The short-list for this year’s Social Brands 100 has been announced and includes a roll call of top global brands including Starbucks, BBC, Ford, Red Bull, KLM, Virgin Atlantic, PayPal, Dell, and Xbox.

It isn’t all about big brands and how they are doing in social media. As with last year’s Social Brands 100 there is a good representation from smaller brands with the likes of Muddy Boots Foods, ARKive, Help for Heroes, Frugi, and Fifteen Cornwall all shortlisted. The full shortlist is below.

The 100 was whittled down from a long list of almost 300 brands, which were crowd sourced on Twitter in January and February this year. The 100 shortlisted brands are those that have proven themselves to be the best social performers.

It is going to be fascinating to see what has changed this past year. We’ve seen so much more social media activity in the last 12 months, with more brands experimenting while others have been getting into their stride, and the final results could prove very different to 2011.

There are, of course some brands, that haven’t made the 100 in 2012 while others have powered onto the list.

The 2011 Social Brands 100 was topped by Dell with second and third places going to Nike Plus and Starbucks. But in fourth place was UK mobile brand Giffgaff and Innocent Drinks also made last year’s top ten.

The 100 shortlisted brands will now go forward into final judging phase to be ranked from one to one hundred for the final Social Brands 100, which will be published on Tuesday May 29^th on The Wall and in Marketing magazine.

The diversity of the brands represented in the Social Brands 100 reflects the methodology used. This measures a brand’s success in creating valuable interactions in social spaces, something that brands of all size have the capability to do.

In the evaluation process to date each brand’s performance on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, Foursquare, brand-owned forums, and own blogs have been assessed by data analytics firm Brandwatch and Headstream’s own analytics team.

The analysis covers over twenty metrics, providing a detailed picture on; brand responsiveness, content effectiveness, cultivation of community, user content generation, and more.

Steve Sponder, head of agency at Headstream, the social agency behind Social Brands 100, said: “In the past twelve months the significance of social media, and the amount invested in it by brands, has grown hugely. Our aim in creating the Social Brands 100 is to help brand owners by providing a genuine benchmark for social performance across sectors, and the industry.

Working with Brandwatch we’ve created a methodology that analyses social performance in detail, and gets to the heart of which brands are creating win-win relationships between brands and people.” (Click to expand infographic).