After getting enrolled into the course of
Social Media Analysis (SMA), the first question I want to clarify by myself is
why analyzing the social media network.
According to the illustration from
WIKIPEDIA, A social networking
service is a platform to build social networks or social
relations among people who share interests, activities,
backgrounds or real-life connections. The social network platform has
blossomed everywhere since the emergence of internet. According to the
statistic report revealed by tech.qq.com
on July 25th, 2014 ,
the total subscribers on Facebook reached up to as high as 2.2 billion, which
represents nearly 30% of the global population. Tons of conversations, comments
and replies that within them could actually implicate a great value for the
business market given all these contents are processed properly.
Figure 1 Various Social Media Network
With the further question of how can SMA
help the social media network platform, I did a little research on the internet
and found a business instance as the application of SMA. In this business
scenario, MyMadrid is an mobile APP providing a unique interface to the online
and mobile fan community of the top football club Real Madrid C.F. A SMA &
SNA (Social Network Analysis) company was hired to help MyMadrid for an
in-depth statistical view on its user behavior. Eventually the following
information was output via the analyzing techniques.
-
Who is talking to whom?
-
What do they say?
- The top influencers surrounding
the social object “MyMadrid”. The top 4 influencers can be seen as the brand’s
ambassadors as the total network of these 4 people has an immediate reach of
5420 twitter accounts.
Apparently, with the above statistic
information, the APP can understand its user much better in many dimensions. Maybe
different marketing campaigns could be deployed based on this deeper
understanding in order to attract more users hereafter.
Thus, from my point of view, social network
analysis provides the applicable approach enabling us to leverage all these
contents and extract the valuables from social network. In the lecture 2&3, Professor
Chan has explained various useful methods & principals to do the analysis. And
I believe this course will lead us into a fantastic journey of the SMA world.
Reference
[1]
WIKIPEDIA, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
[2] SNA
focus to MyMadrid - Real Madrid
