Description
An Explosion of Data Collection Techniques
Can Twitter be a tool for marketing researchers? Twitter is a “microblogging” service that enables users to post instant messages with a maximum of 140 characters, called “tweets.” Consumers are the primary user group, but companies are increasingly finding several uses for Twitter. One of those uses is “inbound signaling,” or the collection of information on Twitter for research purposes. In inbound signaling, organizations search Twitter for conversation threads about their company, brand, or product. These companies can use the search tool search.twitter.com or the desk-top application TweetDeck to observe in real time what is being said about their brands, products, or industry. Some industry onlookers argue that there are too many random conversations and “meaningless chatter” to find anything of value. But increasingly, research tools are being developed as Twitter add-ons that use data-mining approaches to search through the clutter and find relevant information. 1 Max Goldberg, founding partner of the Radical Clarity Group, writes: “Twitter is a great tool for feedback and customer service [because it enables] companies to listen to conversations about their brands. Customer tweets can reward great customer service and highlight problems. The instantaneous nature of Twitter encourages companies to quickly try to resolve problems with their products or services.” 2