Why are Social Media Insights Key for Market Research Reports?

Shefali Mathur

Social media insights are an important part of your market research report as they give an overview of how your brand is being perceived by consumers online.
Imagine a fledgling coffee shop – let’s call it “Brew & Bean,” nestled in the heart of a bustling city. Despite offering the best, Brew & Bean struggled to attract the foot traffic it anticipated. The turning point came when the owners decided to leverage their social media presence and dive deep into social media insights to understand their audience better.

Through meticulous analysis of social media conversations, Brew & Bean discovered that their target demographic was highly engaged in discussions about sustainability and eco-friendly practices within the coffee industry.
This revelation was a goldmine. The coffee shop swiftly adjusted its marketing strategy to highlight its commitment to sustainability, from using biodegradable cups to sourcing beans from fair-trade suppliers. The results were astonishing. Social media buzz around Brew & Bean skyrocketed, leading to increased foot traffic and sales.

This success story exemplifies the transformative power of social media insights in understanding and responding to consumer preferences and trends.
These insights are no more ‘good to have’ but essential for your reports because most customers today are using platforms like Facebook and Instagram as a part of their purchase decisions. In fact, forty-five percent of Gen Z consumers consider TikTok and Instagram as the top platforms for their purchasing decisions, followed by YouTube (38%), Facebook (24%), Snapchat (17%), Twitter (14%) and Reddit (7%)

These social media insights are helpful for different teams at different levels. For instance, your customer service team can track mentions (more about it later) to know whether their target audience is satisfied with the service or not.
They not only guide strategic decisions but also provide a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour and preferences. Let’s explore how social media insights are transforming the landscape of market research.

The Role of Social Media Insights in Product Launches

Often an oversight, the collaboration between the market research team and the product team is crucial not only for product development but improves the business’s bottom line as well.
How?

The research team analyses crucial metrics that define how well (or not) consumers are accepting the product.
Tracking qualitative data like product acceptance and quantitative data like the number of engagements within a specific timeline can play wonders in decoding product adaptability.

For instance, by relying on the metric of social listening, the research team can help the product team understand that the new product launch is not as widely accepted as the previous one because of the lack of upgrades, downgraded features and poor performances.
This comprehensive approach provides a robust foundation for the product’s market entry strategy.

Metrics for Measuring Social Media Insights

At the heart of social media insights are key metrics: positive, negative, and neutral sentiments. However, market research delves deeper with a few more metrics that add a richer insight into the market research. Some of these metrics are as follows.

1. Share of Voice

Share of Voice (SOV) is the metric that determines your power and presence in your industry in comparison to your competitors. Having a strong share of voice allows your brand to have a strong presence, more visibility and greater authority in your sector. Tracing the metric for your research can help your brand team understand where your business stands and if there is a need to pump up the campaign activities to enhance its benchmark against competitors.

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A high Net Promoter Score (NPS) suggests that satisfied customers are likely to share their positive experiences online, enhancing the brand’s online reputation. These customers act as advocates, influencing others to engage with the brand.

Conversely, a low NPS, driven by dissatisfied customers, can adversely affect the brand. The negative perception may persuade others to disengage from the brand. Especially on social media, where outreach is extensive, this can lead to significant reputational damage.

NPS feedback offers a comprehensive view of business operations, providing valuable insights for enhancing customer experience and proactively addressing issues that might otherwise harm the brand’s reputation.

To calculate the NPS, teams can use the following formula:

3. Brand and Product Mentions

Your brand/product mentions (both negative and positive) give a clear picture of how your customers perceive your brand online. Including this social media insight in the market research report helps leadership get a bird’s eye view of the overall brand perception. Tools like Locobuzz can create a detailed report highlighting the total number of brand mentions which can be positive or negative or neutral. By focusing on these details, the platform enhances the precision of campaign execution, resulting in improved campaign outcomes. This approach is instrumental in identifying the optimal time to initiate campaigns and pinpointing the periods of highest activity.

These metrics, along with basic social media indicators like likes, comments, and shares, paint a comprehensive picture of consumer engagement.
However, it is important to note that market research is not limited to a single social media platform. Each social media channel, from Instagram to YouTube, offers unique insights.
While the core data remains consistent across platforms, nuances like YouTube’s lack of sharing options versus Twitter’s rich engagement metrics offer varied perspectives.

The evolution of social media from Web .0’s one-way communication to Web 2.0’s interactive capabilities has revolutionised market research. This transition to a more interactive era has enabled researchers to tap into the needs and wants of users more effectively than ever before.

4. Engagement Rate by Content Type

Understanding the content types that resonate most with your audience can greatly refine your content strategy. For instance, a skincare brand might discover that tutorial videos on Instagram garner more engagement than static posts, prompting them to allocate more resources to video content production. Moreover, it’s noteworthy that currently, short video formats like Reels or YouTube Shorts often outperform other formats, suggesting their effectiveness in capturing audience interest.

5. Influencer Engagement Impact

This metric evaluates the effectiveness of partnerships with influencers by measuring the engagement (likes, comments, shares) and audience growth resulting from influencer collaborations. For instance, a beauty brand collaborating with a well-known makeup artist on Instagram can track the increase in followers, engagement rates, and hashtag use specific to the campaign. This metric helps brands understand the value influencers bring to their social media presence, not just in terms of direct sales but also in enhancing brand visibility and credibility among target demographics.

Effective Techniques for Data Collection

Contests and user engagement strategies, like Samsung’s competitions, have proven to be effective in gathering social media data. Analysing posts with the highest engagement for manual data collection offers valuable insights. However, for larger data sets, automation tools like Locobuzz become indispensable.

Utilising Locobuzz for Data Acquisition

Since the applicability of social media insights is not limited to commercial enterprises but government sectors and various critical industries as well, safe and secure data acquisition is the need of the hour.

The right means for data acquisition is often debatable but when it comes to dealing with a highly voluminous data set, it is best to deploy automation and tools adept for managing copious amounts of data.

Locobuzz streamlines data acquisition by using keywords to systematically funnel relevant information. Whether it’s analysing a major smartphone brand or a sector like automobiles, this targeted approach ensures that the most pertinent data is captured.

Beyond basic data collection, Locobuzz also offers advanced features like sentiment analysis, word clouds, and influencer tracking. These tools provide a more nuanced understanding of how brands are perceived and discussed in the social media sphere.

But what about ethical considerations and data security?
Your data is safe on Locobuzz because the product works on an oAuth mechanism where users are protected by an authorisation layer and separates their role from that of the resource owner. This ensures that only users have autonomy over their data.

Additionally, in social media market research, adhering to API guidelines and privacy laws is paramount. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube do not allow single profile screening, thereby protecting privacy and sensitive user details.
Respecting user privacy and avoiding illegal profiling are non-negotiable aspects of ethical research.

Challenges in Social Media Market Research

Large amounts of data: A significant challenge in this field is managing and accurately tagging vast amounts of data. Ensuring relevance and accuracy in analysis is critical, especially when dealing with data sets that include hundreds of thousands of conversations.

Measuring ROI from social media insights: While ROI measurement is not directly within the view of social media insights, these insights significantly influence sales and marketing strategies. Understanding consumer sentiments and trends through social media can lead to more effective and profitable business decisions.

Essential Skills for Market Researchers: Successful market researchers must be well-versed in current affairs and possess an in-depth understanding of their industry. Equating market trends with consumer behaviour is essential for effective research.

New Age Market Research Needs Social Media Insights

Social media insights have become an integral part of market research, offering an unprecedented level of consumer understanding. As social media continues to evolve, its role in market research will only grow, providing businesses with the tools they need to succeed in a rapidly changing marketplace.

With Locobuzz, your team has the opportunity to go beyond the traditional metrics and dig deeper into mentions, and activities that are pulling up or pushing down your brand. And the best part? You can customise your dashboards to razor focus on the key elements (all on a unified platform) that can help your brand elevate its products or services as per the customer demand.

Discover how Locobuzz can transform your market research. Schedule a demo today!

Market Research = Quantifiable and Qualitative Reports