Archive | February, 2011

TOP 10 – Tips for having a presence on social media sites

23 Feb

Social media and its many platforms provide us with the opportunity to talk publicly, voicing our opinion and discussing our passions whilst adding interesting topics of conversation to our digital lives.

Unless you have been hiding in a cave you will have heard of a micro blogging and social networking service known as Twitter. Created in 2006, Twitter has grown in popularity worldwide and is estimated to have 190 million users, increasing by 2 million per week, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day (Quantcast).

Facebook crossed the 500 million active user mark in July 2010 and is known to dominate the world of social media by a huge margin. To put this into perspective, if Facebook was a Country it would be the world’s 3rd largest in terms of population.

Also, did you know?

  • 200 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile phones;
  • More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, blog posts) are shared on Facebook daily;
  • People spend over 11.67 million man-hours per month on Facebook; and
  • Since social plugins launched in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day.

So many of us are now regular users of social media sites with 77% of all internet users reading blogs (Bibendum Times). Whether this usage is for personnel or business interest, the value of involving yourself within the realm of social media and online communities is becoming more and more obvious. With this in mind we have prepared some handy tips for any business considering having a presence on social media sites:

1)     Be prepared – Think long and hard before entering the world of social media. Have a clear action plan.   What do you want to achieve? How will the business benefit?

2)     Relevance – There needs to be a valid reason for having a social media site, don’t just do it because everyone else is!

3)     Consistent Branding – Think about your social media site and how it fits in with your businesses brand / strategy.  

Continue reading →

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TOP 10 – Insights from Ci Research’s Comprehensive Spending Review Tracker

16 Feb

The Coalition Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) was released on the 20th October 2010. In order to understand more about how the public has reacted to these proposals, and capture their views on wider economic and political issues, Ci Research have been undertaking a tracker survey to monitor public perceptions through a mixture of street, online and telephone interviews.

This survey uses the conjoint technique ‘Trade-Off’ to gauge the relative strength of support or opposition to a range of proposed spending reforms.[1] The survey has now been conducted twice, once in November 2010 shortly after the CSR was announced and more recently in January 2011. In both waves of the survey over 200 interviews were completed over five days.

This week’s ‘top ten’ contains the key findings from the 2011 survey and highlights how opinion has changed between the two waves of the tracker:

  1. Since 2010 interest levels in UK politics and the UK economy have declined from 68% of respondents describing themselves as ‘having more than a passing interest’ in politics in November 2010 to 57% in January 2011. Interest in the economy also showed similar levels of decline.
  2. Of those who claimed to have ‘little or no interest’ in November 2010, their views have remained largely unchanged. The media attention on spending reforms has had little or no effect on this sub-group with only 10% becoming more interested as a result of the spending review. The largest growth in interest was amongst those who were already interested.
  3. Overall public perception of the CSR had not changed since 2010 with just over a fifth (21%) of respondents feeling positive and 39% holding mixed views (consistent with 2010). There were notable demographic differences, with Conservative voters significantly more positive. Continue reading →

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TOP 10 – Questionnaire design tips

9 Feb

This week’s top ten is a blog post from Ci Research Managing Director, Colin Auton, on the “art” of good questionnaire design.

When working as the company’s head of market research or insight, there is nothing more frustrating than stumbling upon someone who has decided to conduct their own survey without consulting you first. More often than not, you are handed a fairly basic questionnaire and are left thinking “If only I knew you were doing this. I could have designed this survey so you could have got so much more from it”.

Perhaps it is not surprising that people take it upon themselves to dive in and design their own questionnaires. On the surface it seems an easy thing to do. On the other hand would colleagues start to take on other marketing tasks themselves, such as designing creative materials or doing their own PR? Typically not!

 In all honesty it is only likely that this trend to “do-it-yourself” will continue, particularly with the emergence of the likes of Survey Monkey. With this in mind we would simply like to highlight to non-researchers that there is an art to designing a good questionnaire, and some useful rules to follow. Our top 10 tips are listed below:

 1. Think about your introduction

Positioning the survey upfront is important. Try to make the respondent feel that their views are important and look to highlight what the benefit is to them in taking part. Also be open and honest in advising on how much of their time will be required, and more specifically how their feedback might be used. True market research can’t be used to generate sales leads, and where individual views are to be fed back to the client you should get permission to do this and explain how this will be used.

 2. Screen out anyone that might be inappropriate

As a general rule of thumb you would always look to exclude anyone that works in marketing, advertising or market research. The theory is that they will have insight into why certain questions are being asked, and may therefore bias the results. For similar reasons you should look to screen out anyone who works in your sector.

 3. Think about the flow

The best questionnaires flow in a logical order for the respondent and thus make for a more survey friendly experience. For example, it is deemed good practice to order questions for satisfaction surveys in line with the order that the customer will have experienced the service.

Continue reading →

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TOP 10 – Qualities required to be a good researcher

2 Feb

Perfectly formed

There is a researcher within all of us just waiting to be let loose…

Being ‘good’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary can be aligned with a multitude of properties of which high quality, competent and skilful are amongst those listed to name a few.  If these qualities have been cited as key requirements in order to fulfil this objective, then surely success can be said to be heavily weighted on the possession of such desirable qualities?

Some may argue that surely this discussion should encompass all ‘good’ values and skills for researching, however we at Ci Research believe that the qualities required to be an experienced researcher can be broken down into more specific core competencies. Although an opinionated subject we would like to share with you the reasons behind our own interpretations of the types of expertise required to be a ‘perfectly formed’ and ‘quality focused’ researcher.

So to begin and in no particular order…

1. An analytical mind

“As a market researcher you are constantly analysing a variety of factors. Why does the client ultimately want to do this research? What is the appropriate methodology? When should this research take place? What are the appropriate questions to ask and how? Why did the respondent say that? What are the findings telling us? Why are they telling us that? How do I best communicate the findings? etc. etc. etc. On a daily basis researchers must be able to take a step back and analyse the situation presented to them. The obvious answer is not necessarily the right one” (Gareth Hodgson)

“You have to be able to see the bigger picture as well as the detail. People often find it easier to do one or the other- it is a skilled researcher that can do both simultaneously” (Richard Walker)

“Interpreting information and data- the ability to not just present the findings of research but to look for all the causal factors behind them” (Ian Brown)

2. A people person

“For clients – the buyers of research would rather work with professional AND friendly consultants. For respondents – to get the best out of interview / focus group participants” (Richard Walker)

Continue reading →

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