Being active on social media is vital to a brand's success in 2019 but not all brands wield the same level of power across the most popular platforms.
U.K.-based digital marketing agency Pilot Fish Media recently analyzed the social media accounts of some of the world's most recognizable brands, adding up their combined Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube followers to determine which have the most social influence.
National Geographic takes the crown and it's not even close. The magazine company that published its first issue in 1888 boasts a combined following of 202,817,271, nearly 60 percent of which come from Instagram.
For perspective, National Geographic's social media following surpasses that of brands like Samsung, Nike, NBA, Coca-Cola and Victoria's Secret and is more than twice that of Netflix and McDonald's.
National Geographic's following is nearly 10 times more than second-ranked travel brand Airbnb, which ranks 65th among the 100 brands Pilot Fish analyzed with 21,232,977 followers across the four platforms. Three-fourths of Airbnb's followers come from Facebook while only 5 percent come from Twitter and YouTube combined.
A pair of airlines, Emirates (16,825,321 combined followers) and LATAM Airlines (13,704,239 combined followers) also cracked the travel sector's top five along with Booking.com (16,263,072 combined followers). Interestingly, more than 91 percent of Booking.com's following and over 87 percent of LATAM Airlines' following comes from Facebook users.
TripAdvisor and Travel + Leisure are also among the world's most influential travel brands heading into 2020, with each boasting more than 12 million combined followers, enough to barely break into the top 100.
Of the seven travel brands to make the cut, Travel + Leisure's 4,025,791 Twitter followers are second-most behind only National Geographic.
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