OCTOBER 21, 2008

Social Media As A Social Barometer

Here at TMG Strategies, we place a lot of value on public opinion research as a tool to help our clients understand how their products and issues are being perceived and understood by the average consumer.  And, as the social media team here at TMG often says, social media provides some of the best market research out there - it’s free, it’s authentic, and it can be accessed by anyone.

One of my favorite sites for free, authentic public opinion research is the Compete blog, which takes a look at traffic metrics across the Internet to answer various questions, like: 1) how is a particular marketing campaign doing?; 2) how do two companies’ marketing strategies compare, in terms of success?; 3) how effective are various online tools at driving sales or traffic?; or even 4) what’s on people’s minds these days?

A recent Compete post addressed question #4, above. Given the news of late, it’s not surprising that people are worried about the economy and are keenly interested in the presidential election.  But, according to Compete’s list of the fastest growing sites for September traffic, last month people were also interested in storms (the second fastest growing site was stormpulse.com and the fourth was FEMA’s home page); Halloween (costume stores held the sixth and seventh places on the list); and tennis (usopen.org was #11).

Maybe it’s just me, but I find this kind of information fascinating. How are we coping with all of the bad news around us? Are we bravely, solemnly trying to understand the crux of the problem, thus propelling the FDIC site to #5 on the list? Or are we escaping into fanciful traditions like Halloween or old standbys like sports? Or is it some combination of both?

I believe that people are in a natural state when they are online, meaning they do pretty much what they want and spend time in the places and communities that truly interest them. The Compete list is just one small piece of a world of online data waiting to be explored and analyzed.