Two things I enjoy hearing:
“This audience doesn’t use social media.”
“The only opinions you’ll see online are extremes.”
Either of these statements put a smile on my face because I know our extensive appendices and presentations can not only easily disprove them, but in fact change and inform a client mind completely and utterly that they become believers of the real issues and opportunities at hand.
So let’s unpack a few things I’ve learned about each so that you too can learn what they did:
“This audience doesn’t use social media.”
- Reality: This is almost never, ever true
- Who Do They Say It About: It’s a phrase always saved for anyone over 50 and especially males
- Example Cases: watermen of NC, men talking about prostate issues, older car enthusiasts
- What Real Social Listening Found: Entire communities who have been around for more than a DECADE!
- What A Dashboard Missed: All of it; dashboards aren’t looking for context clues to verify age, much less able to look at nuanced forums and message boards
“The only opinions you’ll see online are extremes.”
- Reality: It’s never JUST extremes; it’s about putting them in context and looking beyond the surface review sites; but also it ignores the many examples where people are overwhelmingly positive (which happens)
- Who Do They Say It About: Basically uttered whenever we have to break the bad news of negative sentiment
- Example Cases: Giving too much due to reviews and not enough to conversations; assuming that negativity can’t be real or valid
- What Real Social Listening Found: That actual conversations aren’t about extremes; in many cases you’ll find conversations where people happily have been dictating their entire journey only to find the end a disaster – it’s harder to discount or ignore that kind of negativity as outliers or just a loud voice when they’ve been informing peers every step of the way
- What A Dashboard Missed: All of it – they’re great at only “red light” vs. “green light” for a handful of channels but if you don’t understand any context behind the sentiment (or even if it’s is correctly labeled red or green) and you know you’re missing deeper conversations, why would you make decisions on such limited information?
Happy to chat further with anyone wanting to hear more on our process – but suffice to say, deep listening with ACTUAL behaviorists is the way to make sure you don’t stumble into these same traps.
– Dean Browell, PhD
If you’re interested in learning more about your audiences, reach out and we can customize a research plan and approach that works for you: Dean @ discoverfeedback.com .