We all understand that market research is an important component of business strategy. Market research is systematic and rigorous. It provides us with a hedge against risk when we’re crafting strategy to make those all important customer and market affecting decisions. But lately (and increasingly so) I’ve been hearing chatter in the market suggesting that market research can be done cheaper, faster and better using Social Media Monitoring. “Don’t ask, just listen.” Seriously?
Hold the boat! Stop the train! Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet. Social media represents another customer data point you need to take into consideration for your research efforts, but heed my 6 warnings before you take the proverbial plunge.
Warning 1: The Price on the Box Does Not Reflect the Actual Cost
On the data gathering side, social monitoring systems use what are in effect search engines that scour the web, matching search strings you put into the system. What you receive back is a whole load of off-topic conversations– unstructured data from a whole bunch of random people. And from all of those raw unstructured comments, 30% or more of it will be irrelevant data you never asked for. At the end of the day you still have to invest ‘people-time’ to sort out the data, analyze it and interpret everything. Market researchers usually don’t have the staff to do the necessary analysis both of overall content and sentiment that’s aggregated by listening platforms.
Warning 2: If You Want Something, You Need To Ask For It
We were all taught in school at a very young age, if you want something, you need to ask for it. Don’t expect anyone to hand you anything. Does a successful sales person simply sit around waiting for the phone to ring? Do you really think your insights and strategy are simply going to come and kick you in the derriere? What part of drive do you not understand? Just because you now have a way to gain additional insights (by listening on social channels) does not mean that you should abandon the proactive engagement of your customers in market research studies. In order to drive strategy you have to be proactive– you have to go after it—you have to ASK. And, by asking the customer you not only show them that you care but you also take the guess work out of planning.
Warning 3: Garbage In, Garbage Out
To get the best results possible from market research it is vital to select a sample of the population that is truly representative of the customer base. In social media the source of the information is of unknown origin, so how can you trust that the results are in any way truly representative of your customer base? Questionable or unknown sources generate results without a high degree of certainty or confidence. In addition, the data being gathered in social media monitoring systems is only as good as the topics or words you are monitoring. You create the topic and tell the system to go look for it. It doesn’t mean that the crawlers will find conversations that are necessarily on topic, but rather comments that just happen to have the keyword(s) or phrase(s) you are searching for. If you don’t know how to look for the right things, your assumptions are highly likely to be based on flawed data. There’s also the question of just how good the data collectors are. I use a monitoring tool on a daily basis called Google Alerts. The principle is the same as social monitoring tools—a search algorithm and corresponding engine. Put in a keyword and Google will deliver back social media it matches your keyword to. And almost daily I get one or more stale links—even repeats and clones. If Google can’t create a reliable simplistic monitoring tool, then just how reliable are these social media monitoring crawlers? And finally, there’s just a lot of garbage data floating around in social networks—propaganda, spam, advertising, sarcasm, and self-serving regurgitation of other people’s ideas and posts. The adage hold true… garbage in, garbage out.
Warning 4: Some Voices May be Louder than They Appear
I’m sure by now you already know the 90-9-1 rule (audience- editors-creators). Dominant voices are a real problem when you’re trying to create strategy. Moderators go to great lengths in customer focus groups to control or even silence dominant voices in order to not sway opinion or emotion. Some people are just very passionate and some simply like all the exposure, but regardless dominant voices tend to create more volume. In social media the fear is that louder folks get heard more. And since you’re only getting the voice of 1% of the people to begin with, I don’t understand how this can possibly give you a representative view of your customer base.
Warning 5: Computers Are Not People
In social media monitoring, the intelligence is in the machine—we’re being led to believe that magically some algorithm can all of a sudden accurately pull my sentiment from my words. Don’t forget that this technology is fairly limited—based on keyword matching, like a search engine. And once it crawls all of those sites and picks up all of that data, it then supposedly has the ability to analyze themes and influence ranking and sentiment. People think as they do because of innate genetic endowment, shaped in development by contact and culture. And admittedly the tools for performing this have improved over time. But let’s face it, no algorithm is ever going to be highly accurate at interpreting things that are innately human (sentiment, influence, desire, preference, emotion, etc.) from random comments in social media. That process will require people and time.
Warning 6: Let the Games Begin!
How real is the information you’re gathering? Can you trust it? Disinformation campaigns have been used throughout time to trick enemies into believing a lie or into not knowing what information is real. Information is power, but controlling information is more power. There is one rule that the Internet has made painfully clear: “If somebody can, somebody will.”
Early this year someone posted a video of a commentator on the OneWest Bank transaction with FDIC to acquire assets of IndyMac. The video was so compelling, and distributed so widely, that on Feb. 12 of this year, FDIC was forced to actually issue a press release refuting the “facts” stated in the video and providing its own fact sheet.
Now that people are aware that companies are monitoring social channels, it’s just a matter of time before someone uses disinformation on a very large scale that will present an even bigger challenge for data validity.
In Summary…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Social Media Monitoring isn’t important. Social Media Monitoring can be a useful addition to your Market Research efforts. And social media monitoring shines in reactive situations when used as an early warning system. Customer service can effectively use Social Monitoring to diffuse negative sentiment before it boils over, which might just generate positive sentiment from lurkers and positive word-of-mouth from influencers. And it’s a great way for marketers and market researches to understand real life reactions from people when companies make a change or release something new into the market.
There’s no denying that everything is moving faster, and everyone is demanding far more from less. And I doubt many will argue when I say that traditional market research needs to and will evolve and incorporate additional approaches and methods to accommodate ever changing markets and demands. If you honestly believe you can toss out traditional market research for social media monitoring, then I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you. Know the limitations and set your expectations accordingly, and realize that there simply are no silver bullets.
