Community Mapping & Intelligence
Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash
Relevance is today’s #1 challenge in marketing & community management.
The time when companies would spam their way to prospects is over and in the fight for attention, relevance is the currency by which everyone is measured. So how do we reach relevance?
Relevance starts with listening, and to be specific, listening to the right people.
This is where Community Mapping is critical.
Definition:
We define Community Mapping as identifying a very large group of people (1000’s, 10000’s), active in social media, who fit a specific profile or persona.
Map of Virologists
Before mapping a community, you need to be clear about who you target:
These people belong to your market/ your ecosystem. Many of them should be clients or partners.
They are defined by :
Occupation: ex Entrepreneurs, Software developers, CIOs, Managers, VCs, Physicians, Lawyers …
Expertise: Data Science, Biotech, Fashion, Python SW development, …
Gender/Age
Location/Market/ Language
Interest: Chocolate, Alumni of a school, concerned about climate change
Behavior: follow a certain brand, talk about specific topic…
How can you leverage these Community maps?
By understanding who these people are, listening to what they share, and who they engage with on social, companies can power their marketing & community-building initiatives and make data-driven decisions:
Product insights, market research: By listening to people in your field of interest, you understand issues and you can learn what people value in your offering or in competitors offering, see what’s trending and emerging issues you need to address.
Content Marketing: A great and effective way to get content ideas is to look at what people in your target community are talking about and what content they are already sharing. Here is an example of articles that “Women venture partner” are sharing on Twitter.
Micro-Influencers programs: different types of influencers can be used by companies to collaborate on content partnerships, share company/corporate content, speak at events, review products. Looking at the people with whom the member of the community engage the most, read content is very helpful to target the right influencer/content producer for specific initiatives.
How do we build them?
Community Maps are custom maps that we develop along specifications build together with our clients.
Community mapping is an investment. Its result is an asset that is used over and over across multiple marketing programs. The initial mapping, its quality, and its fit to the persona that the brand is targeting are all critical components.
It takes a few weeks and multiple reviews to build a high-quality community map.
A CIO Map
References:
