Jason Buschlen
Communities, Panels and Social Media, Oh My!
The industry is all a twitter (pun intended) these days about social media and online communities. From an insights, and more specifically, shopper insights, point of view, what does this all mean?
I like to think of this in terms of how the information flows to (or from) the researcher and how much time the researcher is able to interact with people. On one end of the spectrum, researchers are "pulling" information from consumers, on the other end, consumers are generating their own content..."pushing" it to researchers. From a time standpoint, we can either get a snapshot in time, or follow people through their lives, like watching a movie.
Think of it like this:
All of these tools have their place and purpose. We just need to be able to use them in the most effective ways. Here are some ideas:
Social Media Analytics
Gain insight into what people are naturally expressing about your brand. It is great for identifying problems and for reacting to them with great customer service. Comcast does a fantastic job of this by monitoring sites like Twitter, then proactively reaching out to individual consumers with solutions and/or addressing complaints. As I mentioned in the diagram, consumers will talk about the things they are interested in, so don't expect to gain much unsolicited feedback on the way your particular section looks like at Walmart!
Online Communities
Full disclosure...I am involved in a company called Livebranch that builds private communities of shoppers for manufacturers and retailers. For good reason though! This is a very powerful tool which combines the best aspects of open-social media with the ability to nudge conversations in ways that are very specific to a particular topic...like how your shelf looks at Walmart! Online communities are pre-recruited, targeting the demographics and categories that are most relevant. Communities also offer both the ability to send surveys and text mine free-flowing conversations that occur within the community, not to mention the power of video! More and more companies are turning to communities as a cost effective way to generate a consistent flow of insights in a cost-effective manner.
Panels
It seems that many panel providers are using the term panel and community interchangeably. This, however, is not entirely accurate. The key difference is really simple, it all comes down to interaction and relationship. Members of a panel are engaged in mainly a pull relationship..that is, they ask questions and you as a member answer. Panelists do not see who the other members are and do not have an opportunity to build relationships with the other members. Panels are great for garnering quantitative results from a statistically validated sample. The primary use is to conduct survey-based research studies where the numbers are critical to proving or disproving a hypothesis.
Good shopper insights professionals will take a balanced approach and utilize each of these methods, depending on the business issue or question at hand. If you have any questions, please reach out to me and I will be happy to help you sort through the buzzwords and point you in the right direction.
I'd love to hear your feedback and opinions! Write to me at Jason@livebranch.com
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POPON - Point of Purchase Online Network Featuring Jason Buschlen