All irregular competitors are not created equal. Nor do they necessarily later all become equal and evolve into threats about which a company should be uniformly concerned. Some irregular competitors have more mojo than others; either because of smarter staff or better funding or both.

When you’re a corporate communications or PR person trying to deal with an irregular competitor who is talking trash about your company, it’s good to know something about them. (That harks back to what Sun Tzu said.) An understanding of the irregular competitor’s strengths and weaknesses will help you: 1) to determine whether you should be responding to them at all; and, 2) if it’s determined that you should respond, to have a knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses which can help you choose which strategies and tactics to apply against them.

To assist in this understanding, today I introduce The Irregular Competition Threat Index. This is a scale rating system that I will use in some of the case study posts on this blog. This rating system will rank the irregular competitors discussed in terms of their general strengths and weaknesses in the use of social media. You may select those irregular competitor case studies specifically under the category Irregular Competition or more generally under the category Research – Case Studies.

The ranking of irregular competitors in The Irregular Competition Threat Index will be primarily along factors of their social media and web campaign strategies, but offline strategic factors may also contribute to their rating, and these will be called out in the case study posts.

So, I look forward to presenting some interesting case studies and I also look forward to your feedback.

(Update: The Irregular Competition Threat Index was renamed the Irregular Competition Social Media Threat Index (ICSMTI) and moved to exclusive coverage on www.KahunaInstitute.com. You may access the ICSMTI ratings on that site by going to the ICSMTI Page.