A ‘Twittersphere’ map which charts the relationships between Australian tweeters could be used by marketers to identify the social media influencers they should be targeting, researchers said.
The Twittersphere map, generated by researchers at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), reveals the interests and links between 950,000 local twitter accounts.
Researches at QUT’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) pulled the users into groups, revealing topics which brought the different clusters together.
On the map, the green dots represent topics or popular people such as Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard while the yellow shows the strength of their following.
Associate Professor Axel Bruns said marketers and public relations professionals could use the CCI’s algorithm to figure out who the leading users are in a certain area.
For example, if a wine brand wanted to reach out to wine connoisseurs Bruns said he could identify the Twitter user with the most followers who frequently tweets about wine.
“For a defined topic area you could most definitely work out who is the most important, most influential user,” Bruns said.
“If you are doing marketing the ones with the most followers are the ones who you want to target.”
The algorithm can also be used to figure out how strong a presence and how much sway brands and media companies command on the social media platform.
“We can see whether a brand’s own Twitter account and presence is in the right space, if it is visible enough and how it compares to competitors or with the market leaders,” Bruns explained.
The ABC is currently working with Bruns to get a sense of its influence on Twitter. The public broadcasters’ youth radio station Triple J sits on the map (pictured) between the music and radio clusters.
“You get a sense of where the organisation is strong already and where there are gaps that they are not addressing,” Bruns added.
Bruns said media organisations such as Fairfax have also indicated interest in discovering where they are placed on the Australian Twittersphere.
The researchers have also started looking at how Australian’s share links from the major news sites to measure their impact and audiences.
“The research sits somewhere in the middle between ratings and circulation figures to figure out where in the network people respond to particular stories or news organisations,” Bruns said.
He said the map dismisses the myth that social media users interact in “small isolated fragments”.
“In the past there has been the perception that when online we all just talk in our own echo-chambers and our own little communities,” Bruns said.
“But this map really shows a lot of cross connections between different interest groups.”
Politics, news and books are some of the main topics tweeted about with sports fans, beer lovers and religious groups, including Evangelicals and Hillsong, more removed.
Perth and Adelaide are the only geographical groups on the map.
For more information on the Twittersphere map watch Bruns' webinar by clicking here.