Death and taxes, am I right?
This week in the US, one of life's inevitabilities dominated our financial mindsets as people scrambled to file last year's taxes. Not to mention our Twitter convos. April 15 has come and gone, another tax day done, but which tax filing software won the brand conversation battle on social?
Also on the presidential ballot front, the democratic party's own Hillary Clinton announced she's running. Officially.
Speculation has halted and full-fledged media scrutiny has commenced.
A little event called the MTV Movie Awards took place this week as well, to the joy and direct social involvement of millions of millenials.
And the winner is...
Social Brass Tacks of Tax
Tax talk has been a big topic on Twitter this week. With over 112,000 mentions in the last week, we're seeing over three times as many positive mentions as negative in this conversation.
We all know the commercials for H&R Block and TurboTax, as two of the biggest tax filing service providers, but do they also dominate the online conversation?
We looked at the five major US tax filing brands to see their share of voice and conversation sentiment during this 2015 tax season.
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H&R Block
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TurboTax
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TaxAct
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TaxSlayer
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eSmartTax
In the last week, TurboTax is the clear winner when it comes to overall share of voice, with H&R Block a distant second.
With popularity comes inevitable polarization, and we're seeing both of these brands with a much higher quantity of sentiment mentions - negative or positive.
A top hashtag in the conversation is #immigrants -- but not for the reasons you would think. With over 1.8 million impressions on Twitter, this hashtag and topic has been fueled by infographics showcasing immigrant tax contributions amounting to the two-digit billions.
No tax conversation would be complete without ample chatter about the various political parties and the IRS. They are dominating topics in the online conversation about Tax Day 2015.
#WhyImVotingForHillary... or not
Hillary Clinton has been a frequent news topic this year, from her email habits while in office to her recently confirmed run for president in 2016. Given her social media savvy announcement via video across a multitude of online platforms, Hillary Clinton is still a trending topic.
On Tuesday alone there had been over 61,000 mentions of the democratic party's presidential candidate on Twitter. In the last week, there have been over 371,000 mentions. In the day following the announcement, we saw twice as many negative mentions as positive in the conversation, as issues of gender, past events, and email habits circulate in the conversation. However, in the last week there has been only a 1% difference in the quantity of negative vs positive mentions in the Hillary convo.
Now that the news is public, let's take a look at the social data surrounding this story.
In the days following the announcement, #whyimnotvotingforhillary was a top trending hashtag in the online conversation around the recent announcement of her presidential run.
In the last week, conversation has steadily increased leading up to the official announcement.
Initially, issues of gender and Benghazi were prevalent, as well as mentions of potential competitors including Rand Paul.
When it comes to all the officially running, and "likely to run" candidates, Hillary simply dominates with republican Marco Rubio trailing a distant second in online conversations.
The race may be tight come 2016, but on social media right now there's a clear winner.
The new social MTV generation
Remember when the MTV Movie Awards were first presented? That was 23 years ago in 1992 - and possibly well before many of this year's viewers were born.
The MTV generation changes with each new year that passes, and social media has been pivotal in up-leveling the visibility of the awards show and the MTV brand for a new generation of movie-goers and award show voters.
The biggest award of the night was, of course. Movie of the Year. At Brandwatch, we built some live data visualizations in this blog, and focused our data analysis looking at the following nominees:
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American Sniper
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Boyhood
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The Fault in Our Stars
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Gone Girl
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Guardians of the Galaxy
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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
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Selma
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Whiplash
"The Fault in Our Stars" was victorious, winning the 2015 award for MTV Movie of the Year. And the social media volume of mentions for people voting for that film predicted it.
Despite the marginal lead "The Hunger Games" had in the 48 hours leading up to the awards show on social, but once Sunday hit the volume of people voting for The Fault in Our Stars absolutely skyrocketed.
Next Week in Data
We're getting ready for a spring-tastic week of social data monitoring with continued coverage of presidential nominees, the Boston Marathon, and Earth Day.
Interested in learning more about social listening and data or have a question for Brandwatch? Visit us here or email me [email protected]!