We're coming down to the wire in Mashable's Most Social Small Business challenge, our March Madness-style bracket to crown the nation's most socially savvy small company.
This month, Mashable's ace team of social media experts spent countless hours dissecting our field of 32 killer small businesses to find out whose social presence is the mightiest (and the most refined) in the social media landscape.
We've already judged businesses based on their Facebook and Twitter presences and their use of compelling imagery. For the Final Four, we evaluated each companies' overall brand voice. Does the business have a blog? If so, is its content engaging — more than simply lifeless blocks of text? Is the company actively communicating with its customers and users across various social media channels? Is its tone lively and personable, or stiff and corporate? In this round, each brand did a stellar job of effectively communicating with its respective audience, which made selecting two finalists especially difficult.
While it pains us to eliminate two more fantastic small businesses, there can only be one who ends up victorious. Read on to find out how the Final Four went down, and which two companies will be squaring off in the finals.

Image: Mashable composite
Beekman 1802 vs. Plated
Winner: Plated
Few companies in our initial field of 32 can match the hard-working and quirky persona that Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge have created for themselves and Beekman 1802 — traits the duo easily convey in their personally maintained Twitter feed and blog roll, as well as in their Cooking Channel reality show, "The Fabulous Beekman Boys." While their brand voice is, indeed, fabulous, the duo has a bit of an advantage building an online audience due to their quasi-celebrity status — something that Plated, the competition, has had to build from scratch.

We laud Plated for using social media to complement its service and product — in this case, chef-designed recipes and the fresh ingredients required to execute them. For Plated's customers, the brand's blog the dish acts as a useful and user-friendly explainer on a number of relevant subjects, such as frying eggs and selecting the right olive oil for a meal — tips that are useful even if you're not a Plated customer.
What's more, Plated produces highly stylized videos to go with these condensed how-tos. The brand connects with its audience well, and provides quality content and chef profiles that humanize and personalize the business, turning it into much more than simply a food-delivery service. The end result is a blog and Twitter feed that look and sound like a high-end food publication, personalized for Plated's customers.

"Our voice is quirky and knowledgeable, with some dry humor thrown in the mix," Plated tells Mashable. "As a food brand, we want to be an industry source, but we never want to seem uptight or exclusionary." With a job well done, Plated continues on to become one of our final contenders.
Blue Bottle Coffee vs. Sevenly
Winner: Sevenly
Sevenly underscores its values with the mantra "People Matter." We applaud Sevenly for reinforcing this belief by asking its followers to name what matters to them and then using those crowdsourced responses to discover new causes for the company to conquer.

Even when advertising its clothing, Sevenly drops in reminders about dreaming and altruism. In general, the apparel company doesn't pull punches with its content. At its core, Sevenly is a charity fundraising site, and its content mirrors and furthers the causes that it cares about. Whether that's bullying or third world hunger, the company's voice is consistently earnest and noble.
"We believe that people matter, and this shows in the way we interact with our customers," Sevenly tells Mashable. "We're like a friend — approachable and just as passionate about world change as they are!"
Post by Sevenly.
Blue Bottle is another kind of dedicated on Twitter. The Oakland-based roaster takes on any and all feedback without sounding stiff or trite — like a corporation might. Blue Bottle also reinforces the idea of community by giving its social media followers a panorama of the everyday happenings of the company, e.g., what it's like to be one of its baristas, or where Blue Bottle's coffee comes from. The roaster's friendly, informative voice welcomingly blurs the line between customer and company, a tenet other small businesses would be wise to emulate.
@mattwheeler You are indeed cool enough, if that was a concern.
— Blue Bottle Coffee (@bluebottleroast) February 25, 2014
@bluebottleroast that means a lot guys. I appreciate it.
— Matt Wheeler (@mattwheeler) February 25, 2014

Image: Mashable composite
We'll be announcing our final winner on Monday, March 18, and the winning business will receive a profile on Mashable. Stay tuned with the competition and tell us who you think should be crowned America's Most Social Small Business with the hashtag #SocialSmallBiz.
How does your small business leverage social media? Tell us in the comments