giffgaff ranked number 4 brand in UK for social media!

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New Community-led mobile network provider giffgaff, which now has tens of thousands of members, is celebrating new found recognition as a top 5 ranked social media brand within the UK, according to Social Brands 100.

The PAYG mobile network operator derives its name from the ancient Scottish word meaning ‘mutual giving’, and is consequently shaped and developed by its membership to authentically meet their mobile needs. Ranked closely behind Dell, Nike Plus and Starbucks, giffgaff came fourth in a list of the Top 100 Social Media Brands, beating off competition from the likes of the BBC, Virgin and Sony and eclipsing all other UK mobile network providers.

The Social Brands 100 survey was carried out by Headstream over a three month period from November 2010, which involved crowd-sourcing nominations from Twitter and analysing 30,000 tweets, posts, comments and likes to evaluate how effectively brands used social media outposts. In addition, a ten-person independent panel of experts scored brands on their ability to listen and engage with connected communities in a manner that mirrored people’s personalities and behaviours, whilst remaining agile, transparent and responsive to both positive and negative sentiment.

Unlike other mobile network providers, giffgaff has no call centres or big advertising campaigns, but instead harnesses the power of its online community to successfully run customer services and marketing operations.

Since its launch in 2009, giffgaff has empowered its community to shape the business and its products by asking them to post their suggestions on a dedicated page on the website. This has led to 830 unique ideas being posted, resulting in 137 ideas being implemented, a further 62 accepted and 48 under consideration. There have also been over 300,000 posts made in its combined online forums, where members help each other to answer questions and queries. So far there have been more than 20,000 questions asked, with an average of 9.6 responses to each question. All questions have been answered within an average of three minutes.

In return, and as part of its mutuality ethos, giffgaff rewards its members who help out on the forums or refer friends with a bi-annual payback scheme. giffgaff’s last payback in December 2010 resulted in over £128,000 given back to the community in airtime, money or as a donation to a chosen charity, with its top earner receiving over £900.

Cristel Lee Leed, Chief of Marketing for giffgaff, said:

“We are thrilled to have been recognised as a top 5 social media brand in the UK, and the number one social brand in the mobile and telecoms industry. It really is a remarkable achievement for giffgaff, just one year on from our launch.

“We are thrilled to have been recognised as a top 5 social media brand in the UK, and the number one social brand in the mobile and telecoms industry. It really is a remarkable achievement for giffgaff, just one year on from our launch.

“It’s a big thank you to our dynamic and dedicated online communities’ right across our forum, Twitter and Facebook.

We came higher than many blue chip businesses by actively engaging and working with our members to create something better in the mobile industry, which included building new products through the use of social media. This social approach is part of our DNA as opposed to being just an add-on, and we look forward to continuing to implement the great ideas we get from our members and rewarding them for working with us.”

Kirsty Weston, Head of Social Communications at Headstream, added:

“We wanted to find out what really makes a brand social. The bad news for some is that we didn’t find a simple answer to this question because these brands engage in a diverse range of ways appropriate to their communities. The best examples, however, do stand out for commercial gains they’ve made from good use of social. ”

SOURCE: http://giffgaffnews.com/2011/03/giffgaff-ranked-number-4-brand-in-uk-for-social-media/