Social marketing intelligence is the method of extrapolating valuable information from

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

interactions and

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted ...

flows that can enable companies to launch new products and services into the market at greater speed and lower cost. This is an area of research however, companies using social marketing intelligence have achieved significant improvement in marketing campaigns. Through social marketing intelligence, companies can identify people that are the most influential within their communities. These are the most connected people within any given social network. These people, sometimes called the ''alpha users'' or ''hubs'' as in

small-world network A small-world network is a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but the neighbors of any given node are likely to be neighbors of each other and most nodes can be reached from every other node by a sm ...

theory, have considerable influence over the spread of information within their social network.

Alpha users

Alpha users are key elements of any social networks, who manage the connectivity of the core members of the community. Similar to how viruses spread in nature, there is an initial starting point to communications in social networks, and the originators of such communications are alpha users. They tend to be highly connected users with exceptional influence to the other thought-leaders of any social network. Before

digital communications Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

, it was only possible to isolate the most influential members of any community by interviewing every member and tracing their full communication patterns within the social network. Traditional fixed

landline telephone A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

and

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

use did not give enough accuracy to be able to pinpoint alpha users to a meaningful degree. With the advent of mobile phones, a personal digital communication channel was available to study. Early research by mathematicians at Xtract in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

produced models that suggested mobile networks could indeed track the full communication and isolate the alpha users. Since then, several companies including Xtract have launched commercial tools to detect alpha users, usually using mobile operator billing and telecoms traffic data.

Engagement marketing Engagement marketing, sometimes called "experiential marketing", "event marketing", "on-ground marketing", "live marketing", "participation marketing", "Loyalty Marketing", or "special events", is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumer ...

campaigns attempt to use alpha users as spokespersons in marketing and advertising. The idea is that consumers will trust more the opinion of their friend or known contact from a social network, than the random marketing and advertising messages of companies and brands. The desire is to achieve

viral marketing Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...

effects by which the alpha users would spread the messages further. Alpha users were first briefly discussed in public in the book ''3G Marketing'' in 2004. The first industry article about alpha users was by Ahonen and Ahvenainen in Total Telecom in February 2005. The first telecoms conference where ''alpha user'' was explained was the 3G Mobile World Congress in Tokyo in January 2005. The topic was part of the strategy keynote address at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes in February 2005. The first book to discuss alpha users at length was ''Communities Dominate Brands'' in 2005.''Communities Dominate Brands'', Ahonen & Moore, Futuretext, 2005

References

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Alpha users

See also

References

Further reading