Social media analytics helps companies find all kinds of links and connections from within social media data. These insights help businesses around the world refine their strategies and improve performance. But with such large volumes of data being produced every day many crucial links can be overlooked with each representing a potential missed opportunity.
To help you save time and find the hidden connections in your data we’ve developed the new Smart Themes feature. The Smart Themes are fundamentally a selection of filters that show which people, brands, companies, events and even emotions are linked to your brand, industry keywords, Twitter accounts – essentially anything you can search for.
The new feature will help marketers find their most powerful influencers, brand specialists understand key associations between brands and public figures and PR professionals understand a crisis better than ever before, amongst other use cases.
Here are just a few examples showing exactly how you can benefit.
Event Marketing – Is your brand standing out?
Major global events often generate millions of online conversations which mean that crucial insights and links can often remain hidden.
One recent global event was the release of the new James Bond movie, Spectre. Aside from the global marketing and advertising efforts that go into promoting such a major movie, such events are also opportunities for brands to link themselves to a global, high profile movie franchise.
But which brands are being mentioned most alongside Bond? And are these the same brands that are paying good money to be associated with the film?
Smart Themes allow you to look at just the connections that matter for you. Whether that’s looking at public figures linked to a product launch, emotions linked to a movie or brands associated with an event.
Looking at non-filtered themes for James Bond for example only one brand really stands out: Aston Martin.
This is to be expected as this has always been James Bond’s car of choice.
But when applying Smart Themes and looking at just companies and brands linked to Bond a very different picture emerges:
Brands most closely associated with the new James Bond Movie
All of a sudden we see that all kinds of brands are associated with Bond from BMW and Land Rover to Rolex and even the WWE wrestling federation.
The reason for the WWE link? The presence of WWE wrestler Dave Bautista in the film, showing what major movie franchises can do for seemingly unrelated organizations like WWE.
With this information brands and sponsors can easily measure the exposure they are receiving from a certain event or product launch. On the flip side, event organizers can see all the different people, brands and emotions discussed alongside a new movie, product launch or any other major event. This can then help brands to refine their marketing and sponsorship activities, and maximize efficiency in the future.
Influencer Identification – Find your biggest brand ambassadors
For major brands around the world, influencers have become a critical part of any marketing strategy, particularly in industries like fashion where celebrities have outsized influence. But for these brands that have millions of dedicated fans of varying levels of influence, how can you determine which influencers are truly important for your brand?
For global sports labels like Adidas and Nike, knowing the people discussed most in association with your brand can help you determine how to allocate your sponsorship and marketing budgets for particular celebrities and athletes.
The example below shows the top public figures linked to the two sportswear giants over the last month:
Key public figures linked to Nike (left) and Adidas (right)
From the above theme clouds we can quickly see that Michael Jordan is the biggest name for Nike and Kanye West is the celebrity most associated with Adidas. And by drilling down into the data you can see exactly which posts are driving these associations:
Using this data, brands can not only assess the performance of sponsorship/influencer marketing programs, but also discover new influencers that are having a major impact on brand awareness and develop mutually beneficial relationships.
Crisis Tracking: Keep a closer eye on your online reputation
Major companies, politicians and celebrities are constantly scrutinized whenever they comment on social issues of almost any kind. This is a major challenge for PR and communications teams trying to get to grips with the online reputation of key figures and for global organizations trying to understand the key people and brands linked to major issues like climate change. Here again, Talkwalker’s Smart Themes can quickly provide key insights that would otherwise remain hidden.
The below Smart Theme clouds shows the brands most linked to the topic of climate change over the last week:
Top companies and brands associated with climate change over the last week
Immediately we can see that ExxonMobil, the U.S. based oil company has been heavily linked to climate change over the last seven days due to reports of an investigation into their environmental practices.
Using the Smart Themes people filter, the perceived movers and shakers on this major global issue emerge:
Major public figures most closely associated with climate change
By tracking issues that relate to your brand or industry and then setting up alerts, brands, public figures and organizations can keep a careful eye on their online reputation. They can also react quickly and understand a social media crisis situation without having to individually track hundreds, even thousands of separate topics.
It’s impossible to know every brand, company or person linked to the topics that matter for your business. But sometimes these unseen connections can hold valuable business insights. Using Smart Themes, Talkwalker users can now instantly uncover insights hidden in social data opening up a whole new world of information that can be put to work.
