Read Social Network Marketing Expands Sphere at Emarketer, today and noticed the Altimeter Group , Jeremiah Owyang joined last  week, put out a study saying that Social Media Presence can be equated with Brand Performance, even financially!

…. a study from the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint, along with a separate study from Razorfish, indicates that the stronger a brand’s social media presence, the better the brand performed—whether measured in conversations or in financial performance.

So how do I prove that?   First, I used SocialMention.com and compared Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke and Diet 7up for Social Media Presence:

According to a post on BevReview.com – Pepsi vs. Coke, 3rd Quarter 2008

(which, to be fair, doesn’t focus on Diet Pepsi vs. Diet Coke, but takes the whole brand, – Pepsi and compares it to Coke …

With the recent talk about Pepsi redesigning their logo and repositioning their classic carbonated soft drinks, one wonders what prompted all this movement. You only need to look at the 3rd Quarter results of the big soft drink players to figure it out.

In short, Coke is doing well and Pepsi is not.

According to the Britvic Soft Drink Report for 2009 (which might only cover the UK, for all I know) suggests that a brand that spends more is also going to, all things being equal, have a stronger Social Media presence – though I personally don’t think that has to be true – as social media isn’t that closely tied to cost of a campaign.

Source: Nielsen Media Research

Radian6 shows how much stronger “Diet Coke” is, in terms of “conversations” than “Diet Pepsi” or “Diet 7up”

For the purposes of this post, I define “conversations” as unique entries, blog posts, message board threads, video content, though, not necessary, tweets.  I also think conversations can be “weighted”, similar to the way some blog posts have a lot of comments, and some, a few, while many other have no comments.

There’s simply a lot more “conversations” over the last month, happening around Diet Coke than Diet Pepsi, for example (see below).

And much of the reason for Diet Coke’s dominance in Social Media is it’s Twitter Presence (see below) which Radian6 does a great job of breaking down.

Meanwhile, the total number of “Twitter Followers” of each brand, effortlessly created using Radian6, is shown below:

As far as Twitter Followers  – Diet Coke has it lined up, according to the data I pulled from Radian6.

So, we should equate that a brand that does well, now, is going to also be involved in Social Media, almost as if Social Media is a “marker” for financial success.

But what if you brand is not very big or successful, financially?  Will Social Media, done correctly, make your brand more successful?   According to a post on Read Write/Web on Social Media strength and Financial Success

…After examining the companies and their social media activity levels, the brands were ranked on an “engagement scale” where scores ranged from a high of 127 to a low of 1. Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.

Here’s where I’m going ……  if you have a small brand that’s not too successful now – by using Social Media, effectively, you may be able to (depending how well you execute a Social Media Strategy) make the brand more successful.

While I didn’t prove Social Media makes a brand successful, I did prove that Social Media is an attribute of Success, therefore it ought to be cultivated and used more often, and more effectively, than it is.