Social Media Marketing Dude

A study conducted by Wharton uncovers the behavior of “network neighbors” within existing customer bases. Mining data from “social networks” — who talks to whom or who emails whom — could allow companies to pinpoint likely customers who otherwise would be overlooked.

Hill, Foster Provost of NYU’s Stern School and Chris Volinsky of AT&T Labs Research detail their findings in a paper titled, “Network-Based Marketing: Identifying Likely Adopters via Consumer Networks,” published in May 2006 in the Journal of Statistical Science. “One of the main concerns for any firm is when, how and to whom they should market their products,” the authors write. “We provide strong evidence that whether and how well a consumer is linked to existing customers is a powerful characteristic on which to base direct marketing decisions.

Our results indicate that a firm can benefit from the use of social networks to predict the likelihood of purchasing.”   While the paper is more targeted at how academic departments can take advantage of social media marketing, the study does prove quite a few things that businesses can use for a proof of concept when pitching Social Media Marketing to their companies. 

 Read the Full Story at Wharton
The full paper, “Network-Based Marketing: Identifying Likely Adopters via Consumer Networks“  

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[…] Social networks are amazing from a “data mining” perspective. I’ve had a few posts about MyBlogLog recently, uncovering an easily exploitable flaw and announcing the Missing MyBlogLog Tools. As I’ve looked in depth into the MyBlogLog “network” that is accessible by the public, I’ve realized how much potential there is for doing so much more than what most social media companies do with their networks. A recent research paper (actual paper; thanks to here for blogging it) discusses this in detail, how social networks like MyBlogLog and MySpace create an opportunity for network-based marketing. It’s an interesting read for any entrepreneurs and social media marketing lovers out there. […]