A Social Divide in the City: 2018 Edition

Breaking Away From the Pack

The sixth annual edition of our Social Divide index throws into the spotlight a number of key trends relating to corporate results reporting on social media by FTSE 100 companies.

When we started the Social Divide in 2012, we saw a simple distinction between those companies that were using social media for results reporting and those that were not. We’ve since seen new types of engaging content come forward as companies have invested more time and effort on content designed to tell the story of the strategy and performance of their business around results time.

With a higher number of engagements as a proportion of posts compared to our 2017 report, today’s Social Divide has taken on a new meaning as we welcome the ‘1000 Club’, a distinct group of companies who have achieved over 1000 engagements across channels in relation to their results posts. In fact, to be within our top ten ranking required companies to achieve over 1038 engagements relating to results content, with LinkedIn serving up the most engagements overall.

Our index looks behind engagements to give a quality score based on the content we have analysed too – and this year, more than ever, we have noted an impressive array of formats and design innovations helping to bring to life complex information.

While there has been no change in the top two performers overall in comparison to 2017 (Diageo holds onto the yellow jersey, with BP second), the big changes are happening further down the index – with the likes of Informa, 3i Group, Standard Chartered, Intercontinental Hotels Group and RBS all rising by more than 20 places. Conversely some of the biggest falls can be seen from the likes of Centrica, Taylor Wimpey, Admiral Group and National Grid.

Again we can say that the best performing companies in our index are working smarter with content, not necessarily creating more of it. Over the coming pages we detail some of the techniques used by FTSE 100 companies to create high quality posts that deliver on engagement and reach, effectively targeting an audience of over 37 million across the Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram channels they are active on.