Targeting Social Media Influencers

This post is from from my other blog here

TIPIS - The Influential Persons Identification SystemIn an attempt to harness the power of Word of Mouth, or Viral Marketing – Microsoft has been looking at processes that seek to identify influencers within social networks to attain the greatest reach for marketing efforts. By reaching the core influencers in a social networks an advertiser;“…creates the potential for exponential growth of the marketing message, as an individual passes on the message to his friends, those friends pass it on to their friends, and so on. Viral marking, so called because it spreads similar to a virus epidemic, exploits pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness. Viral marketing harnesses the network effect of the Internet.”To that end, let’s look at a recent Microsoft Patent titled; IDENTIFYING INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN A SOCIAL NETWORK (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080070209.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080070209RS=DN/20080070209)