How to go through social media and pull out pearls.
Sosia goes into my Facebook reading groups, reads, and pulls out organized quotes and mentions. Within an hour there were 28 quotes for the campaign and 5 real mentions of e-vrit.
Our readers talk on Facebook.
Not on Twitter, and not in store reviews. In reading groups, with tens of thousands of members.
Tools that scan the web just don’t get there. So I let Sosia go through Facebook herself. (Sosia is one of my shluchim. That’s Hebrew for “emissaries”, and it’s what I call my AI agents.)
Step one, signing in without typing a password by hand:
The sign-in went through a secure form inside the chat. I typed in the details, and then a code from the authenticator app.
The shaliach (one of my agents) never saw the password at any point.
Step two, a map of the groups:
Sosia mapped 35 reading groups.
For each group she noted how many members it has, how many posts go up per day, whether it’s public, and what it’s about.
Romance, Kindle, secondhand, sci-fi, kids, audiobooks, and general groups. That way you see at a glance where there’s real traffic.
Step three, joining:
I joined 16 new groups, including a romance group with 117 thousand members and more than 50 posts a day.
And Facebook? Not a single warning.
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Step four, reading and organizing:
From here it’s a weekly review.
Sosia searches inside the groups by topic, and reads the posts and the comments.
Every finding is saved as one line in a file, by type: pains, wants, slang, competitors, reading habits, and mentions of e-vrit (our Hebrew e-book store).
Every line has a date, a group type, a short quote, and the reader type. Mentions of e-vrit also get a link to the post, the tone, a summary of the comments, and whether we need to do something.
And no names. No names or profiles of private people, only what they write.
And within an hour:
28 reader quotes for Growth’s reading streak campaign. From 6 groups, organized by topic: time and screens, habits and reading blocks, where people buy and why they switch.
And also what wasn’t found. Almost zero conversations about badges and reminders, and that’s important information for the campaign on its own.
And 5 real mentions of e-vrit. A reader literally begging us to bring back the old site. And a reader who bought a Boox (an e-ink reader), purely for the e-vrit app.
What’s worth taking from this:
Go where the readers are. For us that’s Facebook groups, and that’s where you need to read.
Map first, then read. Members, posts per day, topic. That’s how you know where it’s worth investing.
A fixed format turns posts into data. One line per finding, with type and tone, and you can use it right away in the campaign.
Sign in without typing a password by hand. A secure form and an authentication code, and the shaliach never sees the password.