The social graph is the representation of our relationships, which define our personal, family, or business communities on social websites. With the growing number of distribution channels in the social realm, consumers are now more in control of establishing the power of a brands message as they create and share media through their social graph. According to the AdAge article, What Studying Your Links Can Teach You About Your Marketing, nearly 20% of traffic that websites receive arrives via shared link (IM, email, online communities, blogs, forums, tweets, ect.), and this percentage is continuing to grow. This means that brands are more reliant on the power of social graphs as relevant, engaging, useful content is selected and distributed by the consumers themselves.

Multiple studies have shown the importance of measuring and analyzing shared links with site visitors arriving from shared links having a conversion rate two to four times that of other traffic sources. Brands must harness the full power of social media and better optimize their marketing efforts through mapping the social graph by analyzing shared links to identify:

• true brand advocates
• content that engages consumers
• channels being used to share information