Restaurant Brands Most Mentioned Industry Sector On Social Media

New research shows that in just six months, the largest 100 global brands were mentioned a staggering 56.7 million times on social media, with restaurant, beverage and technology firms being those dominating conversations in the social space.

These are the findings of media researcher PQ Media, which used uberVU real-time data to rank the Top 100 consumer brands within the Top 10 product categories by their social media impressions. According to its report, titled ‘Top 100 Brands in Social Media Worldwide 2013′, global social media impressions reached 83.59 billion in the second half of 2013. Marketers’ social network ad spending advanced 42.1% in 2012, hitting $7.94 billion.

Female Internet users generally stay longer on social networking sites, but men talk about brands more, with conversations initiated by male users accounting for 55% of the total. Brands that are internationally-recognised were mentioned most often by consumers and 57% of conversations took place outside the US.

Three of the top 10 categories analysed, namely restaurants, beverages and consumer technology, accounted for over 70% of social media share of voice (SOV) between July and December 2012. Restaurants in particular were those most talked about on social media, generating 33.4% of SOV, followed by beverages with a 23.2% SOV and consumer technology with a 17.2% SOV.

Just 7% of media conversations concerned brands in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry such as personal care and household products firms, which implies that firms with hefty advertising budgets do not necessarily reign over social media chats.