Microsoft Tops LinkedIn's List of Most Influential Tech Brands

Microsoft has been steadily losing its leading position to competitors like Apple and Google, but LinkedIn’s new list suggests the corporation is beating its tech peers when it comes to content marketing on the business-oriented social networking platform.

To create its inaugural list of the 10 most influential global brands, LinkedIn measured the advertising efforts of brands using its Marketing Solutions products. To determine the leaders, LinkedIn quantified brands’ content marketing efforts with a Content Marketing Score (CMS), which was calculated by measuring a brand’s unique engagement divided by its total target audience.

The results? Eight of the top 10 global brands are located in the U.S., and half of them are media companies or publishers.

It’s no surprise to see media corporations leading the way, as they produce a large amount of content on a daily basis, and know how to distribute their content to target consumers. But it’s interesting that the tech industry represents the second largest vertical on the list.

Among the most influential global tech brands, Microsoft takes the lead, followed by Hewlett-Packard, then Salesforce.com, and IBM.

“Microsoft has a solid follower base, and they make good use of content to effectively engage our members with organic and sponsored information,” says a LinkedIn spokesperson, Fenot Tekle.

When asked if Bill Gates’ Influencer Posts were a big driver of Microsoft’s strong content marketing performance on LinkedIn, Tekle explains to ClickZ that in addition to Influencer Posts, LinkedIn measured other engagement activities as well, including Sponsored Updates, Company Pages, LinkedIn Groups, and employee updates.

“[In addition to the Influencer Posts], Microsoft has employee posts that drive great engagement on our platform,” she notes.

You can see the full top 10 list of most influential brands (in terms of content marketing) on Linkedin below:

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