Blog Assignment: Use social network analysis to identify the most important influencers of your brand.

Enhance the power of your brand’s main content contributors to influence others.

In the past advertising was a one-way conversation in which the company talked and the consumers listened. There was no reciprocity and it was almost impossible for consumer to communicate back or even share information with other consumers. But now all of this has change. The arrival of social media platforms has transformed the conversation in to a decentralized two-way channel where everyone has the power to become a publisher. Now everybody has the capacity to create content for millions of people by using their networks on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

This situation has caused companies to loose control of what is being said about them. Now there is a new group of content creators in the picture sending messages about products or services to other consumers. These people are passionate about communicating to others their experiences and what they like without being part of the company or being paid. But most importantly these are people able to built powerful networks in different social media platforms of people interested in what they are saying.

However, there are ways in which companies can take advantage of these networks to turn this situation into something positive for them. Social network analytics are great tools that can help companies analyze them. By studying these networks they can find out who are the key contributors and how they connect to each of their followers.

When doing this analysis is interesting to look at the density and the amount of nodes connected to each of the actors in the network. This will help to see who has the largest number of contacts. At the same time is also important use the eigenvector metric to see which actors are connected to the most influential ones. This is important because it will lead to possible subgroups that can be linked by secondary actors to the main players.

Once the main actors have been identified the company can reach them and invite them to collaborate. At the same time each company should try to find different ways to motivate these contributors so they will keep creating more and more content about their company.  By doing these companies will be able to maximize the amount of channels they have to communicate to their costumers while at the same create a more transparent communication that will lead to a more loyal relationship.