Influence of human emotion expressed through social networks in viral marketing

Social networking is a multidimensional content and knowledge-sharing online communication media. Presently, the social network influences users' activities, such as identity creation, sharing, conversation, relationship establishment, presence indication, group participation, and reputation. In a way, these activities do reflect an individual's behaviour. As social networks allow any online content to be shared, it is possible to utilise this channel to employ marketing in an effective way. As of now, the major challenge of social marketing is selecting and understanding the target audience to develop marketing and campaigning strategies. One way to understand users is to know the emotions they express when they communicate content through social networking. This paper attempts to study the nine basic human emotions and their significance in various social network activities to determine the right strategies of marketing in e-business. In order to personalise this process for the social network users, initially, a survey is conducted to analyse the influence of human emotions on performing activities on social networks. With the help of the extracted information, developing a suitable marketing strategy and tools to attract users to the product being advertised may be easier in e-business.