At this point, it’s probably safe to assume that most people are pretty used to using GPS services. Whether it’s using Google Maps to get directions from Point A to Point B, searching “taco restaurant near me” on Grubhub or using your location settings to see how close the UPS guy is to getting your Target order to your doorstep, this technology is now a part of our everyday lives.
With this handy tech, however, comes location tracking on both ends, targeted advertising and access to your web activity. Like with most things, this can be good and bad. Social media-based location analytics sounds scary because from a single post, anyone can track who you were with if you tagged someone, a precise location and the time you were there. Marketers can then use this data to create personalized content and measure its effectiveness.
This can also be helpful to end-users as customers are more likely to be satisfied if they get what they want when they need it. Successful location analytics really depends on a person’s comfort level with their privacy settings.
Hoping to explore the positive side of digital mapping this week, I created a public Google Map with every comic shop in the Rio Grande Valley. Comics, collectables, cards and tabletop games have been a staple in households for decades, but with more reasons to get out of the house and find others who share the same passions, we’re now seeing more shops than ever. But not all comic shops offer the same products. There are some that only sell comics and graphic novels, some focus on collectibles like action figures and Funko Pop figurines and some are solely for tabletop games that also host weekly game nights for players.
While anyone could search for “comic shop near me,” and hope that your local shop offers what you’re looking for, I decided to create a map with every store in the Rio Grande Valley and split them into categories so shop-goers can not only see every location, but also search for the one that fits their needs. The categories I placed them in are:
- Comics
- Collectibles
- Cards
- Video/Arcade games
- Game nights; and
- Tabletop games
Because some of the shops offer more than one category, there are some that are repeated on the list. I also categorized them by color and added a special “POW!” icon on the comics tab to make it stand out since those shops typically offer more products.
This map can be used by local community members who are active with this hobby, those who are looking to join it, and parents who would like to take their kids for a fun afternoon or weekend activity.
Mention Mapping the Comic Industry
Tracking your brand’s social media analytics is like getting a report card of all the things your company is doing well and, even more useful, discovering the ways your brand could get better. Tracking your Twitter— though just as important as your Instagram, Facebook and YouTube analytics— is an important platform in gaging the success of your brand’s social media strategy.
Learning more about how your business performs online can provide key insights into how your audience engages with your content, the type of content that performs the best and whether there are any influencers in your realm that can help push your message out to more people.
Because I spent the week looking into local comic shops, I wanted to gain more insight from different Twitter networks in that sphere. I began to look at the tool Mentionapp. Mentionapp is a tool that shows you connections to user profiles and hashtags that have been mentioned by central users. The platform then lets you click on connections to see tweets and the people who are tweeting them.
The first hashtag I searched for on the platform was #LCS (Local Comic Shop). Though well-known in the industry, I did not get the results I was looking for and instead got tweets about what looked to be an E-Sports organization.
The next hashtag I searched for was #comics, my thinking would be that it would grab tweets from people who were tweeting about both comic shops and comic books. Exploring all the connections it generated, I found that a lot of the connections were from either comic shops or graphic artists who draw their own comics and post them online. They were each interesting to look at, but neither account I clicked on came with a large enough audience.
Other hashtags I looked at were #LocalComicShop, #RGVComics, #NewComics, #ComicsforSale, #MarvelComics and a handful of others. Some garnered zero results and while the others were interesting to explore, I still wasn’t getting the detailed and in-depth data I was looking for. I decided to pivot from hashtags to searching for a specific person.
Ryan Higgans is the owner of a comic shop in California named Comics Conspiracy that I actually got to visit for the first time in December. He is also a co-host of The Geekbox and The Comic Conspiracy podcasts. I wanted to search his presence because I know he uses his platforms to engage with followers about the importance of shopping at local comic shops, routinely talks about the industry with the goal of being transparent about his business.
I followed his web of connections, which revealed writers, comic book artists and others in the industry (as well as his enthusiasm for the Boston Red Sox).
Though he nor his fellow comic book podcasters came up organically on Mentionapp, it was interesting to explore his connections once I searched for him specifically. He has 8,265 followers and follows 835 accounts, but he frequently interacts with his followers and anyone who asks him questions about the comic industry. A common request is his reaction to a new comic book movie so he can talk about on the next episode of podcast. Venom 2 actually came out over the weekend, so it’ll be interesting to see the comics he suggests for anyone who would like to read them before they watch the movie.
While 8,000 followers may not sound like much in the world of social media, he is a great micro-influencer in the comic industry by his own right and does what he can to get people to shop locally.
Big companies like Marvel and D.C. could definitely benefit from reaching out to him with pre-releases so he could hype up a comic if he truly enjoys it, and graphic artists and writers could continue to visit his comic shop to promote new material.
Wrapping up
While Mentionapp was definitely interesting to look into, it wasn’t as in-depth as I hoped it would be. It also did not use my location to pinpoint local trends, hashtags or influencers, which made me have to search for them at the national level.
I would love to continue exploring Twitter insights and analytics for business so here’s to finding the next tool!