Socialbakers, the world’s most cited source and fastest growing social media analytics company, on February 09, 2012 announced the launch of its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco.

The company also announced its new U.S. leadership team based in San Francisco, which includes veteran technology executive Martin Huml as President and Chief Operating Officer, and Katrina Wong as Vice President of Marketing. Socialbakers’ global expansion follows rapid demand from many of America’s most recognized brands.

Socialbakers social analytics platform measures the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns across all major social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+.

With more than 750 customers and 275,000 registered marketing users, Socialbakers is the leading source for Facebook and social analytics throughout Europe. More than 60 U.S. brands are already using the technology, with an accelerated U.S. demand from brands, consumers and even politicians.

“Companies can no longer expect or assume that online users will engage with their Facebook or Twitter content. Our clients increase social media relevance and build their social community faster because we show what is working, what doesn’t work and how they compare against competitors. Companies can build tremendous communities by using our technology to understand which content is most and least engaging and viral,” said Jan Rezab, Socialbakers CEO.

Technology veteran and investor Martin Huml has joined as Socialbakers’ President and COO, and will lead U.S. operations from San Francisco. Huml, who has been serving as company Chairman, is an accomplished entrepreneur, executive, and investor. Huml built and sold his first company in the mid nineties – an exclusive distributor for Apple Computer in Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia and several other former Eastern Blok countries.

He also worked for several years in private equity at Credit Suisse First Boston in London and New York. Most recently, he ran his own San Francisco-based investment consulting firm, Runway Capital. He has chaired and served on several boards, and has also served as interim CEO and COO for various technology firms.

“Socialbakers is an exciting company on the brink of becoming the global leader in this fast growing social analytics space,” said Huml.  “Jan is a brilliant entrepreneur, visionary, and business leader. The team is exceptional and Socialbakers is positioned as one of the top analytics companies in the world. The U.S. is home to many of the world’s most savvy companies, and it’s time we expanded in order to provide them a technology that will change the way they run their entire social marketing programs.”

Katrina Wong has been hired as vice president of marketing to lead the company’s global go-to-market strategy, with focus on the U.S., UK, France and Germany. Prior to Socialbakers, Wong led corporate marketing for subscription billing company, Zuora. Wong developed marketing strategies for SAP’s entry into the SaaS market, and worked at Salesforce.com deploying CRM solutions for global Fortune 500 companies.

“We have the most aggressive go-to-market strategy in the industry, and have big plans for 2012 – while the U.S. has a fragmented analytics market, Socialbakers is positioned to become the standard for social media intelligence,” said Wong.

Socialbakers, a European technology company, launched in 2008 and is now the social analytics provider of choice for customers in more than 75 countries.

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Socialbakers announced that it has launched a campaign to identify the most (and least) influential, engaging and popular presidential candidates on Facebook, including President Obama, via public information on the world’s largest social network.

Socialbakers’ social media analytics tracked more than 10 million Facebook Pages and Places and billions of individual user interactions. All findings are available through a new political infographic and microsite about each candidate on Facebook. With the upcoming Iowa caucus, this groundbreaking research reveals what drives engagement, influence and conversations for all eight Democratic and Republican presidential political candidates on Facebook.

Socialbakers tracked interactions between December 1-31 to measure engagement and changes in online candidate popularity. Socialbakers will also track the same information for January’s New Hampshire primary and upcoming debates and other newsworthy events. According to a recent Pew study, Facebook users are more politically engaged and are more than twice as likely to participate in political meetings or rallies. Socialbakers new infographic outlines which candidates are leading, and which are lagging.

“Politicians and brands have a tremendous opportunity to go beyond counting the number of ‘fans’ or ‘likes’ – they must pay attention to why people are talking about them and what they care about,” said Jan Rezab, Socialbakers CEO. “Fan and community engagement is the key to success. Politicians today can measure public information about Facebook user engagement to make more intelligent decisions about what to post, when to post and how to best stimulate conversation.”

Key Finding: User Engagement, Viral Reach and Popularity:

Viral Reach (The total reach for each candidate when people “like” and comment, multiplied by the average number of friends per Facebook user to provide a comparable number)

• Ron Paul has the highest overall viral reach, followed by Mitt Romney and Rick Perry
• Ron Paul leads with 59,554 “people talking about” him this past week (second to Obama)
• Rick Perry has the most engaging single-post amongst all candidates, followed by Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich
• Obama’s most engaging post was a family portrait, yet had the lowest overall engagement rate* when compared to the other candidates
• Ron Paul increased engagement rate by 69 percent, followed by a near tie between Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, with a 58-percent increase and 57-percent increase respectively
• Rick Santorum decreased engagement rate by -7 percent

Peer-to-Peer Interaction (all debates, comments, conversations to each other’s posts on candidate’s page)

• Michelle Bachmann leads in person-to-person interactions among Facebook users, followed by Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman
• Obama leads with 50 percent of the total interactions. Ron Paul leads the Republican Party with 19 percent, which is 2x and 3x higher than Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

Candidate’s Facebook Fans:

• Obama is leading with the most number of fans at 24 million, followed by Mitt Romney at 1.3 million, Ron Paul with 672,483 and Michelle Bachmann with 460,336.
• Rick Santorum has the fastest-growing fan base throughout the last 30 days (23-percent growth) surpassing Jon Huntsman’s growth (18-percent growth).

*Engagement rate: The number of “likes” and comments per post divided by a candidate’s number of fans.

Rich Koele / Shutterstock.com

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