the Money: 10 Leading Cities for Marketing Jobs and Salaries.”

Check out every issue of The Pulse on SlideShare, and read a few of our most popular posts: 

• “10 sports teams doing social media right“
• “10 top PR agency Facebook pages“
• “10 best-paying cities for PR jobs“

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Tags: branding strategies, customer service excellence, integrated marketing strategies, public relations, social media marketing, social media strategy, sysomos map, The Pulse

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2011 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Branding, Marketing, Monitoring & Analytics, Public Relations, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.