Social Media Brand Rankings: How to Read Them and Build a Scorecard

A social media brand ranking (in Turkish marketing, often called a social media "scorecard") is a regular index that scores and ranks brands' social media accounts on shared criteria. In Turkey, the best known is SocialBrands, produced by BoomSonar AI. A ranking like this shows where you stand in your sector based on public data, but it does not measure your effect on sales, demand or brand perception. The real value lies in knowing how to read these lists and in building an internal scorecard around your own goals.

What does the SocialBrands ranking measure?

According to a Marketing Türkiye report dated August 7, 2026, SocialBrands evaluates the performance of more than 53,000 brand accounts in Turkey using more than 30 criteria. The analysis includes data such as follower size and growth, content types, engagement level, engagement per post, and hashtag and mention use.

For the August list, covering July 1 to 31, 53,000 accounts, 1,479,000 posts and more than 1 billion interactions were analyzed. The channels covered are Facebook, X and Instagram. In that period's Top100 list, the first three places went to Aselsan, MKE (Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation) and the digital streaming platform tabii.

BoomSocial's SocialBrands page states that the data is compiled from public page statistics and that engagement is defined differently on each platform: likes, comments and shares on Facebook; likes and reposts on X; likes and comments on Instagram. Besides the overall ranking, lists are also published by sector and sub-sector. That is the most useful part when reading the ranking, because comparing a defense industry brand with a local café on the same list makes no sense.

What does the ranking not show?

What makes rankings valuable is that they offer a shared measure. But that shared measure also brings limits:

• Platform coverage is limited. The method relies on Facebook, X and Instagram. If your audience is concentrated on TikTok, YouTube or LinkedIn, the ranking shows you incompletely.
• Only public data is used. Data that only the account owner sees, such as reach, saves, profile visits, website clicks, messages and sales, is not counted. Yet that data tells you the most about marketing results.
• Large accounts have an advantage. Follower size and total engagement criteria push brands that already have large audiences forward. A small but very loyal community may not appear on the list.
• The quality of engagement is invisible. Hundreds of negative comments during a crisis also count as engagement. Sentiment and content quality need separate analysis.
• It is a snapshot of one month. A single viral post or a large campaign can decide that month's position. To see the trend, you need to look at several months of rankings together.

So there is no need to panic when your position drops, and a rise does not mean your business goals have been met.

How should you read the ranking?

Pick three to five brands close to you on the sector list and watch, over several months, which content types make them stand out. The goal is not to copy them but to understand what audiences in your sector respond to. Short video, product showcases, behind-the-scenes content, user-generated content?

The second question is what the brands at the top have in common: do they post on a regular schedule, do they reply to comments, in which months do they concentrate their campaigns? These observations give you concrete input for your own content calendar.

If your rank dropped, where should you look first?

A drop in the ranking usually has an ordinary explanation. Start with these four questions:

• Did the number of posts fall? Holiday periods, team changes or delays in approval processes reduce posting frequency, and total engagement is directly affected.
• Did the content type change? Going back to single images instead of video, or switching to product-focused posts after a campaign ends, can change engagement.
• Did a competitor have an unusual month? Rankings are relative; while your performance stays the same, a competitor's viral campaign can push you down.
• Did your channel mix shift? If your audience moved to a platform the ranking does not cover, your position can look lower without any real decline.

If a drop is still unexplained after answering these questions, it is time for a more detailed review of content and community management.

How do you build your own social media scorecard?

External rankings are for comparison; for decisions, you need an internal scorecard. A simple one can be built in these steps:

1. Write down the goal. Awareness, website traffic, lead generation or customer service? Each goal has a different metric.
2. Choose five to seven metrics. For example reach, engagement rate, saves and shares, profile visits, link clicks, forms or orders coming from social media, and response time.
3. Fix the formula. Decide whether you divide engagement by followers or by reach, and use the same formula every month. If the formula changes, the comparison loses its meaning.
4. Define the comparison group. Compare yourself both with your own past months and with a few competitors you choose. Your own trend often tells you more than a competitor ranking.
5. Write an action next to every metric. For example: "Save rate dropped, increase the number of guide-style posts." A scorecard without actions stays a report.
6. Review monthly, decide quarterly. Monthly swings can mislead; change strategy based on a trend of several months.

Using UTM parameters on the links you share and defining conversions in your web analytics give you the most reliable rows of the internal scorecard for measuring traffic and demand from social media.

Does a social media ranking measure AI visibility?

No. A question brands ask more and more is how they get discovered in places like ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI features. Social media rankings do not answer that; they measure engagement on the platforms.

On the website side, there is a starting point: since August 31, 2026, Google Search Console has offered a generative AI performance report for all sites. The report shows your site's impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, device and country. Visibility in other AI assistants requires a separate tracking method. We describe our approach in our AI search visibility service.

In short

A social media brand ranking is a good mirror for seeing your sector and competitors through public data. But what shows whether you are reaching your goals is the internal scorecard you build with your own data. Use the external list for inspiration and comparison, and the internal scorecard for decisions. If you want goals, metrics and the content plan built together, take a look at our social media management service, or read our guide to social media community management.