Mean Girls & Sociometry (The Study of Popularity in Social Media)

Sociometry

This field is very interesting, you could call it - the study of social relationships, the study of social connections or even the study of popularity.

In my work, I've used these theories and practices to solve the question: How do you measure popularity (which is much more tricky than it seems) . In Sociology, there has been many attempts to quantify social popularity - but first, how do you define it?

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Perceived Popularity

This type of popularity is made most famous by the movie Mean Girls. Famously in the movie, a click of mean popular girls control a high school as social dictators. Studies show, however, that this type of popularity is only perceived and does not always correlate to like-ability or with the ability to positively influence others. In the movie, the downfall of the "mean girls"  demonstrates the true irony of their 'conventional high school popularity'.

Sociometric Popularity

On the other hand, sociometric popularity refers to individuals who are socially agreeable and well liked. Individuals who are sociometrically popular are usually outgoing and good at building trust amongst individuals. Importantly, these individuals may not always be identified as "popular" - in the sense of being "famous" (or in the Mean Girls sense of "infamous").

Which popular do social marketers want?

I would argue that social strategists should focus on the second type - sociometric popularity - true like ability. In digital marketing we have to be ok with shedding the mantel of  "fame" or perceived popularity, for true popularity - which is not always initially as visible.

This means a Facebook page with 1,000 likes (sociometric popularity) should not always be jealous of Facebook pages with 10+ million likes (perceived popularity) - numbers don't always point to true popularity - as we have seen in the movie Mean Girls . 

Instead, focus on building that small ardent fan base. If you have built trust and rapport with your social followers - your ability to truly engage, persuade and reach has exponentially grown. 

Want to learn more about this subject - the book Networks, Crowds and Markets is a very thorough (although very technical and highly text-booky) overview of this entire subject. You should give it a look-see if you're interested.

Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World

By David Easley, Jon Kleinberg

Language Notes # 31: Linguistic Relativity - Leaky Grammar

This article ​touches upon another interesting topic that I have read about before in the world of Linguistic Relativity. 

Metaphors of Language Expression

​The idea is that certain metaphors are built into how languages express certain topics (I touched up on this in this post). I gave the example of states of being - English relates upward motion with higher states of being and downward motion with lower states of being

• Wake UP
• Get UP
• I'm in HIGH spirits today
• I'm UP on cloud nine

• Put the dog DOWN
• For the surgery we'll put you UNDER
• I'm feeling depressed and LOW today
• I'm sorry he FELL sick today

The English Metaphor of Time & Money

Time is Money. But in English, time REALLY IS related to money. In English, you can "buy time, waste time, save time, spend time." There is no larger metaphor in English that relates to time. This metaphor is pervasive in our expressions of time - it is therefore reasonable to believe that this colors our perception of time. In the US, time is money, something that individuals dare not waste and should make the best of (as the metaphor suggests - I'm not saying we're all cold-hearted, productive workaholics). 

​What came first: the chicken or the egg timer? ​So does English reflect this because our culture is based on this way of thinking? Or does this linguistic structure gently help reinforce the believe that time is something to be used constructively.....(I don't have the answer)

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“Perhaps eventually in English you will be able to: loan time, mortgage time, embezzle time and invest time?”

2013 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INDUSTRY REPORT

​This is a very interesting report that was just released. ​

The key takeaways of the report:

• Social Media Marketers want to know: which tactics work, what are the best ways to engage, how can one measure results, what are the best tools and how do you develop overall social media strategy. 
• Social Media marketers plan on using YouTube much more heavily as a social media tool. 
• A whopping 97% of businesses use social media marketing, BUT also interesting from the report - only 74% of them outsource social media mgmt while a little more than half have been using social media for around a year (leaves a lot of room for potential).​

​This field is still wide open - but at the same time I think it is important not to become to tunnel visioned when focusing on social media - it's hot right now, but it shouldn't steal all your thunder. 

Let the games begin (or continue)!​

The Psychology of Persuasion: Social Media Story Telling

YES! This article talks about the use of storytelling and narrative to persuade and convince people. This is exactly what I am talking about - and I  therefore completely agree. The egyptians mastered this technique - capturing our imaginations with myths and stories of the devine. 

​The story of Osiris -  A 3,000BC social media tactic?

What's even MORE surprising  - the structure they lay out in the slideshare article has remained relatively unchanged. 

• A Hero to drive the action
• An Antagonist to challenge
• A movement of awareness or enlightenment 
• and finally transformation. 

You don't have to follow this structure (but it would be fun to try to fit this character arch into - say - GE's brand story - very entertaining indeed), however the classics have always worked and will always work for a good reason!

How BrandYourself Works and Personal Brand at BrandYourself.com

​Having done my thesis on Facebook and online personality management - This website seems like it's been a long time in the works. People are becoming more and more aware of their online persona and digital footprint - one way to measure this is by whether or not people google their own names. This handy dandy site seems to help promote positive profiles showing up higher on google searches of your name - still trying to figure out how it works tho....