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Geosocial Segmentation: Explore the Personality of a Neighbourhood
Geosocial Segmentation: Explore the Personality of a Neighbourhood

Use location-based social media data to discover the unique behaviours, interests, and beliefs that characterize any area.

Cameron Klapwyk avatar
Written by Cameron Klapwyk
Updated over a week ago

Demographics, traffic counts, mobile location data and points of interest all provide an excellent bird's eye view into the profile of people and businesses in an area. Each should play an important role in your location analysis toolkit. 

We are pleased to introduce you to a new data offering that complements your existing toolkit and allows you to explore the culture, beliefs, hobbies, trends and that give a neighbourhood its unique colour. 

Why are we so excited about this new dataset?

Consider the following scenario. 

You are analyzing two potential markets, both of which have a median household income of $105,000 and an average age of 42. Both have high vehicular and pedestrian traffic volumes around the site you are considering along with a high number of coffee shops and independent grocery stores. 

Beneath the surface of these similar neighbourhoods we might be able to discern interesting differences. One might have a preponderance of history buffs and car enthusiasts. The other might be characterized by wine lovers and foodies

With any real estate analysis, you want to get as full a picture of the area under consideration as possible. This helps you decide if a site is truly well-suited for you or your client. If you're offering a healthy, trendy foodie experience, you want to target areas frequented by foodies. If you're opening an up independent cinema, you want to find neighbourhoods full of film lovers.  

Enter Geosocial Data. 

Developed around billions of geotagged social media posts, this rich and constantly evolving dataset aggregates the personality of a neighbourhood. It adds depth to the story your other datasets tell you about an area. 

If you'd like to learn more about the geosocial dataset and the methodology used to collect, sort, and aggregate it, we encourage you to read spatial.ai's The Essential Guide to Geosocial Data.

Are you interested in adding geosocial segmentation data to your PiinPoint account?

Contact your Customer Success Manager or e-mail support@piinpoint.com


So how do I use geosocial segmentation data? 

Once geosocial segmentation data is enabled on your account, you will have a brand-new feature panel, featuring the full geosocial taxonomy of 72 different personas. 

Depending on whether you have subscribed to limited or full access to geosocial segmentation, you will be able to activate up to 15 or all 72 segments. 

Geosocial segments function much the same as demographics in that they can be viewed on the map in the form of a heatmap and brought into your site reports.

Geosocial Heatmapping

1. Open up the Geosocial Segment feature panel and click Add Segment.  

2. This will bring you to the Geosocial Segment Library. For a deep-dive into each of the personas click the button below: 

You will be provided with a descriptive overview of each persona in PiinPoint as well. 

💪 Geosocial Power User tip #1: Make sure you take a look at the “Drivers” and “Opportunities” sections. Drivers will give you an idea of some of the attributes of an area that increase the behaviours and attitudes associated with the segment while Opportunities will give you an idea of what business types will perform well in areas that are highly concentrated with the segment.

💪. Geosocial Power User tip #2: It is important to note that Drivers do not necessarily equate to good Opportunities. Vintage stores are a driver of the Hipster segment, but this could be because there are many vintage stores in areas that are highly concentrated with the segment. To combat this potential friction, utilize a POI heat-map which will provide insight into what kinds of businesses are operating in a given area. Areas that have high concentrations of your geosocial segment and low concentrations of organizations in the Drivers or Opportunities sections could have a high chance of success.

3. Click the grey Add button to select a persona and then continue browsing the library. 

4. Once you have finalized your list of selected segments, click the blue Save button. 

5. You will now see that all of your selected segments have been added to the Geosocial panel: 

Choose a segment to toggle to ON to activate the heatmap for the location that you are exploring on the map. 

Here is how the Ingredient Attentive persona indexes in Downtown Portland: 

💡 Note: In the US, segments are aggregated and indexed at the Block Group level. In Canada they will index at the DA level. For more information on these geographies, click here.

6. Click on any of the blocks or DAs to bring up a detailed picture of how it indexes for all of your selected segments.

Bringing Segments into your Reports

It couldn't be any easier to bring geosocial segments into your site reports. Any segment that you have added to the geosocial panel will automatically be added to single site reports. In addition, all reports will show you which three segments are the highest indexing for your location.

Here's an example from a report for Disney World in Orlando Florida:

And here's one from halfway between the White House and the Washington Monument: 

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Dig Deeper into Geosocial Analysis:

There are a whole variety of ways in which we can incorporate this data into a custom analysis for you or your client's locations. By incorporating geosocial data, we can generate a composite picture of the personality of areas where locations perform really well and identify similar locations across North America!



 💡 If you're interested in learning more about this type of analysis of have any questions related to this fantastic new feature, please contact your Customer Success Manager or e-mail us at support@piinpoint.com


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