• by Karl Greenberg , January 4, 2010

Domestic automakers moved down and out while imports rose in Vitrue's second-annual Top 100 Social Media Brands.

In the inaugural study for 2008, Ford was the top auto brand, and #12 among all brands that Vitrue measured for social-media relevance. This year, Mercedes-Benz was at number one -- or #17 among all brands, up from 36th place in 2008 -- while Ford has dropped to third place after BMW and is in 24th place among all brands. Indeed, domestics have moved down, while big jumps in social-media presence were seen by BMW, Ferrari, Toyota, Audi, Porsche, Nissan and Kia.

The Vitrue study comes from an analysis of some 2,000 brands. Vitrue spiders sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and various blogs every day, measures total mentions and uses various algorithms to compare and rank them, per Reggie Bradford, founder and CEO of the Atlanta-based firm. He says one thing the study does not do is distinguish between positive and negative mentions of a brand, so that it isn't necessarily ominous to see one's rank slip.

"My thinking is, if you look back a year ago, in Q4 [when the first study was done] all three domestics were in the news every day because of talk of bankruptcy, bailout, TARP money and other negative mentions," he says. "So I don't look at lower ranking as a bad thing."

Honda was second last year among automakers at #25, and now it is third. Although Honda is still at #25 among all brands, BMW jumped from 37th to 20th place. Ferrari follows Honda at #27, Toyota is #38, and Audi is #45. Ferrari wasn't even on the list last year, while Toyota improved by 10 rankings. Audi did even better, improving by 23 ranks in the 2009 study. Kia moved from 73rd to 53rd place. Porsche also improved, rising from #74 to #55. Nissan was 60th place in 2008, and is 37th this year.

By contrast, Jeep and Dodge slid from 51st place to 56th and from 41st place to #57, respectively. The Chevrolet brand went from 51st place among all kinds of brands in the 2008 study to 80th place in 2009; sibling Cadillac dropped off the list entirely from 49th place in the inaugural study. Also off the list this year are Ford's Mercury and Lincoln brands, which were in 44th and 28th place, respectively. Chevy's parent GM went from 31st place to 85th. Among imports, Volkswagen dropped from 58th place to 67th.

Bradford says imports' improvement this year reflects a lot more activity on their part in the social-media space. "It's a barometer of German, Japanese, Korean and luxury brands more aggressively embracing this space," he says.

Bradford says 2010 will bring a lot more more dealership and dealer-group social media activity. "One of the things you will see is a lot more aggressive development of social-media presence on Facebook in local markets, which increases the number and share of voice of all cars and auto products. It makes sense because a lot of buying and selling is on a local-market basis; and that's where the social-media battle will lead."