• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 14, 2014

While the real value of brands' various social networks remains a mystery, it's still fun (maddening?) to compare top performers in terms of followers, engagement, and activity.

On average, the 20 most social-savvy brands had about 14.5 million Facebook fans in March, along with 1.9 million Twitter followers, and north of half a million YouTube subscribers.

That’s courtesy of new findings from social analytics firm Socialbakers, which also found that top 20 social brands posted to Facebook an average of 52 times last month, while tweeting 174 times and uploading video to YouTube 19 times.

Arguably a better measure of social success, Durex USA scored the highest average engagement rate on Facebook in March (7.32%) compared to the industry average of 0.16%. After Durex, P&G detergent brand Dreft achieved a 4.9% average engagement rate; Sheraton Waikiki boasted a rate of 4.78%; Dutch distiller DeKuyper USA had a rate of 4.55%; and Miracle Whip ended March with a Facebook engagement rate of 4.52%. 

In the highly unstable world of social media, however, it remains difficult for brands to maintain consistently high engagement levels, according to Michaela Bránová, data analyst at Socialbakers.
 
“Brands are continually updating their social media strategies, which is why we see that the top brands by post engagement rate vary month over month,” Bránová said on Monday.

Once again, phone carriers were the most “socially devoted Facebook brands” in March, Socialbakers found. T-Mobile achieved the highest response rate last year (97%) compared to the industry average of 55%.

With nearly 32 million Facebook fans, Walmart remained the social giant’s most popular brand in March. Each with about roughly 20 million fans, other top Facebook performers included Amazon, Target, Samsung Mobile USA and Subway.

With north of 5 million followers, Samsung Mobile USA took top honors on Twitter in March, followed by Whole Foods Market (with about 3.7 million followers), social bookmarking service AddThis (with about 2.6 million followers), the T-shirt specialists at Threadless (with nearly 22 million) and Sony (with nearly 22 million followers).

Measured by interactions, American Airlines ranked first on Twitter in March (with about 270,000 interactions), ecommerce site Fancy.com (with over 100,000 interactions), Wheat Thins (with nearly 100,000), along with Xbox Support and headphone maker Beats by Dre (each with about 76,000 interactions on Twitter).