The Do's and Don’ts of Using Social Media for Market Research [Infographic]

In the last 10 years, social media has become more than just a casual pastime.

For many, it’s an irreplaceable communication tool, both professionally and personally. It connects teachers and students, teammates, friends, and family.

It is an integral part of how we communicate with those in our lives as well as share information about ourselves.

With so much of our personal details being made accessible online through social media, it’s only natural that these networks become a go-to resource when it comes to market research and developing buyer personas.

To help make the process a little bit easier, Mobile Marketing Watch compiled this handy infographic with several dos and don’ts of using social media for market research. Use them to gain deep insight into your buyer persona's interest, personalities, concerns, hobbies, and much more. 

Here are just a few of its highlights from the infographic below:

• 85% of marketers don’t know what tool is best for managing social media marketing
• 48% of marketers say developing a social media strategy is one of the most challenging aspects of social marketing
• About 85% of Facebook’s updates are made by 29% of the site’s total population.

Do:

• Define your goals and objectives early on.
• Budget enough time to clean the data collected.
• Keep an open mind.
• Refocus on data-driven goals.
• Use social media to complement other methods of research.

Don’t:

• Go into a social media market research campaign saying “let’s see what we find,” -- Test a theory.
• Try to measure everything.
• Over-rely on social media market research and exclude other channels.
• Only focus on looking for a “viral” idea.
• Get discouraged.

Tools to know:

• Sendible: A tool for building customized analytics reports, managing social media campaigns, tracking ROI, and more.
• TAPoRware 2.0: A tool that allows you to perform analyses on HTmL, XML, and plain text files.
• Crowdbooster: A tool that analyzes your Twitter and Facebook activity and gives you advice on when to posts, what to post, etc.
• FollowerWonk: A tool by Moz that allow you to allows you to track your follower count based on activity
• KISSMetrics: A tool that tracks where visitors come from, their activity, and more.