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24th March, 2014
Following instantaneous news on Twitter can sometimes be frustrating for a number of reasons: speed, variety, quality and sources all contribute to the mix. The spread of market research related news is concentrated across two main hashtags and as such you may find yourself missing segments of day to day breaking news. It should come as no surprise that there are a host of different cumulative social media management web applications to assist your drive for information: Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Seesmic to name a few. All have benefits and will suit your business and research needs as is.
Setting up a social media manager is relatively simple to anyone au fait with web apps and with each you can sign up to multiple social media accounts to keep tabs of everything you are involved with: mentions, sign ins, showed in search – everything. Where it is particularly useful is gauging the assortment of information flowing through Twitter on the two main market research hashtags: #MRX and #marketresearch. I should mention here that #insight receives an honourable mention, but also attracts a wider variety of attention and posters, particularly when any sporting event is underway.
The two main hashtags are both free flowing passages of market research information that consistently update throughout the day. Utilising a social media manager lets you follow each stream concurrently, assuring you miss nothing. There are subtle differences to the manner of information disseminated under each hashtag. Whilst sitting and writing this blog I have had all three streams up (system works very well with multi-monitor setup) and watched as they auto-update every few minutes.
Noticeably, #insight does not fare so well. It has been a busy sporting weekend and aside from this it seems to attract a wider range of people declaring their insight into many themes: love, astrology and music to name a few. But there are some genuine notifications stemming from financial institutions, and individual market research and political bloggers. Realistically, it is the weakest of the three and is only included due to the connotations of #insight.
Onto the main event: #mrx and #marketresearch. Both tags contain enough consistently excellent information that both should be monitored, or at least scanned throughout the day. The difference stems from external site relationships with the #mrx tag. Industry thought leaders such as greenbookblog and #newMR consistently engage with both tags. However, many articles on the concerned sites refer to the #mrx tag as a reference point for any future conversations concerning the topic. Others feature weekly #mrx roundups containing most used words or highest number of retweets. It is clear to see that research organisations also interact with the #mrx tag with higher frequency. Companies such as Vision Critical, Research-Live and Marketing Week all post habitually and as such #mrx remains an industry leader itself by way of information collation and dissemination.
Clearly it is useful to monitor all social media outlets throughout the day for any exceptional breaking news. And by keeping a close eye on your streams, you might just gain some unexpected #insight.