Influence and Semantic Network en Social Media

GARCÍA IGNACIO; MICELI JORGE EDUARDO; GUERRERO SERGIO; BUNDIO JAVIER; LODI EUGENIA; GARCÍA ALBERTO; MONTEIRO SHALLA

Evanston

Conferencia; International Conference on Network Science (NetSci); 2013

International School on Network Science

The access to huge amounts of behavioural information available in the social media, allows organizations to capture perceptions, habits and trends.Particularly for business applications, mapping the influence networks and monitoring its semantic flows throughout the web has provided a powerful analytical tool for innovation and brand equity.In order to capture, transform and contextualize digital influence and its semantic flow, we developed an innovative integration among Social Network Analysis techniques, Netnography and Analytics.We believe that this approach adds meaning and context to the digital relational patterns and provides business strategic knowledge.In this opportunity, we present a case of study that was conducted for a Brazilian cosmetics company, with a strong presence in Latin America and France.The goal of this project was to establish a systematic monitoring of strategic issues - related to cosmetics in general and cosmetovigilance in particular - focusing in the identification of influence networks, the spread patterns of key content and its potential impact on the brand.The scope of the project involved ten strategic countries and its eight related languages.For each country, we first identified "the small world networks" of the most influencers, accordingly to the scale free network pattern proposed by Laszlo Barabasi and Reka Albert (1999). These networks showed new players in the cosmetovigilance field and the networks behind them.After that we mapped the semantic networks of key words that were flowing among the more influencers. These networks showed which issues were the most relevant in relational terms, in a particular moment and region.Trends, campaigns and insights were analyzed with Digital Ethnography techniques (Kozinets, Robert, 1998).In a second phase, we proceed to integrate local networks into a unique sociocentric network of ten countries interconnected.Finally, we started to monitor the evolution of the semantic networks looking for new patterns and signals of change.This integrated approach revealed its analytic power with a wide range of application, from trends research to digital reputation.