@Goodyear_UK is top social tyre brand

Another leading name may be the top brand in terms of both prominence and sentiment according to our annual online brand equity survey (see ‘Michelin top again, but is lead eroding?’ for more on this), however there is a new top social tyre brand in town. A year after we kicked off our coverage and analysis of this segment in last years’s e-Commerce feature, Goodyear has shown itself to not only be the faster riser, but also the top overall tyre brand when it comes to social media influence.

At the time of going to press Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that the leading social network has just broken the 1 billion member mark. In 2006 it was just 25 million. Twitter’s latest user count comes in at 500 million and newcomers Foursquare and Pinterest are both after their own piece of the social networking pie. Whatever happens with Facebook’s plummeting share price (down to about $22 (£17) from a starting price of $38), canny companies know that influence is the real currency of the social networks.

Tyre manufacturers ramp up social media activities

Last year’s analysis highlighted the apparent underpreparedness of many of the biggest names in the industry, with much smaller operations able to score higher in this niche. But this analysis also warned that it would not be long before the tyre majors upped their game, something that turns out to have been exactly right with all but one of the leading tyre brands attaining improved scores compared with the same period last year.

As we have seen @Goodyear_UK (the official Twitter account for the Goodyear brand in Britain) flew up four places from fifth in the last survey to top this time around. This was based on the fastest ascendancy of any brand measured – a 22 point improvement year-on-year – which itself seems to have sprung from the best parity between our two social metrics (59 and 44 for Klout and Peerindex respectively) and best individual scores in the pack. In layman’s terms what this suggests is that whichever way you choose to measure it, Goodyear have had a strong year in terms of generating social network influence.

Second place @MichelinTyres haven’t had a bad time of it either. Growth may not have been so fast (average impact is up just 0.5 point compared with the last survey), but there brand is still a couple of points clear of third place. That said, it is worth pointing out that while there are 9.5 points between first and second place, there are only 5 points between second and fifth meaning a) competition is close; and b) there is a good chance there will be more changes next year.

Third place @PirelliUK also have much be pleased with. Overall average impact is up 10 points year-on-year and this equates to a one place improvement, with the company moving on up from fourth to third.

However, just 0.5 points behind in fourth place is @ContiUK. First placed last year, the result may be disappointing for the German manufacturer, which is obviously strong in social media, but has lost out due the chasm between its Klout measured result and it PeerIndex score, which suggests that some areas of its social strategy are stronger than others.

Two points behind in fifth place, @DunlopLive was the second fastest faller, sliding two places from third last year. Again a big gap between its Klout and PeerIndex marks led to the decline.

Stable in sixth place, @BridgestoneTyre suffered a similar fate, but with an overall average influence score of 27 it is some 10 points off the pace, which suggests there is some work to do.

@tyrepress still top

Tyres & Accessories’ @tyrepress twitter handle continues to hold its own in our study of online tyre media, topping the chart for the second year in a row. However with our average impact falling eight points, the gap between first and second place has narrowed significantly suggesting. Once more it was the disparity between Klout and PeerIndex results which let us down – sounds like there is some learning to do.

Both surveys were conducted by averaging the scores of two of the leading social media influence measuring companies Klout and PeerIndex. Although we refer to twitter handles – a veritable must in social media circles – both companies actually measure a much wider range of social data. Details were correct at the time of the same, which was 15 August 2012. See tables for complete details of the results of both studies.