Masterclass: Social Media Network Analysis

Description

Join us for a Masterclass, supported by the Waikato Management School with guest speaker, Dr. Marc A. Smith - Chief Social Scientist at Connected Action Consulting Group. Network science provides powerful methods for solving core problems in the social media marketing space. Visualizations and analysis of social media networks are useful methods for quickly identifying and evaluating influencers and contrasting the shape of the conversation around different topics and brands.

Until recently these methods have required advanced software development skills, but network analysis tools are evolving and now point-and-click solutions are emerging that can quickly identify sub-groups and market segments and describe the themes and high value resources in each. Key network concepts like "betweenness" and "centrality" can provide insights that go beyond the counts of easily manipulated things like likes, followers or replies.

A network perspective looks at social media as a "collection of connections" and reveals the emergent shape of the crowd. Research from Pew has shown that there are a small set of social media network structures that commonly appear in many forms of social media platforms that allow "reply".  Divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, and in and out hub and spoke patterns are common in social media. These shapes can inform social media strategies by recognizing the current and possibly desired shape of the conversation while providing new KPIs to guide the transition.

Putting these insights to work requires identifying key influencers and then engaging them, building relationships, with the aid of content analysis to recommend words, URLs, and hashtags of greatest mutual interest.

Marc is here in New Zealand for a limited time and with the generous support of the University of Waikato and the Waikato Management School, this Masterclass is an event you do not want to miss.