By now, you have undoubtedly heard the numbers: a population of 91 million US Facebook users growing over 50% per year...over 6 billion YouTube views growing 15 percent annually...27 million Twitter users growing at 1,300% per year.
With growth and reach like this, the social web has become an important part of the way that we connect, learn, grow and entertain ourselves. In fact, we are witnessing the birth of an enormous conversation that promises to change the ways that marketers reach out to and influence consumers.
Like much of technology, the emergence of the social web happened quickly. Which means that many of the questions about how to best employ social media to affect positive change in the realm of consumer marketing remain unanswered. One thing is clear however: the social web as a source of consumer insight offers unique promise and has the potential to greatly reshape how we listen to and what we learn from those consumers.
The enormous amount of unstructured data contained within the social web has a range of characteristics that make it extremely attractive from a consumer marketing perspective:
- the input is extremely timely - in many cases only a few hours old
- it brings a degree of openness and freshness that may be difficult to achieve with traditional research approaches
- the conversations can be followed over time to gain additional clarity into meaning and intention
That's where Consumer Insight Mining come into the picture.
Consumer Insight Mining represents the technologies and the expertise necessary to tap this collective insight so as to help marketers better serve consumers.
With this approach, the social web is scanned for brand and keyword mentions, these mentions are, in turn, assessed for sentiment and then analyzed further to understand the hidden motivators behind the sentiment as well as the trends and directions in these motivators. We then take into account related factors such as social influence to create a complete picture of affinity. The picture that emerges is one of increasing clarity about consumer intent and likely future purchase behavior.
New consumer media create new consumer marketing opportunities. But to reach and influence these consumers, new approaches are called for. Listening to consumers across the social web produces insights that emerge over time and increase in fidelity and resolution with time. By looking deeply into the conversation, actionable drivers behind the sentiment can be uncovered which allow marketers to learn and make adjustments in message, application or offer in order to better serve consumers.
Consumer Insight Mining turns the social web into a compelling source of timely, actionable consumer insight.