Being Cheryl: Columbus Social Media and Random Humor

I wrote a post a while back with some quick ideas for how Twitter could be used for market research. A year and a half later, it’s still the post that brings me the most traffic through search engines, so I know it’s a topic on a lot of folks’ minds.

Well, I’m currently at the American Marketing Association’s 2010 Marketing Research Conference, at which Nate and I are leading up a human business team to create online content. I attended a presentation titled, “Social Media Techniques vs. Focus Groups for Qualitative Research” in which Gina Woodall and Charles Colby from Rockbridge Associates, LLC provided great insight into specific ways social media can be used for market research.

First, social media is different from phone/email communication in obvious, but important, ways for market researchers. In social media, participants are…

• In the mood to socialize
• Stimulated to share
• Looking for immediate advice
• Want to interact with others like themselves

There are several benefits to using social media for marketing research. In social media, respondents are in the mood to talk about your topic – instead of a moderator trying to extract information from participants, social media allows participants to come into the conversation when they feel like it. Additionally, social media provides the opportunity to capture information from participants immediately after an experience or transaction. Social media is also enjoyable for respondents – it’s more fun than a traditional survey or focus group.

3 ways market researchers are using social media:

• Data mining: There are mass amount of conversations on Twitter and Facebook, blog posts and more, all available for free, that can be used to identify trends.
• Online communities: Used to come up with new ideas and innovation (MyStarbucksIdea, Dell)
  
  • Open communities, in which anyone can view and join
    - Benefits:: Builds brand image, fosters continuous innovation, makes participation recruitment easy and creates less need to offer incentives
    - Issues: Expensive to maintain, negative comments seen by everyone, competitors can access data
  • Closed communities, which are invitation-only
    - Benefits: Doesn’t skew to heavy users as much as open communities do, more cost efficient than a focus group, quicker project turnaround, rich data extracted from each respondent, privacy
    - Issues: Recruiting participants, loss of potential brand image boost
• Social media interfaces: Conducting primary research through applications that use the elements of social media
  • Tips for recruiting respondents: Add “be the first to share your opinions” language early on to encourage others to start the conversation, as starting it yourself would create bias in your research. Use about 5-7 topics to create maximum engagement. Always leave an open topic so participants can start their own discussions.
  • Analyzing this data from social media interfaces is similar to a traditional qualitative analysis. Depending on the amount of responses, some data/text mining may be needed to extract themes. There is a bit more confidence in the data, because you have more people participating.

There are limitations to social media research tools. It is difficult to keep respondents engaged with your topic. Updates and incentives need to be frequent to foster conversations. Additionally, social media, as a virtual experience, makes observation of body language and facial expressions impossible.

Thanks for the great presentation, Gina and Charles!