By Dr. Christian Jarchow

Blackrider12: “I took the new hybrid SUV on a test drive today. I’ve heard it has a lot of problems. Does anyone know?” Easygoh: “Very bad choice. The hybrid engine is absolute rubbish. Electric cars are the future now.” People who read and write posts on social media sites, in this case the automotive forum Motor-Talk.de, attach a very high degree of credibility to opinions expressed there – so social media monitoring is more important than ever before.This is already a relatively well proven area of digital market research, in which companies use special web technolo-gies to collect public posts by users of social media such as blogs, forums, consumer sites and open communities over a specifi c period, and analyze them using data and text mining. These posts can include written opinions, such as product reviews on Amazon, and also homemade vid-eos posted on YouTube. Software systematically collects, cleanses, codes and aggregates data, using statistical and linguistic analysis to compare and interpret it and fi nally turn it into valuable business knowledge.

Will social media monitoring make online surveys ob-

solete?

Some proponents of harvesting user-generated content say that online surveys will eventually be seen as stone-age technology. They predict that questionnaire-based online

research has a limited lifespan and will be an insignifi cant niche market at best in future. The signs of decline seem quite obvious to anyone in the market research business: a decreasing willingness to participate, poor-quality data and a growing demand for surveys which are fun to take part in rather than methodologically rigorous and representa-tive. But the reality is different: all types of online research are expanding fast. GfK has carried out detailed studies, comparing the results of online surveys and social media monitoring, which clearly show that the two research meth-ods make it possible to obtain different insights.

Keeping a watchful eye

If you asked “Easygoh” for his opinion of that particular make and model of hybrid SUV in an online survey, it would undoubtedly be negative. But when he is posting on a web-site, he is much more forceful in his views: “hybrid engines are rubbish”. He even recommends an alternative: electric cars. “Easygoh” has a very strong sense of personal in-volvement, because he is talking freely, spontaneously and honestly to like-minded people in cyberspace about subjects that matter to him at that particular moment. Users are also much more likely to be open about sensitive subjects, such as health, where the anonymity of the internet allows them to share problems with others who are affected. Since the beginning of the year, GfK HealthCare has been >

From passive to active social media analysis

Buzz Almighty?If you are a consumer who is thinking of buying something, the social web is a treasure

trove of opinions, experiences and recommendations. For this reason, forums, blogs, social

networks and comparison sites are increasingly valuable information sources for companies

as well. Social media monitoring is a market research method that tells you what people are

saying about you and your products. But how “mighty” is this online buzz? How much does

it actually infl uence purchasing decisions?

1 Focus: Social Media

Focus: Social Media 2

The bugbear that is the almighty social media user – companies can use innovative market research to stand up to him

monitoring public social media channels for postings on the subject of diabetes. This multiclient study enables pharma-ceutical companies to identify patients’ needs, misunder-standings and problems concerning their own and com-petitors’ products, and to respond quickly where required.Social media monitoring also makes it possible to track sub-types who are diffi cult to recruit in online panels. For ex-ample, some people on automotive websites talk about cars which they have ordered but that are yet to arrive. Known as “waiters” (fi g. 1), these communication types openly discuss delivery times and how much they are looking for-ward to their new vehicles, and generally compliment the manufacturer. Their posts may have a positive infl uence

on the opinions of potential buyers. If a market researcher can monitor these subtypes, they can also highlight issues that would not have been revealed by an online survey, but which are highly relevant to the client. So “waiters” might talk about delivery times, “speed merchants” about the amazing driving experience and “aesthetes” about the shininess of the wheel rims.

GfKCeres.dx: collecting and understanding words

GfKCeres.dx is fi rst and foremost a traditional social me-dia monitoring tool, used to analyze consumer-generated content such as opinions on products and services. GfK identifi es between 10 and 20 of the most important so-cial media in each language for the brand, or uses its own focused, industry-specifi c web indices. For example, it is currently building an international web index for the au-tomotive sector containing the most important motoring forums and blogs.Five years ago, this process would simply have involved collecting and sorting keywords, but this is no longer enough: increasingly, companies also want to understand why people post particular things. The distinctive feature of GfKCeres.dx is that it offers two types of research: it is available in express and depth versions. The express ver-sion shows very traditional, customer-specifi c social media key performance indicators (KPIs) in the form of a daily updated dashboard or key fi gure cockpit. One typical KPI is “share of buzz”: the number of posts about your own brand as a proportion of the total posts on all brands in a product category. The depth solution goes one step further. The posts are classifi ed and subjected to qualitative analysis, which makes GfKCeres.dx different from other tools. In this way, clients fi nd out not only what people are saying, but also how it should be interpreted.

No rose without thorns

Traditional surveys are normally factual and neutral, where-as online discussions are frequently very emotional. Social media posts are often infl uenced by the feelings of others, and particularly opinion leaders, who in the semantic chart of posts on the VW Golf VI (see fi g.1) GfK refers to as “gu-rus”. Maybe this particular SUV is not really that bad after all – perhaps “Easygoh” has simply read a lot of negative posts about it, and exaggerated his negative opinions as a result. In an online survey, you can fi nd out why by asking more questions, but this is not possible in social media monitoring, so market researchers and clients have to take what they read at face value.The general problem for market researchers is that social media monitoring can never be representative. The au-thors of online buzz are mostly individuals with a strong desire to share and above all they remain anonymous.

3 Focus: Social Media

Fig. 1: GfK ThreadMap – spatial representation of

discussion about VW Golf VI at Motor-Talk.de

Delivery timeWaiters + +

Features CostsHagglers

Aesthetes

AdviceResale

Color

Tires, wheel rims

ProblemQuestion

Advice seekers

Gurus – –Light

Exterior

Interior

Aftersales

Too expensive

Poor acceleration

NoiseDriving experience

Speed merchants –Gearbox, gear changes

Motor performance Consumption

Good acceleration

Posted topics in Web 2.0Communication types+ positive tonality– negative tonality

GfKBrandBuzzMiner.dx makes it possible to

carry out online surveys during, before and af-

ter specifi c social media contacts. This means

that market researchers are no longer passive

observers, but can be actively involved and ask

questions about people’s motivations.

We might hazard a guess that “Easygoh” is male, but we have no idea about his age or income. Because we know so little about posters’ demographics, social media monitoring cannot replace surveys that fi nd out all this information.But what one method cannot do, the other can. The two ap-proaches are not mutually exclusive – in fact they comple-ment each other. So in addition to the extremely versatile social media monitoring tool GfKCeres.dx, which is the right research solution for specifi c customer questions, GfK has developed GfKBrandBuzzMiner.dx, which combines methodological components of online surveys and social media analysis.

GfKBrandBuzzMiner.dx: focusing on specific target

groups

How do we know whether “Blackrider12” or “Easygoh” represent the majority viewpoint among owners or poten-tial buyers of a particular make and model of car? This is where GfKBrandBuzzMiner.dx comes in. As with question-naire-based online research, the marketing target group is the starting point of the survey. Respondents identifi ed as members of a particular group from their responses to online panel surveys are asked to install a browser add-on on their computer, which allows GfK to record the social media sites they visit and the posts they read or write. So if we fi nd that “Blackrider12” does belong to a target group, we already know he is male, aged about 30 and works as an electrician. The add-on would enable us to fi nd out if, after his discussion with “Easygoh”, he actually went and found out more about electric cars.GfKBrandBuzzMiner.dx also makes it possible to carry out online surveys during, before and after specifi c social media contacts. This means that market researchers are no longer passive observers, but can be actively involved and ask questions about people’s motivations. For exam-ple, they could ask “Blackrider12” whether he actually intends to buy an electric car, why he trusts the opinions expressed on Motor-Talk.de, and whether he has been infl uenced by opinions expressed on Facebook or other social media sites. Based on all this information, GfK can then evaluate things like the extent to which individual social media sites affect brand image and intention to purchase.

Dr. Christian Jarchowis Head of Digital Research in GfK’s

Custom Research sector, and is based

at GfK Marktforschung in Nurem-

berg, Germany. He is responsible

for developing new research tools,

such as GfKCeres.dx and GfKBrand-

BuzzMiner.dx, and the conception of

fundamental surveys in the fi eld of

digital research.

Two pillars of a social media strategy

Companies using not only GfKBrandBuzzMiner.dx but also GfKCeres.dx can study posts on the sites of particular inter-est to them, and then obtain quantitative and qualitative information. So if the hybrid car manufacturer fi nds that Motor-Talk.de and Facebook are particularly infl uential as far as owners and potential buyers are concerned, GfK can use GfKCeres.dx to monitor the public areas of these sites for specifi c keywords. This gives a very precise picture of which groups of people are writing what about their prod-ucts, and how much these posts infl uence the marketing target group. Based on this, they can decide whether it is worth becoming active on these sites, for example by advertising and helping to shape discussion in a positive way. Combining the two tools GfKCeres.dx and GfKBrand-BuzzMiner.dx therefore forms the ideal basis for a social media strategy. At present, for instance, GfK is carrying out a basic study comparing the effects of Facebook, YouTube, a car forum and the manufacturer’s own website on the brand image of a particular car.So if our hybrid manufacturer uses this strategy, “Black-rider12” may soon see banners advertising the new SUV on Motor-Talk.de, and possibly even an article discussing the relative merits of hybrid and electric cars on a Facebook page newly created by the manufacturer.

Further information:

Dr. Christian Jarchow

tel. +49 911 395-2663

christian.jarchow@gfk.com

Focus: Social Media 4