Use social media to understand your customers

Social media gives people the power to communicate online, and the result is a vast ocean of conversation for organisations to trawl through to try and get a better understanding of their customers. To make life easier, we provide the tools that help companies turn these conversations into insight.

There are two main approaches to gaining customer insight through social media:
1. Social media monitoring (also known as buzz tracking)
2. Market research online communities

Social Media Monitoring

Your customers are talking about your brand online. They're highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of your products and suggesting service improvements and innovations. We provide a buzz-tracking service that can help you listen in to relevant conversations and learn from them.

We use a range of social media monitoring tools, from the freebies to the paid-for. We're not tied to a single proprietary tool, so we'll give you an unbiased view of the right tool for your needs. And all the different tools have their strengths and weaknesses.

More importantly, we won't just provide you with a dashboard. We find that people often buy a whizzy bit of software for buzz-tracking, only to discover later that technology on its own is rarely going to generate customer insight - let alone deliver it to the right person in your organisation, in the right way, at the right time.

Market Research Online Communities

Tracking online buzz is a great first step. But a far more powerful way to use social media for customer insight is to engage a group of customers in your own branded online community. It's like having a permanent online advisory panel - an always-on focus group.

Our Market Research Online Communities (MROCs) provide a research resource full of in-depth insights about your brand and customers. And you can forget months of painstaking research that’s out of date by the time it’s presented to you. We open up a world where you can access detailed up-to-the-second information about your customers, whenever you need it.

Online panels and communities provide a broader range of insight than many traditional methods. This helps you cut your research costs, while significantly enhancing your level of insight.

Customer-to-customer communication is sustainable, accurate, and easy to access if you have an effective social media platform. With the right technology, plus a proven process of implementation and ongoing management, online panels and communities will provide excellent research returns at a fraction of the cost.

FreshNetworks guarantees great online market research

When it comes to research, we really know our stuff. FreshNetworks is part of the FreshMinds group, a world-class research agency. We’ve got years of experience in customer and market research and can help you collect, analyse and apply the insights produced by your panel or online community.