Understanding the Social Media Landscape

How and in what way is social media important for the market?

Knowing the importance of social media in terms of consumer impact can help contextualise and position findings. For some markets, where traditional media is censored, social media can be a vital source of ‘real’ consumer intelligence

Which social media platforms are critical? What role do they play in the market?

Another element of the landscape is understanding the role and importance of different social media platforms for each market. Not every platform is used to the same extent or in the same way in each market. In addition, some markets have unique platforms, including China, Japan and Korea. For these markets, avoid the lure of ‘false cognates’. For example, Weibo might look and act like Twitter in many ways but there are also critical differences between the two platforms.

Don’t forget message boards!

All markets will have Reddit style message boards or online forums. While not very sexy compared to more ‘modern’ forms of social media, these are often essential to find the most engaged and tuned-in consumers with relevant, in-depth commentary, especially for high involvement ones, such as auto, beauty, parenting and fashion. 

Choosing a Social Listening Tool

What sources are covered? To what extent are they covered?

Almost every social listening tool will claim global coverage. They are not necessarily lying, but it’s important to understand that there is a difference between ‘coverage’ and ‘in depth’ quality coverage. Once you have identified which social media platforms you need for your target market, dig deep to understand how well they cover each platform, especially local platforms like message boards or ‘cognate’ platforms. In an ideal world, you may need to have more than one tool and/or a mix & match of local and global tools. 

Does the platform handle ‘hard’ languages?

Asian languages like Thai, Korean, Japanese and Chinese can be a challenge. Do some side-by-side testing and probe the tools’ support teams on this question; make sure the person who is answering your question is a native speaker of that language or at least can speak to the nuances of processing of the target language. 

Localising Queries & Analysis

Are you using the right key terms?

Translation is not localisation. Localising queries means you are including unique terms or concepts in the market. For example, if you don’t include “Little Brown Bottle” as a term for Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair in China, you will miss out on a significant amount of content for analysis. The need for localisation also applies to analysis. As we often say here at Convosphere: Analysts should be able to win a trivia contest in the target market with knowledge of popular culture, slang and simply the ‘way things are done’ in that market. For both query building and analysis, the analysts need to have the right mix of social media, local culture and category knowledge.