Margie Barkley: Use Social Media to Market Research

If you ask any marketer about their dream superpower, they will tell you “to read minds.”

Marketers dream of knowing exactly what their customers want. Understanding your audience’s needs and preferences is key to success. Accurate, insightful data gives you the opportunity to create the best products, craft the best messages and increase engagement and customer loyalty.

Marketers regularly do market research to gather as much information as possible. They investigate industry trends, collect feedback and interview focus groups. In 2023, the research process may be slow and ineffective. Social media market research is a great way to do this.

Social listening and monitoring social media can help marketers get an accurate and up-to date understanding of customer attitudes and needs.

You can be as close as possible to a mind reader with social media research. Learn how this superpower will help you to boost your business and engage your followers.

Download our free guide today to learn how you can use social media to increase sales and conversions. There are no tricks or dull tips, just simple instructions that work.

What is social media marketing research?

Social media market research involves collecting data and insights via social media platforms about your target audience. This data can help businesses better understand their audience demographics and brand sentiment.

You can get real-time insight into social media marketing by pulling an analytics report. It will give you the inside scoop on what is happening right now.

Social media research is more affordable than focus groups and surveys, but it also allows you to examine the behavior of an enormous number of users. Imagine trying to fit 4,76 billion users of social media into a conference room to discuss your latest advertising campaign.

Social media can be used to conduct market research.

You are ready to use social networks to learn more about the audience. What exactly do you want to know? Listening to others can provide you with eight useful insights.

What do people think about your product or brand?

Your fans are likely to be talking about you on social media if they use it.

Keep an eye out for positive feedback about your product or brand. Keep an eye out for people tagging your posts and stories. Don’t forget to also check your DMS for any fanmail that might be lurking.

If you’re using Hootsuite to manage your social media, creating streams of listening for certain keywords or phrases is a great way to catch those less-than-official mentions.

Set up streams to catch misspellings or product names. This will ensure you don’t miss any positive tweets, such as “i swear i ran faster in my Nikees!”

The feedback you receive from actual users can be extremely useful when planning future marketing campaigns.

The old-school thermos company Stanley has seen a rise in the number of young mothers posting on Instagram about their mugs, raving about how they kept their coffee hot while running after their children.

The company began releasing their products in Millennial cool colors to target this new and surprising consumer market.

@perkinsonparkway

#stanleycup #stanleytumbler #stanley40oz utah#adventurequencher#stanleyadventure#stanleyadventurewaterbottle#stanley#emotionalsupportwaterbottle#stanley#unboxing#utahcheck #stanleycup #stanleytumbler #stanley40oz #utah #adventurequencher #stanleyadventure #stanley #emotionalsupportwaterbottle #stanley #unboxing #utahcheck

DIY & Home

What do people dislike about your product or brand?

You may hear some grumblings from those who are not as excited about your product. It can also be useful.

Remember that your critics are giving you an opportunity to improve. Genuine criticism or complaints are an opportunity to improve or correct something you may have overlooked.

Netflix might be interested in this tweet that mentions Netflix but does not directly tag the company. Netflix now knows why this subscriber is canceling his subscription.

I stopped watching Netflix six months ago, as I do each year. I subscribe for about 4 to 5 months and then cancel it when I have seen everything.

CE Newton (@cnewton_ky), March 21, 2023

Hootsuite Insights, powered by Brandwatch, takes social media listening to the next level by providing data on 16 billion social posts each month.

By using Boolean Search Logic, you can find trends and patterns that you may have missed by only monitoring hashtags and keywords. You can filter your search by location, demographics and date to find conversations that are most relevant to you.

With Insights, you can also track your brand sentiment using intuitive word clouds or meters that measure brand awareness and sentiment.

Listen to what others are saying about you competitors

You can use social listening not only to monitor what is being said about your company, but also about competitors.

You can gain an edge by understanding what is going well (or poorly) for your biggest business rivals. Fill the gap that your competitors haven’t filled yet. Offer an alternative to a dissatisfied customer. You can improve your marketing campaigns by tweaking them.

You can use your Instagram grid to showcase your similar style if you’re making yoga pants.

Keep an eye on your industry

You may also want to include keywords related to your industry in the streams you create.

Keep up to date with the latest developments in your industry. This will help you better understand consumer expectations for your product, or the health of your industry as a whole. You may be a luxury real estate agent and you’ve noticed that other realtors are using TikTok to get views.

What does this tell us about your followers?

@markonyc

This is the perfect one bedroom apartment! This building is insanely luxurious!

What do you think about this? #fyp #foryourpage #nycrealestate #realestate

awkward sped up sza – rem

Analyze content to see what resonates

You can either guess what your audience wants… or crunch some numbers to find out the truth.

You can use social analytics to find out what content resonates with your audience. You know that your audience loves interior design with a dash of star power if your celebrity home tours get likes and shares. Reels isn’t working for you if your Instagram carousel post aren’t getting any likes or shares.

Hootsuite Insights allows you to schedule recurring reports which compile all your favorite key metrics in cool and easy-to understand infographics.

Find out more about social media analytics.

Learn how to communicate with your audience

In order to conduct social media marketing research, you need to put on your sociology hat and study the ways in which your audience expresses itself.

What are their most popular platforms? They may tag you in “get ready with Me” TikToks or send you a private message gushing about their new plus-sized pajamas.

You’ll learn the language and tone that your audience prefers by practicing social listening. Some communities are more comfortable with slang and emojis. You’d better learn the lingo if you plan to hang out with this group online.

It’s easy to identify cross-platform trends when you keep all of your social media management and monitoring in one place. Hootsuite Inbox, for example, allows you to see all of your private messages in one place.

What are you waiting for if you haven’t yet claimed your 30-day free Hootsuite Trial?

Discover trends that may resonate with your customers

Social media allows you to see the world, even if your analytics are not up-to-date. Trends change at an incredibly fast pace, but if you keep your eyes open for a while, you will begin to see what content is most popular on each platform.

Hootsuite’s Digital Trends Reports and Social Trends Reports provide a macro-view on how different demographics interact with social media.

Ask your audience directly

Social media gives you the chance to directly ask your audience what they think.

Ask your followers to post TikToks showing how they wear your fanny pack or ask your Facebook audience about the color of their dream suitcase.

Fashion Brand Company has mastered this. The avant-garde fashion brand asks its followers to vote for the products they would like to see next.

See this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fashion Brand Co Inc Global (@fashionbrandcompany)

Social media as a tool for market research: Challenges and opportunities

Social media marketing research is not without its challenges, despite all the benefits.

It’s useless without analytics

Your data will be flawed if you are only watching Tweets and not doing the math. You need to go beyond individual examples and anecdotal data in order to get useful big-picture information.

Use tools such as Hootsuite for creating regular reports to identify audience growth, trends and behavior.

For accurate analysis, you need a large reach

The insights you gain are not very useful if only 10 people see your post (and 2 of them are your employees). Ensure that your social media content reaches your target audience to accurately determine what types of posts engage them.

A scheduling tool such as Hootsuite will help you to plan your content so that it is delivered at the best time for your audience. Here’s more information about scheduling social posts.

Consider boosting or paying for ads if you’re just getting started on social media and your audience is small.

The loudest voices could overwhelm the quieter voices

Social media can lead to overvaluing loudest critics or super-fans. Just because someone tags you in each Facebook Live unboxing, doesn’t mean that they represent the entire community.

Hootsuite’s streams and alerts can help you to do this. They’ll capture mentions and references even from the smallest accounts, so that everyone’s voice is heard.

Are you ready to start with social media marketing? The first step is to set up your social listening streams on Hootsuite. Get a 30-day free trial by clicking here.

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