Wendy Troupe and I were speaking to Nathan Gilliatt this morning about the nature of analysis, measurement and social media. The conversation ranged across a variety of topics: from his recent and very successful AnalyticsCamp in Chapel Hill to the occurrence measurement silos (we all agreed, by the way, that measurement silos stink and rob you of true cross-channel, big-picture insight). During that conversation, Nathan said something that stopped the coffee cup halfway to my lips. It was eloquent, simple and yet, profound:

“[If you set aside the corporate desire for engagement], Social Media becomes a set of really powerful, publicly-available, data points.” (paraphrasing, Nathan said it much better)

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Social Media is an almost limitless source of data about the habits, lifestyles, opinions, relationships and behaviors of an incredibly diverse pool of people. According to a post by Brian Solis, covering the latest Neilsen report, that pool is growing at an amazing rate:

More than 100 million people have swelled the ranks of social media visitors in just two short years. Today, the total pool of individuals stands at more than 300 million strong, roughly the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the United States. It should be noted, however, that less than half of the social media citizens (142,052,000) are actually from the United States.

Not only does Social Media provide detailed data on an incredibly diverse group of people, it may also eliminate what Quantum Theorists like to call, “observation contamination”:

“One of the most bizarre premises of quantum theory, which has long fascinated philosophers and physicists alike, states that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality.”

In a recent post, we explored this tenet of Quantum Theory and applied it to the Social Media space:

“This premise has long cast a tiny shadow of invalidating doubt on all manner of research. Primary marketing research like focus groups, usability testing, interviews and even surveys are no exception. The simple act of observing an action or response can to some degree skew that action or response.

Yet, today, an array of Social Media tools provides marketers and brand managers with an unprecedented way to access the actions and conversations of a particular group in such a way that the group isn’t cognizant of the observation.”

Couple this amazing pool of data with the elimination of “observation contamination” and those companies with the right analysis tools have an opportunity to learn about their targets in unprecedented ways.

In yesterday’s #SocialMedia Chat, Ken Burbary discussed how Social Media is changing the nature of target segmentation. Ken did a great job of providing an interesting framework and guiding the discussion when needed. Participants all agreed that Social Media doesn’t just change the nature of target segmentation, it forces it and our notions of what’s knowable to evolve.

Our understanding of the target is no longer limited to static demographic, psychographic and geographic data. We can now study their interactions, relationships, use of platforms, personalities, preferences, habits and behaviors in real time. We can literally watch them unfold before our very eyes.

If your company isn’t leveraging the power of social media to study the target, you can bet your competitors are. Social Media analysis should be a part of the customer study in every strategic marketing plan. If your company is like many, you may need to shift dollars from another marketing program to fund social media’s inclusion. If so, maybe it should come from your marketing research budget?

Tags: marketing channel, ROI, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Measurement, Social Media ROI, Social Media Strategy, Social Media Tools

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 9:42 PM by MattC and is filed under Strategy and Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.