This document discusses a project analyzing social media data to provide marketing insights for the YMCA. It collected tweets from 14 hashtags related to swimming over 5 days. After data cleanup, the tweets were analyzed to identify trending topics by geography and references to the YMCA. Word clouds visualized that water safety was a prominent topic in the USA, Illinois, and Chicago. The project recommends the YMCA maintain an emphasis on water safety, conduct research on expanded aquatics offerings, and integrate relevant hashtags into social media activities to further leverage momentum on topics like learning to swim.

1. Mining Social Media for Product
Development & Marketing Insights
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 - Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole

2. PROJECT BACKGROUND
• Challenges
– YMCA enjoys strong brand recognition among consumers – although many
individuals do not know that the YMCA is a not-for-profit organization
• Often cited as “..where I learned to swim” or “..where I went for summer camp”
• No individual is turned away due to the inability to pay for services
– Increased competition, changing lifestyles, and changing community
demographics
– Understanding the wants and needs of consumers via traditional market
research techniques is costly
• Opportunities
– Social media helps organizations understand topics that are important to
consumers
– Big data tools and techniques offer the promise of timely, cost-effective
insights across a wide range of consumers – current and prospective
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 - Final
Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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3. Big Data Source – Twitter Hashtags
• What is a hashtag?
– Short link(s) preceded by the pound sign (#)
– Organize and categorize discussions
– Created/promoted by end-users and marketers
– Started as a Twitter experiment and has evolved
into a primary social media mechanism
– Adopted by other social media outlets -
Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
• Accessing Twitter hashtags
– Custom PHP script
– Twitter’s Rest APIs  Twitter search API
• Read and write Twitter data
• Responses are available in JSON
https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/search
Twitter Hashtags
#learntoswim
#swimming
#swimminglessons
#swimmingtips
#kidsswimming
#babyswim
#swimtime
#childdrensswimgames
#swimmingworld
#watersafety
#waterconfidence
#watergames
#drowningprevention
#learncpr
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 -
Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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4. Data Details - Summary
• Search across 14 hashtags
– 11/4/14 – 11/9/14
– Initial search results limited due to API
rate limits
• Reduced by ~10% after data cleanup
• Foreign language characters
• Inappropriate content
• Obvious promotional content
Twitter Hashtags
#learntoswim
#swimming
#swimminglessons
#swimmingtips
#kidsswimming
#babyswim
#swimtime
#childdrensswimgames
#swimmingworld
#watersafety
#waterconfidence
#watergames
#drowningprevention
#learncpr
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 -
Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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5. Data Details – Search Results
Query
https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json?q=%23learntoswim+%20OR%23watersafety&count=100
Results
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 -
Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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6. Technology Stack
• Twitter REST API v1.1
• PHP 5.2 (custom script)
• CSV files (for import/export into Mongodb, and import
into Wordcloud generator)
• Mongodb, mongoimport, mongoexport
• Wordcloud generator (jason davies)
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 -
Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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7. Analyzing the Data
What are the trending topics for swimming within the selected hashtags?
• By geography
– Chicagoland
– Illinois
– USA
• With YMCA references?
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 -
Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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8. Trending Topics – Expressed via Wordcloud
USA Illinois
YMCA DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 - Chicago
Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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9. Insights & Recommendations
1. Maintain emphasis of water safety in YMCA aquatics social media
activities
– Water safety
– Drowning prevention
2. Conduct internal research regarding opportunities to promote
aquatics offerings
– “onemileswim” cited as “gateway” to triathlon preparation
– Expanded parent/child swimming offerings
3. Associate active hashtags into routine social media activities to
further leverage social media momentum
• #learntoswim
• #swimming
• #swimminglessons
• #swimmingtips
4. Integrate IBM’s BlueMix engine and custom apps for enhanced
analysis of twitter stream sentiment
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 -
Final Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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10. Q & A
DePaul Big Data & NoSQL Programming - IPD 451 - Final
Project Highlights | 11/12/14 | J. Cole
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