Authors
This how-to guide was created by ZoeAmar This guide has also been edited by WEditor, TomMcHugh and MarkBarratt
How to use social media for market research
An average rating of 4.4285714285714286
from
7
votes |
Rate this page
|
Rating stats
Rating statistics for this page
4.4 out of 5 from 7 votes
Breakdown
5 votes
1 vote
0 votes
1 vote
0 votes
CloseThings you'll need
- Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media accounts.
Social media gurus keep telling us to ‘listen’ as well as ‘engage.’ Now that Twitter, Facebook et al are well established charity communications and fundraising tools, and we’re all tracking our social media mentions, I think we need to maximise their potential for market research.
Social media offers valuable leads about what your audience is thinking- right now. These channels are ‘free,’ but they are not substitutes for bigger market research projects such as focus group exercises, interviews or omnibus studies. What they provide are raw, immediate and unvarnished insights into your stakeholder’s most pressing needs. And many of us are using all of these tools already. So we are ‘listening’- we just need to know how to do it systematically so that we make the most of the huge amount of powerful data available through social media.
At Lasa we have a tight budget for market research, so I’ve learned some quick and cost effective ways to gather useful data through social media.
Here are my top tips.
Twitter is brilliant for pushing out surveys
If your survey covers a hot topic, offers good incentives and is quick to complete, then Twitter is a great way to get it out there.
As an example, last year we ran an online survey to find out what the charity sector thought about ‘Big Society.’ (As a charity which supports thousands of charities across the UK each year, we wanted to know their views). We sent it out through our @Lasavoice and @LasaICT Twitter accounts, and we also asked a different charity sector opinion leader (with at least 1000 followers) each day to retweet it. Interest in the survey snowballed and more people began to tweet about it. Over 400 charity sector professionals responded and the results were covered by the BBC Politics Show, Metro, The Guardian and Third Sector, amongst others. We did all the work in-house so the only cost was £150 for the Amazon vouchers which we gave away in a prize draw for respondents.
LinkedIn groups offer useful data
Often the dark horse of social media, LinkedIn can be a great way to source market research. At Lasa we seeded our Big Society survey amongst charity sector discussion groups, which created a lot of word of mouth interest and boosted responses.
The charity sector groups are also very active and are good places to pick up nuggets of valuable information.
Who you follow on Twitter determines the quality of your insights
Make sure that you’re following journalists, competitors, trade associations, trade press, government departments, MPs and any other key stakeholders. Since Twitter is often the first place that news breaks, this means that leads sometimes need to be verified, so take care that they come from a reliable source and doublecheck them if necessary. It’s easy to just dip in and out of Twitter reactively, but if you can get into the habit of checking the timelines of your most important stakeholders regularly and following up useful tweets then nothing will slip through the net.
Pass on your results
Where it is appropriate, use your social media networks to share your findings.
A good example of this is Third Sector Social Media and Digital Communications Convention (nfpsm) who ran a survey about the use of social media in charities in June 2011. They used Twitter (and other on and offline channels) to promote the survey. Once the results were collated, they communicated the survey results through the same channels.
Go for it!
In today’s rapidly changing climate, your market research needs to be ongoing 24/7. There is no better tool for that than social media.
Further information
- For an introduction to social media see Lasa's knowledgebase article
- How to design and use free online surveys
A version of this article first appeared as a blog entry for Bright One
Zoe Amar is Head of Marketing and Business Development at Lasa, a charity which provides services to Shelter, Age UK and thousands of other charities across the UK. She is also on the board at Bright One and is a Chartered Marketer. Zoe tweets from @zoeamar
Similar how-tos
Find how-tos
Join in
How-tos are written by the users of this site; they can be anyone working within the charity sector. By sharing knowledge we can all support each other across the sector and help make things better.
How-tos are collaborative - we encourage other users to add to, edit and update existing how-tos as they see fit. Changes can also be undone. Don't worry, you can't 'break' anything!
If we see inappropriate or abusive behaviour we will prevent that user from making changes.
So log in, join in, and help make a difference!
Brought to you by:
