Knowledge Networks Adds Custom Social Media Analytics to Identify Effects on Societal Issues and Brands

Knowledge Networks is expanding its social media offerings to include custom analytics, giving marketers and researchers comprehensive information about social media’s effects on product categories and how social media conversations reveal people’s feelings about specific products or topics.

By enabling an increasingly customized focus in studies of social media dialogue, Knowledge Networks is helping researchers and marketers alike take social media to a new level of relevance, and define its return on investment.

In 2010, Knowledge Networks partnered with MediaPost Communications to launch the syndicated component of The Faces of Social Media; this ongoing research has defined five major social media user segments and revealed their influence on 39 product categories.

The syndicated Faces research -- utilizing KN’s probability-based KnowledgePanel -- has shown that

• Four-in-five 13-80 year olds use social media; daily users are now a fifth of the U.S. population;
• Almost one-fifth of social media users indicate that it has an influence on their purchase decisions;
• 13 percent of those using social media at least weekly discover new brands or products through it – about 10 million 18-to-80 year olds; and
• Social media’s influence on product decisions varies widely by category – Influence Score range of 193 to 46.

To add custom analytics to its Faces of Social Media product suite, Knowledge Networks has engaged Collective Intellect, whose proprietary semantic engine is able to process tens of millions conversations daily from more than 100 million authors. In the past 12 months, CI has collected billions of social media records from public sources such as blogs, message boards, Facebook, and Twitter; these records are the basis of KN’s analyses.

“Broadening our social media capabilities is another sign of KN’s commitment to giving clients the most current, complete and precise information they need for key decisions,” said Simon Kooyman, CEO of Knowledge Networks. “Providing targeted and actionable insights for specific issues or research subjects is a core element of the approach that has given us exceptional growth and very high client satisfaction. We are pulling social media and other data streams out of their usual silos and giving clients a perspective on the complete picture of societal issues and brands.”

“Collective Intellect is excited to be collaborating with Knowledge Networks to help integrate social media as a complement to their overall research approach,” said Don Springer, CEO of Collective Intellect. “We look forward to broadly supporting Knowledge Networks as they help their clients gain social intelligence from consumers’ natural discussions of lifestyles, categories, products and services. When combined with traditional methodologies, even broader insights are obtained."

With the new custom analytics capabilities, KN can help clients

• identify market trends that lead to new marketing and product tactics;
• determine which social media marketing activities and messages have the greatest ROI potential;
• diagnose how brands are performing on the social media landscape;
• illuminate new product acceptance and reception as input to course corrections; and
• evaluate whether key advertising messages are being reflected in social media conversations – a marker of campaign progress.