In competitive intelligence, you often need to source interviews to determine the real strengths and weaknesses of your products compared to the competition. People who’ve chosen products are going to have biases, and break down into what we call lovers and leaners:
love your product – lean towards your product – lean toward the competitor – love the competitor
The lovers are also often referred to as fanboys. You know them when you meet them. They just gush positives about their favorite product and can be vitriolic towards everything else. Because they often find themselves needing to defend their position, they’ve done their homework. They know where their favored product is superior and where the competition has warts.
When we’re doing primary research, we often want to make sure at least some lovers are included in the list. But how to find them? This is where tools like Twiangulate come in. Once you find a few influencers, you can use twiangulate.com to identify the people those influencers follow in common. When 3 influencers follow the same people, those people are likely to be influencers (lovers) as well.
To use twiangulate, just enter three people’s twitter handle, select “mutual friends”, and you’ll get a list of the people these influencers are following in common.
By Sean Campbell
By Scott Swigart
