Social Media Marketing

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c h a p t e r

2 :

THE NEW ROLE OF THE CUSTOMER

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Figure 2.3 BuzzStream and the Social Graph

At the heart of tools like BuzzStream is the social graph, a map of who is con-

nected to whom. Social infl uence and Social CRM tools work by “crawling” the

personal and profi le links in your online conversations to fi nd information about the

source of the conversation in much the same way as a searchbot crawls page links to

fi nd related or supporting content. Starting with a comment or a blog post, BuzzStream

looks for a reference to a website or email or Twitter handle that may be present in or

near that post. As it fi nds contact information, the social graph crawler will organize

and return potential or contact points.

As these contact points are discovered, a list of potential links and identities

are grouped together and presented through the dashboard. As a human (Yes, we are

still needed!) you can review this information and pick out the bits that actually seem

related. Then, click a button and create your infl uencer contact. A typical contact may

have a profi le name, a Twitter handle, and perhaps an email address or phone number.

Over time you’ll add to it, as your actual relationships with these infl uencers develop.

Once created, any tweets, emails, or similar will be logged, just as with a traditional

CRM system. You can then build and manage your relationship with these infl uencers

just as you would any other contacts.

Google’s Social Graph API

Google publishes an API—a way to access existing functionality within Google’s open code-

base—that supports the development of applications that can crawl the public pages on social

sites and present the related links, providing the social graph of a specific person. Check it out:

Even if you’re not a programmer understanding what it is and how it works is useful.

http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/

Google’s Social Graph API

Google publishes an API—a way to access existing functionality within Google’s open code-

base—that supports the development of applications that can crawl the public pages on social

sites and present the related links, providing the social graph of a specific person. Check it out:

Even if you’re not a programmer understanding what it is and how it works is useful.

http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/