Small businesses aren’t the only ones struggling to master social media these days. According to one new study, many of the world’s biggest brands are failing to use Facebook to its full potential by choosing not to actively engage with the millions of consumers and business owners.

Wong Doody Crandall and Wiener, a marketing agency with offices in Seattle and Culver City, California, analyzed the Facebook strategies of the 100 most valuable global brands and found that 16 still haven’t joined the social network.

Those who have created an official Facebook page are certainly gaining strong followings, with the average brand having just over 1.8 million fans, but these companies could potentially do even better by rethinking their social-media strategy.

While the vast majority of these brands (about 90 percent) allow fans to comment on the company page, the study found that just 66 percent actively reply to these posts. That means that roughly 45 of the 100 biggest brands are missing the opportunity to engage with their users on Facebook.

“Big companies absolutely need to get more engaged, but they are terrified of these public forums,” said Lon Safko, co-author of The Social Media Bible and a consultant to several of the companies on this list. “These companies are usually at the whim of the stock market and are worried about saying something wrong that causes stocks to go haywire.”

Instead, many companies choose to play it safe. The average brand on the list posts updates to their Facebook page 24 times a month, or less than once a day. And most of the brands (88 percent) stick to posting videos, a strategy Safko describes as “very effective one-way conversation,” but a lousy way to achieve the two-way engagement that users are accustomed to elsewhere on Facebook.

Credit Suisse, for example, averages less than one update each week, posts mostly video content, and does not respond to users when they comment. Not surprisingly then, this company, which ranks as the 80th most valuable brand in the world, currently has just 5,655 fans on Facebook, a paltry amount compared with the millions of fans following other companies on the list like Starbucks and McDonald’s.

Of course, engaging with users on Facebook is about more than building up fans and winning a popularity contest. As Safko explains, two-way communication is vital for companies looking to build trust, generate feedback on initiatives, and even to get out in front of issues and concerns raised by the public.

Indeed, the need for engagement is just as true for brands looking to improve business-to-consumer relationships as it is for those building business-to-business relationships.

“There is virtually no difference between trying to convince a consumer to buy your product online and trying to get a business to do so. Both require the company to be responsive,” Safko said. “The second ‘B’ in B2B is really just a ‘C’.”

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