The social media services company Vitrue recently released their list of the most social brands of 2008. Social brands were defined as those with the most mentions in social networking, blogging and microblogging sites. They used a "social media index" to track these mentions but did not differentiate between positive and negative conversations. The purpose of the index is to capture a brand's share of voice on the web. The top 10 brands/branded products were the iPhone, CNN, Apple, Disney, Xbox, Starbucks, iPod, MTV, Sony and Dell. View the full list here.

There are three lessons associations can take from these big brands/products to help generate more mentions in social media venues for their groups: