Social Media Listening Lessons from Microsoft
Would a market researcher rather be a spider, a bee or a fly? A fly, of course!
Article Synopsis, “Market research at the speed of social media: How to leverage social intelligence”
As market researchers, we would all love to be the proverbial “fly on the wall”, getting to observe consumers discreetly and directly as they talk about or shop for products and services. While asking questions is certainly a great way of collecting data, we know from well-documented advances in behavioral sciences that people often answer questions in rationalized or overly optimistic ways. Not to mention the 50+ other biases that can impact data quality. That’s why so many of us are hungry for observational data: we want to eliminate the skews we get from self-reported data.
What if there was a way that market researchers could gain valuable, unbiased insights in a way that minimally impacts consumers (like that fly on the wall)? There is. Social media listening gives us access to unprovoked, rich qualitative data…a literal treasure trove for market researchers.
Of course, social media listening has been around for years. But lately it has been surging in popularity. And some of the powerful reasons why are illustrated in a 2020 article published in Research World by Angie Aldape, Director of Social Intelligence for Microsoft. Aldape describes Microsoft’s use of social intelligence to support decision-making, and also makes a case for social listening not just for consumer markets, but for B2B and niche markets as well.
In her article, Aldape outlines 4 main reasons why Microsoft finds social intelligence to be beneficial:
- Inexpensive and quick to implement. Social listening techniques can easily be adopted and provide fast insights for companies.
- In the words of the customers. Companies do not have to be concerned that they are not getting the whole picture or that customers are not being entirely truthful. This allows the information to be more actionable and credible.
- “Qualitative data at the scale of quantitative”. Social listening unearths a whole new, massive set of unbiased qualitative data. It combines the depth of qualitative research with the scope, span, and reach of quantitative research.
- In real-time. The ability to do anything in “real-time” is a rising trend in the marketing industry, and why should marketing research not take advantage of that? Information can be gathered nearly instantaneously on social media sites. This lessens turnaround time to make effective decisions.
Of course, this all sounds great, right? But all research methodologies have risks. So, what steps can researchers take to really achieve these benefits? In her article, Aldape lays out success tips. Two of the key ones:
- “Construct robust queries to capture the right data”
- As Aldape states, “Queries are to social intelligence what questionnaires are to survey research – these are Boolean queries that define both what you include in your dataset and what you exclude” and they are the foundation of a strong social intelligence strategy.
- To accomplish this step, Aldape suggests several things, including working with cross-functional teams to develop a list of potential queries. For many researchers this will sound familiar; we often generate hypotheses before we start survey design. Of course, there are various social media optimized text analytics tools that allow this type of data to be collected and queried at scale.
- “Understand the social media universe to correctly analyze and interpret data”
- Different social media platforms have different audiences and will generate different data to leverage—know the differences.
If leveraged effectively, social media listening and analysis does become “intelligence” and brings market researchers that much closer to becoming those flies on the wall…and at scale.
[1]. Market Research at the Speed of Social Media: How to Leverage Social Intelligence, Research World (Aldape 2020).
More Resources:
- Research Rockstar YouTube video: Social Media Research
- Check out our related course, Social Media Research & Sentiment Analysis, available in both instructor-led (real-time eLearning) and on-demand formats.
