![Tori B]()
Models are quite influential people when it comes to social media. In recent years, self-made Instagram stars have made it big thanks to the millions of followers they've accumulated by showcasing their work on the platform. Social media is an important aspect of a model’s portfolio and a good way for followers to keep up to date with their work.
Of course, the problem with social media is that there is a lot of data to be collected, analysed, reported and understood in terms of tracking target audiences. This data can be complicated and hard to understand for those who aren't tech savvy. In turn, platforms have started popping up to simplify data collected from social media sites and industries are utilising these platforms to better understand their markets.
“There's a whole bunch of analytics out there, but the problem is that it's very confusing data, so Google analytics and Facebook analytics for example are great, but unless you're quite savvy with the marketing world, they're very very hard to dissect,” said Tori Bowman, founder of
Socio.Folio.
The Perth startup has created a product called The Social Report to solve this problem. The SaaS cloud-based platform is designed to allow models and agents to monitor their social media platforms and the accounts which they manage. It takes the key essential data regarding demographics and analytics for social media, bringing all the information from a model's social media sites into the one spot.
Agencies log in to The Social Report with a username and password and add their social media handles such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Once each site is added the platform begins to collect data every few hours. For example, bookers at modelling agencies who manage 20 models add the url for each model and their individual social media sites to The Social Report and then let it do its thing.
The platform then displays a dashboard of demographics of the model's followers along with user engagement and activities. This includes the number of people who like a certain post or image, and the types of people talking about the model on Twitter or using their hashtag. The Social Report displays key demographics like age, gender, and location of followers and collates the data onto a dashboard, which can be transported into a PDF file that can be sent to clients.
Social media data collection and analysis isn't new, having been used by many social influencer platforms such as VAMP and TRIBE, who try to narrow down on their target audience to increase a brand’s popularity and global reach. This space has many global players who corner niches in the marketplace to create a point of difference and harness the power of social media platforms. There are a range of platforms that are focusing on the model niche, however the modelling industry only needs a certain amount of collected data, and too much information can be confusing and useless to clients and agencies.
“For the fashion industry I think that they really only need a certain collection of information, the rest of it is sort of just noise and it tends to confuse people and makes people very fearful of using those different platforms,” explained Bowman.
In terms of The Social Report, the model is the brand and collecting data - and, more importantly, understanding that data - is crucial when it comes to facilitating effective relationships between the model and their followers and brands. The platform works in conjunction with Socio.Folio, which is a digital portfolio for models. Models upload their images to the Socio.Folio app, which can be shared across their social media sites. The Social Report is used by their managers and can also be accessed by the models to identify who their target audience is, providing them with a better understanding of their brand when it comes to booking work.
Last year Bowman was accepted into the Perth accelerator Amcom Upstart, through which she received $40,000 in funding, mentorship, and working space. From there she built up her company and worked on her original product called Snaptch (now know as the Socio.Report), which won the fashion category at the 2014 Australian Mobile & App Design Awards. Bowman was also named as one of the top five Female Australian App Developers in Marie Claire Australia in January 2015.
“Models were starting to become quite influential online and they had heaps of followers and people were becoming more attracted to that space rather than the traditional forms of advertising. So it just made sense to me to try and build a portfolio that would not only showcase the model's imagery and measurements, but also their social profile,” said Bowman.
While the design and application of Snaptch was impressive, the name however failed to take off and attract users. People found it too close to Snapchat and the meaning of a model’s snapshot failed to translate to her audience.
This February Bowman will be launching the new name Socio.Folio as an app for models along with the new Social Report product for agencies. Both products tie neatly together to match the market’s needs and fill the gaps in organised data management.
Bowman said she has had substantial investment interest from the US and even turned down the offer to be acquired by a small company. She said her company is not ready to take on more investors until The Social Report moves from a prototype to an up and running product.
She explained, “I'm only looking at getting the product ready and making sure I use my time wisely, so going over to Melbourne and Sydney and meeting with agencies and models. I’m continuing to talk about what's happening in the industry to make sure that the product is going to match what the market needs."
Image: Tori Bowman. Source: Supplied
