Storytelling for Communicators: Network Analysis

This week is National Storytelling Week, “a joyful celebration of the power of sharing stories” run by the National Literacy Trust in the UK.? The theme for this year’s event is Reimagine your world, which we believe is at the heart of how storytelling can and should be used by communicators within organisations to spark the enthusiasm of key stakeholders from consumers to CEOs, from donors to diplomats, from employees to executives.

Yesterday’s post discussed how thematic research can help communicators to create compelling narratives, and today we’re going to take a closer look at how network analysis can drive storytelling.

What is network analysis?

If thematic research provides information on how a particular topic is being discussed in the digital space, then network analysis provides more detailed insight into who is discussing it. Using publicly available metadata from social media users, network analysis uses algorithms to group them into audience segments based on commonalities, creating a network map.

Using this map and related data, we can identify key aspects of the people in the audience including the influencers, platforms, types and even tone of content likely to engage them.

As part of our analysis, we look for commonalities and differences between audiences and segments, in terms of demographics, interests and attributes, as well as how each segment within an audience connects to others. Our clients’ audiences are then compared to a baseline audience, so we can assess whether the data we’re seeing is significant and specific to our selected audience.

This type of analysis can be applied at a thematic level, to understand who is discussing a topic area as a whole, at an industry sector level, or at a brand level, to drive understanding of how people are engaging with you and your competitors.

You can also flip the script and seek to understand what is of interest to people within a target demographic group to see whether they are likely to engage with your campaign content.

How does this drive storytelling?

• Network analysis provides invaluable insight into how to make sure your narrative connects with your target audience via improved understanding of their interests and influences.
• Understanding who is likely to engage with your content provides both strategic and tactical advantages, supporting planning prior to, and allowing for course correction during campaigns
• Network analysis can help to identify potential partners that would resonate with your target audience and could support in engaging people with your narrative.

Do you use network analysis to drive your storytelling? Let us know in the comments.