News you can use

Consumers will talk about brands that offer useful content, Mr. Keller said, and in turn they will share that content with others. Quaker Oats, a PepsiCo, Inc. brand, nabbed the top spot on the TotalSocial ranking mostly due to its usable, shareable recipes and new products catering to convenience.

“While the company remained stable with respect to offline consumer conversations, it was their on-line campaigns that catapulted them to the top spot,” Mr. Keller said. “Over the past six months, Quaker has given their on-line community a lot to talk about and share — from the launch of their 140th anniversary campaign to debuting innovative products such as single-serve Overnight Oats. Quaker Oats is part of a heart healthy diet. Health is important to consumers, and they’re fitting in quite well in how you can use oats not just for oatmeal but in other ways as well to create tasty and creative kinds of meals for the family. ‘News you can use’ is not just something that’s valuable for one consumer, but it becomes shareable content.”

Betty Crocker, a General Mills, Inc., brand, also emphasizes recipes and useful information in its marketing, which helped it claim the second position in the ranking.

Betty Crocker and Quaker Oats have seen social success, Mr. Keller said, because they “engage people with recipes to make their life easy and make their brand something that people come back to over and over again on-line.”