I’ve recently been talking to some of the new kids on the research block, the social media monitors. The likes of Market Sentinel, MotiveQuest, Cymfony, etc. They each have their own approach, but their core offer is the same: they listen to brand related conversations on the web and aggregate them for analysis. Volume, trend, sentiment, and so on.
They put forward a compelling argument for their services and they claim they are furiously busy (which I believe). But a couple of things struck me after seeing their pitches.
1) Scale. You rapidly lose any sense of volume or context when you look at the data produced by these guys – if you had any to begin with that is. How many people does this buzz come from? How much of the ‘conversation’ are you listening to? And, of course, who the hell are these people and who do they represent? How would you feel if your strategy was influenced by people who call radio phone-in shows? OK, extreme example, but you get my point.
2) Depth. The power of this stuff lies in its authenticity. It’s unsolicited. Raw and pure. But that also means you have no way of really digging into why people say the things they do. It’s a bit like a focus group with no moderator and you just watching through the mirror. Except that with a focus group at least you know exactly who you are listening to.
This is an important new tool for sure – Google’s mantra that ‘more data is better data’ applies. But it’s not going to give you all the answers. So why are these guys so busy…
1) It sounds sexy
2) It looks great – opportunity for nice data visualisation
3) Most importantly it doesn’t require anyone to spend their Tuesday evenings eating crisps in a recruiters chintz palace in Solihull
PS The image is from a case study presented by one agency. Sadly they couldn’t explain what the chart actually showed.
They put forward a compelling argument for their services and they claim they are furiously busy (which I believe). But a couple of things struck me after seeing their pitches.
1) Scale. You rapidly lose any sense of volume or context when you look at the data produced by these guys – if you had any to begin with that is. How many people does this buzz come from? How much of the ‘conversation’ are you listening to? And, of course, who the hell are these people and who do they represent? How would you feel if your strategy was influenced by people who call radio phone-in shows? OK, extreme example, but you get my point.
2) Depth. The power of this stuff lies in its authenticity. It’s unsolicited. Raw and pure. But that also means you have no way of really digging into why people say the things they do. It’s a bit like a focus group with no moderator and you just watching through the mirror. Except that with a focus group at least you know exactly who you are listening to.
This is an important new tool for sure – Google’s mantra that ‘more data is better data’ applies. But it’s not going to give you all the answers. So why are these guys so busy…
1) It sounds sexy
2) It looks great – opportunity for nice data visualisation
3) Most importantly it doesn’t require anyone to spend their Tuesday evenings eating crisps in a recruiters chintz palace in Solihull
PS The image is from a case study presented by one agency. Sadly they couldn’t explain what the chart actually showed.
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Hi Rich (?)
ReplyDeleteWe use blog mining to complement some of our projects at Virtual Surveys. However, I previously worked at WaveMetrix. They fall into the buzz RESEARCH agency category. They can talk about volume of buzz (derived via computers), but also conduct some deep dive analysis around specifics people are talking about online, including sentiment (best done via human analysis). I would class some companies in this space as buzz monitoring companies (rather than research). They might be more likely to produce sh*t charts like the one above that they think are impressive, but mean sod all.
You should talk to Alan Ault at WaveMetrix. Tell him I sent you.
Cheers
Jon