We wanted to update our tracking of the Swine Flu using the Vitrue SMI as we were seeing rapid growth of people talking about swine flu on the social web. Last week we saw some steady growth in online conversations. However, over the weekend there was a very dramatic spike in the score as swine flu reached new heights - one of the largest SMI scores we have seen to date of 23,100. To put in some context, some of the highest terms we have seen to date are Obama at 12,400 and now Oprah reaching 18,100. While the term “love” scores 57,900.
Today the SMI score for swine flue did start to decline and today registers 12,600. We did also see an AllFacebook post today which also illustrated very similar trends in terms of volume of discussion of Facebook alone.
Vitrue SMI Report for Swine Flu
Facebook Lexicon Data on Swine Flu
We also wanted to share some additional reporting on brands consumers in the news in relation to the discussions. as cited in a recent “Ad Age” article, many consumer brands are getting a lot of attention and we wanted to see how they were stacking up on the social web. As of today, Tamiflu registered a 25.7 while Purell was 8.7 and Clorox Wipes a 1.4. Not huge SMI scores but on the radar.
As the pork industry is also trying to re-frame the conversation to be H1N1 and not swine flu, we wanted to see how some popular pork brands were stacking up. We find Smithfiled with an SMI of 13.3, Hartfied with an SMI of 8.56 and Hormel at 2.19. Again, relatively low SMI scores - illustrating social media would be a great vehicle for these brands to help steer conversation and educate consumers about the facts and risks as we move through this outbreak.
Great post! I read your other posts as well and I subscribed to your RSS Feed!