Netgain 6.0: An MRIA Social Media Workshop by Annie Pettit

Monday, December 5th, 2011

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

Article in the Vue: Words I’ll Live to Regret

Friday, June 10th, 2011

This article was originally published in the Vue, June 2011.  When people answer research surveys, they don’t sign their names or write their email address. This degree of anonymity gives them the power to share their true feelings with as little pressure as possible. But what happens in the social media space? Read along to find out. It can be pretty scary!
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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
RW Connect: Privacy and Ethics in Social Media Research #MRX
ESOMAR Launches Consultation on Social Media Research Guidelines

Cell + Survey + SMR: A Social Media Mashup #MRIA2011 #MRA_AC #MRX

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

I must start with a kind thank you to everyone who chose to come to the Conversition session, despite all of the other great sessions that were available at both the Washington MRA and Kelowna MRIA annual conferences.

As well, thank you so much to everyone who shared kind words with us afterward. It’s always nice to hear that people learned something and felt their time was wisely spent.

As requested by many of our attendees, below you will a longer version of the presentation. Please do feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions at all. Enjoy!

Conversition Presents Mobile Mixed-Mode at MRA in Washington

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Mobile Mixed-Mode Research Workshop

Date: 06/06/2011
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Room: Palladian Ballroom

Technology has forever changed the way people live their lives and how businesses do business. Gone are the days of conducting a single mode, landline telephone survey to reach a representative sample. Using multiple data collection methods creates many challenges for marketing research. It also provides new opportunities for reaching and understanding different populations. With the advent of new technologies, researchers now have a wide range of options available to them. But what works and what doesn’t? How do we implement those new and still widely debated methods and provide reliable results?
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In this three hour immersion workshop, attendees will first get detailed explanations of four separate case studies that provide practical applications of online panels, cell phones, smart phones, SMS texting, IVR, social media, mobile web surveys, and tablets in actual mixed mode research studies.
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Attendees will then be challenged to put together an effective research plan using a variety of methods to collect opinions and sentiment from various “hard to reach” populations in less than ideal locations. This “hands on” session will provide participants with the knowledge of how to implement different data collection methods while understanding how each method augments and complements the others.
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Conversition at the MRIA In Kelowna BC

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

I have to admit – I’m pretty excited! Kelowna BC looks to be a gorgeous site for this year’s annual MRIA conference. Add to that a ton of great speakers and it doesn’t get much better. We were lucky enough to be selected to speak at the conference and look forward to sharing what we’ve learned since we presented at last year’s conference. We hope to see you on Monday May 30, at 2:30 in the Chilcotin room!
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Side by Side by Side: The Survey, Cell, SMR Study You’ve Been Waiting For

In 2010, we saw sample social media research results, and we learned about the pros, cons, ethical implications of the method. Now, it’s about time we saw some real examples of how SMR works in cooperation with other methodologies. This presentation will showcase a cooperative study using results from three different methodologies, online panel surveys (fielded by global online sampling and data collection company, Research Now), cell phone surveys, and social media research. We will see where the results are similar and where they differ. We will discover how the strengths of one method build on the weaknesses of another method. We will discover data fusion at its finest.

Chief Research Officer Conversition Strategies

Annie Pettit, PhD is the Chief Research Officer of Conversition Strategies, a boutique market research company that specializes in social media research.

She has more than 15 years of experience as an online market researcher and specializes in survey research, data quality, and social media market research. Annie is a member of the CASRO, MRA, and ESOMAR social media research committees. She was previously the VP of Online Panel Analytics at Ipsos where she created their proprietary survey panel data quality system.

Annie tweets at @LoveStats and maintains the LoveStats marketing research blog where she occasionally showcases her attempts at being a better baker and gardener.

Conversition Presents the War on Social Media Research Standards at NetGain 5.0

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

What are you doing on January 26, 2011? Well, we’ll be presenting at the NetGain 5.0 conference in Toronto.  Annie Pettit has been invited back to give a brief overview of where the various marketing research organizations stand in terms of developing their own social media research guidelines, as well as to discuss a few of the more controversial topics.

Here is the full schedule of speakers. Annie will be presenting during “Case studies relating to Social Media in the area of Marketing Research“. Her session is titled “The War on Social Media Research Standards” and you will see that it is indeed a war!

Annie will, of course, be tweeting the entire event using the hashtag #NetGain5 so be sure to follow along if you can’t be there in person.

If you’re lucky, there might still be an available seat. Register here and hope to see you there!

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

Social Media Research: Forget the Buzz, Focus on Biz

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

On May 30, 2010, Annie Pettit (@LoveStats) presented the topic of social media research to a packed house at the MRIA conference in Toronto (#MRIA_AC). Enjoy the slides and leave a comment below. We’d love to hear your reactions. Even better, come see us in Boston next week at the MRA conference (#MRIA_AC). We’d love to chat in person!

The Conversition MRA and MRIA Roadshow

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Our CRO, Annie Pettit, will be making the rounds this summer sharing insight on social media research. Just last week, she presented a case study on how Ronald McDonald House uses social media research at the NetGain marketing research conference in Toronto. If you didn’t meet her there, you have two more chances.

• MRIA 50th Annual Conference from May 30 to June 2 at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto, Ontario (Marketing Research and Intelligence Association of Canada)

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• MRA Annual Conference from June 9 to 11 in Boston, Massachusetts (Marketing Research Association of the United States)

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Let us know if you’ll be there. We’d love to meet you!

The Best Bet for Social Media Research

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Over the last few months, social media research has turned into a top of mind topic for many people. The MRA, ARF, MRIA, and ESOMAR research organizations have all been flooded with questions and opinions about this growing methodology.

No one would suggest that telephone surveys work well for every type of research, just as they wouldn’t say that online surveys, mobile surveys, or focus groups work well in every case. Similarly, social media research isn’t the answer for every brand. There are number of things to keep in mind before taking on the social media research option.

1. Does your brand have a large social media presence? It is often difficult for brands to know what type of presence they have on the internet. They often focus solely on the specific websites where they know they have a presence. Even on these sites, their presence might be fairly small, perhaps hundreds or thousands of comments spread out over a couple of years. Small quantities of data like this are good for understanding overall satisfaction levels but make it difficult to dig down into specific details. Further, just because a brand is well-known doesn’t mean it will generate significant online chatter.
2. Does your brand have a unique name? Brands that would only be used in one way are great for social media research. No one is going to go on the internet and type “Radio Shack” unless they mean the electronics store. However, many people use the words target and gap in regular everyday conversation. “Kleenex” and “Xerox” might also have some problems with social media research. Try searching for your brand name online and see whether any unusual references come up.
3. Are you willing to see a different type of data? As with any change in data source, just like the transition from offline to online, trendlines will shift somewhat. Some of this is because the format of the data is different and some of this is because the research data is coming from a different type of person. A change in data isn’t a bad thing. It is to be expected. Embracing the changing methods means you will always be ahead of the game and have the most up-to-date and relevant information.

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A quality research company will help you work through all of these issues so that you can decide whether social media research is right for you. Be sure to ask the right questions.