The document analyzes the Twitter performance of top soda brands during summer 2013, focusing on engagement metrics such as replies, retweets, and favorites. Mountain Dew emerged as a strong performer relative to its follower count, while Coca-Cola and Pepsi had the most viral and commented tweets. The analysis highlights shifts in social media strategies, with mid-tier brands improving their presence while market leaders struggle to maintain engagement.

1. TrueSocialMetrics
Soda wars:
top soda brands on Twitter
report by TrueSocialMetrics

2. 2012 2011 2007
1. Coca-cola Classic Coca-cola Classic Coca-cola Classic
2. Diet Coke Diet Coke Pepsi-cola
3. Pepsi-cola Pepsi-cola Diet Coke
4. Mountain Dew Mountain Dew Mountain Dew
5. Dr Pepper Dr Pepper Diet Pepsi
Soda Wars
The market domination by soda brands
In this study we’ll take a look at top 5 soda brands on Twitter at Summer (1 Jun' 13 - 31 Aug’ 13).
Using metrics like Conversation rate (comments per post), Amplification rate (shares per post), Applause
rate (likes per post) to assess and compare their Twitter accounts performance.
As long as we remember there was an intense rivalry between soda brands on the market, including an
endless epic battle between Coke and Pepsi. But in 2011 something unimaginable happened - the battle
was lost, by Pepsi to DietCoke, who took the second place on US market. Everyday this Soda War
unfolds on different battlefields and one of them is Social Media.

3. Soda Kings
So What was the best performing soda brand at Summer on Twitter?
The most important indicators of successful presence in social media is social interaction with brands’
posts - comments, shares and likes (or replies, retweets and favorites). Comparing all the brands
accounts to the Upper limit (maximum) value among all soda brands shows the leader of the Twitter
race and how much faster other participants should run to catch with the winner.

4. Soda Kings
But taking into account different number of followers for all brands, let’s look at the Relative Kings
nomination - engagement calculated per 10 000 followers:
Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Hail the Soda Kings of Twitter:
Mountain Dew has won 4 out 6 nominations both in relative and absolute terms. Which is a really
surprising result, taking into account that Mountain Dew has much less followers than big brands like
Coca Cola and Pepsi.

5. Follower Wars
Which leads us to a question: Does having the big number of followers garanties good interaction results
for the social media page? Lets look how the number of followers correlate (or doesn’t) with their activity
at Soda brands Twitter accounts.
For example, Coca-Cola has 8 times more followers than Mountain Dew.
But Mountain Dew has 4 times more replies and retweets per tweet and 5 times more favorites per
tweet than Coca-cola does.

6. Tweet Wars
Mountain Dew
tweets
We can see even visually that almost all Mountain Dew tweets demonstrate a good performance, while
among Coca Cola’s tweets there is only one superstar tweet and others just don’t get too much
interaction.
Coca Cola
tweets

7. Tweet Wars
What was the best performing Soda tweets at summer?
The most Viral tweet
and
The most Commented tweet
In absolute numbers the best tweets belong to
Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
The most Favorited Pepsi-tweet features a
contest with a chance to win tickets to Beyonce’
s show in NYC.
The most Viral and Commented tweet
nomination is monopolized by Coke, presenting
a positive viral video about the power of a
smile.
The most Favorited tweet

8. Tweet Wars
But taking into account different size of the accounts, which means the different number of followers, it
is also wise to calculate the winner in relative terms per 1 follower. So here are the best performing
tweets in relative terms per follower:
The Most Viral tweet The Most Commented tweet The Most Favorited tweet
The Most Viral tweet belongs to
Mountain Dew: it informs the
fans about the epic comeback of
their favorite flavour.
The Most Favorited tweet was
also made by Mountain,
featuring their awesome promo
videos.
The most Commented tweet
was written by Dr Pepper and
includes a contest with a cool
branded one-can-mini-fridge.
Based on both relative and absolute results, it looks like contests
and creative videos are a good receipt for top tweets.

9. Soda Benchmark
And how does an average soda brand tweet performed at Summer on Twitter?
Average Soda brand profile
Conversation rate: 3 replies/tweet
Amplification rate: 30 retweets/tweet
Applause rate: 19 favorites/tweet
Posting density: 71 tweets/month
#Fans: 576,246 fans
One more great way to compare
social media performance is using
benchmarking - an industry
standard. Which helps to
understand brand’s social media
performance in the context of the
overall market.

10. Market Wars
And, finally, the last question, how does Soda brands perform in social media comparing to their market
domination?
The Bottom-of-the-list brands hold the same position at Twitter presence, Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet
Mountain Dew doesn’t have a Twitter account, and Fanta has one, but the last their tweet was posted
in March 2013.
An interesting tendency to see The Middlers climbing higher up the Twitter peformance list, maybe
they are trying to win the market by gaining social media domination?
On the contrary, the Leaders of the market, cede their leadership on Twitter.

11. And may the force be with you
welcome@truesocialmetrics.com
Google+: +TrueSocialMetrics
Twitter: @2etag
Linkedin: truesocialmetrics-com
necromant2005@truesocialmetrics.com
tania.nikitenko@truesocialmetrics.com
Skype: necromant2005, tania_nikitenko
Gtalk: necromant2005, tania.nikitenko
Contact us