I’ve had an idea today that I wanted to share. Wouldn’t there be value in doing an analysis of the followers and fans that brands have on social networks? For example, if Crayola has 1MM followers on Twitter, how many of those followers are just Crayola employees or spam? And how many fit within the target audience Crayola seeks? How many are part of a totally different audience that Crayola has never considered (and maybe should).
There’s obviously a lot of weight placed on the number of people listening on social platforms, but what is arguably more important is the caliber of people – right? I’m clearly no expert, but I would assume that some sort of algorithm could be set in place to glean attitudinal information from the fans and followers of brands based on bios and recent posts. Of course, Twitter bios are short and not always accurate, but users’ last 100 posts could garner some understanding of their interests and attitudes. And doesn’t Facebook Open Graph allow us to more easily segment users by their activities and interests? This is exclusive to FB advertisers but is there a way around this?
My resident SM and Interactive experts assure me that, to their knowledge, no such tool exists for providing this kind of analysis yet. But shouldn’t there be? Perhaps there’s a way we could think about this, and if doable, consider it as another offering in our social media toolbox. Ultimately a great tool for new business.
This is clearly half baked but worth continuing to think about. Nonetheless, I wanted to share it while it was still inspiring for me and the realities that make it complex haven’t gotten in the way.
What do you think? Message me under ‘ask me anything’ and bring me out of the clouds.
