Atlanta-based Vitrue, a social media marketing company, released its first ranking this year of the top 100 social brands of 2008, tallied at the end of December. Of the top 100, only 13 where retail oriented:

• #14: Target
• #34: Walmart
• #39: Nike
• #59: REI
• #63: Macy’s
• #65: Guess
• #66: Victoria Secret
• #71: Ikea
• #85: Adidas
• #89: The Gap
• #97: Converse
• #99: PUMA
• #100: Sears

Women’s Wear Daily asked the firm to cull its list for retail and apparel brands, along with their updated Social Media Index scores; here are the top 10 Fashion-Related Social Media Brands of 2008.

• #1: Nike
• #2: IKEA
• #3: Wal-Mart
• #4: REI
• #5: Target
• #6: Adidas
• #7: Sears
• #8: Gap
• #9: Victoria Secret
• #10: Converse

For the WWD article, an overall score was based on the volume of daily, online public conversations about each brand across social networking (Facebook), blogging, microblogging (Twitter), photo and video sharing (YouTube) sites. Within the WWD top 10, many of the firms dramatically increased their scores as raised their profiles on these sites.

“Social networking sites are so incredibly powerful, because brand buzz is being generated by word-of-mouth,” said Reggie Bradford, chief executive officer of Vitrue. “For example, someone with a public Facebook profile updates his or her status by saying, ‘I’m wearing my new Prada shoes right now’ – it shows us that people are creating awareness by simply talking about the brand.”

Note: You raise your profile by actively engaging in social communities. You contribute content, answer customer questions and respond to messages sent to you; you use your social communities to share, not create a soap box for how great your brand is.

What surprises me, while not surprising me at the same time, is that of the top 100 brands overall only 13% are retailers. These 13 brands are early adopters. There are a lot of medium and independent brands that have been using social marketing successfully, but they don’t have the budgets of the larger ones.

As the case studies emerge, more brands are going to integrate social marketing in their online marketing initiatives. The social space will become more crowded as brands compete for online attention. With the mainstreaming of Twitter and Facebook (thank you Oprah, Ashton Kutcher & CNN), there will still plenty of opportunities to for retailers to engage customers in their online space and build brand equity with new ones.

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