Passion networks - Why marketing campaigns require a deeper understanding of your audience
Social media users find solace in joining specific passion groups, especially when being part of such an imposing online environment. People use their interests to define themselves - and jump on social feeds to put these beliefs across.
When brands or agencies are looking to engage with these people, they need to know what online sub-communities these individuals have chosen to be part of. This makes it a whole lot easier to send the right message out to a potential audience.
Social listening experts Pulsar Platform worked alongside Twitter to analyze over 800,000 Twitter users and better understand their passions by demographic traits and interests. Analysis seems to suggest that each passion network forms its own unique cluster of users and this is usually related to geographic, ethnic or interest affinities - in some cases a mixture of the three.
Some Pulsar data viz below shows some examples of how these sub-communities are formed:
Brands and agencies should be keen to explore the sub-community talking points and interests, so as to approach from the right angle when looking to engage with them. Due to the sheer fragmentation of these audiences, it is practically impossible to reach sub-communities with the correct message with something generic.
A generic message is likely to resonate with a minority of the community - leading to campaigns missing some potentially valuable audience members.
It’s often hopeless painting everyone with the same brush in marketing campaigns - especially when an audience is tied together by so many different interests. The primary benefit of social listening is that you can dissect these audiences and approach your marketing campaigns with an assured and targeted strategy behind them.
Pulsar’s findings on Twitter passion networks show how a selection of distinctive passions incorporate different sub-communities. Here are some examples supported by some cool data viz:
Fashion
Fashion enthusiasts from a number of small national and international communities that come together around major fashion influencers, professional hubs and culture.
Technology
Techies share plenty of similarities, are extremely interconnected and form small global to city level communities - where there is a continuous overlap of interests and passions.
Politics
Political audiences share a tight bond of having similar understandings and interests, with close-knit communities on both a national and international level. National and global political influencers on Twitter bring this group together.
TV & Film
Unlike the rest, TV & Film enthusiasts are hugely diverse, sharing a variety of interests - less fragmented than you’d think, but not widely connected with each other. This represents a passion that has many enthusiasts from a much larger and less-connected audience group. After all, who doesn’t love a good movie or Netflix series?
What these findings show us is that there’s so much more to an audience than meets the eye. Generic messaging is not the answer – and by looking into your audience at a more granular level, you can begin to understand dedicated passions, interests and ultimately the messages they will likely engage with.