By Dana Stanley and Kristin Luck
There are few bigger buzzwords in research today than “social media.” Researchers are experimenting, and in some cases struggling, to ascertain the best ways to take advantage of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms. Methodological innovations involving social media are occurring both by choice and by necessity.
However, innovation is not limited to research methods. Researchers are increasingly being asked to advise clients on the use of social media. Many in our industry are finding that in order to provide credible advice to clients on the use of social media, they need to have a baseline understanding of these tools. More researchers are taking the plunge, some enthusiastically, others hesitantly, and incorporating social media into their sales and marketing plans. The economic slowdown has accelerated this transition to less expensive marketing efforts.
Industry Survey
Decipher and The Operandi Group conducted a survey to measure how and to what extent our own industry has adopted social media for its own marketing purposes.
We fielded an online survey in August 2009 among 372 market research industry professionals. The study, conducted over a 17-day period, profiled researchers’ adoption in their marketing efforts of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, as well as instant messaging and e-mail.
The study had a two-stage sample design. The first was an e-mail invitation sent out to a de-duplicated list of our industry contacts, which yielded 1,358 unique records. The second stage, which began on August 13, involved posting links to the survey on various social media Web sites targeted to the marketing research community, including: Facebook, LinkedIn and Market Research Global Alliance. For both stages, respondents had the opportunity to send an invitation link to up to five of their own industry contacts.
The survey was programmed by Decipher using an interactive survey format. In addition, Peanut Labs provided use of Optimus, a digital fingerprinting technology to prevent any duplication of respondents.
The final sample composition was as follows: 139 completes from the contact lists, 34 completes from referral invitations, and 199 completes from social media sites.
Sixty-one percent of the sample was comprised of research analysts, those who run projects on a day-to-day basis. Fourteen percent were company executives and 15% were sales or marketing executives. Full service research companies made up 70% of the sample, followed by 19% data collection companies, 11% End Users, 6% advertising or PR agencies and 8% other types of firms. Seventy-seven percent of respondents were in North America, compared to 11% in Europe, 10% in Australasia, 2% in South America and 1% in Africa.
The study revealed that social media tools, while increasingly popular among researchers, still trail far behind more established communications methods. E-mail (100% use “regularly” or “multiple times per day”) and instant messaging (74%) outpaced social media tools such as LinkedIn (56%), Facebook (35%), Twitter (18%) and MySpace (4%). Interestingly, female researchers tend to be more likely to use Facebook and Twitter.
A majority of researchers (56%) report using LinkedIn regularly. Only 18% say they use Twitter regularly and only 35% use Facebook regularly. Each of these methods showed significant growth among marketing research professionals in the past year. By comparison, fully 97% use e-mail regularly and three in four (74%) use instant messaging regularly. Only 4% of researchers report using MySpace regularly (not entirely surprising given the mass migration of many social network users to Facebook).
Users of various tools were asked whether they had a positive effect on their business. Half (49%) said LinkedIn has had an “identifiable positive effect.” Forty-five percent indicated the same for Facebook. About a third (36%) felt Twitter has had a positive effect.
Finally, we asked about the use of some other interactive online tools for marketing. Among the more popular were sending/receiving a text message (93% have done it), reading blogs (84%), posting on Facebook (78%), searching for oneself or one’s company name on Google (72%), joining a social network (71%), creating a LinkedIn profile (61%) and attending a webinar (58%). Among the least popular were creating a poll on LinkedIn (3%) or Facebook (7%), searching for oneself or one’s company name on Twitter Search (20%) and writing a blog post (21%).
Incorporating Social Media into Your Marketing Plan
Researchers are curious by nature, so it’s no surprise these new marketing methods are gaining in popularity in our industry. However, there’s a lot of uncertainty about how to get value from an investment in social media and how to avoid wasting time.
So what should researchers do to maximize value for their social media investment? The following are some observations and tips we recommend researchers consider when contemplating their own strategic use of social media.
- Get in the game. At a minimum, register for accounts on the “big 3:” LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and start getting familiar with them.
- Understand that some of the common beliefs about social media are myths, including that it’s not essential for business, that it’s mostly used by teens or Gen Y, and that it’s necessarily complicated and/or time consuming.
- Create a written plan that incorporates social media as one part of a larger overall marketing mix. Your plan must take into account the strengths and weaknesses of different social media tools.
- Benefits of social media can include: cost, relevance, accessibility, timeliness, networking power and an ability to complement and build on existing branding efforts.
- Challenges can include: consuming significant amounts of time (particularly if it’s not part of an overall marketing plan), consistently creating quality content, effectively measuring success and misuse.
Getting Started on LinkedIn…
- See who’s looking at your profile (a great strategy for determining external interest in you or your company).
- Use the TripIt travel application to inform contacts of your travel plans and make more meetings.
- Post presentations to your profile using the SlideShare application.
- Keep track of contacts’ job changes and activities.
- People are often more responsive to LinkedIn messages than normal e-mails.
- Follow competitors’ activities.
- Join, create and participate in targeted industry groups.
- Research prospective clients.
Getting Started on Facebook…
- Decide whether you will use Facebook only for personal contacts or for both work and personal purposes.
- Keep in mind it can be awkward to refuse a connection to a client; think through your approach in advance.
- Consider connecting with clients on Facebook because it can bring them closer to you.
- Target content to specific subgroups of contacts.
- Create a “fan” page for your business.
- Avoid extremist posts and ranting, posting questionable content, complaining, getting too personal, or even worse, not getting personal enough.
Getting Started on Twitter…
- This is the most misunderstood of the major services. Spend some time getting to know it.
- Use for distributing company news.
- Drive traffic to your Web site, blog, webinars, events, etc.
- Use market research focused user “lists” to keep on top of industry news and developments.
- Meet people in the industry.
Getting Started on Blogging…
- A company blog does not have to be overwhelming or time consuming, and it can significantly increase your Web traffic.
- Decide how frequently you will post and assign writing to senior members of your team.
- Setup has become very easy. If you’re technophobic, consider finding someone on your staff to help you out with the logistics.
Industry professionals will doubtlessly continue to experiment with social media, and the winners will be those who take hold of these tools in a way that supports their brand.
Dana Stanley is the founder and president of The Operandi Group and Kristin Luck is president of Decipher, Inc.