The Overflow Podcast this week takes a look at the opportunity that brands have to listen and conduct research regarding their businesses that would have required focus groups in the past.
During our discussion with a group of students at AIA we addressed the ability to use social media tools as a listening device when first venturing into the world of online marketing. Taking the time to uncover what is being said about your brand or company will assist in developing a comprehensive strategy, deciding on where to focus attention, and how responses will be handled.
The first, and easiest tool for reference is search.twitter.com. Plugin your keywords to see what people are saying and subscribe to the RSS feed so that you can constantly stay on top of the twitter dialogue.
We will invite our good friend David Mills, from Mills Consulting Group on to the show in the future to discuss how the new tools are changing the face of market research. Are clients coming to him with more qualitative ideas regarding their brands and simply looking for quantitative affirmations now that they have social media tools to assist in their own research efforts?
A particular concern at the beginning of this revolution is the reliability of the data gleaned via online tools versus the controlled environment of a focus group. Will brands believe in the accuracy of the information obtained by using listening tools on the web? I believe that brands will have the ability to obtain data from a much larger, more “real” target group than the sterilized small case studies of the past.
The social networking companies like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (as well as Google) are going to be able to use the data flowing through their servers as a revenue source by charging companies for access to that information. Giving away services that invite participation and grant the rights to re-purpose the data that is generated, is the ultimate currency of the Information Age.
Another approach to data gathering comes to the gathering storm of URL shorteners on the market, including Bit.ly which just received an investment of $2.0 million dollars. The proliferation of these services plus the action of the investment team providing more funding obviously poses as evidence for the potential to earn revenue from the data provided by linking around the web.
There was a great review of the services done by Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land breaking down the pros and cons of each service, with the relative merits of choosing a particular one. To me, the most important trait of the URL shortener is whether they use a 301 redirect or a 302 (temporary) redirect .. indicating to the search engines where the “link juice” goes. I certainly believe that the final destination URL should receive the benefit of the link and therefore a 301 redirect is the best option.
Social media listening tools will provide a window to deficiencies or attributes that are being discussed on line. A key role within the organization is the Community Manager who represents the online constituency internally to the company, and conversely represents the company to the online environment.
Other listening tools include:
Delicious RSS Feeds
StumbleUpon (although I could not find any RSS feeds for search terms within SU)
Let us know what you think about using social media tools for your market research, leave us a comment below!
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