Social Media Monitoring with NUVI and Tour of Alberta 2015

A week of grueling cycling across Northern Alberta for the Tour of Alberta 2015, or #TOA15 for short, has wrapped up. Dutch cyclist Bauke Mollema pulled out the top spot on the podium over the 6 stage 865-kilometer race with a final time of 20:20:28 – pretty good. Here at Strong Coffee Marketing we used social media monitoring tool Nuvi to track the social media data surrounding the hashtag #TOA15

120 cyclist from around the world participated in the event and aside from the cold weather conditions including rain and snow, officials deemed the race a success – but how do we determine the success of the Tour of Alberta on social media – with social media monitoring

Use Social Media Monitoring to Track the Conversation

One service we offer our clients is social media monitoring. Using a tool called NUVI, Strong Coffee is able to keep an eye on things like brand mentions, posts by competitors and industry keyword-generated chatter. The tool allows us to go through the information gathered and make suggestions to clients on next steps and strategy. Social media monitoring allows you to keep track of a conversation through the use of a hashtag or topic

Graph showing the number of mentions hashtag #TOA15

This year’s Tour of Alberta was made up primarily of 6 stages, which we can clearly see illustrated in the above graph. The peaks and valleys correspond nicely with the finish of each stage of the race as well as a few notable moments along the trail. In social media monitoring we can use mention metrics help determine the size, strength and key moments in a conversation.

We can dig a little deeper into the data and actually see where the conversation was headed during the times when mentions are at their highest. The table below shows us the conversation during the final few kilometres of the fourth stage in Jasper National Park.

Dutch cyclist Tom-Jelte Slagter riding for UCI ProTeam Cannondale-Garmin won both the third and fourth stages of the event. With social media monitoring we’re able to see the team making the announcement on their Twitter feed and track the influence team Cannondale-Garmin had on the conversation. We can also track the sentiment of the conversation with Nuvi. Green is positive sentiment, blue neutral and red indicates a negative sentiment. Sentiment is import when it comes to social media monitoring as it allows you to track the context of the conversation.

During the final stretch of Stage 5 – Edson to Spruce Grove, cyclists encountered a bit of a disaster, a wrong turn. The peloton – or the main pack of cyclists – was lead the wrong way by a pack leader on one of the final turns of the leg. In total, 69 riders peddled past a turn leading to a bit of confusion and officials calling the race early. In the above graph we can see the initial tweet relaying this information on social media and in turn the influence it had on the conversation. NUVI allows us to see the subsequent tweets stemming from the announcement of the wrong turn and the sentiment of the mentions. For a brand, sentiment is an invaluable tool, and without it this measurement, mentions can be misleading. Sentiment allows us to see the direction the conversation is turning and retool strategy or figure out next steps in real time.

Use Social Media Monitoring to Compare the Conversation

Comparing the social chatter of more than one phrase, keyword, or tag is a great indicator of the success of your campaign or brand. We kept it simple and tracked two sporting events being held at the same time in the Edmonton area, the Tour of Alberta (#TOA15) in the blue and World Triathlon Series Tour (#WTSEdmonton) in the pink.

On September 6, we can see that #WTSEdmonton overtook #TOA15 by quite a margin. At its peak #TOA15 drove just over 250 mentions, where as #WTSEdmonton drove just under 700. The triathlon was a one day event bringing in just under 2000 mentions, whereas the Tour of Alberta was a week long and produced just over 4500. Arguably, the one day triathlon appears to have had a more successful social campaign then the seven day bicycle race.

The insight into a social campaign or brand doesn’t stop there either. NUVI allows us to see top influencers on the conversation, those with the most reach, as well as those with the furtherest spread.

NUVI utilizes Klout to rank their top influencers. Klout, is a social media scoring system where the amount of followers, interaction and content shared affect your rating. The higher your Klout score, the more social media prowess – something that’s rather important when performing social media monitoring. The reach metric is potential audience and corresponds with the number of followers an account has. Spread further expands on a potential audience by measuring not just the number of followers an account has, but the number of followers each one of their followers has.

Right at the top of the list we have the captain of the Edmonton Oilers Andrew Ference, known on Twitter as @Fernuckle. After sifting through Ference’s social media content you can see that he was in attendance during the Jasper leg of the race and participated in a #TOA15 VIP ride. It’s interesting to see the number of interactions a high influencer can achieve.

NUVI: The Visuals are Great the Insight is Better

The Tour of Alberta was a big deal in its host province – Alberta as well as Europe and the United States. NUVI allows you to view mentions based on location. Outside of Alberta most of the mentions coming from Europe, the United States and Australia were from cyclists or their teams respectively. Using social media monitoring you can break down the data and see where people are talking about you and what they’re talking about.

Even the Netherlands chimed in on the actions as their countrymen Bauke Mollema pulled out the top spot.

One of the more interesting things that caught my eye was a trending topic ‘unbelievable shot by @photogjono‘. NUVI allows us to see trending concepts and trending terms both with positive and negative connotations. The top trending concept for the Tour of Alberta was a beautiful picture taken by @photogjon working with the Edmonton International Airport.

A tweet from the Tour of Alberta Twitter account using a photo of Stage 4 of the Tour of Alberta from @photogjon

The shot is remarkable to say the least and garnered 115 mentions throughout the course of the event. We can see the term ‘photo justice’ has also made quite an impact on the top positive terms. This is one of the more successful posts and we can definitely see why.

If you’re interested in learning more about how social media monitoring works and how it can help elevate your brand’s social media presence please, drop us a line.