By Fernando, Conversition’s Lead Evolisten Engineer
(Our tech team writes too!)
Have you ever complained about something? Or given your honest opinion? Or answered a question? Only to be completely ignored? Because, after all, you’re just one guy, and there’s not much you can do about it.
Here’s another scenario. Was someone listening to you but you weren’t really telling the truth because you were being nice and polite, because you really didn’t care about the subject, because they were expecting an answer, so you just said the first thing that popped into your mind?
No matter how you slice and dice it, it’s not an easy thing for the little guy to be heard.
But, what if you get to speak about something you care about, only when you feel like it, and you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings, and you just let it all out. Wouldn’t that be nice? And then you do it again, and again, and again. You share your thoughts with the whole world, nonstop, 24/7, loudly and with brutal honesty. You’re angry, or ecstatic, or surprised, and you let everyone know about it. You will make them know. Well, then you’re probably a really strange person.
But, even if you are this strange person, there is still a bright side. Now, you can’t be easily dismissed. You must be dealt with. You can’t be ignored because ignoring you will not make you go away. And strange people can do a lot damage when left unattended. You say whatever you want to say, whenever you want, to whomever you want, as loudly as you want. And it feels great.
Back in the real world, there aren’t many people like that, probably because it’s so exhausting. But a task that is too much for just one person can easily be done by a thousand people if they just all pull the same way.
Social Media, the ultimate strange person.
Social Media is honest and blunt and does not stop. It speaks with a thousand different voices, from a thousand different viewpoints, for a thousand different reasons, and it will speak about you. It will tell you exactly what it thinks of you. It will tell everyone exactly what it thinks of you. You may think this is either a good thing or a terrifying thing but, at the end of the day, the fact remains that this is indeed a very real thing. It is happening right now, it has been happening for a while, and it will happen more and more in the future. The little guy is out of the bottle, and he and his millions of friends are merrily typing away telling the world what they feel.
You can ignore social media at your own peril, or you can do something about it. What is going to be?
Many people are curious about the difference between social media monitoring and social media research. The distinction is clear, and fairly easy to see if you have experience with market research.
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Social media monitoring
The act of reviewing and tracking social media data
May include tracking the volume of data meeting specific criteria, possibly tracking the sentiment of that data, determining which websites are producing greater or lesser volumes of data, identifying individual who are prone to discussing a brand, interacting with individuals contributing the social media data
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Social media research
The application of scientific methods to social media data
Like surveys, focus groups, and other established research methods, social media research incorporates the scientific principles that turn data into valid and reliable data sources, suitable for explaining past and current behaviour, and predicting future behaviour
Established methods may include several of the following: developing research objectives, defining problems, defining and selecting relevant target groups and samples, applying sampling, weighting and standardized data quality methods, applying validation methods, evaluating data reliability
Outputs include Usage and Attitudes studies, Brand Trackers, Ad Trackers, Segmentation studies, and other research traditionally using survey or focus group data
New York, NY, July 23, 2010 – Conversition Strategies, the developer of social media research product evolisten™ and www.tweetfeel.com, has launched EvoPlay, a social media exploration tool for consumers.
Unlike evolisten™ which has been specifically designed for researchers, and tweetfeel which has been designed for instant twitter analysis, EvoPlay is a free tool that consumers and brands alike can use to visualize sentiment across the entire internet space. Based on the most topical brands, the tool presents sentiment and conversation topics and provides a taste of social media research in a fun way. Sentiment can be displayed over limited time period allowing consumers to see brands rise and fall as marketing campaigns succeed and fail.
“The scientific principles of social media research can be intimidating, but this tool helps people see it in a more basic form by creating an engaging experience,” states Tessie Ting, co-founder of Conversition. Jean Davis says, “This new tool will allow people to get inside the data and really experience what social media research is all about. Not just Twitter, not just Facebook, but the entire internet space.”
About Conversition Strategies:
Conversition Strategies is a boutique online market research firm based in the US (Conversition Strategies Limited) and Canada (Conversition Strategies Incorporated). 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 globally respected market researchers with social media mavens.
For more information, please contact:
Jean Davis
Conversition | By researchers, For researchers
Today, we introduce to you, fresh out of the box…. EvoPlay! A fun new visualization for watching how people talk about brands and people online. If you love trying things out for yourself, there’s no need to go any further. Check out EvoPlay for yourself right now. Go! Now! For those who prefer a little bit of handholding, there’s no shame in that! Let’s take a quick walk together and see the cool things you can try.
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1) Welcome to EvoPlay! Simply click on the black arrow to begin.
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2) What brand interests you? A person? A product? A movie? Make your choice here by clicking on the name. That in itself is a bit of fun! (Enough already, I want to play now!)
3) Wooooohhhhh, coooooool. The bubbles disappear into the screen or fly crashing into your face! These represent just a small sample of the thousands or millions of conversations out there. Imagine if you could see them all! Click on one to see the conversation it represents. (OK, OK, Let me play now!)
4) What are the conversations about? Right now, conversations about all of these topics are showing. Click on one to see what the bubble stream looks like for it! Are most of the conversations about humor? Or are they about recommendations? It’s up to you to find out! (I got it now, let me play!)
5) Where are these conversations coming from? Right now, everywhere! Click on a checkmark so that conversations from there disappear! Try turning on one data source or two or more. See if there are conversations happening in each of the places. See where many or few conversations are taking place. (Cooooool, let me play now!)
6) What do the colors mean? Well, red is always negative. And here, yellow means positive. Sure, we could have made green mean positive, but then it would just look like Christmas all year round. Perhaps that’s not so bad? (Christmas present? Let me play now!)
7) Want to fly through space yourself? Click on the black button and drag yourself forward and backward though time. It’s yours to discover. Just don’t blame the motion sickness on us! (I figured that out by myself, I’m going to play now!)
Want to try another brand? Simply click on left arrow at the bottom of your screen and choose another brand. Is there a brand you’d like to see here? Just send us a note, or a leave a comment here, and we might pick your favorite! Are you ready to begin??
What product launched barely one day ago? What product is “just an app?” What brand new app can’t keep up with consumer demand after just one day on the market?
It must be Flipboard, a new app for the iPad, an app that promises simplicity in all things from using your social networking tools to reading books and magazines. And so far, the buzz isn’t just the hype of anticipation, it’s the hype of reality.
Conversition gathered thousands of conversations that have happened only within the last few days and analyzed the results. Let’s consider the percentage of opinions that were positive, as opposed to neutral or negative, in respect to a few different measures: ..
61% positive: Overall, it’s a good app, but if you need to know the specifics, the most common comments are that it’s “amazing,” “awesome,” “brilliant,” and “incredible.”
58% positive: The app comes highly recommended. People say it’s the “greatest.” We’re assuming the greatest since the iPad and sliced bread that is.
70% positive: The app is “easy,” “effortless,” “straightforward,” and “simple” to use.
79% positive: The app is “beautiful,” “sleek” and “very cool” or “really cool.”
68% positive: The app is a good ereader.
68% positive: The app works well with facebook.
65% positive: The app works well with twitter.
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Given this stunning level of positivity, we can’t wait to see what the trend line turns out to be. Are we witnessing the birth of the next amazing piece of software, the iPad of software? Or, is this just a temporary fad fueled by great marketing and social media celebrity endorsements.
Regardless, if you’re looking for an easy application for using twitter and facebook, one that is brilliant, effortless, and sleek, the internet community highly recommends that you try the Flipboard. If you can finagle yourself an invite that is.
Social media research has stepped out of the shadows and into the limelight. Phrases like sentiment analysis, content analysis, text analysis, microblogs, and web 2.0 have begun to clog up our already over-flowing research dictionaries and caused us to question this strange beast. How can market researchers possibly make sense of it given that it is completely different than anything we’ve seen before?
Let’s consider a few points:
If you have uploaded survey data into SPSS, you already know how to upload social media research data into SPSS
If you have used survey data sets with numeric and string variables, you already know what a social media research data set looks like
If you have selected variables, grouped cases, and run SPSS crosstabs with survey data, you already know how to do those things with social media research data
If you have built a frequency bar chart or tracking line chart using survey data, you already know how to do it for social media research data
If you have read survey verbatims before, you already know what you’re looking for in social media research verbatims
If you have drawn conclusions from survey data before….. why haven’t you transferred your expertise to social media research yet?
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Bet you didn’t know you’re already an expert in analyzing social media data.
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.
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.
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.
You can measure data using any scale imaginable. 2 points, 5 points, 10 points, 100 points. Your wish is our command.
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.
You need to sample your data sources properly, or you won’t be able to predict to the general population of internet users
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a well known theory of human motivation that starts with meeting our basic physiological needs for food and water, and ups the ante to needs of safety, love, self-esteem and self-actualization. The theory behind Maslow’s hierarchy can be used to understand other processes as well, including the application of the scientific method to terabytes, petabytes, and yottabytes of social media data to create social media insight.
No matter the size of your business, social media matters to you. You want and need to know what consumers are saying about you. There are many different approaches to this learning, each building on the previous stage.
This, we have outlined in the Conversition Hierarchy of Social Media Insight.
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Conversition's Hierarchy of Social Media Insight
Stage 1 Happenstance reflects the most basic level of social media data understanding wherein social media information is consumed if and when it happens to come your way. Perhaps employees email YouTube comments to you, or consumers leave postings on your website. What you learn depends upon what you happen to hear.
Stage 2 Searching reflects active seeking out of information, such as through the use of an internet search engine like Yahoo, Bing, or Google. The search may be a one time occurrence and likely isn’t exhaustive or representative of all the information that actually exists. This is our ‘Need to Hear.’
Stage 3 Alertsis the first attempt to gather information using an unbiased and standardized method. Setting up an alert system through a third party, such as Google Alerts, gives you access to data from a wide range of sources on a regular basis. Though all relevant data will not be identified, at least the data won’t be biased due to the constraints associated with manual searches. This is our ‘Need to Hear Regularly.’
Stage 4 Monitoring is the first attempt to put some rules around the data collection. Search terms are now broader, more comprehensive and higher quality. Data is automatically added to databases which allow you to track the volume and source of data over time. Some offerings even include sentiment analysis such that you can determine overall levels of positive and negative sentiment of the opinions collected. This is our ‘Need to Hear the Masses.’
Stage 5 Research is the stage that finally turns data into knowledge. By applying strict scientific principles to the collection and analysis of the gathered opinions, valid and reliable generalizations can be made from data which may otherwise be biased, skewed, and unrepresentative of any population other than itself. Regardless of how much or where the data comes from, it has been assembled in ways that allow you to grasp the opinions of the average online consumer, not just the most talkative online consumer. This is our ‘Need to Hear Validly.’
Stage 6 Insight is the last stage, the one that all data fans aspire to. This is where data, which has been properly assembled and analyzed, empowers analysts to create insight, that amazing and powerful idea that comes out of nowhere to guide action plans and strategy.
On to part 2 of data quality! Ok, so BP was a bad example. Obviously, a lot of different brands and people and things will have the initials BP. It’s an isolated case. But is it? Here is another great example of how data quality begins at the very beginning of any social media research project.
The scenario is the same. We gathered thousands of verbatims from thousands of websites and created a word cloud of all things related to Apple. The usual suspects are all there. Competitive brands like HP, Hitachi, and Toshiba are well represented. And, since the iPad is the greatest discovery in all of mankind EVER, it is the most prominent feature of the cloud.
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But wait. Isn’t there more to Apple than just computers? Here is a second word cloud we created from the very same data. No manipulations and no sneaky subsampling. What’s with all this apple pie, apple cider, and apple cinnamon deliciousness? This is simply another great example of poor quality workmanship inviting terribly incorrect confounds.
Is social media research fast? Sure it is. It’s even faster if you ignore the annoying stage of data quality.
The time is now. Spain vs Netherlands. Who will win? Who can say? Paul the Octopus can say as evidenced by his 80% accurate predictions. Science always comes through in the end.
Given Paul’s extraordinary celebrity status, we decided to do some scientific research of our own. We gathered thousands of conversations from thousands of different websites and conducted our own version of science, social media research, that is.
Right now, Paul is viewed quite favorably by those who feel he is important enough to talk about. Opinions towards Paul are 34% positive, including 5.5% of people who just love him.
However, about 54% of conversations are neutral with another 4.5% being negative, possibly people who love him literally to death. We should assume those negative opinions are from people who are now regretting cheering for the losing teams. They are regretting their choices so much that they have selected a specific use for poor Paul, and have overwhelming chosen to cook him for dinner. What are the preferred cooking methods you ask? Frying has taken the lead position and is preferred by 56% of the nellys followed by grilling, boiling, and barbequing.
But who do the people think will win? Spain is generating about 52% of the conversation while the Netherlands is generating about 48% of the conversation. But, the Netherlands is generating 42% positive scores (of whom 8% would bet their life) compared to Spain’s 37% positive scores (of whom 7% would bet their life).
