TM
The infusion of social media requires market research to leverage existing platforms to engage and excite consumers.
Traditional mediums such as online bulletin boards and in-facility focus groups were essentially designed by researchers for researchers. We need to rethink the way we engage consumers, because existing social media platforms are beautifully designed and down-right addicting! If we want to elicit honest and organic feedback from customers, we need engaging platforms designed for social interaction and sharing stories.
Thus, we prefer to use Yammer to conduct online groups. It works just like Facebook, but it's private. It has a myriad of benefits, but most importantly, respondents LOVE it!
Fuze is our proprietary, patented, social media toolkit for conducting research using existing social media platforms. It allows us to expand on the capabilities of existing social media platforms like Yammer and Facebook to build online communities, conduct online focus groups, translate over 100 languages, collaborate with clients, tag discussions real-time, and export to multiple reporting formats.
Social Media Communities & Insight Extraction
Create online communities using the social media platforms that are widely used and most engaging. Private groups in Facebook and Yammer are easy to set up and *free*.
We developed Fuze - our toolkit of add-on modules that expands on these social media platforms so conducting research and extracting insights is effortless. Fuze lets you...
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Expand accuracy and auto-translation to over 100 languages, making it very attractive for research in foreign markets
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Include a real-time translator to edit auto-translations for client-viewing
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Collaborate with clients on parallel threads to tag key themes or comments
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Export numerous file formats for reporting e.g. text, word, excel, etc.
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Categorize and analyze the text using hashtags, text analysis, sentiment analysis, etc.
Reaching Remote Users and Respondents Online - Leveraging the Framework of Social Networks
Technology and social networks is changing the way we do research and reach consumers. Not only can traditional focus groups be cost prohibitive for new entrants and entrepreneurs, but they can take months to set up, gather and glean insights, while being selectively bias towards certain respondents with more downtime. Previously, when there have been fewer platform suppliers in the digital online space, the costs for utilizing these type of platforms came close to accounting for 50% of the cost of the research. Now, digital groups can be moderated on professional network platforms such as Yammer, with ease of sharing digital stimulus and voting polls.
Benefits of using online Yammer groups over traditional focus groups and online bulletin boards:
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Allows respondents and clients to interact from anywhere in the world using the Yammer mobile app
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Integrates videos, digital content, web pages, etc., fluidly to the online discussion
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Delivers a relatively flat learning curve, because Yammer works like Facebook, which is the most pervasively used social media platform in the world
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Allows for more sensitive topics, where customers can still be anonymous to each other and sharing very personal stories relevant to the research
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Produces less bias in responses, as everyone posts responses at the same time
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Reaches more than stay-at-home participants, because respondents can be at home, anywhere in the world and participate in the group
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Respondents can join discussion threads when they are at lunch during the weekdays, or in the evening or on the weekend.
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Produces fast turn-around time – there are no transcripts, it’s digital so share the transcripts in real time
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Faster set-up time than traditional focus groups
The best thing is that your clients DO NOT have to buy a proprietary software platform to conduct the online group – it can be developed completely in-house. It’s a faster way for businesses to keep a pulse on their customers without the traditional costs involved.
Recommended Readings - AI, UX, EyeTracking
Facebook AI Learns Human Reactions After Watching Hours of Skype - NewScientist.com
The Best Way to Test Rich App Usability - UXMag.Com
Step 3 For a Successful Startup: The Importance of Market Research - Forbes.com