The Flowers, The China, The Catering, The Hashtag

The Flowers, The China, The Catering, The Hashtag

The cake was ordered, the dress had arrived, but an important detail was missing: the official wedding hashtag. With 275 people on my invite list, I wanted a way to track their personal social conversation – to see what they were discussing before, during and after my big day. Crowdsourcing ideas from friends led to a hashtag victor: #TimeToTreharne.

A week before the wedding, I enlisted the People Pattern platform to monitor my wedding campaign. I uploaded my wedding guest list into the People Pattern platform using two methods:

  1. I stitched my wedding guest list to identify my guests across social media, based on their name and location.
  2. Using keyword search, I used the People Pattern platform to find and analyze posts using #TimeToTreharne across social channels.

The results varied across the board.

I found some friends talking about the wedding across Twitter.

#timetotreharne vows. congrats @allysquirespic.twitter.com/EeVIgZq8xY

— Joe P (@joeknowsjoe) September 28, 2014

Cute, right? And then I found my childhood babysitter. I am now following Nick on Twitter.

Cheers! #TimeToTreharne @ Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center http://t.co/kVO08AYRU8

— Nicholas McWhirter (@redblank) September 28, 2014


And then I discovered that the man operating the photo booth–who I had never met before–had also joined in on the celebration.

Cheers! #TimeToTreharne #smilebooth pic.twitter.com/ldy9xNXvQw

— ben winder (@smileboothben) September 27, 2014


Not surprisingly, the younger crew contributed at a higher rate across social channels, while the older crowd prefered face-to-face attention. Uncovering surprises within a data set is one of the most enticing elements of audience intelligence, but I really didn’t anticipate any in this case, seeing as I had thoroughly planned my wedding end-to-end. To my surprise, the data set revealed a detail that I never would have known–there were more males than females in attendance. And those males were interested in sports and tech. 

While I typically do not use People Pattern to monitor events, I thought this would be an interesting one to analyze. In real world cases, People Pattern can be used to understand engaged audience is throughout a campaign, event or activations. Oftentimes connecting people inside the conversation with those on the periphery. With a better understanding of the known–and unknown–audience, brands can activate influencers, make more informed content decisions and ultimately optimize future campaigns based on success metrics.

So what would I have done differently? Knowing that my audience had a high rate of males–with an interest in technology and sports–I may have enhanced their experience by providing a TV on in the corner with the UT vs. Kansas or USC vs. Oregon State game on.

Are you launching a campaign and need a tool that will help you deeply understand who engages with your brand? Email us or request a demo, and we will be in touch!