Social Media Considerations and Caveats

Most of the coverage around social media in the past year has been favorable to this new channel, which indeed provides a promising way to interact with, and learn from new audiences. Most of the people who have written about social media fall into one of two categories: 1) Critics who don’t quite understand how social media work 2) Advocates who see social media as a valuable new tool for marketing and communications professionals.

While I clearly fall into the second category (I thoroughly believe that social media can provide new ways for companies and consultants to share news, provide customer service, receive feedback, promote products, sell services and more), I also believe that companies need to use social media cautiously to avoid getting results that backfire.

Gauging customer sentiment: Look at patterns

To illustrate this point, let’s take as an example the use of social media for gauging customer sentiment about a product or a brand. While social media provide unprecedented access to direct feedback from customers and are a valuable way to gauge favorability for products or brands, going through the huge amount of comments, posts and Tweets can feel like trying to catch raindrops in the middle of a storm. In addition, comments vary a lot in length and content, with some comments being long and detailed, and others (many of them, in fact) being short and futile.

The key to getting the most out of social media customer feedback is to look at patterns. Some communications professionals recommend listening only to select voices—the ones from the “real influencers”— but marketers who do this run the risk of subconsciously (or not) picking the voices that best fit their own preconceived notions.

I advocate, instead, looking at patterns. Taking into account patterns of comments that have statistical significance (i.e. ones on a large scale) is much more effective in providing information about a brand, product or service to an insider who has a biased point of view.

Over-representation of certain groups

While patterns always deserve attention and consideration, they should also be analyzed with care. Is there a correlation between the comments and demographic of the people leaving them? Are certain groups over- or under-represented in certain social media? Are certain groups using social media passively and ingesting information without ever voicing their opinions?

While Facebook has become increasingly mainstream, its user-base is still primarily composed of teens and young adults aged 18-24 (this age demographic represents more than 50 percent of Facebook’s users). And among these people, some are more prone to actively voicing their opinions than others. In other words, it is important to avoid weighing certain opinions more heavily simply because they are louder. In the same way, companies should make sure not to dismiss certain groups or voices just because they are quieter. Make sure to analyze patterns in conjunction with associated demographics to ensure a more meaningful analysis.

Use social media as a supplemental tool

For the reasons outlined above, social media are best used as a supplemental tool in the context of market research and customer feedback. Unless the demographic of the audience a company seeks to reach is exactly the same as that of the social media being used, social media are best used in conjunction with other research methodologies to corroborate or reinforce findings from these sources.

So, go ahead and venture into the exciting world of social media. Use it as a tool to poll your audience and find out how people feel about your brand. But make sure to look at patterns, and make sure to carefully analyze your finding within a context, as failing to do so may lead your company to a set of wrong conclusions. This would in turn do your company more harm than good, and would give critics of social media only more fodder to argue.

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