New Patent: Targeting Groups with Strong Social Network Ties

CitizenNet is proud to announce we just received notice that we have been granted a  new patent for one of our key targeting and optimization methodologies.  In today’s blog post we’ll explain how this works and how it improves social media marketing performance for our clients.

Influencers vs. Tight Social Networks for Achieving Viral Marketing Success

Many advertisers value social media channels specifically because the platforms make it so easy for consumers to share messages -- leading to virality. With this goal in mind, many advertisers target “Influencers” or users with a large number of followers.  However, quite a bit of research, including some conducted by Facebook, indicates that content achieves a higher volume and velocity of sharing not by relying on a few influencers who can push content out through a large social network, but instead by focusing on multiple members within a tight social network.

A tight network is more important than a strong influencer for sharing and virality.

Logically, this makes sense as it captures the concept of frequency and social proof (e.g. if one of my friends recommends a new restaurant I may check it out, but if three of them do in the same week I’ll make a reservation immediately).

Connectedness Delivers Impact on Social Media

Armed with this insight, CitizenNet developed a way to estimate the “connectedness” of a group of people on a social media network.  By applying this measure of connectedness to different overlapping demographic, behavioral and interest based audience segments, CitizenNet can predict which audiences are likely to start trends.

This understanding of connectedness within audience segments means that CitizenNet can more accurately predict virality within different groups.  When a message goes “viral” and is shared broadly and repeatedly within a particular audience it achieves greater reach and frequency with the target, improving advertising impact.

Focusing ads on those audience segments with the most connectedness leads to better advertiser impact at a lower cost, thus improving media efficiency!

Social Sharing for Organic Content

This same capability is equally valuable in maximizing the impact of content shared organically, outside of advertising.  By targeting the most connected audience segments who are highly likely to share, the impact of the message increases exponentially.

Ongoing Social Media Technology Innovation

“It’s extremely rewarding when our innovations are validated as truly cutting edge,” said Dan Benyamin, Co-Founder, CEO and Head of Product.  “Our patents show our clients that we are creating real competitive advantage for them, instead of just re-hashing the same targeting methodology and programming code that everyone else uses.”

Congratulations to the CitizenNet Data Science team on their latest patent - 13 and counting!

Mark Osborne
By Mark Osborne
VP Marketing at CitizenNet. Crafts Social Media strategies for key B2C clients using social insights and programmatic targeting of interest graph.