For years companies have struggled to harness the power of word of mouth consumer sentiment.  Focus groups, interviews and surveys have been utilized for years to help brands understand consumer feedback, however until now there hasn’t been a vehicle to capture word of mouth feedback in an unsolicited manor.  Enter social networks, places where consumers can share comments and opinions with friends and family, and where word of mouth sentiment takes on a whole new meaning.

The Socialization of your brand is here, that is, consumers now have control of the way they will interact with your firm, how they will conduct business, and how they will inform others of their experiences.  However, the socialization of your brand spans way beyond just listening to the chatter on social networks, but includes the coordination of content across multiple channels, it includes incorporating social feedback into corporate content on corporate websites, it includes measurement and attribution that stems beyond social channels, but incorporates all channels including web, e-mail, and direct mail as well as television.

Come to the Alterian Summit on August 17^th and 18^th, to learn what leading brands such as Dave and Busters, Western Union, and ZipCar are doing to incorporate the power of the social network into their overall branding, messaging and communication strategy.  Register at: www.alterian.com/NAETSummit2010.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Regardless of whether or not you understand the craze, the power of the Twilight franchise is undeniable. The Twilight: Eclipse movie was just released yesterday and is already breaking records. According to Box Office Mojo, Eclipse had the highest grossing Midnight Launch at $30 million (beating out Twilight: New Moon’s $23 million) and opened in the largest number of theaters ever. The Twilight Saga books have sold nearly 100 million copies worldwide and remain some of the best-selling books of the decade.

As rabid fans across the world line-up for this week’s release of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, we thought it would be fun to use Alterian SM2 to analyze the conversations around this summer’s hottest debate:

Who is winning the Battle of the Supernatural Heartthrobs – Edward or Jacob?

DEMOGRAPHICS

If you think that it’s only Tweens and Teenage girls who are chattering about Twilight, think again. Our analysis found that the largest Age Group talking about Team Edward and Team Jacob is 25-34 years old. The second largest age-group was Under 18.

Only a small subset of the conversations are tagged with Age data, either because the author has not identified their age, or because that meta-data is not available within that medium (ie Twitter). However, it’s an interesting glimpse into the fan base, that probably wouldn’t surprise Twilight author, Stephenie Meyer. As she told About.com in 2008, "I had a very specific audience, and it was a 29-year-old mother of three."

What might surprise Stephenie Meyer and certainly surprised us, was the number of males participating in the conversations. 40% of those talking about Team Jacob were Male, while 42% of those talking about Team Edward were Male.

WORD CLOUDS

SENTIMENT

Team Edward is the leader in terms of Sentiment Analysis with 28% of conversations marked as positive and 13% of conversation marked as negative, while Team Jacob had 26% positive and 15% negative comments.

VOLUME

It is pretty much neck-and-neck, but Team Edward has edged out Team Jacob again with the greatest number of total mentions. Interestingly, Team Jacob did jump ahead on the movie’s opening day.

THE WINNER 

Well kids, (and adults apparently) after looking at the data, we have to say that Team Edward appears to be the front-runner in the Battle of the Supernatural Heartthrobs: Eclipse Edition. Will Team Jacob fare better during the Breaking Dawn release?

Only time will tell…

**** We analyzed the conversations happening around Jacob and Edward from June 1st 2010 to July 1st 2010 using our Social Media Monitoring tool – Alterian SM2.