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The future… in 140 characters or less
Excerpt from features section of Research-Live, by Brian Tarran.
Friday April 16, 2010
“It is a school of thought seemingly embodied by the agency Conversition, which describes itself as a social media research company, as distinct from social media monitoring and social media analysis. “Social media research is the application of scientific marketing research principles to the collection and analysis of social media data such that valid and reliable results are produced,” says the agency’s website.
What this means in practice is that Conversition produces similar outputs to a traditional market research agency, only it sources its data from the social web rather than through surveys. There are some limitations to the approach. Brand or product awareness is impossible to measure, says chief research officer Annie Pettit, explaining that just because someone doesn’t mention a brand in an online conversation doesn’t mean they are unaware of it.
Otherwise, Conversition has most of the basic tracking measures covered. And, says Pettit, it’s wholly possible to use the company’s data to create working predictive models – and why wouldn’t you? “That is the whole purpose of market research,” she says.”
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I agree that people use brands all the time that they don’t mention on social networking. Is there a way to follow this up?