Social media man­age­ment plat­form Hoot­suite has debuted its Love List, a month­ly report that mea­sures how con­sumers react to brands on social by exam­in­ing the con­ver­sa­tions between brands and con­sumers. This report will give brands an oppor­tu­ni­ty to gauge how con­sumers per­ceive them, and improve their score by hav­ing more pos­i­tive con­ver­sa­tions with their audi­ence on social media.

It may sound like a prop from the set of “Mean Girls”, but social media man­age­ment plat­form Hoot­suite has launched The Love List, or what it calls “a recur­ring month­ly report which ranks more than 450 of the world’s top brands on which are see­ing the most love on social media.”

The Love List was cre­at­ed as an “easy-to-under­stand met­ric that could be applied across the entire enter­prise,” accord­ing to Mark Pas­carel­la, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of uberVU via Hoot­suite, which is a lis­ten­ing, social mon­i­tor­ing and advanced ana­lyt­ics prod­uct.

The Love List uses data from uberVU to pull in hun­dreds of mil­lions of pub­licly avail­able social media posts from net­works like Twit­ter, Face­book, Google+, and LinkedIn, as well as about 20 addi­tion­al plat­forms.

“It’s that broad-based col­lec­tion of social insight, or what we con­sid­er to be the entire social web – blogs, forums and com­ment sys­tems where peo­ple have social dis­course – that we bring in for a com­plete 360-degree view,” Pas­carel­la said.

Brands are ranked using three data points over the course of a month, includ­ing the total num­ber of brand men­tions, the sen­ti­ment score for the brand, and the per­cent­age of social con­ver­sa­tions about the brand con­tain­ing the word “love.” Each brand is assigned a score between 1 and 100.

The top 10 brands in Octo­ber were:

1. Dove
2. Friskies
3. Kohl’s
4. Avon
5. Renais­sance Hotels
6. The CW
7. Tri­pAd­vi­sor
8. West Elm
9. Twit­ter
10. Nord­strom

Hoot­suite notes October’s find­ings include a large num­ber of “acces­si­ble” brands like Dove, Kohl’s, Friskies, Avon, and The CW, as well as a num­ber of brands that “strad­dle the line between acces­si­ble and aspi­ra­tional,” such as Nord­strom, Tri­pAd­vi­sor, Renais­sance Hotels, and West Elm.

“We had this gut feel going in with­out look­ing at the data that there would be a num­ber of lux­u­ry brands in the top rank­ings, but only one lux­u­ry brand appeared in the top 25, Chanel, and the next [brands like Cap­i­tal Grille and Bergdorf-Good­man] are clus­tered around 100,” Pas­carel­la said. “[The top-ranked brands are] the brands that were able to suc­cess­ful­ly cul­ti­vate a real­ly pas­sion­ate fan base by using inspired or amus­ing cam­paigns or give­aways or contests…as well as [those that have] fans [like] the CW tele­vi­sion net­work that real­ly engage in word of mouth.”

For its part, Hoot­suite says Dove has suc­cess­ful­ly opti­mized its Real Beau­ty cam­paign to gain trac­tion on social, “which is known for encour­ag­ing women to take a pos­i­tive stance on their bod­ies.” Fur­ther, cit­ing a 2014 Pew Study, Hoot­suite says women are the more active gen­der on social media and the Dove cam­paign encour­ages “pos­i­tive social con­ver­sa­tions among this audi­ence” which com­prised 78 per­cent of the con­ver­sa­tions about Dove.

Hoot­suite says it will update the Love List each month, show­cas­ing which brands have moved up or down in rank­ings based on the changes in men­tion vol­ume, sen­ti­ment and social con­ver­sa­tions. Each month’s results will be shared on the Love List web­site and dis­cussed in webi­na­rs. Fur­ther, Pas­carel­la said Hoot­suite sees this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate an ongo­ing record of insights and trends.

One ben­e­fit to brands is the abil­i­ty to bench­mark their suc­cess against com­peti­tors, accord­ing to Hoot­suite.

“The start­ing point was we want­ed to use analy­sis ver­sus just a tal­ly of likes and shares to put togeth­er a mea­sure­ment of how con­sumers are react­ing to brands – not just pop­u­lar­i­ty, but instead a met­ric that mea­sured how con­sumers are react­ing to those brands via social,” Pas­carel­la said. “One of the key ele­ments was the abil­i­ty to look at two-way pub­li­ca­tions. So much in the past has been a col­lec­tion of likes and shares. What we want to get to here is the abil­i­ty to look at both sides of a con­ver­sa­tion and come up with a sin­gle easy-to-under­stand met­ric.”

In the future, Hoot­suite will also look at which brands are win­ning in cer­tain regions and indus­try cat­e­gories, Pas­carel­la said.