Editor's note: Tamara Barber is an analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. This article appeared in the August 9, 2010, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

With as much interest as there is in research methods that use social tools and technologies, many market researchers are still unsure as to how to actually get started or what best practices exist. While social market research is not a replacement for more traditional research, it can serve as a valuable complement to other insight-gathering techniques. At Forrester, we've discussed this with vendors and client-side researchers and identified three main ways in which market researchers can consider adding social methods to their range of research tools today.  

1. Accessing through social media sample

With ongoing debate around the reliability, projectability and quality of panel samples, two issues have become especially clear: 1) response rates are falling in many cases, and 2) panels can be thin on hard-to-reach groups. But social media can add a new channel for recruiting respondents by finding consumers where they already are, such as using a social sample provider like Peanut Labs to field a survey to young consumers on social networks. Because of the way in which people are recruited and incentivized through social network applications, fielding a survey like this can give you faster turnaround.

From a qualitative perspective, think of tapping into open-affinity communities or LinkedIn as a way to do observational research or in-depth interviews with specific groups of people, such as certain types of business executives or enthusiasts.

2. Embracing consumers via social tools

Since consumers don't express themselves through multiple-choice answers in real life, research methods should encourage communication in familiar ways. This means getting more comfortable with exercises that feel similar to activities that people are already doing online. For instance, to gain feedback on a new ad, try a discussion board or a live chat for true reactions. The former can create the familiar feeling of a threaded discussion on a site like YouTube.

Or, to gather more in-depth insights over a longer period of time, introduce a community into the research mix. What makes a community truly social is not only the feedback loop between researchers and members but the member-to-member interactions that drive insights as well. This means the real innovations in social market research occur when respondents' conversations with each other uncover needs that researchers wouldn't even have thought to ask about.

3. Listening by mining the social Web

Customers are already talking online about brands and products, so why not take advantage of this fact and use what they're saying for social market research? In many cases, large brands are already using listening platform technology to sort relevant online conversations. While listening is currently a very early practice among market researchers, we've found that it can apply to different types of research such as tracking consumer sentiment on a large scale or assessing product messaging.

For example, mining social media channels allows market researchers to understand, in the consumer's own words, how well their - or their competitors' - new product or campaign is being received on a real-time basis. This can then inform future campaigns; be used to tweak messaging in the short term; or be a catalyst for further messaging research.

Be realistic

As market researchers, it's our job to understand not only the benefits but also the caveats behind any research technique, and we need to be realistic about the challenges in social market research. Just as with any other method, social market research methods also have their drawbacks. Case in point: Social media data, in general, are not a reflection of all consumer opinions, so samples are rarely representative of the entire target market.

Additionally, for the more qualitative parts of social market research, sifting through hundreds (or even thousands) of open-ended comments is a difficult task that requires time and skill. Expert analysis is needed to boil all of the data into actionable insights with data points and verbatims to back them up. This might result in needing extra headcount and possibly extra funding to work with an agency that can do this work for you. Some challenges, such as the accuracy of sentiment analysis and where social media sits within the organization, will shift over time with new technologies and broadening use of social media across the organization.

Continue to push

Even with the challenges ahead, the groundswell of social technology use among consumers and business organizations will continue to push market researchers to consider how to include these technologies in their work. By getting comfortable with issues such as non-representative samples, devoting resources to understanding social media and even dipping a toe into understanding how to use social applications personally, market researchers will understand the possibilities of social media and create with even more creative trends moving forward.