Not all companies are in the same boat when thinking about SMMR, and for many senior managers the discussion starts like this: “Are we doing this? Wait -what is this? What can it do?

Social media is no longer new. SMMR enthusiasts has been working hard to keep up with all the information and tools showing up, and growing exponentially, overnight. As your team (and I strongly recommend a team) thinks through SMMR and the benefits it could bring to your company, I’ve tried to put together a list of possible usages that could prove handy.

Following basic marketing principles, SMMR techniques can be divided into two camps (Secondary and Primary). Of course, some techniques will have elements of both as you’ll soon find out. Like most strategic decisions, many companies will benefit from an integrated strategy that utilizes tools from both, but it really comes down to the specific goals, project and budget.

Secondary (Passive) Research

As opposed to Primary (Active) Research methods, these techniques use data already present online, and the trick lies in collecting it and analyzing it. Collecting the data or Data Mining has become easier over time as many tools has surfaced, but analyzing social media data can provide many challenges. Here are some of the communication channels you can use to learn more about a topic.

• What’s popular? With the recent addition of Insights, Google Trends has become more useful than even before for research, expanding from just a novelty to a advanced filters driven technique to find out how people are looking for information – including specific and related keywords. These tools can help segment the information by geographies and time periods, compare search terms and more.
• Ear on the Chatter: The web’s latest star, Twitter’s vast amounts of up-to-the-minute banter can be easily collected using search built-in search tools (not to mention the number of independent websites offering tools to help collect and filter Twitter data). Especially relevant for recent topics, Twitter can help you quickly find out what the community thinks about a topic. Other tools allow you do the same for other popular social media sites including facebook, myspace, youtube etc.
• The emerging experts: Web 2.0 has made it easier than ever before of individuals (and groups) to share their opinions and thoughts establishing their expertise on certain topics – through blogs. While a majority of blogs are run for personal use by non-experts, popular ones have followings that can rival traditional publications such as newspapers and magazines. Many sites, including Technorati provide easy way to find out how certain topics are being mentioned in the blogosphere. For those who want to keep a regular eye on specific keywords, Google Alerts will do the job and alert you on new mentions in websites and blogs.

This is, of course, an incomplete list, but should help you think of the type of information you can collect from the diverse social media community.

Primary (Active) Research

Online research is not new, with hundreds of websites offering the ability to conduct web-based surveys. Though less common, online focus groups and interviews have often replaced their in-person counterparts. But the newest opportunity lies in tapping into these new, always connected channels to do research. Of course, there is the possibility of error due to observer effect, but as opposed to Passive Research, specific questions can be addressed and it’s easier to make sure you talk to ensure you’re talking to the right demographic.

• Tapping current features: Most social media websites offer ways for companies to easily converse with their customers. Unfortunately, this requires forming some kind of relationship with them, whether it is belonging to facebook groups or generating Twitter followers. This can be very difficult, but once established you can easily ask short questions to your consumers and get quick answers.
• Looking ahead: Old dog, new trick: Of course, most market researchers have many follow-up questions and it can be hard to hold a continuous discussion in the above-mentioned method. This leaves room for researchers to use Social Media sites as a way to screen and recruit respondents for more thorough research techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus groups and ethnographic research.

Another undeveloped opportunity lies in forming research panels that can be communicated to via the social media websites and channels, making it possible to control demographics and still conduct fast, cost effective research (I know of very few efforts working on this).

This list is not comprehensive – but hopefully it will get you thinking about all the possibilities out there and if they are actually the right one for you. Have other ideas? Lets hear it in the comments.

Quantitative metrics are key to understanding one’s market. Now, more than ever, marketers have access to a wealth of data to help make decisions. However, I’m going to argue that this new resource is often emphasized at the expense of qualitative knowledge, which is instrumental to creating effective strategy.

Today in the New York Times, they covered the efforts of big firms like M.R.I. to better quantify the impact of advertisements in magazines. A small detail stuck out as I read. Ad revenues at magazines are not falling as fast as they are at newspapers. One obvious explanation for this is that magazines come with built-in psychographic and demographic targeting. Want to reach snowboarders? Why not try Transworld Snowboarding?

The underlying message of the article was also pretty clear. Quantitative metrics are indispensable for marketers and advertisers. Online advertising and marketing offer quantitative analysis undreamed-of before the advent of the Internet. Print advertising offers metrics that have resisted improvement for decades- ergo, print advertising loses.

At Compete, Stephen DiMarco underscores this point by drawing a line between marketing undertaken on the basis of intuition, “Powerball Marketing” and marketing informed by substantial statistical analysis, “Moneyball Marketing”. His key points, roughly paraphrased, are that:

1) Desired outcomes of marketing campaigns should be specifically quantified

2) Advanced quantitative measures should primarily guide marketing initiatives

On point 1, I agree with Stephen wholeheartedly. All projects need clear-cut objectives, and woe to the firm that allocates hard money to soft, unquantified “improvements” or “increases”.

On point 2, I have to disagree, in part. Success in marketing-by-numbers can’t explain the persistence of magazine ad revenues over newspapers’, given that both media lack robust quantitative measures. Online marketing and market research provides a veritable fire hose of consumer data to the savvy marketer. This leads to a tendency to ignore or discount qualitative knowledge, despite its necessity, as demonstrated by those plucky glossies.

Quantitative data can accurately describe consumer behavior, and be used to predict it to some extent. Qualitative data is valuable when the quantitative data you have doesn’t provide the ability to rationally explain a behavior, or make rational strategic decisions. When the beliefs, attitudes and motivations of one’s customer or consumer are well-understood, it’s possible to make good decisions when quant data can’t do it for you.

For example, if your analytics show that conversion rates have fallen off sharply after introducing a new tagline, the most the numbers can do is identify that the tagline is the problem. With a robust qualitative dataset, and a good understanding of the beliefs, motivations, and other relevant pyschographic factors expressed in that dataset, you’ll be able to identify the unintentional use of a new slang word used to describe terrible body odor in the tagline. The quantitative data would allow you to replace the tagline and fix the problem. The qualitative data would allow you to replace the tagline, as well as spin the faux-pas, make a knowing joke with your consumer, and salvage brand image.

Part of a marketer’s job is to understand their customer or consumer. Clickstream data, correlates of conversion rates, or even surveys won’t really illuminate human beliefs, attitudes, or motivations. SMMR provides a unique opportunity to collect, oftentimes, both quantitative and qualitative knowledge simultaneously. It’s important for marketers to remember that both types of information are essential. Remember: Pizza and beer separately are great, but together they make a balanced meal.

Verify user demographics -- one tweet only

Slate today has a story on the topic of “orphaned tweets” — user accounts that consist of one tweet only.  While Swansburg and Singer-Vine take the article in a hilarious direction by classifying the various kinds of orphaned tweets, the article points to a critical statistic relevant to managers considering social media market research.

A major Harvard study reveals that 10% of Twitter users are responsible for 90% of the site’s traffic.   Add to this an older Nielson study revealing that Twitter has a month-over-month retention rate of just over 40% and the prognosis for creating a wide societal groundswell on twitter is bleak.

This creates an imposing challenge for those looking to create valid demographic samples from Twitter.  One of the most popular objections to SMMR is that it is disproportionately limited to certain demographics.

The relevant question is whether this difficulty will be limited to Twitter or if it creates  problems for the idea of SMMR itself.  My answer has been that it is indeed possible to capture more diverse demographics, but there are three additional considerations.

1. Twitter might not be the best vehicle for capturing insight. Given the low insight available in 140 characters and the difficulty understanding demographics, other social media sites may be more appropriate for market research.  However, if Twitter continues to grow and gains mainstream traction, it’s search functionality will make it an invaluable tool.

2. Use SMMR before target demographics are finalized. Smart market research practitioners will integrate social media market research into their research plans in a way that leverages it’s advantages — casting the widest possible net for insights.  This knowledge should help inform the thinking as you progress to tighter demographics.

Properly understood, social media’s difficulty in expensively isolating demographics is in fact an advantage.

SMMR demos: more than the NPR set

One of the objections I will often hear while discussing social media market research goes like this.  “I understand the potential of SMMR to capture huge amounts of actionable insights, but won’t those insights all be generated by certain non-representative demographics (e.g. younger, coastal, urban)?”  This is definitely a relevant question and a serious concern.

Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford, has part of the answer.  Money statistic: there are 16.5 million moms participating in the blogosphere.  Granted, work needs to be done to further segment the demographic further, but rest assured the percentage of nearly all demos using social media is growing.

We all know that social media are a great source of market insights. All you have to do is log on, see what people are saying about your brand or product, and act accordingly. When you pay close attention to your customer, you can’t fail. Right?

Wrong. SMMR is like any other research activity – it demands not just data-gathering, but the knowledge to interpret that data correctly. If you take the time to understand your brand, product, and target market well enough, SMMR will return great ROI. On the other hand, if you simply take online commentary at face value, you’re playing Marco Polo in an empty pool.

Take the example of the 2006 film Snakes on a Plane. Early teasers generated a great deal of buzz in social media, with commentators practically salivating over the expected camp extravaganza. The studio went so far as to re-shoot portions of the film to meet (some might say pander to) fan expectations. Despite the huge buzz and apparent addressing of needs uncovered through (crude) SMMR, the film grossed a disappointing $62MM.

Buzz aside, SoaP was probably never going to be a truly great film, in terms of acclaim or revenue. However, it is clear that the studio was badly misled by internet buzz. A better understanding of the dynamics of online conversations and their target market would have prevented this misapprehension.

In contrast, the site Think Geek takes a very sane and profitable approach to integrating online conversations into their product and marketing strategy. Although (or maybe because) Think Geek is a niche retailer, they have exhibited a much better understanding of their target market.

Each year, they feature April fool’s products which are meant only as satire of the merchandise they actually carry. However, sometimes these fictional products strike a chord with their customer base and spark a lot of conversation and outright demand. One year, the “Personal Soundtrack Shirt” created such an outcry and later saw production:

April Fool’s Joke Turned Real
Yep. This unusual shirt was originally a joke product for April Fool’s day. But after your overwhelming positive response and hundreds of e-mails screaming to “make the damn shirt already” we went ahead and made the damn shirt… please enjoy.

While this might seem like an obvious choice – ‘give the people what they want’, it required careful consideration on the part of TG. First, they had to find a way to produce the shirt in appropriate quantitites at a reasonable price. Just as importantly, they had to use knowledge of their customer base to determine what that price could be. They had to estimate propensity to buy, rather than simply exclaim about the desirability of the shirt. They had to whether there was genuine demand, or simply a vocal minority, as in the case of SoaP. TG considered all of these variables and introduced a successful product.

Moral of the story: If you can’t tell the difference between real demand from your target market and loud noises from an unruly mob of bloggers, step away from the keyboard, take a deep breath, and look a bit closer.

In this economy, it’s become popular to criticize economists and their favored principle of economic rationality. Commentators lament the shortsightedness of smart people who assume others think the way they do. It’s important to recognize that good problem-solving ability and general edification can sometimes hinder efforts to understand how “regular people” think and make decisions.

This trap can ensnare anyone, but it’s particularly pernicious for market researchers, and those of us in SMMR are certainly not immune. It’s important to do your homework when trying to understand a brand, product or company in an on-line context. In other words, hitting up facebook, twitter and technorati aren’t going to give you a good picture of that context and presence unless the target market concentrates their activity there. Those might be your favorite haunts, they might even have a broad user base, but that doesn’t mean they’re representative of the target customer or consumer. Sometimes the target is going to behave in ways that are unintuitive to you.

Here’s a small example. The much-beloved er, towel, Shamwow, has a website at Shamwow.com. A simple Google search for “shamwow” returns the official site first, with several review sites, news links about the spokesman’s legal misadventures, and a link containing the word “ripoff” not appearing until 9th place. If you run a search for “shamwow.com”, however, the 3rd link down, visible without scrolling, has a pretty harsh description:

Shamwow is a sham!! Do not buy this junk. These towels do nothing!! I take that back they DO push water around all over you counters but they don’t pick …

Well, that would certainly make me think twice if I’d run the search with the intention of buying. One might assume that a search for “shamwow.com” would furnish a high conversion rate, given that the user is presumably looking for the official site. Unfortunately, most of those potential sales are probably lost once the user encounters the above screed. If they had anticipated that search string and built it into their SEO strategy, they might have held onto them.

This example is truthfully pretty silly, but it does illustrate the point. You’re not the customer. Just because you would never search for something as dumb as “shamwow.com” doesn’t mean the customer wouldn’t (no offense, customer!) Never dismiss the behavior of real customers unless you can afford to do business without them.

One of the hot-button issues in the social media community continues to be whether and how you should use metrics to judge the effectiveness of social media.  This is a critical issue for social media experts (because it is their ticket into companies or up the corporate ladder) and a critical issue for companies, who need to judge an investment in social media in terms of opportunity cost.

I jumped into this hornets’ nest.  Ben Foster argues that social media metrics may delay action and cost your company leadership position in an emerging channel.

What is clear is that the social media community does not lack for metrics that can be applied to social media efforts.  However, what is missing is a discussion on what the right metrics are.

The right place to start is by understanding your company’s goals for social media, starting with the end in mind.  The social media community has a menu of possible and realistic goals for your social media efforts.  If you have already spent a ton of money on social media programs and are just now thinking of how to measure the results, you are behind.  This is how metrics like followers on twitter become germane — because you have come to a point where you need to set metrics that you can achieve.  (Just Google “gain twitter followers” — if twitter followers are the social media currency, this market is seeing hyper-inflation.) It’s comparatively easy for social media experts to create pageviews or followers — that is why they are experts.

One easy method for setting social media metrics: set metrics that are intrinsically valuable for your organization. If you head up a consumer insights department, your metric may be actionable consumer data.  If you are marketing tampons, maybe you want to drive sampling. Your social media metrics should almost always be external to the world of social media — not pageviews or twitter followers, unless your goal really is to increase your brand’s presence among social media experts.

Mashable has a post up discussing Ford’s dominance in the social media space vis-à-vis competitors. The point is that Ford has been massively more successful in creating a social media presence, as measured by:

• Blog mentions
• Videos tagged on YouTube
•  Photos on Flickr

The author is not the only social media expert to use these metrics like these. It’s an understandable temptation – followers, re-tweets, and tags are easy ways to measure progress. However, there isn’t a discussion of why these metrics are valuable to Ford. It’s not clear, after all, that a twitter follower is in any way more likely to buy a new Ford – particularly since a large percentage of these followers are themselves social media experts.

Here are the three most important metrics for social media. If you can’t measure these, and don’t have a line of sight to measuring these, your initiative is in trouble:

1. What did you learn? Understanding your customer or community better is a fantastic goal and one that we fully support. The functionality of social media market research has high value potential, and should be considered a positive ROI investment in the way that focus groups or surveys are generally valued.
2. Who did we reach? If your B2B company has run a successful campaign and generated multiple sales leads, congratulations — you’ve run a successful social media campaign. However, if you have no idea how reaching more targets impacts your top line, it might be time to rethink your strategy. And if you’re having a hard time knowing if you’re reaching customers or just other marketers it is definitely time to rethink the strategy. 
3. What was the ROI? If you are able to measure a direct top-line result of your campaign you’ve solved the paradox of social media marketing. You did it!

As with any initiative, understanding the rules for success is critical. Make sure you agree to them upfront with your social media consultant.

On May 18, the much-hyped new search (er, computational) engine Wolfram Alpha launched. My first impression is that it’s a great tool, but is nearly useless for market research of any sort.

That’s a pretty bold statement, but the key here is that Wolfram Alpha is emphatically NOT a search engine as we’re accustomed to. WA refers to itself as a Computational Knowledge Engine, which is actually pretty accurate. While that distinction gives it some exciting new capabilities, it also means that it won’t be replacing your favorite search engine anytime soon.

Wolfram Alpha is useful for doing things like pulling a quick poop sheet on a geography or population, or doing some relatively sophisticated calculation, correlation, and graphing of quantitative data. What it’s not good for is learning about any topic not already coded into the WA system. For example, while it can easily compare the nutritional content of Hot Dogs and Hamburgers, it chokes if you wander even a short way off the beaten path, having no idea what Deep Dish Pizza or Philly Cheese Steaks are.

The implications for market research, then, are essentially nil. While WA might be a good first stop to do groundwork on demographics or basic statistics, market research is not a computational exercise.

Wolfram Alpha is an awesome technology. The promise of Wolfram’s ambitious goals and substantial progress is exciting. Being able to compute basically anything without special software or tools would be of huge value. Unfortunately, WA is not going to save me much work when I need to learn qualitative facts about a market, company, product or brand. Now, Wolfram Gamma or Delta? I wouldn’t count them out.

Although this post has little to do with the MR part of SMMR (Social Media Market Research), I came across a very creative use of a modern social media tool for marketing and decided to share.

The example is from the webcomic Questionable Content’s usage of Twitter. QC follows the lives of a group of friends in a manner similar to TV sitcoms. While it is common for authors, artists and other creative folks to have their own Twitter accounts, QC creator Jeph Jacques took a different path and made separate Twitter accounts for his fictional characters instead.

The result is that his audience is no longer limited to “experiencing” the characters’ banter in the comparatively traditional medium of his comics, but can now subscribe to them in the way most Twitter-folks are following their friends and family. They can now read the characters’ random thoughts and virtual conversations, adding a whole new dimension to the characters (making them a lot more “real”) and further strengthening the comic’s relationship with its audience.

Many companies and firms are currently using Twitter to pass news and updates about their products, but I can definitely see them extracting value from this strategy to create a very different online presence. Imagine Geico (or the Cave Men from Geico’s commercials) or Burger King’s mascot having their own pages where they posts random thoughts and share a quirky, funny and more human side with followers. Different from typical marketing efforts, this one is not intended to simply pass on directed messages about promotions and new initiatives, but instead have a lasting communication using humor and entertainment in ways similar to viral marketing. And of course, there is no reason why once these channels are made they cannot be used for passing on those messages about promotions and other deals periodically.

Furthermore, as Twitter and its supporting tools upgrade, it may become possible to easily list out the demographics and psychographics of your audience and use that for market research. And that, is how I’m tying all this back to SMMR.