The theme of Jed’s talk was “When social media grew up”, which he is well placed to discuss having written “The Social Media Manifesto”. In the book he makes a compelling case for every department in a business to embrace the opportunities social media offers.

Jed points out that because social media had “flattened out” communication, every department and every person in your organisation is responsible for communicating your brand and its values to the outside world.

He also used social network analysis to demonstrate how many contact points a brand may have with its customers, arguing that brands are (to an extent) dead:

“Your people are your brand, and the conversations that they have with their wider networks are how brand perceptions are built.”

He argued that everyone within an organisation is responsible for brand perception and communications, making clear that every department can benefit from using social as both an outbound communications channel and also as a way to understand customers more deeply:

“Make things people want, don’t make people want things.”

Jed made a particularly strong case for market research and consumer insight professionals to use social media based research to understand what their customers think about their own products and services, and their competitors. He argued that social media research should be used to understand unprompted consumer opinions and what they really want to buy.

The benefit of using social media as a two-way communication channel to improve direct customer experience was also highlighted. Jed cited the experience of a client that he worked on to implement a social media-enabled customer services team, who said that “in the time that it takes to answer five customer service telephone calls, you can deal with fifty through social media. And they’re stored forever on Google“.

With changes to Google’s algorithm and the advent of Google Plus, search results increasingly take their cues from social media, and a widely shared negative customer experience could act as a long-standing black-mark.

With regard to customer service, Jed said that companies “should always listen, but don’t always act“. O2 was cited as the gold standard in this regard.

Jed also touched on the thorny question of ROI, and talked about how you can measure social media. Jed made the point that you should “measure what matters, not what you can measure“. This is exactly how we approach measurement for our clients, whether it’s from traditional or social media: what is the outcome you’re looking for, and how can we measure the communications’ effect on this?

Jed is a strong advocate of using search and Google analytics to help identify the effect for brands, and it’s a point we’ve made to a number of clients recently. As business results are increasingly digital events, whether it’s for companies wanting to drive online inquiries or sales, or charities seeking to increase online donations or sign-ups, it makes sense to use Google analytics as a tool to measure the impact of communications. Measuring and benchmarking organic search can be a very simple way of demonstrating increased awareness of a brand during a campaign, for example.

With regard to the thorny question of who ‘owns’ social media, Jed argued for a central centre of excellent, and “hub and spoke” model, which has a central, cross-functional team responsible for social media: feeding out the different services required by different departments to meet their different needs.

I would encourage you to read Jed’s presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/CIPRPaul/cipr-6-junejedhallam

And you can buy his excellent book, “The Social Media Manifesto”, here: http://amzn.to/13YkV77

I rarely come away with any useful tips or advice that I can apply to my work.

An opaque approach is favoured by agencies pushing quasi-scientific methodologies; such as those fantastically creative mathematical formulas to predict future voting patterns based on an unrepresentative sample of the population.

As a relatively new methodology, it can also be because those presenting at conferences rarely do (or have done little of) the research themselves. They only concern themselves with the hypothetical.

As a result, it’s actually easier to make what you’re saying sound clever, rather than simplify it so it can be understood by anyone.

It also helps get your unqualified statements and unsourced statistics spread via the echo chamber of Twitter. Particularly when the audience has a collective interest in not questioning those facts.

Jargon serves the purpose of acting as a useful ‘handwave cliche‘ in which listeners or readers rush to fill the gap with their own understanding of what a phrase means. ‘Big data’ is arguably the most in vogue and loaded of terms at present.

As such, when I was asked to write a ‘how to do social media measurement’ guide for B2B Marketing, I wanted, within the parameters of the word count and ’10 point list’, to make it as practical as possible.

I’d argue the two most important points here are to start every project with a clear objective and finish it by interpreting (and presenting) the findings in context.

It’s certainly not a definitive guide to doing social media analysis, but hopefully you’ll find something of use:

http://b2bmarketing.net/knowledgebank/social-media-marketing/best-practice/how-measure-your-social-media-footprint-effective

Is there anything you’d add to these?

“All polls of opinion must be superficial. They reveal the top of what people think organized into common sense. What people really think is always partly hidden” 

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a towering, visionary and epic film in scope.

At its heart is a man (Sean Penn) in the midst of a mid-life crisis, forced to confront his negligible place in the universe.

The film moves seamlessly between portraying snapshots of a childhood in 1950s rural Texas to depicting the origins of life itself.

In a voice over at the beginning of the move, Jessica Chastain tells us that we must choose between the “two ways through life – the way of nature and the way of grace”.

“Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.”

Brad Pitt is magnificent as the foreboding father who rules by fear (nature), while Chastain plays the saint-like and loving mother (grace).

One of the themes running through the film is how we become the person we are now.

In Penn’s case, nature (the father’s genetics) and grace (the mother’s) are at odds and compete for a hold over him. He prays to be more like his mother but knows he is his father’s son (“I’m more like you than her”).

Penn’s middle-aged character is an accumulation of all that has come before him: both the life he has lived and all of life since the very dawn of time.

At one point, we move back thousands of years to a river in a forest where a dinosaur is seen stepping on the head of a smaller, weaker one, pinning it down for a minute, before walking away. The reason being, it is the dominant creature.

We later see Penn as a younger boy by the river, holding a BB gun to his little brother’s hand and then, despite promising not to, pulling the trigger. Nature holds the same grip over him.

Examining our genetics and tracing back our DNA thousands of years can explain who we are and how we got here. It can even help us to distinguish between different human beings.

However, we are also the accumulation of all the little, seemingly unnoteworthy experiences that happen to us each day.

You cannot understand the man Penn becomes without observing these first.

Nor can you measure the impact of any of these individual moments.

The quantitative evidence can help explain the bigger picture, tell the overarching story and provide the critical context we need.

It does not, however, fully explain the why or the how, and only reveals a surface level of understanding.

It often provides all the information we need.

However, for a deeper understanding of the man, we need to the look at the cumulative effect of the smaller, seemingly innocuous details of his upbringing and day-to-day life.

The kind of thing that can’t be quantified.

During those 18 months, we frequently shared articles and exchanged ideas; often discussing them at length.

I believe it had a big impact on the quality of work we both produced.

Not only did it help me think more creatively and critically, it also boosted my morale and I looked forward to coming to work each day.

Unfortunately, she left last week.

Twitter’s real value

When we talk about the value of using Twitter at work, we frequently focus on the direct results we’ve achieved, such as whether it’s led to any new business, or helped us share our blog with a wider audience.

Or we talk about the value of our followers: how many we have and who they are, the two most popular obsessions.

Other than the obligatory ‘Follow Friday’, we rarely talk about who we’re following.

For me, this is the real value in checking Twitter every day.

I follow a number of very smart people, who frequently share thought-provoking articles and opinions; often their own.

To really benefit from using Twitter, however, you need to challenge your own beliefs and convictions.

Too many of us choose to only follow those who think like we do.

Confirmation bias can easily be exaggerated by using the internet. On Twitter in particular, it’s all too easy to find and follow people who share our views.

It’s why many of the political commentators I follow have quite different opinions to my own. I think you should always aim to understand both sides of an argument, no matter how clear cut the issue appears to be.

From a work perspective, I generally get more benefit from following those who don’t work in market research.

It helps me to think laterally and can spark new ideas and approaches, often by reading articles that appear to be completely unrelated to what I’m working on.

Brilliant advertising planners like @adliterate, @mweigel and (creative director) @davetrott; academics like @nathanjurgenson and @zephoria; independent thinkers like @mrteacup and @marginalutility; smart tech journalists like @alexismadrigal and @adrianchen; and innovative ad agencies like @bbhlabs have all helped me to think differently about the way I approach a project.

Within the market research industry, I particularly enjoy reading the thoughts of @tomewing, whose clarity of writing can help to simplify the most complex of ideas, and @hautepop, who isn’t afraid to share and test out her views on a very public forum.

On some, strange level, I feel like I actually work with these people, watching their thoughts pop up on my second screen throughout the day.

Their tweets can often feed into something I’m writing at that moment, and it motivates me in a not entirely dissimilar way to working with my old colleague.

Incidentally, she starts her new job today.

So good luck, @clairelmoon. I look forward to sharing a few more ideas yet. Let’s not succumb to digital dualism.

I see u all. Trust me—
Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) February 25, 2013

#5yearsJustinSigned was trending throughout the world on Twitter on Saturday, in celebration of the fact Justin Bieber was signed to Island Def Jam Records on 13 April 2008.

The hashtag was used more than 140,000 times to share ‘then and now’ photos of Bieber, alongside tens of thousands of emotional tweets from his passionate young fans.

#5YearsJustinSigned my heart can't handle this http://t.co/zGMAwf3vve—
103012 (@DaVillegasBooty) April 13, 2013

For fans of Bieber, the illusion of accessibility has played a pivotal part in propelling the (still) teenage singer to global stardom.

While his tweets have provided daily fodder for the media, for his young fans, the ability to read what Bieber himself thinks has played a critical role in establishing his extraordinary level of fame.

With an increasing level of distrust in the media, the unmediated access to the ‘truth’, as reported by Bieber himself, helps to create a proximity to the star; in addition to maintaining the illusion of direct access to him.

fake stories to sell papers i guess are part of the job. but im a good person. i know that. u cant tell me different. we know the truth—
Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) March 06, 2013

In this context, it’s interesting to see Island Def Jam Records indicate they signed Bieber in October 2008, with fans appearing to have identified the 13 April 2008 date from old tweets. The few who pointed to this fact went ignored, indicating a greater level of trust in the ‘truth’ as established by the community through Twitter.

Follow me Justin!

Recent rumours that Twitter was making a change to the settings, which meant only @ mentions from people you follow would appear on your interactions, was met with howls of discontent from younger users whose tweets would, as a result, never be seen by their idol (unless the celebrity followed them back).

Despite the thousands of tweets sent to Bieber’s account every minute, the illusion he may one day read the tweet the fan has sent plays an important role in creating the perception he remains accessible.

This culminated in the #5yearsJustinSigned hashtag, with the date signifying an important milestone in the shared journey fans have been on with the young star.

Dedicated Bieber Twitter and Tumblr accounts abound and, because of his Twitter presence (and active use of the site), the Belieber community feel closer to the singer and perceive themselves to have played a personal role in helping to establish him.

Because of the metric driven nature of digital media, the increasing importance of dates and figures to younger users is also evident here, with anniversaries providing an opportunity to get a hashtag trending on a global level, before basking in the collective (and social) achievement.

This also functions at an individual level via quantitative ‘accomplishments’ that, quite literally, allow the user to measure their self-worth. Beyond the more obvious sense of triumph that comes via re-tweets and favourites, milestones such as the number of tweets sent are now celebrated as a personal achievement in and of themselves.

I want 5,000 more tweets by June. Lets do this.—
Madison Lee (@Madisin) April 14, 2013

For a generation for whom documenting every aspect of their lives online has become second-nature, what escapes capture through social media is simply deemed irrelevant. This manifests itself in the need to photograph and share every ‘authentic’ moment to their social networks; ironically through ‘faux-authentic’ Instagrammed photos, which appear more dated and feel more ‘real’ as a result.

Authenticity is a particularly important concept when you’re one of millions of fans and need to stand out. There’s a pervasive feeling amongst his fans that, when the majority of a person’s tweets focus on one particular celebrity, the individual should be rewarded for their (quantifiable) dedication to the star ahead of those who are (measurably) ‘less deserving’.

This person only has one tweet and JUSTIN BIEBER NOTICED HER yet i have 1000's of tweets about him and I'm unnoticed http://t.co/ot5QDSPv—
KIDRAUHL∞ (@NikkiJerry) December 23, 2012

The opportunity to rediscover and share old tweets, which prophesise something which subsequently came true, also provides a sense of satisfaction not too dissimilar to the rush to ‘break’ a news story to followers amongst older users on the site.

In the case of Bieber, his talent manager, Scooter Braun’s tweet from four years ago was widely re-tweeted and commented on again because of the anniversary.

Great meeting today at Def Jam with Usher and LA…we are ready to show Justin Bieber to the world.—
Scooter Braun (@scooterbraun) April 08, 2009

The ability to see (and share) a snapshot of a history that’s been lived through and experienced on the very medium which has documented every step of that shared history between the fan and the idol is particularly powerful. It also encourages the teenager to forget there was a time before their fandom, with Twitter not there to document it and no immediately accessible record in existence (which also ties back to the digitally accelerated nostalgia trend we identified last year).

I'll forever cherish every character of this tweet #5YearsJustinSigned http://t.co/6nafgQqWP0—
вєℓιєвєя∞ (@DABieberGal) April 13, 2013

The Facebook fightback

With more and more younger people migrating from Facebook to Twitter, how does the social network respond?

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook would be introducing a small fee to contact celebrities, in the interest of reducing spam.

I suspect, however, part of this proposed move is to combat Twitter’s increased appeal to teenagers (and pre-teens).

One thing you’re unable to do on Twitter is to send a direct message to someone who doesn’t follow you and, even amongst the wildly optimistic, one would assume there’s at least some awareness Bieber, and stars like him, are unlikely to see your tweet amongst the many thousands that are directed at him every minute.

I wonder whether the real intention of Facebook is to create, what they hope will be perceived as, a more premium messaging service to the stars, where, for a ‘small’ fee of around £11, you can send a longer message to your idol.

Of course, the chance of the celebrity reading it remains low (and you can hardly blame Zuckerberg if they don’t), but it creates the perception there is a greater chance of it being seen than on Twitter.

However, part of the community driven appeal of Twitter, comes from the fact that, even if Bieber himself doesn’t see the @ message, fellow fans will.

If he does re-tweet or reply of course, the individual immediately has millions of followers bearing witness to Bieber’s personal affirmation of their status as the truest of fans.

Money aside, a private message on Facebook will always struggle to compete with that.

(In this related article, we examined what impact a celebrity tweet – in this case, Miley Cyrus – could have on a brand’s reputation)

An in-depth study of Facebook users by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that “regrettable postings are not unusual“, with 23% of those surveyed regretting something they’ve recently shared.

Respondents, who came from a wide variety of backgrounds, regretted sharing sensitive content (which related to drug use, politics, family issues and work), content with a strong sentiment (argumentative or critical comments) and lies and secrets the most.

People said that they shared this information to appear cool, funny, vent frustrations, or did so without thinking through the consequences of their actions.

These updates became regrettable because the update had reached an unintended audience, had underestimated consequences, or because the users misunderstood how Facebook worked and who would see the information they’d shared.

A number of the respondents talked about the difficulty of disentangling different contexts of their lives on Facebook; particularly separating the professional from the personal sphere. Younger users were more likely to take measures to ensure different friends saw different things by attempting to curate their profile and settings. In contrast, older users were more likely to simply self-censure.

The report stated that “even if a posting was only seen by its intended audience, it could still backfire because users cannot always foresee how others might perceive their postings”, adding: ”Users may not have enough information at the time of posting or they may underestimate the consequences of their posts.”

The authors went on to conclude, “our results agree with many news stories that report that regrettable postings on Facebook can yield serious ramifications for users”.

The Paris Brown furore

This study provides some important context for thinking about the media reaction to Paris Brown’s high profile resignation from the first youth police commissioner role, after the Mail on Sunday published a series of tweets she’d sent.

I think it’s a compelling example of different generations clashing in the way they use and think about social media.

While the collective response has been to suggest younger people need to think more carefully about what they share online, I think much of the overreaction is based on a misunderstanding of how teenagers use Twitter in particular.

Amongst professionals who began using Twitter as working adults, the site is largely seen as a tool through which one can broadcast their views to a wider audience. As a result, those views are, broadly speaking, more carefully thought through and reflect the person’s age and status when they started using the site. The aim, essentially being, to build their personal brand.

While younger users of the site clearly need to think very carefully about the information they share, the danger is we judge their use of a site by the way we ourselves use it.

I started this piece with an academic study of Facebook use because I think, as a more private site (with few users making their status updates public) that most of us have been using for longer, we’re more inclined to share information there that is more personal because most of our friends on the site are just that: friends.

In contrast, many of our Twitter followers are strangers or loose work/industry-related connections and we’re very aware our tweets, unless we lock our profiles, are public and so we align them more closely with our professional persona.

In contrast, many teenagers use Twitter to converse with close friends, often referencing a stranger following them as ‘creepy’, and having (what they perceive to be) ‘private’ conversations beginning with @ mentions; which, in theory, means only people who follow both users would ordinarily see it.

I think we’re right to warn teenagers that they need to examine what they’re sharing publicly online but I wonder whether the reaction would be as strong if Paris had said the same thing on Facebook. While some of her comments are clearly indefensible, is part of the overreaction to what she said based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how a different demographic uses Twitter?

Just because what she said was public at the time, is dragging those tweets up years later any less an invasion of her privacy than if the newspaper had created a fake account to befriend her on Facebook to search her old status updates?

Last week, I attended the MRS Conference, which this year was headlined ‘The Shock of the New: Managing change through the application of insight, data, technology and creativity’.

As the headline suggests, the conference focused predominantly on the changes happening within and around the market research industry, such as the advent of Big Data, the emergence of new technologies and the changing consumer landscape.

The list of attendees, which included ad planners, marketing directors and journalists, was testament to the increasingly far-reaching interest in and impact of market research.

Market research is no longer confined to ‘traditional’ agencies carrying out quantitative surveys or qualitative focus groups.

The definition of market research and boundaries between who is working within the sector have become blurred.

As we have previously discussed within this blog, surveys and focus groups now exist as just one tool in the research tool-kit. The increasing amount of data generated by consumers, brands and news sources, both passively and actively, has provided researchers with multitude of rich sources of insight. Furthermore, there are an increasing number of software packages and other tools available to researchers with which to access and utilise these data sources.

The emergence of new technologies and increased use of social media means that there are new ways for researchers to better understand consumers. Researchers can observe behaviour and monitor attitudes expressed (relatively) spontaneously and often in real-time.

Big data and social media give researchers access to data more representative of System 1 thinking (fast, emotional and automatic) than ever before. However, I must reiterate that the information shared and produced within social media is not produced passively – a topic I have previously explored here.

All of these changes represent new opportunities for researchers, but also bring with them many challenges. As I have argued before, the more data a researcher has access to, the more reliant they are on their analysis and interpretation skills.

The skills now needed in the new market research landscape were discussed in-depth at the MRS conference during the talk titled ‘Skills debate: The new research professional’.

The key themes running throughout the discussion were flexibility and creativity.

Flexibility

Job descriptions for market researchers are changing. Indeed, those now drawing on or undertaking market research in their day-to-day role may not even classify themselves as market researchers.

Very few job descriptions follow the templates historically seen for quantitative and qualitative researchers. Instead, requirements vary greatly, with more emphasis on having a combination of skills. Many companies and agencies require those applying for a quantitative role to have knowledge of and exposure to qualitative methods and vice versa. Other skills are also asked for, such as exposure to social media monitoring tools, experience of content-creation, and of devising brand and marketing strategies.

This is partly to do with the fact that these specifications are no longer only coming from companies considered to be undertaking market research. Research conducted in-house by brands and other agencies is becoming more complex, drawing on data and information from more sources.

Furthermore, data generated within social media, for example, contains unstructured information relating to a variety of areas, such as customer service, marketing, public relations and consumer conversations. It is no longer adequate for researchers using this data to have specialist knowledge in just one of these fields.

The size and varying types of data and information now available to researchers means that they have to be comfortable analysing both quantitative and qualitative data. For example, social media can be looked at from both angles. The sheer volume of posts generated within social media lends itself to a quantitative analysis. However, social media can be thought of as a type of focus group on a global scale, with the need to also analyse discussions more qualitatively.

In fact, I would argue that researchers need to think qualitatively when looking at social media data – even when performing a quantitative analysis. Content generation on each social media channel is driven by different motivations. For example, why someone posts a status update on Facebook (and what they post) will obviously differ greatly to what and why they post on LinkedIn. Therefore, it is not enough to simply aggregate the volume of posts within social media; we need to also understand the context surrounding each post – as far as possible. This means considering the content of each post, rather than just looking at the level of ‘buzz’.

As well continually developing their practical skills, researchers also need to continually critique the theory behind the research they are carrying out. In addition to new data sources and software packages, market research is also witnessing the convergence of multiple systems of thought, drawing on theories and analytical models from fields such as behavioural economics and neuroscience.

Creativity

The theme of creativity ran throughout much of the discussion. It was posited that researchers need to have a creative outlook in all areas, including how they think about research design, data-collection, analysis and presentation.

It was suggested that many research agencies are doing a good job of innovating their data-collection methodologies, but that there is a lack of innovation in the way findings are delivered back to clients. I believe innovation in delivery is crucial when the findings draw on an increasing number and type of sources.

Researchers need to work harder to think laterally and join up the dots between data sets, and there are many new ways in which findings can be presented back. Some agencies are now exploring different ways, including interactive websites, infographics and video diaries. An ability to deliver findings in these ways requires researchers to possess yet more skills.

Within the discussion around the delivery of findings, there was an emphasis on the story-telling abilities of the researcher. This included a focus on the impact on research; its ability to inspire people at all levels within business. The plethora of information now available to businesses means that researchers often have the task of simplifying complex data sets into a clear and compelling narrative that can easily be incorporated into strategic decision-making by people at multiple levels within multiple departments. It was said that research without impact is purely academic.

The rapid changes in and around the market research industry over the last few years are showing no sign of slowing down.

Unless researchers remain flexible and creative they may be left behind.

(image courtesy of Gabriel Rojas Hruska)

Among those working in social media in some form, it would probably be a rather conservative estimate to state that at least half of all content shared informs others how wonderful social media is in one way or another.

And yet, I wonder how many people would continue to read a newspaper if half of it was dedicated to how important newspapers are and how everyone should read one.

Which is why I draw your attention to a recent study by Pew Research. It suggests, on the surface at least, that social media research may offer less value than we and our competitors claim.

The year-long study concluded that “the reaction on Twitter to major political events and policy decisions often differs a great deal from public opinion as measured by surveys”.

The report stated that “the overall negativity on Twitter over the course of the [US presidential] campaign stood out”, adding: “For both candidates, negative comments exceeded positive comments by a wide margin throughout the fall campaign season.”

Which appears to be a rather damning indictment on social media research’s ability to capture public opinion.

Twitter isn’t a representative sample

Firstly, I think it’s important to acknowledge that those of us who use Twitter aren’t a representative sample of the population and it does skew towards a narrow (but expanding) demographic.

As far as the wider population goes, Twitter is still quite new and the relatively recent media infatuation with it is testament to that.

Its early adopters are more likely to be those interested in being part of and shaping the public sphere.

I’m not sure anyone would be particularly surprised to discover that Twitter’s character limit (in addition to the fact more extreme opinions are frequently rewarded with more attention) lends itself to more polarised views.

So the fact that the study found “the overall negativity… stands out” isn’t especially illuminating. It demonstrates we’re generally capturing the opinions of people who feel strongly about issues.

In other words, probably the kind of non-apathetic people you’d want to listen to.

Social media research doesn’t work in a traditional quantitative sense

Of course this means it doesn’t work as a quantitative methodology in a traditional sense and (as we’ve said time and time again) does not, and cannot (at least in the immediate future), replace surveys.

It also doesn’t make for a particularly effective brand tracking service if you’re comparing it to that same traditional approach either.

I don’t think it too presumptuous to state that few of us use our social media accounts to maintain positive sentiment towards a brand we like each month, as BrainJuicer’s Tom Ewing recently alluded to in a tweet: “Question for social media researchers: does your SECRET KNOWLEDGE mean you personally tweet more or less about brands?“

Of course, people are probably more likely to use Twitter to complain to companies, particularly when they have a presence there.

Which isn’t to undermine the importance of understanding what’s being said about a brand in social media. Numerous departments within an organisation would want and need to know what their customers have to say. Ignoring one of the channels they’re using to express these opinions simply because you can’t be sure who they are and what their motivation to share is seems somewhat foolish.

It just means it’s not a service that can replace, or is directly comparable to, what the likes of YouGov’s BrandIndex do in a more representative and repeatable way. However, a brand tracker is usually always a starting point, allowing us to hypothesise about the direction public perception is moving in. Analysing discussions about the brand within social media is one way of helping to understand why opinion may have changed.

Tracking the size of discussion around a particular brand or issue also provides an important context, but only in the context in which those conversations take place.

What are the opportunities?

None of the above caveats mean the insight gained from social media research is useless. We just need to start thinking about it in a different way to other types of research.

In my opinion, its main value comes from the fact the comments we’re capturing are spontaneous and not defined by questions as such.

As well as helping to identify those ‘known/unknown unknowns’ about a brand (which can then be built into a more traditional quantitative approach by, for example, ensuring you’re asking better questions in your survey), I believe it’s best used to feed into the creative process; to investigative a particular issue; or to answer a question that’s difficult to answer by other means. Not to predict voting behaviour or to claim it can “accurately gauge public opinion”.

In a research context, social media effectively acts as a giant, disorganised focus group where anyone is free to share their opinion about anything. Its potential lies in offering the chance to do qualitative research at scale. Again, it’s not an opportunity to necessarily do it better than other types of qualitative research, it’s just another methodology and different approach at our disposal.

We shouldn’t dismiss it simply because the results aren’t always representative of the population at large.

And finally…

I would like to also point out that a Twitter analysis isn’t the same thing as research conducted across all forms of social media. The former is a lot quicker and easier to do but it’s far more powerful if you include other sites too.

People tend to underestimate their audience on forums and blogs so their opinions tend to be more balanced (which also means we need to look at each type of site in context). Too many analyses focus on Twitter alone for no other reason than it’s quicker and easier to categorise what’s being said because of its character limit. In our experience, most of the interesting and genuine conversation takes place on forums anyway.

Finally, it is worth noting that the conclusion drawn by Pew is based on two important premises:

i)   Pew’s survey is an accurate reflection of true public opinion; and

ii)   Pew did the Twitter analysis effectively.

Sentiment is a rather subjective thing and what we write may be interpreted differently to what we have to say. Our opinion may also be more nuanced than the box we’re required to tick in a survey allows too and, as one PhD student highlighted on Twitter, we need to be particularly careful with the conclusions we draw from quantitative research: “wonder if Twitter liking Obama’s State of the Union less than Public Opinion is more “conservative”? maybe Twitter was to the left of Obama?“

I haven’t had much time to reflect on the conference but I wanted to highlight a few things that piqued my interest.

As I’ve said on this blog before, I think it’s extremely important for us, as researchers, to have some theoretical understanding of how and why people are using different social media sites.

If you don’t, the danger is you take comments out of context and draw misleading conclusions. An obvious example of this would be the tendency to overestimate one’s audience on Twitter and the underestimation of it on forums and even blogs; with the former lending itself to a theatre in which more extreme views attract more attention.

Norm shifting

We frequently hear the Arab Spring, in which the population only felt free to criticise regimes online, referenced as a positive example of norm shifting.

However, assistant professor at UNC, Zeynep Tufekci, used the example of the reddit moderator,Violentacrez, who was sharing horrific and illegal images on the site (and who was famously unmasked by Adrian Chen), as an example of negative norm shifting.

Tufekci said that what these users were doing was an “example of digitally enabled free speech by people who think like each other but [who exist] outside the social norms of the broader community, affirming each other, such that the community’s norms shifted”.

She said his attempt to justify his actions demonstrated that he saw his online use as being like playing a “video game”, showing little understanding of the fact there could be offline consequences.

The attention economy

Microsoft researcher danah boyd talked about Newsweek’s attempt to engage Twitter users in sharing examples of ‘Muslim Rage’ as an example of powerful trolling.

She stated that “in an environment where everything is about monetization and who can get the most clicks and the most page views you can imagine, we have this ratcheting up of what can get attention and, needless to say, one of things we see about what gets the most attention is that which is most humiliating or grotesque or otherwise problematic”.

boyd argued that there was a “kind of trafficking in problematic content, whether it’s these major news agencies desperate to figure out how to get advertising revenue or whether it’s individuals trying to play with it”.

She also highlighted how dis-empowered populations attempt to sabotage the attention economy, by ‘trolling’ big brands and media organisations, “because they want to have power within a system in which they have no power”.

Privacy fears

In a similar vein, it’s very easy to dismiss Facebook privacy concerns as being those of a minority, particularly when so few actually follow through with threats to quit the network.

However, assistant professor at Fordham University, Alice Marwick, drew attention to the meme shared by millions of Facebook users which states the site can’t use your profile information.

She argued that this “beautiful piece of folk copyright” was not a “silly meme” shared by people “who don’t care about their privacy”.

Assistant professor at NYU, Laura Portwood-Stacer, also talked about the media’s framing of addiction to social media (and Facebook in particular) as a way of normalising everyday use.

In contrast, social media refusal (such as quitting Facebook) is frequently framed as a hipster trend, trivialising the real reason why people may really be leaving a site, which is often due to privacy concerns.

False assumptions about social media use

Google+ has been widely dismissed as a social network which failed to take off. Many professionals use ‘Author Rank’ simply to feature on Google’s search rankings more prominently, with profiles left otherwise inactive.

However, it’s all too easy to overlook any social networks we don’t use ourselves as not having any widespread use. I think there’s a tendency to assume we know how particular platforms are used by everyone because we base our judgement on our own experience of social media (and our network of like-minded peers).   

So it was fascinating to discover that Google+ is extremely popular with 9- to 13-year-olds in the US because it’s not blocked by schools or terms of service.

Of course I haven’t even begun to do justice to many (or, indeed, any) of the interesting ideas explored at the event, so I’d thoroughly recommend you take the time to watch the talks here yourself.

The conference was packed with marketers from across a range of business, and a range of marketing disciplines, but the event was focused on the lessons to be learned and the opportunities presented to brands by social media.

Much of the conversation identified uses for social media outside the sphere of public relations, though there was discussion about how communications professionals could address the opportunities presented by social, too.

Here are a few of themes that we noticed through the day, that were prevalent in more than one of the excellent presentations and key note speeches.

Content curation over content creation

Lego’s Lars Silberbauer provided an overview of how Lego is using two of its own online sites – Rebrick and Cuusoo – to provide users with a platform to share photos of their own Lego creations.

Whilst few brands are so intrinsically connected to creativity and fun as Lego is, it was the stand-out example of many cited by brands as diverse as Carlsberg, First Capital Connect and Nokia, of encouraging and empowering an enthusiastic community to create and share content on behalf of brands they want to engage with.

Increasingly, for social media and community managers, the skill sets needed may be as much about selecting, curating and promoting the best of user or externally generated content for wider use as it is about creating it.

Social Media is increasingly important for customer service professionals

According to Rob Skinner, head of PR and social media at PayPal, over 60% of consumers have turned to social media to complain about a brand in the last year.

O2 were cited throughout the day as the “gold standard” of companies offering customer service via Twitter, but there were other great examples cited throughout the day, including First Capital Connect and giffgaff.

Social media offers a unique channel for customer service teams, and it is important that this activity is tracked and measured ongoing, to help benchmark performance.

Social media offers brands unique consumer insight opportunities

Chiltern Railways Nicola Clark provided an excellent example of how social media can be used to better understand your customers and their needs.

She detailed how her team use social media as a way of measuring consumer sentiment, and as a source of product development. In response to consumer feedback garnered from social media, Chiltern Railways provided Wi-Fi to its customers.

For forward thinking companies, the opportunity to use social media research for a better understanding of markets, consumers or categories is an exciting one.

Nokia’s Craig Hepburn cited examples of projects they had undertaken internally where his team had used analysts to help them gain insight into consumer trends from social media.

At Precise, too, our market research-trained Brand Insight analysts undertake similar work for clients, and we fully expect this area of the business to grow significantly in 2013 and beyond.

Tools alone are not up to the job

A theme repeated throughout the day was that, whilst the multiplicity of social media monitoring tools available are helpful to provide “listening” services for corporates, they are weak at offering genuine insight. Indeed, in some instances they only contribute to more “noise” within an organisation.

Sainsbury’s digital media manager Thomas Knorpp was asked what tools he used to measure sentiment, and he replied “human beings”.

GSK’s Kai Gait discussed how the problems of irony and sarcasm presented to automated sentiment analysis can be increased when you have to track social media on a global scale, in multiple languages and across numerous time zones.

Social media offers a great platform for good, old fashioned, PR opportunism.

In November 2001, Manchester United’s goal keeper Fabian Barthez had what was described as a “calamitous performance” in a football match against Arsenal, letting the ball slip through his fingers, and leading to the team losing 3-1 in one of the season’s most high-profile games.

Following his “butter fingers” performance, the next day Tesco generated front page national news coverage saying that they wanted him to front a national TV campaign for own-branded butter.

In 2013, as Knorpp said, “Twitter is the front page of the Internet”. Accordingly, when Chelsea’s Eden Hazard kicked a ball boy during a match, Specsavers tweeted this picture within hours of the match, which became a viral hit.

The platform used may be different, but the opportunity is there for smart, witty and topical PR to reach a large audience, quickly.

The most frequently cited example of this during the day was the Oreo cookies Super Bowl meme. During a power blackout at the recent Super Bowl, Oreo cookies managed to produce and tweet the following picture in less than an hour, saying “you can still dunk in the dark“.

Good, old-fashioned PR opportunities abound for the brave and the fleet of foot.

Further reading

There were also numerous books citied throughout the day which could form follow-up reading material on the event. We took note of as many of them as we could, and here they are:

Velocity: The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital by Ajaz Ahmed and Stefan Olander
Culture Shock: A Handbook For 21st Century Business by Will McInnes
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt
Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts by Olivier Blanchard
Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Ekaterina Walter

We hope you find this summary useful. It’s worth looking up the tweets from the day on the #SocialBrands hashtag here.