An interesting conference and still a very healthy turnout considering the climate. Clearly still big demand for online research.
I opened the first day with a broad overview of what is going on in social media globally: usage trends, macro impacts and geographical differences.
I also talked about what it meant for research. In summary the massive rise of social media is a huge opportunity for the whole industry:
- Social media is driving a listening economy, where marketing will be about building dialogue and getting feedback before talking at consumers. This is a huge opportunity for research to sit at the top table.
- Big growth in demand for research skills to interpret the massive volumes of data that come out of observational data and tracking tools
- Embrace social media platforms as a way to collect data
- Externalise questionnaire distribution – think widgets not emails
- Need to start building communities not panels and learn from the social networks
- Global opportunity and the rise one man multi-nationals to rival the big research companies of the past
- The health of social media shows just how much people just love to share opinions
