Social Media - the vanity metrics of a brand.

“This report found that brands which hold a higher emotional attachment in consumers’ minds will generate more engagement, because humans instinctively react more to content that emotionally resonates with them.”
The report, which tracked 110 brands, creates a Temper score by applying a formula to the percentage of engagement figure that reflects engagement saturation and the diminishing marginal returns of engagement.
It found media was the top of the Temper scores, followed by automotive, fashion, not-for-profit, banking, politics, alcohol, retail, sport, tourism and FMCG bottom of the pile.
For the fashion industry brands which meld their brand culture in their image updates get more engagement than those who do not, while travel and tourism companies were most successful when they provided beautiful images of destinations, allowing consumers to imagine they are there."

Taken from: http://www.bandt.com.au/news/

Another great point brought up about measuring success from the publication of your brand in social media is detailed here

http://dj-santhou.blogspot.com/2012/07/vanity-metrics-of-today-does-it-matter.html

As they refer to it as vanity metrics. I can't help but wonder if we have finally hit the ceiling on the superficial aspect of a brand, and we are all perhaps a tad too vain. Do consumers really buy more if there are more followers? Or is what underneath the ultimate thing we look for.

As with most of my branding studies, one would be best off thinking of a brand as a person. Sure we like people who dress well and look like they belong to 'our' group, but at the end of the day, a suit with no personality still turns us off.

So what is that magnetic charm? Are celebrity endorsements the only way to achieve it? Or do we actually need to program that into the brand from the start.

I think we all need to remember that social media are tools and not the qualities of the brand. It is not about gaining the followers, but resonating with their interests and passion.