Twitterversity: Training in the Principles of Market Research Project Management

July 27, 2011 By 1 Comment

Professional training and career development is an ongoing, continuous process. And tomorrow, there’s a great opportunity to keep that process going!

Be sure to join Kathryn Korostoff of Research Rockstar tomorrow, July 28th from 7am-3pm EST, for an exciting day of free market research training at MRXU, their Twitter-based market research training program.

Here’s the agenda for the day:

Class: Principles of Market Research Project Management
When: July 28, 7 am to 3 pm EST.
All times below are EST.

7 AM: Professor Kathryn Korostoff opens the event with, “A Question of Time: Setting Realistic Time Expectations with partners, colleagues and clients.” How long do different aspects of the research process really take?

8 AM: Professor Diane Hagglund will focus on, “Special Considerations for B2B Projects”, and will be available for Q&A via #MRXU

10 AM: Ten Project Management Tools.

11 AM: Professor Greg Timpany on, “Project Management 101: Tips for Beginners”, and will be available for Q&A via #MRXU

12 PM: Professor Michaela Mora on, “A Step by Step Guide to the Market Research Process”, and will be available for Q&A via #MRXU

2 PM: Hot Topics & Final Q&A. The Twitterversity will close with any follow-up on hot topics from the day. All POVs welcome!

Complete details can be found at Research Rockstar.

Follow along with your favorite Twitter client using the hashtag #MRXU. We’ll be there!

Filed Under: Career, Events, Market Research Tagged With: , , , ,

The Game Mechanics of Social Media

May 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

[Editor's Note: We continue our on-going series on gaming and research this month with the following post by Jon Puleston; originally published and syndicated with permission by The GreenBook Blog.]

By Jon Puleston

I have been studying game theory deeply over the last few weeks in my quest to work out how to effectively gamify surveys and I have started to see game play mechanics embedded into all sort of activities.

Just for a bit of fun, well as an invented game in-fact if you look at it this way,  I tried to identify and compare the game play mechanics embedded into Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to work out which was the best game.

These are some of the basic mechanics of successful games:

  1. Strict rules
  2. A reward mechanism that delivers both pleasure and emotional satisfaction
  3. A well balanced success/failure ratio – An accomplishable challenge
  4. A broad learning curve
  5. A wider competitive element
  6. A balance of luck v skill
  7. Levels
  8. Addiction factor – is it an absorbing activity in itself
  9. Team play

How they score…
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Gamification, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

What We’re Reading: Working in Real-Time

May 9, 2011 By 1 Comment

Here at Research Access, we read quite a bit – as you can imagine. Personally, I both love and fear opening Google Reader each morning to find 1000 or so unread items from across the worlds of news, media, business, marketing, technology, and of course – research. (I also subscribe to the daily cartoon xkcd; you should check that out.)

Anyway, as a result of all this reading, I thought I’d make it a regular habit to share some highlights of my Monday morning stroll through the blogosphere. Two articles in particular this morning form a theme that I’d like to expound on a bit: real-time data.

Here are the two articles:
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Market Research, News, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Breaking Through White Noise

February 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the challenges of conducting research by listening to social media channels is the sheer amount of noise that exists around any given topic. Twitter alone sees more than 90 million new tweets per day, and everyone knows that only a fraction of that is what we’d call “legitimate” (once you rule out the tweets about how to increase your followers and get a good deal on real estate). It’s hard to hear a clear message amidst so much chatter.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Market Research, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

The Twitter Fire Hose

January 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Have you ever heard of the Twitter “fire hose” or the “sprinkler” ? If you have, you have probably been doing software development work on connecting to Twitter. The “fire hose” and the “sprinkler” are just two of the terms Twitter use to describe the type of connections you can make to Twitter with an application. As the name implies the Firehose is everything anyone tweets anywhere, and very few companies need or can cope with the volume of data that is produced. Most applications filter or search the stream for hashtags or keywords or users. Absorbing the full force of the global twitter population is not for the meek. According to ComScore there were 25 billion tweets in 2010. That’s a lot of anything.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: ,

Using Twitter for Market Research

January 4, 2011 By 1 Comment

Microsoft fans and geeks alike know (and sometimes even love) blogger Robert Scoble and his blog, Scobleizer. I follow him with a passing interest on Twitter, but was struck by two recent tweets which I think hint at an opportunity for market researchers. Here are those tweets:

From: @Scobleizer
Sent: Dec 14, 2010 1:11p

How to tell whether I am right about a new startup: watch Twitter. With Flipboard hundreds agreed immediately. With Voice DJ? Nope.

From: @Scobleizer
Sent: Dec 23, 2010 3:09a

The best way to tell if a startup is gonna make it is to watch a group of Twitterers, here’s why. @Admore … #Cinch: http://bit.ly/eaKmht

What Scoble is saying is pretty clear – it’s another way market research is, in effect, being crowd sourced.  Scoble is talking about new startups here, but I’ve found a similar trend with my clients who are hosting events.  I can tell from the first tweet if the event is going to be a success.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: How-To, Market Research, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Stay Tuned to Research Access

November 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Just a friendly reminder: You can keep up with the latest from Research Access by following us on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe to receive Research Access posts by e-mail.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Something to Tweet About

September 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Twitter users are some of “the most influential online consumers,” according to a study by ExactTarget. Twitter users compose a relatively small portion of the online audience, only accounting for 14.6% of total internet users, however, Twitter users are also active, digital evangelizers who blog, comment, evaluate, and praise companies or products. As Morgan Stewart of ExtactTarget stated, “what happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter.”

Staying connected to the Twitter audience is actually a very useful practice and most Twitter users are there to stay informed and get updates about the company that they follow (over 38%). After that, Twitter followers are looking to receive discounts, get notified of sales, receive free samples and coupons, and generally stay apprised of all brand promotions. That’s the content that they’re looking for, so hopefully, that’s the content that companies will serve up.

How are you using Twitter as part of your social media strategy? Building a following isn’t necessarily the hardest part – staying connected is. What’s your approach? And how are you learning from your customers via Twitter? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Intimate Moments and Social Media

May 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

New findings in an ongoing Retrevo Gadgetology Report show that social networking borders on obsession for many users. Respondents reported that they check Facebook and Twitter all day and sometimes throughout the night. The most startling piece of information was that 7% of respondents said that they’d even check a social update message during an intimate moment.
One would think that the study was composed primarily of teen users, but Retrevo’s sampling pool is composed of over 1000 respondents distributed across gender, age, income, and location in the US. It seems that social media is an excellent channel for ongoing communication across a variety of audiences.

Filed Under: Market Research, News Tagged With: , , ,