Learn about Social Media Research from the comfort of your home or office.

In the first two weeks of March 2012, Conversition hit the road with a Social Media Analysis and Research Training (S.M.A.R.T.) Bootcamp visiting four cities across North America. This exclusive, four city event hosted over 80 researchers in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and Dallas offering them the opportunity to learn about the emerging field of social media research and practical uses of the new medium.

The entire S.M.A.R.T. Session was captured on video and is now available in bight sized chunks for anyone to view at their leisure.

Key Learning Outcomes

• General theory and practice of social media research
• Identifying research objectives and solving specific problems
• Best practices in the collection and analysis of data as well as ethical standards
• Using social media data for both quantitative and qualitative research
• Using Evolisten to explore social media opinions, generate hypotheses, develop insights, and solve problems

Session Leader – Annie Pettit, PhD Chief Research Officer, Conversition

@lovestats

lovestats.wordpress.com

SMART Bootcamp Videos

1. What is Social Media http://youtu.be/-1o8WSMpQsU
2. Pros and Cons http://youtu.be/uDkDrgugN6I
3. Maintaining http://youtu.be/1QTqZAIvCkI
4. Sampling and Weighting http://youtu.be/8d09DYpDq5Y
5. Content Analysis http://youtu.be/jNOE89IAjs4
6. Emoticon Test http://youtu.be/0R_BOi3ZJlo
7. Acronym Test http://youtu.be/php9Pd3D830
8. Sentiment Analysis http://youtu.be/v_0nzbLbPZI
9. Validating Sentiment Analysis http://youtu.be/RERKsNLkTcM
10. Scaling Social Media Data http://youtu.be/hw_gKdrVpOc
11. EvoListen, Variables and Word Clouds http://youtu.be/g0oD-dKl3wU
12. Slang Test http://youtu.be/F-CRv_S65p8
13. S.M.A.R.T. Test http://youtu.be/8SDWGcSK17Y

Can a mixed mode approach to social media research power consumer insight?

Wednesday, April 11, 201

10:00 am PT/ 1:00 ET

Register today

Social media research has promised much in the way of insights, but many providers are struggling to deliver. And yet, most of our friends, family and colleagues are actively engaged with what we see as the world’s largest un-moderated focus group – the world of social media. Actionable consumer insights from this medium are within reach and we will demonstrate for you how we use a mixed mode approach to live up to this challenge.
For this webinar we challenged Mike Mayers, our VP of Business Development, to study a brand that he had never heard of and see what insights he could derive about its consumers. Both the fieldwork and analysis were limited to one working day using only social media-driven research methods.

This presentation will take attendees on a whistle-stop tour of Mike’s day of social media research and give you insight into a methodology, which has finally come of age.

Specifically, attendees will gain a better understanding of:

•  How a mixed mode approach to social media can yield insights quickly and cost effectively
•  How social media-driven insights can become a valued staple of our custom insights capacity
•  How social media data can be used to drive engagements with your clients.

Register today

By Ben Johnson

Is social media research easy to do? Must you be a category expert to get significant insights out of it? Well, I know nothing about hair care products so what better way to demonstrate the power of social media research.

Let’s look at a few leading brands to disentangle brand specific trends from industry wide trends.  We have gathered tens of thousands of verbatims from all over the internet and cleaned, scored and categorized opinions about Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, and Pantene. The data is provided using a 5 point scale going back to September 2010.

Two questions spring to mind.  First, why was the sentiment for Pantene so much lower than its competitors  in the fall of 2010 and second, what caused the sentiment to rise so quickly through to May of 2011?

Perhaps because of the low sentiment, in the spring of 2010 Pantene completed a multi-million dollar investment in market research and R&D, and rolled out a large brand shift.  They reduced their product line by about a third, removed their 2-in-1 lines, brought out new formulas and redesigned their branding around 4 main types of hair. Despite their efforts, Pantene seemed unable to stop their customer base from being eroded by competition from new in-store and value brands as consumers sought to tighten their belts in the midst of economic downturn.  The effort was not the success the company had envisioned.

So why the rebound?  Let’s understand the composition of the shift.

We should note that it is not so much the case that Pantene’s initiative upset customers as it failed to resonate with them.  This can be seen by a change in the distribution of sentiment from one predominantly blasé to a more positive composition.  So what drove this change?  The factors which drive an individual’s decisions are too numerous to provide a definitive all-encompassing answer.  Unemployment fell, weather shifted, and myriad other statistics changed, but that does not mean our analysis is without traction.  If one takes the time to look, one can find useful and salient points.  Such as this:

Here we see the sentiment for coupons in conjunction with Pantene, Herbal Essences and Head & Shoulders.  The graph speaks for itself but, if you are still not convinced, the correlation between coupon sentiment for Pantene and overall sentiment is 0.89 .  In all their concerns over new competition and their attempts to fine-tune their product, they didn’t see the forest for the trees.  The people at Pantene were too concerned with what a person wanted in a shampoo and not enough with what consumers were looking for in general in these tough times, a good deal.  But hey, what do I know?  I’m a social media research expert, not a hair care expert.

Baby, it’s cold outside!
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Though the holiday season is over and we are no longer singing Christmas songs, baby, it’s still cold outside. Dry skin, chapped lips, cracked hands are all common occurrences during the winter so this is the perfect time to review the performance of a few skincare brands over the last year.

For three popular brands, Aveeno, Nivea and Olay, we gathered hundreds of thousands of opinions from across the social media space. We then plotted the percentage of verbatims that were positive over a time span from January 2011 to December 2011. The trend lines are quite positive and reasonably stable across the entire year. In most cases, at least 40% of all verbatims were positive and Olay consistently led the pack.

But wait! What is the drastic drop Nivea saw in August when the percentage of comments that were positive dropped from about 44% down to 32%? It certainly wasn’t a seasonal trend as neither Aveeno nor Olay experienced a similar change. What happened in August to set the social media space on fire?

When we dive into the data, two popular topics bubbled to the top – advertisements and racism. Indeed, people were talking about a specific Nivea advertisement and they were furious.

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Many perceived the advertising image to be racist, and comments and opinions rolled in from polls, tweets, online newspapers and all other forms of social media. Here are a few (masked) verbatims taken from social media:
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• “Is this ad also offensive to anyone else out there????”
• “The ad has to be trashed. I’m not buying a NIVEA product as long as this terrible ad is on the air.”
• “I don’t know who the f*** their advertising team is, but they dropped the ball big time”
• “Won’t be using Nivea aftershave anymore. Let’s see how they do WITHOUT my UN-CIVILED DOLLARS”

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Indeed, if we track sentiment daily in August, we can see the precise day when the advertisement caused the stir – August 18. And, we can see the precise day when Nivea issued an apology – August 19, the day sentiment reached its lowest point and began the long climb back up.

Both of the above charts illustrate the sometimes short attention span of consumers. After an apology from Nivea, consumers quickly forgave them and forgot about the ad. Sentiment returned to normal fluctuations.

Perhaps it’s the power of an apology, but it’s more likely the power of a strong brand that pulled them through.

By Jennifer O’Brien

Happy New Year! Did you make a resolution for 2012? Many did and I’m sure that ‘shed a few pounds’ was at the top of the list for many people. Television commercials advertising weight loss programs are plentiful right now as weight loss companies vie for your hard-earned dollars. As always, celebrities are a key component of their commercials.  Jennifer Hudson has been the face of Weight Watchers for some time, and new commercials feature Mariah Carey using the Jenny Craig diet and Janet Jackson using Nutrisystem.

But does having the favorite celeb also mean having the favorite program?  Let’s take a look at what social media has to say.

We gathered hundreds of thousands of verbatims from thousands of different websites and evaluated opinions toward three weight loss companies. The first chart below shows opinions reflecting the spokesperson for each of the three companies. Although the percentage of comments that are negative (red) is about 14% to 16%  for all three brands, there is a higher percentage of positive comments (green) for Janet Jackson (29.8% positive).  The smallest percentage of positive comments goes to Mariah Carey (23.3% positive) while Jennifer Hudson (26.6% positive) sits in the middle.

Based on these results, Nutrisystem is winning the celebrity contest.  Does this mean their program is also preferred?

The next chart shows the percentage of comments/messages/ status updates that were scored as negative (red), neutral (blue) and positive (green) for each of the three companies overall.  This time, Weight Watchers has the lowest percent of negative comments (8.6%) AND the highest percentage of positive comments (33.5%), making it the social media fan favorite. Nutrisystem comes in second with 12.4% of comments being negative and 29.1% being positive. Finally Jenny Craig has the highest percentage of negative comments (14.0%) and the lowest percentage of positive comments (28.2%).

So what is our conclusion? The favored celebrity does not make the favored program. We love you Janet Jackson, but Weight Watchers is in the lead.

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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
Coke it is! Or not. I’m not sure. I can’t tell.
Apple pie, Apple orchard, Apple cider, or Apple iPad
Battle of the Brands: Blackberry vs iPhone

Click here to register

Learn to Love Blogging and Twittering: A MRIA Workshop led by Annie Pettit
St Andrews Club and Conference Centre, Toronto, ON
Tuesday Jan 24, 2012 

8:30-9:00am - Includes continental breakfast
9am-Noon - Workshop with coffee/tea and break snacks

Objective:
To become familiar with the art of blogging and tweeting so that you can actively participate in and benefit from the social media space

Who will benefit?
This workshop will benefit those who are thinking of writing a blog and learning how to tweet. These are quickly becoming social media requirements for establishing a prominent presence and promoting yourself, your product, your service or company.

Learn about:

• the basics of starting to tweet and blog
• the different types of twitter clients and blogs
• the tricks, shortcuts  and tips about tweeting and blogging
• the language, including hashtags, 140, bit.ly, RSS
• tweetdeck, socialoomph, Klout, RSS and other third
  party plugins and apps
• the multi-interaction with Twitter via your cell, rss feeds, email
• promoting your blogs and getting yourself tweeted and retweeted
• what works and what does not work in being successful tweeters and bloggers

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Workshop Presenter
Annie Pettit is VP, Research Standards at Research Now and Chief Research Officer at Conversition, an e-Rewards company. She is the author of two blogs, Lovestats and the Conversition blog. She is an active tweeter @lovestats in the market research arena and also with her sugar and spice passion (@LoveStats/sugar-and-spice). Check out the Sugar and Spice Online News Daily. She is a frequent speaker at MR conferences, has over 5000 followers, and has tweeted 13,500 times! She is highlighted on the front cover of the October 2011 issue of VUE and wrote an article inside entitled “You know more than you think!”

Workshop:
This is a highly interactive workshop and spaces are limited to 50 seats. You must bring your own laptop and be prepared to tweet.

MCP points: 10

Don’t worry! If you missed the Esomar webinar, here are the slides for you to enjoy on your own. Welcome to the summer of Tea Parties and Turmoil: Measuring the summer of riots in London

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81 Percent of Market Research Agencies Agree Social Media can Complement Insights Generated by Traditional Research Methods
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Toronto, ON – October 27, 2011 – Conversition, a pioneer in the Social Media Research industry, recently surveyed 601 clients of Research Now to determine their usage and attitudes towards social media data platforms for the purposes of measuring consumer engagement and gaining consumer insights.

Conversition conducted a 15 minute study focused on the usage of social media monitoring tools and technology to engage consumers, or gain insight into their existing or emerging needs. In order to fully comprehend the potential that the Social Media Monitoring & Analysis (SMMA) industry has in different markets, Conversition surveyed Research Now clients based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The findings showed highly encouraging results for an industry quickly being adopted by researchers. In particular, responses regarding the use of social media for insight purposes illustrates that SMMA has entered the „early majority‟ within prime English-speaking markets. More specifically, 81 percent of all market research agencies (MRAs) surveyed agree that SMMA can complement insights from custom and/or ad hoc quantitative and qualitative research.

When asked specifically about the potential that SMMA has:

• 65 percent of all responding companies agree that SMMA will become a substantial channel for market research in the future.
• 63 percent of all responding companies agree that SMMA has immense potential to drive consumer insights.

“What’s clear from the study is that the market research community is ‘switching on’ to the power and insight potential of social media data,” commented Michael Mayers, Vice President of Business Development at Conversition.

The survey also found that:

• 85 percent of MRAs believe that human intervention is still needed to maintain the quality of social media data.
• 58 percent of MRAs believe that data quality issues (e.g. spam, erroneous data, and difficulty of understanding the demographic profile of respondents) currently restrict the use of SMMA for insight purposes.

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Mayers adds, “Social media data represents an emerging research channel, and data from social media can be a rich source of information for consumer insights. At the same time, perceptions over data quality are an issue, and our response is that whether managed by the client or the vendor, social media data requires the involvement of experienced and knowledgeable humans to provide those all important checks and balances.”

Methodology
Fieldwork was conducted between August 19 and September 15, 2011 among 601 clients of Research Now based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. The breakdown by country was as follows: United States (344), United Kingdom (165) and Canada (91).

About Conversition
Conversition is an online social media data collection business unit based in Toronto, Canada and New York, NY. Conversition listens to consumers by applying scientific principles to the collection and analysis of social media data. Its strength lies in combining the expertise of respected market researchers with an in-depth understanding of social media.

About Research Now
Research Now is the leading global online sampling and online data collection company. With over 6 million panelists in 38 countries worldwide, Research Now enables companies to listen to and interact with real consumers and business decision makers in order to make key business decisions. Research Now offers a full suite of data collection services, including social media sampling, and operates the Valued Opinions™ Panel and e-Rewards® Opinion Panels. The company has a multilingual staff located in 22 offices around the globe and has been recognized for four consecutive years as the industry leader in client satisfaction. Visit http://www.researchnow.com to learn more.

Press Contact:
Heather Milt
1-206-200-8207
hmilt@researchnow.com

For a copy of the full report, please email hello@conversition.com.

Millions of people, millions of messages, one common feeling about the passing of Steve Jobs.