Happy New Year from Conversition

Friday, December 31st, 2010

A Double Rainbow Year for Influencers

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

2010 was the year of double rainbows and if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, just watch this simple YouTube video of someone appreciating nature’s beauty. This video caught the attention of online viewers who quickly made it a viral success with nearly 23 million views.

The phrase “double rainbow” took on new meaning as people used it to describe anything they found to be wonderful or amazing – whether genuine or sarcastically (double yellow lines!, double cheeseburger!).

Let’s take a quick journey and see exactly what happened. Prior to July, mentions of double rainbows were very few.  Sure, people were filming and uploading their own double rainbow videos, but none of them had the certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ that would elevate them to viral status. Until July that is.

The video was uploaded to YouTube in January 2010, but it was only after being mentioned in a tweet by Jimmy Kimmel in July 2010 that the video generated a massive spike in hits. People delighted in the seemingly over-appreciation of one of nature’s beauties. And though views have declined over time, referencing the ‘double rainbow’ is still quite popular.

The online community was quick to take up the meme and apply its meaning to anything they possibly could. This word cloud shows the brand names that people most often used in association with the phrase “double rainbow” – bigger words more often, smaller words less often. Skittles candy (“Taste the rainbow!”) and Lucky Charms cereal (“pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”) were the obvious lucky recipients of this meme. Other brands were also praised with this type of new gold star, including Ducati, HTC, and Chanel.

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Most obvious in the list of brands, though, is Microsoft which capitalized fully on the viral phenomenon by casting the original videographer in a commercial for Windows Live. Apparently, there is a way to film an entire rainbow in a single shot as long as you use their software.
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2010 was definitely a year to remember. We agonized through many debates over whether there is such a thing as social media influencers and do they really matter at all. It’s hard to argue with a pre-post design like this one. Without Jimmy’s online influence, this video was destined for the virtual garbage can. Long live influencers! Long live the double rainbow!
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Related links
Social media monitoring vs social media research: Can you see the difference?
The Conversition Hierarchy of Social Media Insight
Battle of the Brands: Angelina Jolie vs Bacon
Battle of the Brands: Homer Simpson vs Dunkin Donuts

Top Market Research Resources

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Your best bet for market research news is to start with the organization(s) in your country. They will have the most up-to-date legal and ethical opinions on issues that are unique to your region. But once you have that covered, you can learn a lot about your industry by keeping in touch with the various organizations around the world. Most of them welcome memberships from the global community particularly as our research focuses on the global community. Here are just a few of the English organizations that may be of interest to you.

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CASRO – Council of American Survey Research Organizations
ESOMAR – European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research
MRA – Marketing Research Association (US)
IMRO – Interactive Marketing Research Association (US, part of MRA)
MRIA – Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (Canada)
AMSRS – Australian Market and Social Research Society
MRS – Marketing Research Society

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There are also many other independent websites to help you stay on top of the MR scene. You can’t possibly participate in all of them as there are far too many and they are spread across Facebook, LinkedIn, and private sites, but not to worry as you’ll find a lot of duplication among them. You’ll probably catch most things with just these few sites. Say good-bye to free time!
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All Top Market Research – Blog listings for any topic, including MR
MrWeb – Great site for MR news updates, plus frequent email updates if you wish
Market Research World – MR news updates, plus email updates
Research Live – Great site for MR news updates, plus frequent email updates if you wish

#MRX MRA IMRO SMR Guidelines #7: Research Contributor Awareness – The Conversition Commentary

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

MRA recently released version 1 of the MRA/IMRO Guide to the Top 16 Social Media Research Questions, a tool to help newcomers and vendors communicate with each other about this new datasource and method. Conversition was a key contributor to this document which is now available on the MRA website.
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This blog is #7 in a series of 16, each one addressing Conversition’s viewpoint on one of the items in the guidelines. We welcome your questions and comments, and look forward to further discussions on this exciting new trend in the market research industry.

slowfoot from morguefile

Are the participants aware that their user-generated content is under observation?

No.

The simple answer is no.

Not all people using social media realize that the comments and opinions they share online are under observation. It might seem counter-intuitive but as researchers of human behaviour, we need to remember that not everyone comes from the same social environment that we have. Given that you’re reading this blog, chances are you are fully immersed in the social media space and know that there is no such thing as private social media. But you’re an exception to the rule.

Human behaviours fall on a normal curve. Some people fall on the end of the curve where they understand that any sense of privacy was lost many years ago and that is probably where you sit. Other people fall on the end of the curve where they believe that the Nigerian prince truly does need financial assistance to cash in his multi-million dollar inheritance. There may be many fewer people on this side of the curve, but that doesn’t mean we can disregard them. As researchers, we are obliged to take care and protect people who may not fully appreciate all the implications of the internet. We do, after all, respect their opinions and so we should also show respect for the conditions under which they shared those opinions.

Most people, however, fall somewhere in between. They accept that the internet is public. They know that many people will read their comments on YouTube. But, they probably haven’t read the Facebook Terms of Service and they probably aren’t aware of which pieces of data are being shared widely. They probably aren’t thinking that when they obtain a password for a chatgroup about dyslexia there may be a researcher in the group who also easily obtained a password. And they certainly aren’t expecting that a completely disrespectful comment they made during extreme frustration would end up in an official report on the desk of the CEO of a global corporation with their name and twitter ID right beside it.

Research contributors are not all aware.  It’s our duty to respect that.

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Related links
MRA IMRO Guide #1: Advantages and Disadvantages of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #2: Datasources of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #3: Data Fusion and SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #4: Reliability of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #5: Responsibilities of Social Media Data Users

From Listening to Research

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Tis the time of year to gaze back on what has transpired and look forward to what is yet to transpire.

In 2010, listening really took hold. Brands finally had the chance, and perhaps the dollars as well, to take the time to listen to their online consumers outside of the framework of questionnaires or focus groups or interviews. It was the year to go online and become a part of the social network. What exactly does social media data look like? Who is participating in social media conversations? How can social media data help me do a better job of meeting my consumer’s needs? 2010 was the year of identifying “influencers,” posting jobs with titles like “Chief of Listening,” and most of all, simply “listening.”

nasirkhan from morguefile

2011 will, of course, continue to see much growth in the online listening space, but with one major differentiator. Instead of  listening, instead of wondering and looking and learning, 2011 will be the year that brands realize that listening is not always sufficient. Listening can create learning but it’s strength does not lie in creating create organized and actionable learning. Research, on the other hand, provides answers to specific questions, discovers new problems, and supplies unique answers. Research creates valid, reliable, and generalizable solutions. 2011 will be the year of words like “valid,” “reliable,” and “Chief of Research.”

2011 will be the year where we’re ready to turn listening into research and use every method at our disposal to learn about our consumers’ needs. It will be the year where surveys and social media research work together. Where focus groups and social media research work together. Where mobile surveys and social media research work together.

Just wait. You’ll see.

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Related links
Social media monitoring vs social media research: Can you see the difference?
The Conversition Hierarchy of Social Media Insight
How important is sampling? Well, how important is gay marriage?

Happy Holidays from Conversition!

Monday, December 20th, 2010

#MRX MRA IMRO SMR Guidelines #6: Social Media Research Skills

Friday, December 17th, 2010

MRA recently released version 1 of the MRA/IMRO Guide to the Top 16 Social Media Research Questions, a tool to help newcomers and vendors communicate with each other about this new datasource and method. Conversition was a key contributor to this document which is now available on the MRA website.
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This blog is #6 in a series of 16, each one addressing Conversition’s viewpoint on one of the items in the guidelines. We welcome your questions and comments, and look forward to further discussions on this exciting new trend in the market research industry.

ppdigital from morguefile

What additional knowledge, skills and abilities will a corporate researcher need to learn in order to improve their level of competency with SMR?

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The leap from traditional survey and focus group skills to social media research skills is not necessarily a very large one. Many traditional skills, including sampling, weighting, norms, scaling, handling bias, accounting for statistical assumptions, and other key topics of marketing research are directly relevant and remain essential. The basic skills required of researchers are completely unchanged.

There are, of course, nuances and in this respect, researchers who have specialized in qualitative methods may find themselves slightly ahead of the game. Most qual researchers already have a good understanding of sentiment analysis and content analysis as these are essential components of the focus group, personal interview, and observational research methods. Qual researchers who already have extensive experience in manual versions of sentiment and content analysis may find they need to become more familiar with the slight differences of their automated equivalents including how grammatical errors, slang, and other normally only-human-understood elements are interpreted.

Researchers who have chosen to specialize in the quantitative side of things will have to take a larger leap. In fact, quantitative researchers are familiar with sentiment analysis but it is normally presented in the form of Likert scales where responders slot their opinions into pre-specified boxes such as “Strongly Agree“ or “Somewhat Disagree“. In the social media research case, however, quant researchers will need to spend some time learning about the processes for placing opinions into those Likert scale boxes on behalf of the responder (sentiment analysis). And, where quantitative researchers are used to creating categories of topics via a survey to which responders then provide an answer, they will have to learn how to reverse engineer that process. Thus, they will have to learn how to read an opinion and assign it to specific questions or categories such as “How likely are you to purchase this item?”  on behalf of the responder (content analysis).

If you keep your eyes open, you’ll notice just how familiar you already are with this thing called social media research.
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Related links
MRA IMRO Guide #1: Advantages and Disadvantages of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #2: Datasources of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #3: Data Fusion and SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #4: Reliability of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #5: Responsibilities of Social Media Data Users

#MRX MRA IMRO SMR Guidelines #5 Responsibilities: The Conversition Commentary

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

MRA recently released version 1 of the MRA/IMRO Guide to the Top 16 Social Media Research Questions, a tool to help newcomers and vendors communicate with each other about this new datasource and method. Conversition was a key contributor to this document which is now available on the MRA website.
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This blog is #5 in a series of 16, each one addressing Conversition’s viewpoint on one of the items in the guidelines. We welcome your questions and comments, and look forward to further discussions on this exciting new trend in the market research industry.
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Alvimann from morguefile
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Within businesses and organizations, how will SMR activities be tracked and aggregated, and whose responsibility is it to handle each of those functions?

This seemingly innocuous question has huge punch behind it. It first requires one to distinguish between social media research and other uses of social media data such as customer relationship management and public relations.

First, each use of social media data requires different skills. Those who intend to use it for social media research need to be knowledgeable about and skilled in such things as sampling, weighting, standards, norms, and scaling. These are industry specific skills that are learned over time through education and practice, and cannot just be picked up casually. As such, if you plan to use social media data for research purposes, make sure you have a researcher on hand who can filter out the noise of monitoring and filter in the science of research.

Second, users taking a research point of view towards the data must understand the ethics associated with that use of the data. Remember, as researchers, we have agreed to respect requests for privacy from our research contributors whether they are participating in surveys, focus groups, or social media research. Though the gathering of social media data brings with it links to an individual’s facebook, twitter, or youtube page, this does not give researchers the unequivocal right to contact and engage with people. This perspective is completely different than that taken by the CRM and PR business so there is definitely room for error and misunderstanding here. Fortunately, numerous professional groups are attempting to work through this issue including the MRA IMRO team.

In the end, as long as you remember to involve people with the right skills and solid ethical considerations, you will be on the right path.
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Related links

MRA IMRO Guide #1: Advantages and Disadvantages of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #2: Datasources of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #3: Data Fusion and SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #4: Reliability of SMR

Shattering the Two-Way Mirror

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Shattering the Two-Way Mirrors by Douglas Quenqua, Wednesday, December 1, 2010, 12:00 AM

The Magazine of Online Media, Marketing, & Advertising

Read the full article here.

Excerpt follows:

“For now, it’s hard to find someone who is doing more to advance social media research than Annie Pettit. Pettit is chief research officer at Conversition Strategies, a boutique research firm based in Toronto, and one of a handful of people working to refine the practice and convince chief marketing officers of its value. Like most true believers, Pettit talks about social research in fatalistic terms. “I’ll stake my life on the fact that this is where research is going,” she says.

But dismiss her as a zealot at your own risk. Pettit, who holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology and boasts more than 15 years as a practicing researcher (she wrote her dissertation on methods for ensuring the integrity of online research panels), has spent the past two years refining the techniques that have made Conversition the company that Fortune 500 companies go to when they want to mine the social Web for marketing data.

“A lot of companies that do mining collect the data and put it on a dashboard and let you watch as the volume of data goes up and down so you can see who’s saying what,” she says. “We go the next step and do all the sentiment analysis, so we determine if someone is saying something positive or negative or something in between, and we get a range of scores so we can tell you how positive or negative.”

Pettit is also helping develop techniques for divining the answers to classic focus group questions from the content found on social media. This way, companies can not only find out what customers think of their brand, but how those customers might react to changes, or what changes they would like to see. “Traditionally, market researchers care about questions related to buying and intent to purchase,” she says. “We have replicated those same questions on our platform … Today, you could take an online survey and basically map it question by question onto social media research,” she says.

To illustrate the purity of the opinions she commonly receives through her research, Pettit talks about a current project that involved gauging public opinion of a particular actress. People on the social networks she was monitoring “were more than vocal and specific about” their “amorous feelings,” she said. “You would never get that language on a survey.”

It’s an extreme example, but it gets to the heart of social media research’s potential.”