Social Media Research: What a difference a year makes.
Posted by Vaughn Mordecai on Thu, Apr 21, 2011 @ 10:14 AM
About a year ago, I wrote an article titled "Social Media Market Research Methods are REALLY Unevolved." It's time to update that article because things have changed...dramatically...over the past year. Oh what a difference a year can make in evolutionary business cycles. The original article I wrote had a few basic premises.
- The way that market researchers view the market research process is often VERY DIFFERENT than the way non-industry folks view market research. Oftentimes market research, for most people, is simply "looking stuff up" on the internet.
- Social media research followed those lines. Even for many in our own research industry "looking stuff up" on social media sites was viewed as the social media research process.
- Few established research tools, research processes, or best practices were available to conduct social media research when this original article was written.
- Most researchers didn't understand the social media research process or what it even meant.
A year later, after a million conference sessions on social media research, some advancement in technology and proprietary platforms that streamline the RESEARCH process, and significant thought into how all this data could be analyzed in useful ways that answer business questions and provide business insights, the picture is becoming much clearer.
Toward the end of 2010, the MRA division IMRO produced a detailed best practices article that outlined social media research. The article, titled "MRA/IMRO Guide to the Top 16 Social Media Research Questions," really helped make this method accessible to researchers in a way that allowed them to execute social media research solutions for their own organizations and more importantly for their clients. Since then, other research organizations have also begun to put together social media best practices documents, suggesting that the method is here to stay.
There's pretty strong evidence that social media research will be a significant growth area for our industry. Yesterday, The Green Book, in conjunction with too many other partners to mention, released their annual Research Industry Trends report for 2011. There are MANY useful pieces of information included in the report, but one particular piece really hit home. They report that 28% of the respondents surveyed have used "Social Media Analytics." In addition, there's a gap between the users of the research and the actual researchers who provide the research (44% of Research Buyers/Clients have used Social Media Analytics, while only 24% of Research Suppliers/Providers have). This is really a call to arms for our industry. If we don't provide the Social Media Research solutions, others that are outside of our industry will. When asked what research techniques these respondents project for the future, 68% of Research Buyers/Clients reported Social Media Analytics while 45% of the Suppliers/Providers reported the same. It's time for us as Research Suppliers to get on board.
Social media research methods have evolved and have evolved quickly
into a very viable research-based process. Much like other evolved market research methods, it is no longer sufficient to simply "look stuff up" and call it social media research.
When I was a teen, I used to jump off a railroad bridge into the Snake River in Eastern Idaho. The Snake River was deep, dark, and full of under-currents. The bridge was high and took a climb to get to the top. When you'd make the jump, you'd almost always wear shoes because when you'd hit the water, bare feet hurt. The entire process was SCARY...but exhilarating. Many hot summer days were spent jumping from that bridge (it's illegal to do it now - it's been a lot of years) to cool off, show off, and goof off. There was a lot of satisfaction in that scary experience. It's time to make a similar plunge into social media research. Even though it might be scary, it will be worth it.
- Any thoughts on how social media research has evolved over the past year?
- Any suggestions for readers that are implementing social media research solutions?