Social Media Academy Publishes Corporate Vulnerability Research
PALO ALTO, Calif. – The Social Media Academy, an education and research institute, released its first corporate research report, exposing the social media status of six global enterprises including Dow Chemical, John Deere, NetApp, New York Life, Toyota, and Vodafone. The report was generated based exclusively on publicly available data by dissecting the social web. The data was aggregated from over one million people who publicly expressed their opinions and emotions in social networks, groups, communities, forums, blogs and other social media related places. The “Mind Share Report” demonstrates not only that social media is used by businesses across all industries but also that it poses a significant threat to companies who do not understand how publicly available information can be used by their competitors to create devastating effects.
The report provides insights into each company’s brand position, their customers’ sentiment, partner engagement and touches on the competitive threats to which the companies are exposed.
Social Media Academy founder Axel Schultze, an accomplished entrepreneur, book author and social media strategist said: “We had a pretty good understanding about the estimated outcome – yet it was shocking to realize how vulnerable businesses are that stay away from social media. The present case demonstrates how a small group of social media savvy consultants can compromise a global enterprise based on publicly available data.”
For each of the researched companies the report shows the customers web locations, some opinion leaders and influencers, depicts the sentiment of the discussions & posts and provides an overall impression as well as a detailed analysis as to what those customers like or dislike, what their needs are and what they are excited about. For instance Jenny Rairigh from Pennsylvania stated on Mar. 17, “Traded our Toyota for a Ford Edge. First American car purchase in a LONG time. Feeling patriotic.” In another example Janita Pavelka an influential networker with over 2,000 followers on Twitter commented, “Yes, we are moving to 21 acre farm and looking for a tractor. A used John Deere would be ideal I think. What do you think?” It underscores that companies either better service those customers or open a door for the competition.
Janice Chai-Chang, one of the students said: “We worked with over 10 different reporting tools mostly from new software companies focusing on social media analytics. Having said that, most of the analysis was performed using methods and models created by the Social Media Academy to eventually compile such a report.”
The methods, models and frameworks to create such a report are part of the standard education program of the academy and as such available to everybody. A 20 page executive summary as well as the 220 page report is available at http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/research .
