Understanding Viral Narratives Among Women with Young Children

🎯 Objective:

To help the client identify and explore viral conversation clusters among their target demographic — specifically women navigating pregnancy, early motherhood, and family life — in order to:

• Inform creative strategy and campaign messaging

• Uncover adjacent interest areas and emotional drivers

• Support culturally resonant content planning

📡 Data Collection: TikTok as a Cultural Pulse

I sourced data using Apify's TikTok Scraper, a reliable tool for collecting:

• High-frequency hashtags used by real TikTok users

• Hashtag co-occurrence (topics that show up together in content)

• Video engagement signals (likes, shares, comments)

• Metadata to support segmentation by region or trend window

I filtered the output to focus on hashtags organically used by women, parents, and lifestyle creators — such as #MomLife, #Postpartum, #BabyOnBoard, #WomenSupportingWomen, #MotherhoodUnplugged, and others.

🧠 Methodology: Topic Network Modeling

To go beyond lists and frequencies, I developed a custom topic graph framework, where:

• Each node represents a distinct viral hashtag

• Links between nodes reflect semantic or behavioral similarity (e.g., often used together)

• Node size reflects influence — measured by centrality in the network

• The entire graph is structured using a force-directed layout that naturally clusters themes

I built this structure to reflect not just what’s popular, but how topics relate and reinforce one another — surfacing emergent sub-communities like wellness-focused moms, working parents, and first-time families.

🧭 Visualization: Interactive & Client-Ready

The network was rendered using D3.js with the following features:

• Interactive node layout — users can explore, drag, and examine clusters

• Labels directly on nodes (no hover required), for clear topic legibility

• Bubble sizing based on connectivity — highlighting influential concepts

• A clean, embeddable SVG interface that integrates into dashboards or decks

This provides a strategic lens for brand teams, creative leads, and researchers to explore what matters to real parents — on their own terms and in their own language.