Stand. Walk. Run. Fly. Mizuno Running Social Media Monitoring: Part 1

People closest to me have told me I can be stubborn at times.  Maybe it's because I'm the youngest child and only girl in the family, but I like to think of this so called "stubbornness" as passionate determination.  This trait has served me especially well in running.  Racing and pushing oneself past everything you thought you were capable of certainly requires one part stubbornness, two parts crazy, and a whole lot of soul.  It also requires the right footwear.  

Growing up, I was an Asics girl.  This was sort of by default, as my dad wore Asics and I consider him to be my personal running guru. Once I hit college and starting really competing (and nursing injuries), I decided to play around with different brands and models.  After a brief stint with Nike, I was back to Asics but was still not satisfied.  Finally, I went to Marathon Sports and got properly fitted for a shoe, based off my stride, gait, pronation, and all that good stuff.   It was then that I found Mizuno-- though I was hesitant to try them out, the risk paid off. I quickly became a Mizuno faithful, not just because of how good they felt, but because of the social community they have created. 

About Mizuno Running

The Mizuno Corporation was founded in 1906 by the Mizuno brothers, Rizo and Rihachi in Osaka, Japan.  The first office on American soil was established in Los Angeles in 1969.  While they happen to be one of the leading manufacturers of golf clubs, their list of sponsorships is inclusive of many, many different sports.

Running is one of the sports that Mizuno sponsors. Though they may not have the same name recognition as Nike or Adidas, it is not due to an inferior product.  Mizuno Running sponsors quite a few runners from all over the globe (and even has a Facebook page dedicated to their sponsored athletes). But what's the real special sauce of Mizuno Running that fosters loyalty among customers? What sets it apart from its uber well-known competitors?

The answer is simple: mezamashii.

But hey, don't take Mizuno's word for it.  Instead, watch actual real-life, non-sponsored Mizuno runners explain what mezamashii running means to them.

For the past four weeks, I have been collecting qualitative and quantitative data on the social media habits and online presence of Mizuno Running.  Below is an introduction and analysis of their social media habits. In addition to reviewing their website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram,  I used to following tools to provide analytical data: Addictomatic, SocialBakers, Social Mention, Google Trends, and Ice Rocket. 

To begin, let's look at what Mizuno Running for themselves on social media platforms.  Then, we'll take a peak at some of the data to see how they're doing from that aspect. 

Mizuno Running & Social Media

Mizuno Running Website

Before being bombarded by visuals of the latest and greatest overpriced model of shoe released, Mizuno Running invites its visitors to "Join the Quest: Experience Mezamashii."  They aim to make the viewer feel like they'll get more than just shoes from Mizuno: they'll be a part of something larger. And, if one scrolls down just a tad, they will come across the "Find Your Perfect Shoe" quiz. They don't just want to sell you a shoe.  They want to sell you the best shoe for your foot. 

When you sign up to join the Mezamashii Community, you gain access to a member's forum, which unfortunately leaves something to be desired. There isn't a great deal of super exciting conversation going on. 

There are other perks of being a part of this free community though.  All runners are invited to share their stories answering the question "why do you run?" Stories are a positive (and free) way of building community AND promoting positive word of mouth about a brand. 

Facebook 

With nearly 170,000 likes, Mizuno Running North America has a very healthy Facebook following. According to data available from Social Bakers, they gained an additional 2,655 followers in last month alone. The graph below shows the number of people talking at the brand over the past month.  Clearly it has fluctuated a bit, peaking around February 10th and then steadily declining through the end of the month and into March.  Why, you ask? Well, it could be at least in part due to the marketing of the new Wave Rider 17 on February 12th. 

From SocialBakers

The account posts at least once a day, though usually it posts more than that.  The posts themselves range from asking the community their opinion on something, encouraging followers to send in pictures, sharing recipes and posts from other running websites, and my favorite, fill in the blank questions which always get some clever responses. 

The posts that tend to get the most likes are ones that promote a sense of comrade and the idea that runners are a tough, crazy breed of humans. 

Twitter

At 26,000 followers and growing, the Mizuno Running twitter handle is not as well followed as the Facebook page, but just as active.  It's following has steadily grown over the past month, as reported by SocialBakers.

The account is quick to answer any questions that are thrown their way and try to be as helpful as possible. They appear to take runner's feedback very seriously, which is a great sign.






Instagram
And last, but not least, there is the Mizuno Running Instagram page. Now, full disclosure: try as I might, I just don't really understand how to use Instagram. But if the success of one's Instagram page is based off the number of "likes" a picture receives, then Mizuno is doing a really great job.

They don't post as regularly on their Instagram account (in fact, there has yet to be a post in the month of March), but that doesn't seem to influence the response from their followers when they DO post. This post of a pretty pair of shoes won the hearts of over 1,000 of their followers.  And, as we can see above, the Mizuno Running account even responds to comments.

Analytical Data Observations

Addictomatic
Addictomatic is a search tool that gathers the latest news, blog posts, and images relating to a brand. It is important to note that this site does not pull data from Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube.  

Though this site doesn't tell us much about the social presence of the Mizuno Running brand, there are a few things we can take away from it: all of the legitimate information that it gathered (blog post titles and Bing News) is seemingly positive in nature.

Social Mention 
According to their website: "Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. "

Before we get into what these numbers mean for Mizuno Running, here's a quick background to what these numbers measure:

• STRENGTH: a likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media
• SENTIMENT: a ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are negative
• PASSION: a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly
• REACH: a measure of the range of influence

Now, I'm fairly skeptical about these measurements as most of the numbers are found by dividing the number of mentions by how many mentions the brand should have, which I find subjective.  I'm more interested in the data below those four boxes: average amount of time per mention, number of unique authors, and number of retweets.

The last set of data that I took was on March 6th, just a couple of days after Mizuno released their "What If Everybody Ran?" study which has all sorts of people talking about it (much more on this in Part Two of the Social Media Monitoring Report, so stay tuned!).  This can explain the major decrease in the time per mentions, the increase in the unique authors, and the number of retweets.

Ice Rocket

This graph from Ice Rocket shows the Daily Blogs Citation Trend of  the term "mizuno running" (the blue line) and the term "Mezamashii" (the red line), from February 4th to March 6th.  Clearly, it has fluctuated a decent amount over the course of the month.  The term Mizuno Running averages 7.70 posts per day.  For comparison purposes, I looked up how many posts "Nike Running" averages per day, which is a whopping 82.70 posts per day.  Wow.

Google Trends

Finally, let's take a step back and look at the big picture. Put simply, Google Trends, a child of Google (who rules the world), shows how often a search-term is entered into Google searches across the world and in various languages.  Below is the trend graph for Mizuno Running, with the 2014 and 2015 forecast included.

So far, overall...

...it appears that Mizuno is certainly putting the effort into creating a social community that thrives around more than just products, but customers stories as well.  While their reach might not be as impactful and widespread as Nike or Asics, they certainly appear to be taking steps in the right direction.

Running can feel like a very individual (and sometimes lonely) sport.  As a runner who wears Mizuno shoes, it feels good to have a community built around the brand I have chosen to run in.  We are Mizuno.