Types of social media research

This entry was posted by Laura on Sunday, 4 July, 2010 at

This is more of a thinking out loud so I can delve into it later. One of the things I’ve been curious about is the type of social media research conducted by academics and marketers. The types that I can think of are:

1) Case studies for how a business uses social media and the web,
2) Content studies that look at social media research and website design of a small basket of companies,
3) Sentiment analysis and keyword mentions,
4) Relationship analysis to try to determine how people interact and to identify key influencers,
5) Population studies.

Any more that people can think of? Is there any method superior to another? Should social media researchers be valuing any over the other? Which methods are more popular and why?

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  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    Happy to think out loud with you.

    Content studies and relationship studies are probably the superior ones.

    I would also want to do a population study.

    Sentiment analysis is good for current or reasonably current information, as well as to get the feeling.

    Case studies are probably the most common.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    ABC Radio National recently ran something on Sentiment Analysis:

    (via Vaughan of Mind Hacks)

    www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/sto...

  • Leighblackall

    Youtube is awash with small marketing companies attempting ROI on social media campaigns. In the early marketing meets social media days, these methods seemed crude.. but some show promise.. I pick them up by the RSS feed for the Youtube search on “social media”.. it gets about 10 new videos a day, but you can usually tell by the description of its worth watching.. I think some form of ROI will make your study attractive to bottom line thinkers…

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    Yes, and one form of ROI can be learning and sharing with the particular community involved, in many forms, like talking about it at the water cooler or at a conference.

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    Read a lot about sentiment analysis. I also did reputation monitoring for two years. My trust of sentiment analysis is pretty low because there are just too many things that a bot can't do with out a lot of programming involved to consider a whole bunch of independent and dependent variables. :/

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    The current methods all have ROI applications but you generally need a formula on top of the existing ways of identifying data. And then it needs to be tailored to specific market needs. I've thought a lot about that issue, wrote about it in April for a friend. (Thought this was posted on my blog but it isn't. I've posted it at ozziesport.com/2010/07/methodology-for-m... .) I could probably do it for a specific team if I had access to some of their internal data.

    One of the problems I've had with the social media ROI work I've seen is that the methodology isn't transparent, isn't repeatable, only speaks to a certain case or feels like it the speaker is saying things to drive their own consulting business. :/ It is just one of those really complex issues that almost can't be explained in a a short speech.

    Also, I'm not that fond of watching YouTube. I'm more a fan of reading things or interacting with things. :/

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    There is the whole issue of what return do people want. Brand recognition may be hugely important. The action that helps spur brand recognition may not in and of itself have a measurable financial return in the short term, but it could translate into long tail financial return because brand familiarity might result in buying changes down the line. (I just haven't read much on brand recognition as opposed to the very clear I do this action on Twitter and I see an increase in sales of X%.)

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    Case studies are ones I see pretty often. Population studies less so. The ones I do see don't necessarily have transparent methodologies. The academic work I've seen related to social media tends to look at relationship analysis. (LiveJournal appears to have a lot of that.)

    I'm not particularly keen on sentiment analysis because COCA COLA! COCA COLA! There. This comment might ping on a page about Coca Cola now. What is the sentiment for that comment? How relevant are my random Coca Cola comments? You can analyze the text around it but that isn't necessarily going to be useful and actionable. And to a degree, my references might matter less than say one of the editors of Mashable who have a much bigger built in audience. Sentiment analysis needs to be better able to weed out spammers and be partnered with relationship analysis.

    They all really need another method to give them context and provide additional meaning. Population studies coupled with any of those are probably superior as it tells you who your audience is and then gives context to everything else.

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