1. The
Conversation
Index
Volume5

3. The Conversation Index
Volume 5

4. Get your digital copy
TheConversationIndex.com
TheConversationIndex.co.uk
TheConversationIndex.de

5. #BVINDEX5
3
Table of Contents
What to expect........................................................................................................................................ 6
What we’ve found.................................................................................................................................... 9
Stock prices move with Twitter mentions...................................................................................................... 10
Twitter evolves from portal to destination..................................................................................................... 12
Brands get more tweets, but less of the conversation is about them................................................................. 16
Search interest doesn’t correlate to Twitter mentions, stock performance, or TV & radio coverage........................ 20
The bottom line? Social and “the real world” are becoming inextricable........................................................... 24
The methodology behind The Conversation Index Volume 5 / Contributors...................................................... 27
Contact us............................................................................................................................................... 28
About Bazaarvoice ................................................................................................................................... 31

6. 4
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
What to expect
We’re used to hearing social discussed as if it’s some kind of vast parallel universe, free of the cause and
effect of “the real world.” This view gets at least one thing right: the social universe is vast, and like our
physical universe, mostly unexplored. But where does social intersect with our everyday experiences,
in life and in business? How do social and the real world affect and reflect one another on a larger scale?
We’re starting to see patterns emerge that tell us that social refuses to contain itself; its effects are spilling
into the real world nearly everywhere we look: in politics, innovation, education, and of course, business
and the economy.
In this volume of The Conversation Index, we ride along the collision course of social data, traditional
media, and business performance, with an emphasis on Twitter. With over half a billion active users, and
an average of 340 million tweets per day, Twitter is like a social seismograph for the entire world. We
worked with enterprise social data provider Gnip to acquire 26 million tweets for this analysis. Every
tweet in this research mentioned at least one of 13 brands from the BrandZ™ Global 100 Brands list,
including Adidas, Clinique, Colgate, Gillette, Hugo Boss, Nike, Pampers, Pepsi, Ralph Lauren, Samsung,
Intel, Tesco, and Sony.

7. #BVINDEX5
We compare, contrast, and combine those 26 million tweets with over 8,000 TV and radio mentions, 17 months
of stock price data, more than a year and a half of Google search interest data, and 270,000 pieces of consumer-
generated content from online reviews—all for the same 13 brands.
This Index reveals some fascinating patterns and relationships at the intersections of all these data streams, as
well as a few places where we found—counterintuitively—no correlations at all.
Social data offers a critical new stream of insights for brands and the industry. The social ecosystem is broad;
conversations happen on brand sites and on social channels, across an ever-increasing set of devices. As social
content and social data expands, so does the scope of our knowledge about how it both influences and mirrors
activity across the digital and physical worlds. Sharing these insights with our clients and the industry is the
driving force behind The Conversation Index. We’re excited to share this edition with you.
Erin Nelson (@erinclaire)
Chief Marketing Officer, Bazaarvoice
5

9. #BVINDEX5
7
What we’ve found
Here’s what we uncovered:
• Twitter volume for brand mentions is highly correlated with stock price
• Twitter is becoming a destination, not just a portal
• Brand mentions in Twitter lag behind overall Twitter growth
• Search interest for brands doesn’t correlate to Twitter mentions, stock performance, or TV and radio coverage

10. 8
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
Stock prices move
with Twitter mentions
It is becoming clear that both quantitative and qualitative
analysis of social data can be useful for establishing
relationships and in predicting real-world events. Stock
performance for the brands in this analysis increased and
decreased in line with the fluctuating volume of tweets about
these brands. This is a remarkably high positive correlation
of .91, meaning that high Twitter volume tends to coincide
with high closing price, and vice versa. The same things that
make stocks move upward tend to make social chatter spike
(such as well-received product announcements and high-
profile executive hires). But there’s a piece of this finding that’s
counterintuitive. Shouldn’t the same factors that send a stock
downward (such as a lawsuit, product flop, or poor earnings
call) be just as likely to trigger a bump in conversations about
the brand? Apparently not. It seems that Twitter users buzz
more about brands as they perform well on the exchanges,
but quiet down a bit as their stocks fall.
Other analyses have shown social data to reflect economic
factors. Product reviews mention price more when consumer
confidence is low (a -.66 correlation).1
In February 2009,
when consumer confidence hit its lowest point, mentions
of price hit their highest point, accounting for 11.5% of all
US reviews. When we map these price references to the
Dow Jones Industrial Average, an even stronger negative
correlation (-.68) is revealed. Price mentions fall as the Dow
average rises, and they rise as the Dow falls. And a 2010 study
by academic researchers at Indiana University and University
of Manchester found that measuring select dimensions of
“Twitter mood” can be 86.7% accurate in “predicting the up
and down changes in the closing values” of the Dow Jones
Industrial Average.2
As more of these predictive relationships
are discovered and subject to rigorous testing, social data
will be incorporated into things like demand forecasting and
product release timing.
1
The Conversation Index Volume 1.
2
http://www.relevantdata.com/pdfs/IUStudy.pdf

11. 9
#BVINDEX5
2011 2012
AVERAGEBRANDMENTIONSONTWITTER(inthousands)
AVERAGECLOSINGPRICE
CLOSING PRICE CORRELATES TO TWITTER BRAND MENTIONS
JAN
60
50
70
80
90
100
10
20
30
40
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
190
200
60
50
70
80
90
100
10
20
30
40
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
190
200
FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUNJUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
121.1
45.8
44.7
51.0
62.4
68.1
62.2 60.9
68.2
73.4
80.8
74.8
88.4
99.7
107.1
124.5
133.7
144.8
154.3
125.6
130.9 130.9 131.4 129.9 129.9
134.2 131.4 132.9 135.4 136.9
142.6
155.5
159.2
180.2
173.7
156.6
stock performance and Twitter mentions.

12. Twitter evolves from
portal to destination
As Twitter grows, it is becoming a destination rather than a
portal or midpoint. People are increasingly going to Twitter
for the experience it delivers — conversation and timely
information — not as an intermediate step between them and
what they’re really after. And they’re staying longer. But Twitter
is used much differently than other social and web channels,
and its data should be used differently, too.
For example, we compared online search terms that include
“Adidas” to mentions of “Adidas” on Twitter. Since search takes
place when someone is looking for specific information, the
terms that appear during a search vary greatly from other types
of content. Top “Adidas” search terms tend to be at the level
of product lines and categories, and of the top 20 searches,
only three are for specific products. The top 20 search terms
associated with “Adidas” also included the names of two
competing brands, indicating that comparison shopping
begins in the search box.
10
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5

13. 11
#BVINDEX5
Twitter users tend to reveal their personal interactions with
or in relation to brands. When we dig into what people on
Twitter are saying about Adidas, they mention what “new”
Adidas products they’re wearing “today,” and use words such
as “my” and “I.” Some of the top Twitter terms associated
with Adidas reference specific campaigns, like the hashtag
“#branch309adidasday.” Businesses interested in doing
their own text analysis on tweets should think of it as a way
to roughly gauge consumer response to news, events,
campaigns, and as a method of identifying enthusiastic
customer advocates. But they will have to develop repeatable
methods of separating relevant, authentic tweets from the
abundance of noise.
In contrast to search and Twitter language, reviews tend to
focus on specific product qualities (“light,” “looks,” “fits,”
“comfortable”), adjectives (“awesome,” “great,” “different,”
“perfect”), and other expressions of sentiment (“love,”
“disappointed,” “happy,” “recommend”). Since every single
review is tied to a specific product, they are a rich social data
source for product-level insights. In fact, 12% of all reviews
include product suggestions, and a fifth of all four-star reviews
provide this type of feedback.3
Use search patterns to optimize your brand’s search
engine marketing and optimization strategies.
And use the words you find in tweets about your brand when
you tweet about your brand. Optimize your marketing copy by
using the language of your top reviewers—or better yet, quote
them. When you reflect what consumers say online in your
own social efforts, you’ll create content that’s more shareable.
Quantify this over time by testing optimized tweets, UGC-
rich copy, and SEM strategies derived from the actual terms
people use when searching for your brand and products,
and compare each to the non-optimized, marketing-derived
alternative.
Tweets that mention brands are using fewer links over time.
In the last half of 2010, 68% of tweets that mentioned brands
also had links in them. In all of 2011, the number dropped
to 55%. In the first half of 2012, the number drops further to
51%, signaling a clear downturn in link usage. This means
3
The Conversation Index Volume 3.

14. 12
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
12
TIME ON TWITTER AND PAGES PER VISIT ARE GROWING
AU
G
SEP
SEP
2010 2011
Source: COMPETE.COM
2012
OCT
N
OV
DEC
JA
N
FEB
M
A
R
A
PR
M
AY
JU
N
JU
L
AU
G
AU
G
OCT
N
OV
DEC
JA
N
FEB
M
A
R
A
PR
M
AY
JU
N
JU
L
400
420
440
460
480
500
520
540
560
TIMEONSITE(inseconds)
PAGESPERVISIT
580
600
620
640
660
680
700
720
740
760
780
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Time on site (in seconds)
Pages per visit
448
425
428
421
423
458
434
456
467
457
486
528
583
563
566
593
578
579
544
551
583
602
684
714
10.1 9.9
7.7 7.6
8.1 8.4
7.4 7.4
6.6 6.5
6.9
8.1 8.0
8.4
9.7
10.3 10.4
9.9
10.8
12.0
12.9
15.1 15.2
7.3
666
14.1

15. 13
#BVINDEX5
that content about brands on Twitter is becoming increasingly
conversational, and less transactional. Users are talking about
brands instead of just pointing to what they bought or want to
buy with a link to external sites.
External data confirms this. Twitter users are spending more time
on Twitter, and visiting many more pages within Twitter.com
while they’re there. According to data from Compete.com, from
2010 to 2011, there was a 19.8% increase in average time on site;
in 2011 to 2012, so far, there is a 19.7% increase in time on site.
And average pages per visit decreased 9% from 2010 to 2011,
but increased by an incredible 58.7% from 2011 to 2012.
Pages per visit
increased by an
incredible 58.7%
from 2011 to 2012

16. 14
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
14
Brands get more
tweets, but less of
the conversation is
about them
The volume of tweets per day has grown 143% from 2011
to 2012; however, mentions of brands on Twitter have only
grown 113% in the same period. To maintain and improve
Twitter share of conversation, brands should analyze their data
to find which tweets are generating positive conversation
about them, emulate these tweets, and continuously optimize
and add fresh content.
Original tweets about brands are declining over time,
as retweeted brand mentions are rising.
In other words, more and more content is simply repeated
verbatim or with little alteration from the original source. In
2010, 85% of brand mentions on Twitter were original, and
15% were retweets. In 2011, 18% of brand mentions were
retweets. So far in 2012, 22% of all brand mentions on Twitter
have been retweets, and only 78% of brand mentions
are original.
There’s good news and bad news for brands in this data.
The increase of brand mentions overall means there is more
data to learn your customers’ thoughts about you, but as the
retweet analysis shows, that data is increasingly redundant.
Retweets are becoming a bigger part of the Twitter brand
story, but a retweet is a weaker social signal than an original
tweet from, say, an advocate or detractor. Retweets also
contain less original data, and may not represent the users
behind them as much as a wholly original tweet from the same
user. Our research also found that some of the most retweeted
content is the work of automated bots (nonhuman scripts)
and spammers that have set up networks of auto-retweeting
accounts to spread their inauthentic messages across the
social web as quickly as possible before Twitter shuts them
down. Altogether, this means that businesses need to apply
more scrutiny to Twitter data. Perform spot checks, weight and
filter your metrics to place less emphasis on retweets about
your brand if you find they are far more noise than signal.

17. #BVINDEX5
15
2010 2011 2012
BRAND MENTIONS VOLUME GROWING; ORIGINAL TWEETS DECLINING
500
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1000
1500
AGGREGATEOFBRANDMENTIONS(inthousands)
ORIGINALTWEETS(i.e.,notretweets)
2000
2500
JU
L
AU
G
SEP
OCT
N
OV
DEC
JU
L
AU
G
SEP
OCT
N
OV
DEC
JA
N
FEB
M
A
R
A
PR
M
AY
JU
N
JA
N
FEB
M
A
R
A
PR
M
AY
JU
N
537,332
539,864
536,894
615,218
638,983
587,469
681,455
695,041
784,875
879,132
1,031,875
919,238
897,434
967,993
1,039,532
1,130,981
1,067,332
1,247,513
1,372,390
1,507,232
1,724,314
1,829,344
2,229,620
1,977,783
78% original tweets in 2012 (as of June),
down from 82% in 2011 and 85% in the
second half of 2010.

18. 16
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
PERCENTAGE OF BRAND MENTIONS CONTAINING LINKS IS DECLINING
AU
G
SEP
SEP
2010 2011 2012
OCT
N
OV
DEC
JA
N
FEB
M
A
R
A
PR
M
AY
JU
N
JU
L
AU
G
OCT
N
OV
DEC
JA
N
FEB
M
A
R
A
PR
M
AY
JU
N
JU
L
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
PERCENTAGEOFTWEETSWITHLINKS
537,332
539,864
536,894
615,218
638,983
587,469
681,455
695,041
784,875
,879132
1,031,875
919,238
897,434
967,993
1,039,532
1,130,981
1,067,332
1,247,513
1,372,390
1,507,232
1,724,314
1,829,344
2,229,620
JU
L
1,977,783
AGGREGATEOFBRANDMENTIONS(inthousands)
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
51% of tweets contain links in 2012
(as of July), down from 55% in 2011
and 68% in the second half of 2010.
994,291

19. #BVINDEX5
17
The increase in retweets also illustrates that news travels faster
than ever before—and that a single piece of content can have
major consequences for the companies involved. In fact,
many of the most retweeted messages about brands in our
analysis were highly negative in sentiment, and concerned
things like scandals, lawsuits, and negative press coverage.
Now is the time to prepare social crisis communications plans
if you haven’t already.
It’s also important for brands to get to know the real people
that are creating the ripple effect for their brand across the
network (and, as this Index shows, beyond) by creating
consistently retweetable content—they are the greatest
distributors of social currency. Reach them, highlight, and
promote them if they are advocates, and address their
concerns if they are detractors. Determine whether they are
influential in other channels: Are they a top reviewer as well?
Give them exclusive access: insider news, early product
testing, event invitations, and the like. Make them feel like
a part of your brand instead of a spectator, and in all cases,
locate them as soon as possible.

20. 18
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
Search interest doesn’t
correlate to Twitter
mentions, stock
performance, or TV and
radio coverage
While it may seem that people tweet what’s top of mind, they’re
not tweeting about what they’re searching for. While we saw
this across the board, we’ll use Clinique as an example. Twitter
mentions for “Clinique” spike in April 2011, August 2011, and
March through June 2012. During these Twitter peaks, however,
we saw either no correlation with search interest or a decline in
search interest (search interest is Google’s normalized indicator
of “the likelihood of a random user to search for a particular
search term” on a 0-100 scale). When we compared the stock
performance of the brands in this analysis to search interest for
the same period in time, we found no correlation.
Unpaid
coverage
doesn’t
drive much
search activity

21. 19
#BVINDEX5

22. 20
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
20112012
FOLLOWER GROWTH FOR USERS THAT MENTION BRANDS
NETWORKS GROWING FOR USERS THAT MENTION BRANDS
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
1200
1300
1400
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000
Average Twitter followers per user
1566
1309
1287
1161
1299
1183
1041
1087
1155
1177
1194
1067
1067
1208
1130
993
1097
995

23. 21
#BVINDEX5
4
http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7731-how-can-marketers-use-offline-ads-to-drive-people-online
We analyzed 8,000 brand mentions in closed captioning
data from television broadcasts (most TV ads are not closed-
captioned, so ad mentions are not reflected in this data), and
radio transcripts (this data does include ads) to determine
whether brands being mentioned in traditional media saw a
corresponding bump in search interest. Surprisingly, they do
not. This suggests that unpaid coverage (news pieces, etc.)
doesn’t drive much search activity, but findings from a study by
Efficient Frontier show television ad campaigns correlating to
a 60%-80% bump in brand-name search during the life of the
campaign.4
So, while unpaid coverage in traditional media
may be a great awareness mechanism, it’s not driving the
consumer search behavior many businesses are craving.
For that, television ads still seem to do the trick.
Brand
advocates
and detractors
have wider
audiences in
2012

24. 22
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
The bottom line? Social
and “the real world” are
becoming inextricable
The borders between “social” and “the real world” are
difficult to pinpoint, but they’re being redrawn in some places,
and eliminated in others. Consider this: Just a few years ago,
the terms “in-store” and “online” gave us a clear, differentiated
way to talk about channels. But as channels converged, and
consumers began to use the mobile web while in the physical
aisles, the terms no longer accurately described the way
that people actually shop. The same is true of social—and
everything it touches.
Convergence is a new concept for many companies, but it’s
actually nothing new in practice. In fact, it’s the “place” we’ve
called home since 2005. Reviews, Q&A, and stories are all
forms of earned social content that live on owned digital real
estate. And while we were helping clients across the globe
integrate owned and earned, Twitter launched, Facebook
opened to the public, and search became more and more
social. Channels blossomed, and are now converging. Data
exploded in volume and then fragmented, and is now coming
together again. Convergence will soon cease to be the
exception, and will become the rule, just as product reviews
on company websites were once the exception.
Social’s connection to the world around us is has been
established in some areas, cannot be found in others, and has
yet to be discovered or quantified in most. But it’s far better
for businesses to look for it everywhere and find it only in
some areas, than for them to stumble over it where they least
expected it.

25. 23
#BVINDEX5

26. 24
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5

27. 25
#BVINDEX5
25
The methodology behind
The Conversation Index Volume 5
Volume 5 is based on an analysis of social content and other data surrounding 13 brands appearing on the BrandZ™
Top 100 Global Brands list, which ranks the “most valuable global brands” of 2012. The brands analyzed are Adidas,
Clinique, Colgate, Gillette, Hugo Boss, Nike, Pampers, Pepsi, Ralph Lauren, Samsung, Intel, Tesco, and Sony.
The data includes 26,000,000 tweets, over 8,000 TV and radio mentions, 17 months of stock price data from relevant
exchanges, more than a year and a half of Google search data, and 270,000 pieces of authentic user-generated
content from online reviews across the vast Bazaarvoice network.
Contributors
Column Five Media created the visualizations for The Conversation Index Vol. 5.
columnfivemedia.com

28. 26
THE CONVERSATION INDEX VOLUME 5
Contact us
Contact us to see how we help brands gain invaluable consumer and product
insights by putting consumer conversations at the heart of their organizations.
United States: (866) 522-9227
bazaarvoice.com
United Kingdom: +44 (0) 208.080.1100
bazaarvoice.co.uk
France: +33 1 56 60 54 45
bazaarvoice.fr
Germany: +49.89.24218508
bazaarvoice.de
Netherlands: +31.20.301.2169
Australia / Asia-Pacific: +61.2.9362.2200
Sweden:
San Francisco:
+46.8.463.1083
(866) 345-1461

29. #BVINDEX5

31. 29
About Bazaarvoice
Bazaarvoice brings the voice of customers to the center of business strategy, transforming business performance for nearly
2,000 clients globally, including over half of the Internet Retailer 500 list of the world’s largest retailers, over
20 percent of the Fortune 500, and over one-third of the Fortune 100 brands. Bazaarvoice social software helps clients
like Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, Travelocity, and USAA create social communities on their brand
websites and Facebook pages where customers can engage in conversations. These conversations can be syndicated
across Bazaarvoice’s global network of client websites and mobile devices, making the user-generated content that digital
consumers trust accessible at multiple points of purchase. Through Bazaarvoice, manufacturers can also connect directly
with consumers on retail sites to answer questions and respond to reviews about their products. The social data derived
from online word of mouth translates into actionable insights that improve marketing, sales, customer service, and product
development. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Bazaarvoice has offices in Amsterdam, London, Munich, New York, Paris,
San Francisco, Stockholm, and Sydney.
For more information, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at bazaarvoice.com/blog, and follow on Twitter at
twitter.com/bazaarvoice.
#BVINDEX5
TheConversationIndex.com
TheConversationIndex.co.uk
TheConversationIndex.de
#BVINDEX5