Social media and viralityProfiling online audiences

Mehdi El Fadil - - http://tribalytics.com @tribalytics

Hi, we're a Belgian startup specialized insocial media audience analysis.

We're there to share some of our findingsabout social media communities andsuccessful inbound marketing strategies.

Before social media, advertising was easy.You just had to publish ads on the mediaused by your target, and you were sureyour message would reach the audience.

Information flow was top down, from onepublisher to manyviewers/listeners/readers.

Nobody controls the information flow onsocial media. Everybody emitsinformation. Nobody can predict for surehow the social media campaigns willspread.

Still, social media is an opportunity toreach persons that wouldn't click on ads,via content relevant to them: blogarticles, infographics, white papers...

How can we make sure that ourcampaigns get noticed, and by the rightpeople?

Creating quality content is not enough,without proper promotion nobody mightnotice it.

By understanding how information flowson social media, we can ensure that theinvestment in content marketing getsworth it.

However, this information - howinformation flows - is not directly visible.

A list of fans/followers doesn't show youthe pattern.

That's when you turn to analytics tools.They aggregate data and provide you asummary.

This gives a first idea of the profile of thesocial media users: their interests, theirlocation, ... But we can go further, formore useful insights

What's really precious is the "socialgraph": the relationships each personhave between each other.

Visualizing the connections

Toon

Thys

Sophie

Lucie

Jacques

MiekeDries

Joke

In this example graph, by studying theconnections people have, we can identify2 communities. Each of them is aconsistent group of people having moreaffinities together. It's great to know this,because we now know that we have twodifferent personas to focus on in order toreach these people.

Real social media audiences are just likethis example, but on a larger scale.

Typical audience compositionDigital marketers and

communicationprofessionals

Your businessecosystem

Your target market

Industry specialists

Niche

Fake 6 types of communities might befollowing you.

Size of each community varies from oneaudience to the other. Younger brandsare often mostly followed by their friendsand communication professionals fromtheir area.

Then only, little by little, they expand toreaching their market.

FocusDigital marketers and

communicationprofessionals

Your businessecosystem

Your target market

Industry specialists

Niche

Fake You should focus on your customers, andyour industry. These are the one you'llconvert to customers, or partners,suppliers, employees.

In the next slides, we'll compare theaudience reached by similar twitteraccounts

@aleydaInternational SEOconsultant

19K followers

SEO - US

SEO - Spain

Latin America

Here are the communities formed by thefollowers of @aleyda: two largeconsistent groups of SEO and digitalmarketing professionals, in the US and inSpain, plus a niche in Latin America.

This depicts her twitter activity matchingwith her career path.

@iPullRankLead generationconsultant

19K followers

General audience -California

General audience - US

Marketers - US

SEO

UK niche

Czech niche

Spain niche

Employer's network

@iPullRank has roughly the samenumber of followers of @aleyda. The 4main communities are part of a larger USdigital marketers professionals one.

We can see many local niches offollowers from specific countries, or oneof his employers, at the borders of thegraph.

(undisclosed)Luxury hotel

1000 followers

Hospitality industry

Brussels

Other hotels of thegroup

Then as a second example let's comparethe followers of two luxury hotels inBrussels.

The first hotel is followed by the hundredof hotels belonging to the same group.This increases the number of followersbut doesn't serve any other purpose.

The orange community also is not reallyrelevant: locals are not customers.

@theHotelBxlLuxury hotel

1500 followers

Travel bloggers

Brussels

Marketers

Fashion bloggers

Hospitality industry

Woodworking projectplans

On the other hand, @theHotelBxl isdoing an outstanding work on socialmedia.

They have managed to catch the interestof travel bloggers, including importantpublications and blogs. Their followersfrom Brussels are from the tourismindustry, and fashion/lifestyle bloggersalso connect them to an audiencerelevant to them.

This shows that being proactive pays onsocial media.

The Hotel monitors not only what is saidabout them, but anything relevant totheir customers, and engages inconversations whenever appropriateand meaningful.

Segment your audience

This is the first message we want totransmit today.

Don't consider your fans/followers as ahomogeneous population. Bysegmenting them into affinity groups,you'll be able to have a clearer imageabout who the people are, and createmore relevant content for them.

How do I build a quality audience?Study the marketCreate quality content, targeted at a specific communityBe proactive

Leverage ambassadors * secret trick

Don't just analyze your current followers.Study all the people likely to beinterested by your products/services.

1025 followers

I'm feeling lucky!25 % reached (263 followers)

26 % reached (269 followers)

8 % reached (91 followers)

9 % reached (102 followers)

24 % reached (248 followers)

16 % reached (166 followers)

I get partners!66 % reached (684 followers)

In this experiment, we compare the effectof two ways to reach an audience:

1. You push on your social mediaaccounts and hope people will pick itup (A random selection of 2 % of theaudience shares your content)

2. The top 10 influencers advocate yourbrand

Partner with relevantinfluencers

This is our second message. Influencersmarketing is not expensive. It's effectiveand efficient.

Take some time before the launch of thecampaigns to study the influencersprofiles, and identify those who would berelevant partners to you.

If your content is relevant to your target,it's likely that them, bloggers or experts inthe domain, will promote it for free.

Craft successful campaignsby

Aiming at a precise audienceLeveraging influencers outreach

Wrapping it up.

Mehdi El Fadil - - http://tribalytics.com @tribalytics

Thanks for your interest.

Tribalytics does twitter audienceanalysis.

Give us a try :)