Facebook Introducing Topic Data To Help With More Targeted And Personalised Communication

A More Complete Fit

In recent days Facebook has announced through its news pages that it will be introducing a new communication product called Topic Data that will allow Facebook marketers the ability to gain a deeper understanding of their audiences' psychographic aspects such as attitudes, opinions and beliefs around the key issues and aspects that pertain to their business, with the view of being able to formulate ever more precisely matching products and services that more fully and completely meet those customer needs.

 

 

 

Historical Approach

Typically up until now by observation an online marketer could deduce by the activity about what was being shared, commented on and generally spoken about, what the respective care factor was for any given issue, topic or challenge. Certainly behaviorally based and useful but at best this represented an incomplete picture about what people thought.

Subsequently Facebook have now communicated that the new Topic Data product will be available to a specified group of pre-selected Facebook partners which one would assume would be a first phase in a plan to eventually roll it out universally to the full 1.35billion globally users at a future time when the trial phase has concluded.

How Does Topic Data Work

Essentially Topic Data will provide greater clarity and therefore insight into what your target audiences are talking about online with respect to you, your product, competitors, upcoming and launch events, matters of importance and other general activities that may all provide your marketing team with addition information on what is needed, how it should be couched to best resonate with that group of potential customers.

 

Deidentified

Perhaps most pleasing is the fact that this information will be provided in a deidentified way where the identity and personal information of the person making the comments is kept secret thereby protecting their privacy and anonymity. Of course as marketers the key for our market research regardless of whether its online or using more traditional offline methodologies of focus groups and surveys, needs to rely on the accuracy of the data but not necessarily on who is saying it.

 

Decision Making

The end result of this being that product and brand managers will again have access to another useful data source that will help them to formulate better positioning, strategy and tactical implementation.

 

As a provided example fro the news source with Topic Data:

• A business selling a hair de-frizzing product can see demographics on the people talking about humidity’s effects on their hair to better understand their target audience.
• A fashion retailer can see the clothing items its target audience is talking about to decide which products to stock.
• A brand can see how people are talking about their brand or industry to measure brand sentiment.

Ref: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/topic-data

 

Although such data has of course been available before, it may have been in numbers that were not statistically significant enough to  make meaningful business decisions.  Now utilising Topic Data, Facebook have amalgamated raw and unidentified data  from Facebook activity to provide insights on all the activity around any given topic or discussion area, which in turn provides a much more quantified perspective of what the target market is thinking. Facebook have made it clear also that the topic data provides guidance for marketers but it cannot be used to target ads directly as personal information is at no stage available.

In Partnership With Datasift

Facebook has announced also that it will partner with the Datasift organisation who operate within the data industry and will leverage their experience and technology to further develop and refine the Topic Data model and data accuracy and reliablity. 

Access

Facebook have also declared that for the time being at least, The Topic Data will only be available to a small number of Datasift’s partners in the USA and the United Kingdom. As well the resulting data will be limited to those countries as well. In time it is reasonable to expect a more refined product be made universally available to all.

If you would like to know more about any aspect of Facebook or social media, don't forget to register for any of the seven free, two hour Digital Enterprise Program workshops by signing up at this link:  http://www.vecci.org.au/business-solutions/digital-enterprise-program/workshops

By attending any of these workshops, all Australian SME's will qualify for a free four hour coaching session for their own business at a time and location of their choice.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,

Daniele.