Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Social Media Means Different Things to Different People - Especially True Among Social Media ‘Experts’

I just got back from the Social Media in Market Research panel event. We started out by discussing how we defined social media and then went into more detail about how to use it. My answer to the first question was that regardless of what social media means to me, to consumers social media can mean very different things to different people. These meanings/definitions/strategies can also change rather quickly for some individuals.

Talking about social media is always interesting to me, and we had quite a diverse panel, from PR/Agency side, to qualitative and quantitative researchers and technologists/programmers.

Having conducted a lot of survey research on various social networks the past month to understand attitudes and usage among various consumers who utilize and don’t utilize social networks, I must say I was a little surprised that we social media market research ‘experts’ probably have even more differing opinions than the general population out there using it.

That said, I think we all agreed on a few things. Most importantly, that social media is important for market research, and that it’s probably more challenging to conduct market research on social media than it is to market on social media.