10 things you need to know about social media research

Monday, July 19th, 2010

The Good

1. Anyone can benefit from social media research even if you have no social media presence. You can research your own brand, your competitors’ brand, the category, or the industry.
2. You can measure far more types of information than the longest survey can. When your survey must be cut-off at 60 questions or 60 minutes, social media research answers questions that might require a 10 hour survey.
3. You can listen to the voice of the consumer in their own, real, unfiltered words. Unlike surveys and focus groups where consumers may clean up their voice, or try to conceal hatred or indifference, genuineness is clear and strong in social media research.
4. You can measure data using any scale imaginable. 2 points, 5 points, 10 points, 100 points. Your wish is our command.
5. You can impress your boss with the statement that you are using data fusion technologies to combine the insights of survey research with those of social media research.

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The Bad

1. You need to sample your data sources properly, or you won’t be able to predict to the general population of internet users
2. You can’t measure incidence. Just because people don’t say they are using your brand, doesn’t mean they aren’t using it. They just haven’t said so.
3. You can’t measure awareness. Just because people aren’t talking about your brand online, doesn’t mean they haven’t heard of it. They just don’t talk about it.
4. Because most people don’t share their personally identifying information when they contribute online, demographic and geographic is less precise than what you are used to with surveys or focus groups.
5. The validity of sentiment and text analysis differs by vendor. Users of social media research need to ask their provider how they validate their results.

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Buyer beware. Buyer be smart.