Aha! See? You learn something new every day. I have to confess that I wasn’t familiar with Twitalyzer’s brand-specific tool until Eric Peterson (@ericpeterson) pointed it out to me Monday. (That’s what I get for not spending enough time playing with the free stuff.)
Anyway, “Twitalyzer: Brand” is essentially a brand-focused version of Twitalyzer that looks at a slightly more interesting set of parameters: Strength, Signal, Favor, Passion and Clout. How is this different from regular Twitalyzer? Well, think of Twitalyzer as a diagnostic tool for your activity on Twitter vs. Twitalyzer: Brand, which is more of a social mention monitoring tool for Twitter. (The first looks at what you do and say, while the latter looks at what others do and say in regards to your brand.)
Taking a closer look:
Brand Strength is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in Twitter. A very simple calculation (brand citations divided by Twitter Search’s data limit) we believe that for emerging brands that Brand Strength is an incredibly valuable measure.
Signal: In the context of brands, the signal-to-noise ratio describes the likelihood that a brand mention will be coupled with a URL or a hashtag of some kind. In both cases these URLs and hashtags may prove to be valuable for further research.
By our definition, “signal” will be counted for any update that includes at least one of the following elements:
- Links to URLs you can visit (defined by the use of “http://” followed by text)
- Hashtags you can explore and participate with (defined by the use of “#” followed by text)
If you take the sum of these two elements and divide that by the number of brand citations, you get the “signal to noise” ratio. For example, if your brand is cited four times and two of the citations contain links, your brand signal-to-noise ratio would be 50% (2 updates with signal / 4 total updates).
Brand Favor is the ratio of citations that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. Keep in mind that, at least for the time being, we are using a very basic set of rules for determining “positive” and “negative” and so this measure is not hard and fast. Still, in our research the results vet well with a more exhaustive examination of the content of Tweets, and thus we opt to present this measure.
Brand Passion is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly. For example, if you have a small group of very passionate brand advocates who talk about your products or brand all the time in Twitter you will have a higher Brand Passion score. Conversely if you have a 100% Brand Strength score and every one of the contributing updates are written by different people you will have a lower Brand Passion score.
Clout is often thought of as “special advantage, pull, or influence” in the real world, as in “the senator’s nephew has a lot of clout with his uncle.” In our usage, clout is the likelihood that other people will reference your brand in Twitter, as in “Man I love the TWITALYZER!” The more people who reference you, the higher your clout.
Our definition of clout is simply the number of references to you divided by the total number of possible references (as governed by the Twitter Search APIs).
Here are some examples of brands which may or may not have an official, active presence on Twitter but can still monitor what people on the Twitternets are saying about them:
BMW
PepsiCo
Harley Davidson
You may also notice that this version of Twitalyzer lists top influencers discussing each brand, which can be kind of useful for a community or brand manager. (Note that when I grabbed the screen shot of the PepsiCo brand, I was the third highest rated influencer discussing PepsiCo on Twitter after Lotay, and… you guessed it, Fox News. Ha!) 
And look! I’m the top influencer discussing Harley Davidson. How about that. Comes to show you that these two brands may not be getting the kind of volume of mentions you would expect on Twitter. Food for thought, big brands!
Have a great Wednesday, everyone.
Wow! I am SO happy this post was written, because I have been scheduling and rescheduling a talk with Eric Peterson about this product distinction between Twitalyzer and Twitalyzer: Brand. I didn’t get it until you wrote this. As usual, you cleared it up in one sentence: “The first looks at what you do and say, while the latter looks at what others do and say in regards to your brand.”
I’ve mentioned Twitalyzer in a couple of articles also because I feel it is a VERY valuable tool to help people understand the “secrets” that may be eluding them regarding using Twitter. I’ve already told Eric I’d like to integrate it with my upcoming Twitter app if possible – I want it to be easy for people to access. The most awesome thing is, right now these analytics are FREE for companies. Worth the small investment of time to run the analysis if you want some valuable social media insight that goes deeper than “buzz tracking” and gives instructional advice about your use of Twitter.
Right. Whether a company doesn’t yet have the budget to apply to a more robust (dare I say “professional” tool) or doesn’t yet know what it wants to do in the SM space (and Twitter), this helps set some parameters for success and some metrics to guide their execution. It’s an excellent first tool – and one that I would continue to use in parallel with other tools. This one’s a keeper.
For someone like me, this is a pretty powerful way to gauge a client’s brand manager or community manager’s effectiveness on Twitter. (If someone has been on the job for 6+ months and these scores are pretty low, they either need more training… or a different set of responsibilities.)