Twitter Measurement – Module 8

GMI has two major Twitter feeds – General Mills, and General Mills Careers. For this post, we’ll focus on the General Mills Twitter feed, which can be viewed at https://twitter.com/GeneralMills. We will compare GMI’s feed to the primary Kellogg feed located at https://twitter.com/Kelloggs_US.

In my view, this feed is used to capitalize on two major outlets/ returns for the company, those are:

   1.)  Direct interactions with customers

   2.)  Pushing marketing and product related material.

For example, this contrast presents itself immediately upon observing the feeds latest tweets:

One post wishes all those on the east coast safety during Hurricane Sandy, while the preceding post helps a customer that “needs to find Count Chocula cereal for reals!” locate some.

Personally, I think we are reaching and engaging our target audience (by interacting with them directly), as well as making sure the content is relevant (i.e. cereal related material / marketing).

When we compare our Twitter feed with that of Kellogg’s, (our largest direct competitor), we see some marked differences arise.

On Twitter Counter, we can see that GMI has several thousand more followers over the past three months (and that number is increasing) when compared to Kellogg’s feed.

Screen 1

We can also see that GMI has a better re-tweet rank than that of Kellogg’s.

Screen 2 and 3

Finally, we can see that GMI’s and Kellogg’s BrandTweet stats are relatively similar. 

Screen 4 and 5

When we view the two feeds closely, we can see many similarities in their content and conversations. Both companies market product, interact with customers, and discuss events occurring locally (i.e. The World Series). I would not, however, that Kellogg’s recent tweets seem a little less “company focused,” in that they seem to be discussing the World Series rather heavily as of late.

In the end, I feel that GMI is on a much more company/customer-focused utilization of Twitter. While we do seem to acknowledge and discuss external events (i.e. Hurricane Sandy), our feed is eccentrically customer and product focused when compared to our biggest competitor. I would advise GMI to continue to interact directly with customers, and possibly expand the number of feeds to include unique feeds for each region we serve (i.e. U.S., UK, etc.)