Social Network Analysis

The key to growing communities is leveraging influencers; they’re the 10% of your audience that connect, inform and excite everyone else. By building deep, collaborative relationships with this small group of influencers, you can leverage their position to engage and convert groups of people who look to them for answers.

Traditionally identifying and leveraging influencers owed more to luck than planning, through social media analysis it’s now possible to accurately identify and engage these people. New marketing companies are using these tools to identify key influencers that drive word of mouth. It enables strategic marketing decisions to be built on deep, fact based insights not intuition or fashion. 

What's social network analysis? Well from my perspective it studies online consumer behavior, exploring data collected from people as they from move link to link. Analyzing this data unveils deep insights into your audience, untapped communities, competitors, influencers and how ideas spread.

Companies like Linkfluence and Double Loop Marketing are pioneering this field — they're evidence of how the internet is shaping the way we do things and exposing the frailties of our old ways. One of my favorite new marketing companies is R/GA. They're a great example of staying ahead of the curve and offering an integrated solution.