Finding True North in the Forest and not Trip over the Trees

How many social networks are you on? It depends on where you are from, and the answer could be Facebook plus LinkedIn/Quora/Pinterest/Twitter/Instagram…. not to mention native forum popular in your region, or ultra-niche like expat networks. Being active on multiple social networks is common, almost a standard as having a cell phone and emails. Despite all the new social networks that keep popping up, most of us still open Facebook on our phones, check our friends’ status, and then leave massive digital footprint on Facebook, either directly, or through one of the other services, which is connected to Facebook anyway.

It’s incredible how deeply we are attached to Facebook. This degree of umbilical linkage was unimaginable when Facebook launched 10 years ago. While Facebook is no longer cool and exciting, and may not be the one generating the buzz these days, it is still the place where all the viral content goes in the end, no matter where those viral content came from. When a technology no longer excites, that’s when it has taken root in our life. No one is excited about emails, but no one can deny email’s power in our work life.

Like the gold/blue/white costume post came from Buzzfeed, or the release of Apple Watch and the New Macbook, we can eventually find something regarding those on Facebook. Thus, for marketing people restricted with time and resources to monitor all social networks, choosing Facebook is the most reasonable and effective option. If a piece of news can’t be found on a platform which serves 1.4 billion users, it can hardly be called viral to be honest.

Moreover, Facebook has the most robust audience response system (a workable balance between the depth of an email and the shallowness of a tweet). It is this audience feedback that makes Facebook such a valuable tool for marketers, politicians, and virtually everyone who seeks to understand and influence the world.

To help organize those fire hydrant of information into usable drinking fountain, QSearch helps users monitor, analyze, and determine a course of action. When Ben Crox of Hong Kong wanted to understand his digital world of HK media, he used QSearch to search for pattern to investigate. In this report, Ben thoroughly analyzed influences of each news media in HK over Facebook with ease. With visually comprehensible chart and intuitive user interface, every one can visualize the footprint in the digital snow and find their own path.

Written by Tien-Yu Lee & Roger Do

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Je suis Palin

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

In the aftermath of the the slaying of the French satirists, collectively known as Charlie Hedbos, the global netizen’s response was to adopt Je suis Charlie (I am Charlie) tag, photos, t-shirts to show solidarity with the right of free speech. While Je suis Charlie remains the most influential Facebook group in this respect, the second most powerful global influencer is a left field surprise. More influential than Fox News, Daily Mails, Huffington Post, or even L’Express, is Sarah Palin's use of the issue to attack Barack Obama’s absence from the public parade of world leaders.

Source: QSearch Trend

While Sarah Palin’s post was not influential over time, its one day attack had 96K likes and one out of three readers shared the article. Her ability to engage and influence is vastly greater than the established media outlet. The comparison between Fox News and Sarah Palin is particularly interesting because both influencers have similar influential profile; provocation.

The traditional method of measuring influence is to look at the ‘Likes’ each group has. Fox News has 10 million Likes. Sarah Palin has 4.4 million Likes. Under the old “more Like equals more influence” worldview, we expect Fox News to have twice the influence of Palin. But Fox News only has 73K likes, and 10K shares. One out of 13 shared, vs 1 out of 3 for Palin. Clearly, Palin has a much higher quality audience than Fox News, despite her audience is only half of Fox News’.

Before advance metric are available, advertisers would settle for group with the larger audience number. With advance analytics such as QSearch, we can now measure the quality of the audience, that includes engagement level of a group, multiply by its group size, and the secondary transmission of its sharing.

Before engaging an influencer to promote your message, measure the intensity of their audience. Social media is evolving to the the point where the quality of the audience is measurable and sometimes more important than the quality of the influencer.

Mark Twain had a great saying, “It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.” When you can measure both the size of the dog and the size of the fight, you can confidently decide which one to apply the lipstick to.

Written by Roger Do

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