Social Media Research
Social media is a massive modern phenomenon. Its channels have exploded and created ways in which anyone can express their views on virtually anything within moments of becoming aware of it. All of this was unimaginable a few years ago, yet the whole landscape of how organisations and individuals interact with the world has irreversibly shifted.
What may once have been a one-to-one exchange via letter or telephone between a company and a customer can now become a very public mini-campaign on a point of concern. In addition to this, individuals will often ask for advice and guidance on product and service choices and conversations take place with public discussion on the products, services, reputation and behaviour of companies and organisations.
Many organisations are well aware of the potential power and influence of social media and have developed strategies to ‘manage’ their relationship with customers and stakeholders. In addition to providing new communications channels social media also offers a valuable new route to generate insights on attitudes and perceptions.
Lawson Taylor is delighted to offer a range of services that deliver insights on relevant social media activity and sentiment that can inform marketing strategy across both social and ‘traditional’ media.
Services and Benefits
Social media analysis gives a clear understanding of the relationship between any organisation and its key audiences. This can establish an organisation’s ‘share of voice’ in relevant channels and map out the relationship between it and the concepts and language used. This creates a valuable impression of where an organisation sits with its audiences.
In addition to the three services identified below we can also integrate them with other market research methodologies that deliver significant levels of assurance and confidence in research insights.
Our social media services fall into three main areas:
a. Analysis of In-House Data
This service delivers a health check on the social media activities of an organisation and begins the process of assessing the ‘tone’ of communications. It is also a good opportunity to discuss the key concerns of a client in terms of what would like to be seen as features of customer comments as this sets the scene for the second stage.
b. Market Perceptions and Engagement Analysis
Data mining is becoming a common term in relation to learning more about customers and other audiences. In relation to social media we use the term ‘Feed Mining’ as this process consists of extracting insights on how a client and its products and services are represented in the various social media feeds.
The process delivers a ‘real-world’ view of the range of comments, both positive and negative, about the client organisation. It works best when a list of six or so key terms are identified as a framework on which the analysis process can be based. Due to the nature of social media this short list will quickly grow, through the identification of associated terms, and this will both develop an understanding of the range of language used and validate the original list.
The insights that are delivered will be both qualitative and quantitative in nature as they will identify the range of terms used and also their frequency.
To deliver high levels of assurance on the insights that emerge from this activity we recommend that it is implemented in an integrated way with other methodologies. This approach will generate additional audience insights so that you will know who is getting involved in the relevant social media exchanges and how representative they are of your target audiences.
c. Social Media Strategy Review
The insights delivered by the above activities are likely to throw up a number of challenges for the future of a client’s social media strategy. We can support the consideration of those challenges and help the client develop its approach to deal with them.
Social media needs to be seen as an extension of general marketing and communications rather than a stand-alone activity and we have the expertise to support clients achieve effective coordination across social media marketing and other marketing activities.
Next Steps
To start a discussion of how our social media research services can support you in learning more about how your customers see your products and services please contact Chris Taylor:
Tel: 07807 308939
Email. Lawson Taylor
