Social Media Listening. How Do Moms Talk About Your Brand?

Table of Contents

Introduction to Listening

Our Approach

Executive Summary: Key Takeaways

Section One:

Who’s Talking? What Do They Say?

Activity Analysis

Sentiment Analysis

Engagement Analysis

Section Two:

Mom Central Coupon Code Campaign

Tone of Coverage

Top Influencers

Ranking

Appendices:

Appendix A: Glossary of Terms

Appendix B: Detail for Top Ranked Blogs

Mom Central’s proprietary listening program provides the data, context and expertise to answer these crucial questions for your team. Our Research Team carefully reviews blogs, message boards, public forums, and other social media platforms, to deliver both data and key insights into trends, markets, and consumers needs and behavior. Our Approach and Reporting Whether identifying brand detractors worth responding to or brand enthusiasts worth following more closely, our team will give you the action step recommendations to listen and learn effectively from the influencers who matter. What is being said about you and who’s doing the talking?

Relevant conversations and the best ways to engage Moms within the Social Media space:

MC Red Alert program : detects negative conversation online and allows your team to respond in real time where appropriate.

MC Weekly Impact Reports: keep you updated on where and how organic conversation is occurring.

MC Viral Footprint Report : enables you to understand and contextualize your current position within the Mom market and the Social Media space as a whole.

MC Conversation Evaluations : aggregated monthly and allow you to strategically determine how best to engage Moms in conversation.

Our Approach To This Report This report summarizes our Mom Central Consulting (MCC) assessment of the “Viral Footprint” for one of our key clients as well as the impact of Mom Central’s word of mouth and social media campaign on client’s brand conversation sparked during January and February 2009. We structured this benchmark report to take you on a journey through our initial social media listening and analysis, penetrating behind the data to show what we found that identified influence and provided insight. In Section One, our MCC team shares ‘top sheet’ information: the quantitative and contextual data to provide a general synopsis of the brand within the complexities of the current social media landscape. We looked at and delved into the full volume of brand coverage and further refined it from our initial search criteria. For instance, we found and reviewed an original total of 3,668 unique posts about the brand online. This number increased to 4,258 when we added a look at all forum replies. We further examined sentiment as this proved to be the most useful metric in determining which blogs encourage positive conversations and participation in stories about our client’s brand during January and February 2009. Section Two deepens the analysis by refining the search to focus solely on Mom Central’s national campaign, which provides a stronger indication of the influence of Mom Central on brand coverage. This section provides both qualitative and quantitative analysis, along with comparisons with traditional coverage, to enable a greater understanding of the differences between the two. Using this refined sample, we then studied who was driving this coverage, their relationship to Mom Central and, in particular, the impact of Mom Central’s national campaign for the brand. Mom Central Consulting© 2009

Executive Summary

Establishing a Viral Footprint for Our Client: Over the past two months, our MCC team first honed listening outposts, relying on ten top measurement tools along with an overlay analysis of blogs, message boards, public forums, and other social media platforms, to deliver both data and key insights into trends, markets, and consumers needs and behavior.

Initially, Negative News Dominated Online Conversation:

Legal difficulties dominated most of the online conversation around our client, and attracted considerable volumes of impassioned, largely negative coverage . This significantly shaped how consumers perceived the client’s brand within the social media landscape.

Tone Shifted Dramatically Once Mom Central Campaigns Launched:

Prior to the launch of Mom Central Consulting’s viral outreach, blog tour, and live events for the client, overall tone of coverage for the client ran only 8% positive .

With the launch of the word of mouth campaign, positive tone for our client increased to 65% . This social media campaign attracted much more favorable coverage than general coverage on brand .

In addition to blogs, Moms receive positive messaging about the brand through Twitter and forums, reinforcing the brand’s social media strategic vision and highlighting patterns of intense levels of engagement.

Conversational Analysis Over Time MC Viral Outreach Sent to MC Community 2/12/09 Feb ‘09 2/6/09 2/13/09 Conversations around our client’s brand initially focused predominately on swirling legal issues, but then shifted dramatically once MCC began our social media strategy with a blog tour and viral campaign. With the shift in dialogue, the conversational tone changed from disparaging to positive, as indicated by the red and green events (neutral events depicted in grey). Social Media Coverage Includes Mostly Personal Stories Legal issues sway online conversation MC Blog Tour Outreach Sent to MC Community Positive coverage appears in Social Media Space 2/19/09 2/17/09 MC Outreach hits peak Traffic to client website begins to increase Highest proportion of positive coverage Facebook Pages Launch Highest Coverage of Negative Issues Highest Reach of client website in 30 days Jan ‘09 2/24/09 Mom Central Consulting© 2009

Mapping the Conversation Moms connect personally with this brand, most stating they remember it from their youth. Conversations involving this brand occurred primarily on these social media platforms: Twitter, Forums, and Blogs. The biggest challenge facing our client: to increase the visibility of their brand enthusiasts, join their ongoing conversations, and carefully watch the brand detractors.

Activity Analysis

Total Reach by Social Media Type

297,610 34,244 32,622 10,483 1,543 For this client, the vast majority of conversation in January and February occurred on Twitter (79%). This suggests it would be valuable to engage in a stronger brand presence on Twitter, along with a Twitter-specific campaign to reach the most active discussion for the brand. Moreover, Twitter should remain a key technology in their overall Social Media Strategy, in particular as a platform for quickly and easily disseminating messaging to Moms and their families. Our activity analysis shows the total number of unique commentators, critics, and those who took some type of action online. In reality, these numbers are dramatically higher, as these numbers do not take into account so-called “spectators” or “lurkers” who read online content but do not comment themselves. Mom Central Consulting© 2009

Activity Analysis

Total Share by Social Media Type

52% of the overall online posts to feature the brand took place on blogs, with a secondary key presence of shared images (23%, primarily from Flickr). A higher proportion of forum replies than original forum posts indicates higher levels of conversational engagement within the forums than the blogs (which had limited comments to the posts). A campaign within forums could yield higher level of conversation about the brand and upcoming events. A potential disadvantage of this approach is that brand detractors are generally more emotional and passionate in their stance than those who enjoy this product, and forums and chat-rooms prove a favored place to air their grievances. Mom Central Consulting© 2009

Mom Central Consulting Campaign

Tone of Overall Client Coverage vs. Mom Central Commentators

Prior to the introduction of the Mom Central Consulting campaign, overall tone of coverage for our client was only 8% positive. However, with the addition of the MCC viral outreach , positive tone for our client increased to 65% . Social media coverage involving the Mom Central Consulting campaign attracted much more favorable coverage than it did neutral or general coverage on our client. Overall Coverage Coverage With Mom Central Campaign Elements

We implement social media technology to activate and engage the Mom community both online and offline. Mom Central Consulting: the premier social media marketing and consulting firm with expertise and focus on Moms. Our vision test: will this make the world better for busy Moms and their kids? Who We Are

For More Information If you would like additional information about our Social Media Listening capabilities, please contact: Tracey Hope-Ross Vice President of Research Mom Central Consulting 617-244-3002 [email_address] Twitter: @thopeross Megan McManaman Research Manager Mom Central Consulting 617-244-3002 [email_address] Twitter: @megz79 Mom Central Consulting© 2009