The concept of social media has been around forever, not too long ago over the Easter weekend my brother-in-law asked what all the social media hype was about? Considering the time of year, the first analogy that came to mind was biblical. I said, social media has always existed in fact one can argue that JC himself was the first master of social media.

Think about it, he found 12 key influencers to spread his word and ensure his story was heard. More recent incarnations would include any form of multi-level marketing such as Tupper Wear Parties, Amway, Avon and host of others. Two things have changed significantly since then, access to information is much easier and faster, also traditional word-of-mouth has gone almost completely electronic with the onset of forums, blogs and social sites such as You Tube, Digg, Facebook and Twitter. So how can social media be used for research? Let’s begin by discussing the tools.

Three years ago there were a few companies collecting social media conversations, today there are probably over 1,000 applications. My guess is, three years from now the few we started with will still be around and most others will be gone. The other thing to remember, is no one tool fits all needs, I would encourage marketers and agencies alike to do some research and commit some time to evaluate a few applications. Assuming you have the right tools you can now unlock the power of social media. Research is typically done to give a company a competitive advantage and reduce risk. It also has three major components: strategy (what to do), development (how to do it) and evaluation (did it work). Strategy Strategy can be accomplished by looking at public sentiment for a brand or product, then working with that data to enhance or release a new product or service. Having done many research projects myself, I discovered online social media users are just as likely to speak about a great experience with a product or brand as they do when the experience is not as gratifying.

This “unbiased” perspective is usually in real-time and very relevant. Organizations can now conduct Primary and Secondary research all within the same sandbox in half the time and usually at half the cost. Our ability to listen is not constrained to just conversations about your own brand and products but also those of your competitors’. This information is extremely valuable in the strategy phase, as you are able to find out what works and what doesn’t with your brand and that of the competition. Research purists may argue that this is strictly a quantitative approach and you lose out on the quality of the research. It’s my opinion that you can have both, or more aptly a Quali-Quant approach. Some Social Media Monitoring tools allow you get very detailed with investigatory work letting you isolate meaningful conversations and opinions that really delivers value. For example, I’m a proud father of two young boys (Dylan and Gavin), prior to taking our annual trip to a tropical resort I always read reviews on the resort. Often times it’s a mix bag of results ranging from 1 star to 5 stars. I never only look at the overall rating as it can be misleading. The last resort we went to had some horrible feedback, specifically the disco closed too early, there were no bars open after 2 a.m. and there were too many kids in the pool. I can see how this could be bad for someone who is headed there to party all week however this was great for me and my family. In fact the 5 star ratings mostly came from young parents who loved the amenities that clearly catered to the needs of a family with younger children.

Drill through the data to find the high quality posts that are relevant to your objectives. Development Development can be accomplished by mining the results from your research to identify the key influencers and detractors for your brand and using them to promote your initiative. The best example of this, is the story of Cindy Gordon Vice President of New Media and Marketing Partnerships for Universal Orlando Resort. She was charged with marketing a new attraction for the theme park called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Instead of spending millions on PR and using all of the traditional channels, she elected to tell 7 people, yes only 7 people! But these were not just any random bunch of 7, they were highly influential bloggers who had a rabid collection of fans that religiously followed them for breaking news on Harry Potter. Gordon held a secret webcast to these 7 individuals featuring the production designer of the Harry Potter films and VP of creative for Universal. They were able to give a unique perspective on the making of the theme park to this exclusive group of people. After the webcast an email was sent to the park’s opt-in email list and like most successful viral campaigns these 7 people coupled with the emails were able to reach over 350,000,000 individuals worldwide. Since Gordon’s yard stick of success was measured on global reach, I think we can all agree this approach was a heaping success. Evaluation Evaluation, it’s important to mention metrics, as the objectives for the research must be clearly identified ahead of developing an execution plan, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. Having a campaign go viral is usually the objective of most social media campaigns, some to drive sales or in the case of Universal to drive awareness. What’s important is that you can evaluate and create most metrics through your Social Media Monitoring tools.

This can be done by establishing benchmarks prior to, during and after a campaign. Share of voice is one of the easiest metrics that can be used to measure success. Others can include brand sentiment (whether you were able to move the needle from negative to positive), demographics such as male, female or age groups (whether you were able to engage an older audience or a specific gender). Most tools on the market allow you to create custom reports to effectively determine if your campaigns are having the desired impact. There are many ways to deploy a SM campaign that can be distinctively tied back to results – the key is to make it unique and social. There is a financial institute that has successfully done this by giving an incentive to an existing customer and the person they refer for all new accounts. This works really well as it puts the customer first and it gives the referrer credibility with their friends as they both gain from the transaction. Since this campaign was never released over any mass-media effort all results were purely pinned to their social presence. There are many great agencies out there that assist with putting together a strategy that is accountable and measurable. In conclusion, social media is not all hype; in fact a recent Forrester’s report show that the largest growing segment for share of interactive marketing spend is in social media. It is projected to increase by 34 per cent from 2009-2014, a close second is mobile marketing. The SM phenomenon reminds me of an inspiration poster hanging in my old boss’s office, it reads, “If you’re not riding the wave of change, you may soon find yourself beneath it”.

http://dmn.ca/Articles/DM_May_2010(web).pdf