How Brands Can Tap Into Blockchain to Identify ‘Power Users’ on Social Media

As you may have noticed, the word blockchain is everywhere. Across multiple industries, it has become a buzzword as companies look to integrate blockchain technology — which creates a digital ledger of transactions — into their offerings. While many companies want to take advantage of the buzz and jump to announce that they're using blockchain, it doesn’t necessarily make sense for every industry. However, one area where it can add value is in marketing campaigns, particularly on social media.

When an advertising firm or brand implements a social referral campaign as part of its marketing strategy, it's able to gather useful information on the sharing habits of its followers. By incentivizing consumers with rewards and using pay-per-share tactics to spread their message, brands can elevate engagement rates and create awareness about their products and offerings. Analytics from these campaigns can reveal which platforms receive the most traction and which posts drive the highest number of clicks and/or purchases. However, until recently, there was no way for marketers to fully measure the impact of each individual user’s social share past a like or a retweet.

Blockchain technology can solve that problem. By creating a complete ledger of every social media "transaction" during a campaign, brands can pinpoint the users that have the widest reach with their shares. This data doesn’t stop with the users they directly share to; rather, it follows the post as it's shared to a new generation of individuals, creating a multitiered tree of everyone who has seen or engaged with the post, starting with the first person to share it. Identifying the users who drive the most shares is very valuable information to the brand. With that data, it can now make future campaigns more efficient and effective by targeting these power users right from the start.

In today’s world, every brand wants to have a strategy, post or campaign that “goes viral.” Viral posts on social media become popular organically — i.e., regular people sharing the content with friends, family and followers on various platforms and even spreading the message via word-of-mouth in some instances. The more people talking and posting about it results in the viral sensation all brands dream of.

For marketers, widespread sharing from power users can result in more than just a boost in exposure to the brand’s message. In many cases, it leads to more clicks, visits to websites, and purchases. Since referral marketing campaigns typically operate on a pay-per-share model, if the most powerful users are targeted at the start of a campaign, brands have the potential to reach a wide audience for a relatively low cost.

As the blockchain frenzy continues to infiltrate many aspects of our daily life, marketers should be aware of the value this technology can bring to a campaign and look for more platforms to begin integrating the technology into their offerings. Insights gathered from blockchain transactions can help brands to make more informed, data-driven decisions in their campaigns, expanding their reach and increasing return on investment in the process.

Eric Ramos is the chief technology officer at Grabbr, a social referral marketing platform.