Social Media Strike Out
Posted by Vovici Blog on Fri, Mar 25, 2011
Social Media Research steps up to the plate, looking to hit a home run.
But not every brand’s customers are talking about them online. There was the educational insurance provider for whom we found just a few quotes. Those quotes were from recent customers simply stating the fact that they had signed up with them – we could find no material discussion about attitudes towards the brand. Then there was the financial services provider for whom almost all mentions were links to news stories or open positions on job boards; the volume of web coverage was simply a function of the volume of news coverage and seasonal hiring. Strike one!
Not everything about a brand is talked about, even for those brands people do talk about. One fleet management firm had begun upgrading the trucks they provided their customers. Getting a new truck certainly seemed like something people would talk about, but the best we could find was “work gave me a new truck! yay!” Hardly insightful. Strike two!
Not everything talked about has enough context to be useful. You can’t segment retail satisfaction by store location using social media, because people don’t mention the address of the store they are commenting on. (A small percentage do have geo-location tracking turned on.) You often can’t analyze comments by product line or model, because people simply refer to brand. “Hate my new Motorola phone” isn’t very useful when you have no idea what type of phone it is or whether it is new or old. You’re getting broad sentiment, but not targeted sentiment. Foul ball!
Not everything talked about is representative of customers. For one firm, social media chatter about customer service was much more negative than that derived from a survey of a random sample of callers into the contact center. There weren’t any people tweeting “I was very satisfied with the call I just made to Bank X” even though many callers were in fact very satisfied. The negative comments were important from a PR standpoint and a service standpoint, but they weren’t representative from a market-research standpoint. Strike three! You’re out!
The mighty SMR has struck out. There is no joy in Mediaville.
I realize that it is only spring training for Social Media Research, but I’m leaning towards playing him as a pinch hitter rather than as the cleanup hitter.