Automaker Social Mind Over Matter - Part 3

Found this interesting blog entry about a Forrester Automaker + Social Network study.  Social Networks Well Suited to Automaker Online Marketing.  I totally agree that car makers, like many big ticket consumer product makers, are well suited to Social Network and Influence Marketing.  But what was really interesting to me was some of the Forrester finding appear to differ from my own research.

Some of Forrester's findings include:

1. Mazda, Honda, Pontiac, Hyundai, and Jeep owners are the most active. These brands have proportionally more young customers than most of the other brands.
2. Chrysler, Toyota, Dodge, Buick, Subaru, and Saturn fall in the middle.
   
3. Ford, Nissan, Chevrolet, GMC, and Mercury owners are touched least by social media, partly because they attract older consumers. Even so, many of their owners are still active in some form of online social behavior.
   

My research, which granted is limited to Social Bookmarking, came up with very different results:

1. GM, Ford, BMW and Mercedes, all received more attention from the social bookmarking community than their market share.
2. Volkswagen is right in the middle, with a market share and level of attention that match.
3. Toyota, Chrysler, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai, did not receive a level of attention from the social bookmarking community that reflects their market share.

Please note I've not read the full report yet, so take my comparison with a grain of salt.

Automaker Social Mind Over Matter – Part 2

I broke the social bookmarking activity, from my prior post, down into 3 major categories: votes/ratings, comments and stories. The following chart shows a comparative breakdown along with an industry average for the automakers. (Click the bar chart to enlarge.)



Ratings – comment agrees/disagrees + story rating/voting. Why did I put these together? They point to a clear user profile, the timid or less involved critic (part collector part critic). This group is in the middle of the influence food chain. On average nearly 72% of the activity around Automakers in the social bookmaking world came in the form of votes/ratings.

Comments – comments on a story or in response to other comments on a story. The more vocal critic. This group is further up the influencer food chain. Just 11% of the activity was in the form of discussions and comments.

Stories – blog entries, videos, podcasts and web pages that have received bookmarking attention. The people behind the blog entries, videos, etc are the content creators. Top of the influence food chain.

Note, the bookmarking itself was done by Collectors. These are the people that took the a moment to bookmark the stories. Collectors tend to be lower on the influence food chain. 17% of the Automaker related activity in the social bookmarking world was the collection of new content.