SocialRank for Journalists

We’ve recently noticed journalists using SocialRank to find sources for upcoming stories. In hindsight, it actually makes a lot of sense — what better way to find domain experts than through a keyword search of Twitter profiles?

For example, a journalist may be preparing an opinion piece on the rise of drone technology. It’s one thing to find people sharing links and appending drone-related hashtags to their posts. But that’s generally a soft, unpredictive vote of confidence.

If someone actually includes the keyword “drone” in their profile, though, that is a much stronger signal. This person actively identifies with this specific word.

Using SocialRank’s Bio Keyword filter, a simple search for “drones” would yield all followers who have that word in their profile descriptions.

Here’s another hypothetical, this time with Bitcoin. I’m writing a piece on the future of digital currency, and I’d love to chat with someone with some experience with Bitcoin.

So I use the Bio Keyword filter, searching for “bitcoin,” and these are my results:

I see here that Vinny Lingham is someone that is into Bitcoin and might be a great person to reach out to. I click the DM button in his profile card:

Now I can directly hit him up to connect with him. Super simple.

h/t @EricFriedman for sparking the idea for this post.

There are tons of ways to use SocialRank and so we’ll be sharing many of these use cases with you all as we learn of them.

If you are using SocialRank in an unexpected fashion, please get in touch with us at hi@SocialRank.com! We’d love to chat.