Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Discover your true competitors, uncover new uses for your products, enhance your traditional research methods, and more.

 

Over the last few years, social media research has evolved from speculation to practice. But many people still approach social media research without goals in mind. This ultimately leads to failure.
To avoid that problem, here are 12 important opportunities and goals social media research offers...

 

[Some really good suggestions on how social media research can be used ~ Jeff]

When it comes to getting general news and information, consumers worldwide put as much trust in search engines as they do in traditional media — and more in both than they do in social media.

But, the numbers don’t portray any single source as highly trusted, which suggests that consumers are at least trying to vet the accuracy and trustworthiness of what they find in today’s information-saturated world.

The data comes from the recently released 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer, the 13th annual global survey that uses data from “informed publics” — college-educated individuals in upper income brackets that follow public policy issues and are active media users....

Researchers are creating software that analyzes 22 years of New York Times archives, Wikipedia and about 90 other web resources to predict future disease outbreaks, riots and deaths — and hopefully prevent them.

 

Researchers at Microsoft and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are creating software that analyzes 22 years of New York Times archives, Wikipedia and about 90 other web resources to predict future disease outbreaks, riots and deaths — and hopefully prevent them.

The new research is the latest in a number of similar initiatives that seek to mine web data to predict all kinds of events. Recorded Future, for instance, analyzes news, blogs and social media to “help identify predictive signals” for a variety of industries, including financial services and defense. Researchers are also using Twitter and Google to track flu outbreaks....