SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index: THE index to focus on

By Tina LY.

DowJones, CAC40, FTSE ,IMKB, and the like are so many indexes that organizations are following to get an idea of their business environment. But the one, organizations should really focus on for their sustainability communication is probably SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index.

Every day, doesn’t your entourage ask you: “Have you been to the place I checked in in Foursquare? Did you see this company’s page on Facebook, there is a contest to win a car? Did you see on Twitter this Company is launching a discount campaign? Did you check out my Instagram? Etc.” Questions not so common just 3 years ago.

Go social a trend? No rather a MUST

Social media has become an essential means of communication if not THE means to use, especially in the area of sustainability. The key word defining today’s communication are: contribution, authenticity, transparency, community. Through social media, organizations are involving their stakeholders through “live” operations, which make them feel as part of the whole process and result.  As said Matthew Yeomans, co-founder of Social Media Influence and director of Custom Communication, a social media sustainability consultancy,  “By empowering people with the sensibility that their voice matters and can make a difference, social media technologies have changed forever the way people communicate and act online.”

SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index: TOP 10

The SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index considered their ranking on a base of 400 companies using social media channel for communication with a focus on communicating sustainability. Of the 400, 176 appeared to have matched the criteria, and were ranked. This is an encouraging number, as it increased compared to 2011: 120 companies were counted.

However, the SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index does not aim to give an opinion on sustainability actions made by companies, but evaluate how those actions are communicated successfully through social media. Thus, as written on https://publisher.wizness.com/, social media sustainability communications of companies were assessed based on:

1-      How often they publish, update their sustainability social media channels?

2-      How transparent they are in allowing comments and responding to comments and conversation?

3-      How authentic is their social media content? Do they communicate what the company is doing or what it says it would like to do?

4-      How creative and innovative is the social media content?

5-      How useful is the information and conversation to the community?

6-      How "social" is the Sustainability or Corporate Responsibility Report?

From this ranking, here is an overview of the Top 10 of 2012:

2012 Position	Company Name	Sector	Out of 100	2011 Position	Rank Variation
1	Levi Strauss	Consumer Goods	92	8	7
2	BBVA.	Financials	91	5	3
3	eBay	Technology	90	New Entry	New Entry
4	Danone	Consumer Goods	89	13	9
5	General Electric	Industrial Goods & Services	89	1	-4
6	Telefonica	Telecommunciations	88	30	24
7	IBM	Technology	87	2	-5
8	Marks & Spencer Group	Consumer Goods	86	New Entry	New Entry
9	FedEx	Industrial Goods & Services	86	11	2
10	Microsoft.	Technology	84	29	19

Source: https://publisher.wizness.com/

Follow the Green Twitterati

The Green Twitterati is a list of 100 top tweeters accounts that are dedicated to sustainability and business, updated every 6 months. Accounts are from categorized based on their sector: media, agencies and consultants, companies, government and academia.  

SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index: a tool for benchmark and measure organization’s performance

SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index provides data related to social media best practices and failures communication campaigns of companies. It is a very useful source of information to benchmark organization performance all over the world.

The breakdown of the top 100 companies included in the 2012 Index is as follows:

Source: https://publisher.wizness.com/

But where is Turkey? Let’s see if in the 2013 index a Turkish company will be part of it…