With the conference season about to start, one thing is for certain: every conference will include many sessions regarding social networking sites. A few people–probably not that many–might ask, "Why is that?" For many reasons. And at the top of the list is the buzz that these social networking sites have created and how they might be able to help in terms of research projects.
My sense is that companies are starting to have some success with social networking sites and starting to figure out their place in the research world.
I assume companies are:
- Using these sites to increase their respondent data base?
- Using them to recruit for focus groups?
- Using them to do incidence checks?
- Creatively using them to find staff?
- Also monitoring the sites to see what the most relevant discussions and buzz words are and using that information to develop a questionnaire or moderator’s guide.
Am I right?
- I would love for you to share success stories (no need to mention clients names at all – please keep that generic)
- Also can you share some of the mistakes that you may have made?
- What learnings have you had along the way?
- On what sites have you had the most success?
It would be great to hear from a lot of people and get a good discussion going on such an important topic. I will also ask our Field Department and some of our project staff to share our experience as well.
I look forward to hearing your comments.
Merrill Dubrow says:
Very relevant article from the Southwest Chapter MRA. Third quarter 2009.
Four Ways Social Networking Can Build Business
By Jake Swearingen
Social networking may sound fluffy, but it can translate into real benefits for you and your company. William Baker, a professor of marketing at San Diego State University, surveyed 1,600 executives and found that firms that rely heavily on external social networks scored 24 percent higher on a measure of radical innovation than companies that don’t. Online networks can help you hire the right people, market your product — or even find a manufacturer. Here are four professionals who used social networks to change the game.
Finding Unexpected Collaborators
Tools: within3.com, a social network for scientific practitioners
Tactic: Saverio Gentile, a visiting fellow in the neurobiology laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, had been using within3.com, a social network for doctors, to discuss medical journal articles. While mulling over a paper on nicotinic receptors, he connected with two researchers he’d never worked with before — though they were all in the same building. “Without the social network, even though we were a few meters apart, we would have never known we were all working on this,” Gentile says. Working together, Gentile and his newfound colleagues, Elaine Gay and Jerrel Yakel, discovered a possible mechanism that can explain why nicotine receptors work the wrong way when associated with congenital myasthenia gravis, a hereditary disease that causes severe muscle fatigue. Since gathering further data on the breakthrough, the group has been selected to deliver a paper on the subject at a Society for Neuroscience convention in November.
Building a Global Business From Scratch
Tools: LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr
Tactic: When Nick Kellet got in touch with a former co-worker through LinkedIn, he was interested to hear that she was teaching Chinese to the inventors of the board game Cranium to help them work with their factory in China. Kellet had recently left his job to publish a board game of his own, called GiftTRAP. His friend arranged an introduction to the factory owners in Shanghai, and soon Kellet had a manufacturer for his game. Next he turned to photo-sharing site Flickr and found images from more than 500 different photographers that he could legally use for his game. Once GiftTRAP had been produced, Kellet used social networks to find buyers at Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us. “It’s not easy to get into those places,” he says. “You get stonewalled at reception.” Then he plugged into BoardGameGeek to connect with influential players in the tabletop-gaming community and get his product into the hands of reviewers. The long hours online paid off. Games Magazine declared GiftTRAP the best party game of 2008; it has been translated into eight languages and is now in its third print run. Kellet isn’t done with social networking, either — he’s just developed a Facebook application that lets people play his game online.
Finding Talent in the Trenches
Tools: Blogs, Twitter
Tactic: LaunchSquad, a San Francisco PR firm working with freshly minted startups, has used social media to find potential job candidates who are skilled social networkers. “If we were going to attract the candidates with the skill sets we wanted, they had to be active within social media before they even came on,” says partner and co-founder Jason Throckmorton. “We began looking for people who were commenting on our client companies or things related to public relations.” Combing through Twitter, they found then-University of Oregon senior Megan Soto, who had tweeted about the virtual community Vivaty, a LaunchSquad client. A quick Google search turned up Soto’s blog, and the folks at LaunchSquad liked what they saw. The firm contacted Soto, interviewed her, and ultimately offered her a position, which Soto happily accepted. “She never would have found us unless we found her,” Throckmorton says.
Viral Marketing on the Cheap
Tools: Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter
Tactic: When Jennifer Wakefield of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission began social networking, she knew that film and media would be her target. “We have green nearly 365 days out of the year here in Orlando,” she says, which makes the city ideal for film shoots. She created profiles for metro Orlando on both MySpace and Facebook, sites popular with film and entertainment professionals. Meanwhile, the commission’s Suzy Spang Allen, VP of film and digital media development, uses Twitter to connect with others at industry events like South by Southwest, Sundance, and the Tribeca Film Festival. Wakefield reports that more eyes are already on Orlando:The number of producers scouting the Florida metropolis is up by 70 percent over last year.
Ed Sugar says:
Merrill, an even more relevant article that a good friend of ours (JM from Boston) forwarded to me from today’s Ad Age -
“Microsoft Wants to Help Marketers Manage Messy Social Media”
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=139199
Michael Braunberg says:
There are doubtless people who contribute to this blog who are much better informed on these matters than me, but I would like to point out the probability that the impact of social networks on both marketing research and the market/consumer relationship is nascent and doubtless part of a larger puzzle.
Technology is obviously moving at blinding speeds, and my guess is that the key concept here is convergence – the convergence of television, the internet and internet based social networks (augmented by the power of data bases), will likely cause a paradigm shift in the relationship between marketers and consumers, leading both to more “consumer driven” content (both ad and entertainment content), and the ability of marketers to better understand and target potential customers.
Already, and as example, companies like Ensequence http://www.ensequence.com/interactive-television are promising the ability to vote in real time on content and see instant aggregated results, “customize the ads they (the viewer) see,” “get targeted offers” and touting “interaction” between customers and brands.
Social networks are (likely) the piece of this puzzle which will enable media viewers to have on-going conversations among themselves about impressions of, and reactions to, content. I am aware of groups of friends who while watching certain television shows, use their lap-tops to have interactive conversation and commentary about what they are watching, both in regard to entertainment and ad content. This sort of real-time interactive/reactive networking seems certain to be a significant factor in the development of demographic group opinion/purchasing norms and content/ad reactions/attitudes.
Nascent networks like Current TV http://current.com/ are already encouraging their viewers to use communication channels such as Twitter to share reaction communally regarding the networks content and provide feedback to the network, regularly posting such comments during the course of their programming. They also encourage user submitted television ads, and have sponsors who use those ads.
What this means all means for marketing research is open to speculation, but in general it would seem we can expect that the consumer of media content is going to play a larger role both in shaping that content, giving feedback to sellers, and ensuring that product offerings match their interests.
To the extent that marketing research is a sort of oracular activity divining the wants, needs, beliefs and probable decisions and actions of consumers, it would appear that the consumer is increasingly going to be making those considerations clear in real time, and as a matter of course, by direct participation in the interface between media and consumer.
For me, it would be fascinating to read some commentary/prediction from experts/people who have put a lot of thought into this sort of thing.
Sean Jordan says:
I’m getting really tired of people talking about Twitter as if it’s the future of marketing and marketing research. Even calling Twitter popular is a bit of a stretch; it doesn’t even have a tenth of the users of Facebook or Myspace, and many of the users it does have don’t come back after the first month. Twitter is great for following celebrities, but it’s got very limited applications for anything else.
I read a lot of the marketing newsletters and blogs out there, and it seems like people are always buzzing about social media, but that very few of them understand it. I get the impression that a lot of marketing people don’t actually use the social media from a user’s point of view; they’re just looking for ways to exploit it so they can say they have cutting-edge techniques.
I was talking with an MR professional about using Facebook for online panel research. She seemed to think it was a good idea since peoples’ identities are tied to something real, and you don’t have to worry as much about bogus identities. I told her that Facebook’s very easy to infiltrate if you’re a stalker or a con artist, and that profiles for false identities, fictional characters and pets are pretty common. Facebook’s trustworthiness is an illusion; it’s a little better regulated than Myspace, but not by much.
Jill says:
I didn’t know which post to put this under, but wanted to let the researchers and marketers pursuing new career opportunities that the following search firm has several openings they are trying to fill.
Virginia Roher
Vice President, Executive Search
O’Connell Group, LLC
203-834-2900 ext 15
Virginia@oconnellgroup.com
http://www.oconnellgroup.com
Merrill Dubrow says:
Here is an article from the October 2009 IMRO Newsletter that I thoughtI would share:
Craigslist Recruitment Horror Stories
There has been a heated discussion on the MRA LinkedIn page on the topic of recruiting focus group participants with the use of Craigslist. Below are some of the responses in the discussion. If you would like to add your thoughts, visit our LinkedIn page.
Q: Is anyone willing to share any feedback on horror stories when they tried to use Craigslist for recruiting focus group participants? – Amy Siadak, president & CEO, House of Marketing Research
A: The problem with CL isn’t that it’s CL, it’s that it’s a self-selecting group of people. It’s the same problem I have when focus group facilities want to send out an e-mail blast or take out an ad looking for “women 18 – 34 who donated to an animal rescue shelter in the past six months.” There are far too many chances of people simply making things up or skewing their answers in order to qualify (and then, of course, doing the same thing during the discussion).
Ultimately, when it comes to research, people fall into one of two categories. Either a) let’s be open to new or money-saving approaches, but carefully consider whether each one will negatively impact the project, or b) do it easily/cheaply and darn the consequences. A and B will never get along or see eye to eye.
If the client is a B through lack of knowledge, simply explaining the reasons and the negative impact will educate them and make them see the folly of this. If the client is a confirmed B who is comfortable in their own mistakes or simply doesn’t care, not a thing you can do will change them. Either accept the project knowing it’s going to be garbage, or reject the project because it will be garbage and you don’t want to associate your name with it. They won’t change. – Ron Sellers, president, Ellison Research
A: There are a couple of concerns about using Craigslist or any similar Web site – security and quality.
In terms of security, Craiglist has a reputation (whether deserved or undeserved) of attracting unscrupulous, or even dangerous, people. It may be a leap, but this might be due, in part, to the anonymity provided by the Web site combined with the various adult-themed meeting forums that are positioned noticeably on the site. Any recruiting adverts would be dipping into whatever pool Craigslist offers.
Secondly, on the topic of quality, the concern with any type of recruiting is whether you’re attracting the right kind of people. A major concern in the survey research profession is “professional respondents.” If the client is intent on you posting the opportunity on an employment board, they may be encouraging this type of participant since people’s primary driver for searching on employment boards is income. – Patrick Glaser, director of research standards, MRA
A: I would steer clear of CL for several reasons. It’s a great place to find a cheap TV, but you’re looking to find qualified participants for studies that have been carefully screened and have a very specific group of target audiences in mind. Not that this is news to anyone, but people will lie for money. CL is a magnet for these people, specifically, as is any job board. Your client needs to understand that the market research process is a process. There’s a reason there’s a screener, and there’s a reason that you re-screen people sometimes when they get to a facility or do a phone survey. You don’t want professional respondents (as stated above).
I would also think that you would have specific targets (as dictated by the screener) that would best be reached through either a client-provided list, or even the phone book before ever turning to CL. – Leah Lax, Jr. Research Analyst, Zenith Optimedia