Social Audience Development Turns Sharks into Twitter Influencers

We are thrilled to see the impact of the powerful passionate audience and audience development strategy covered in Computer World’s article on the Ocearch sharks of social media! We have a killer power of the Ocearch social audience case study. It shows the impact we drove by harnessing the powerful collective network effect of a passionate audience to create global awareness to save the sharks and Oceans.

OCEARCH’s Web traffic is 10 times what it was last year, and it’s expected to grow 20 times more by the end of this year, according to Peter Bordes, CEO of oneQube, which sells social media audience-development software and has partnered with OCEARCH to help promote its cause. OneQube’s software takes data on users — such as their names, location and what they’re posting on social media — in order to help better target marketing and advertising.

For example, when OCEARCH researchers began tagging sharks off Australia earlier this year, OneQube’s software allowed the project to target oceanographers and shark enthusiasts in Australia, who presumably would be more interested in the project because of their proximity to the action.

On Facebook last year, OCEARCH had 13 million visits. This year, Bordes predicts, it will reach 200 million impressions. But, it’s not size of an audience but the quality that really matters, he said.

“Would you rather have 400,000 and 1% engagement or 50,000 people and 80% engagement?” oneQube’s Bordes asked, referring to users who comment and return to the website or use the mobile app regularly. “This is a living, breathing database versus a static database.”

The social media buzz around OCEARCH’s shark tracking project has translated into opportunities for the non-profit to expand its relationship with product and media companies that want to be associated with the study of sharks.

“That’s always been the goal,” Bordes said. “How do we create this rising tide by marrying a great cause and the fascination with sharks to the technology that disseminates information in real time while building global audiences to effect change at scale?”

Bordes sees the public’s attitude about sharks changing dramatically. That was illustrated last week, he said, when a great white beached itself on Cape Cod. Instead of killing it, beachgoers scrambled to save it — and succeeded with the help of wildlife officials.

“It’s amazing to see how people on the Cape put the shark back into the water,” Bordes said. “We’re learning how to cohabitate and respect their environment.”