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Market Research using Facebook

Facebook has a number of great new options to help you get more information when creating new projects. Considering that around 44% of the population of Ireland has a Facebook account you would be stupid to ignore its huge potential.

  • Questions
  • Facebook Groups
  • Insights

FACEBOOK QUESTIONS

Questions are basically polls which anyone on Facebook can vote on. You can ask a question and specify a list of available options. There is also the option to allow people to add their own unique answer. Think about surveys that you ask people to fill out. You email them a Word doc or send them a link to a website page which they have to go to and fill out. On Facebook people are already logged in and on the site when they see your question. They don’t need to go anywhere else, they are using something they are already very familiar with & they can also see if their friends have answered the question. These simple things can really help encourage people to answer your questions.

FACEBOOK GROUPS

Groups are a way of inviting certain people into a forum. They can post messages on the group wall, add their friends to the group, upload images, ask questions, etc. groups can be set as:

  • Public (anyone can join the group)
  • Private (you must be invited by a group admin or you can request to join)
  • Secret (You will not see this group anywhere unless someone has invited you into it)

Since everyone is already on Facebook you have a great starting point. Next you simply need to tell people about the group and hopefully they will want to join. Since you create the group you can add members, invite people, remove and moderate comments and more.

Groups build a feeling of community and is a great way to actual connect with your customers and show them who you are. If you own a company selling off-road mountain bikes you might have a website & Facebook Page which are both all about your company and the bikes you sell. You can also create a Group which is all about mountain biking in general rather than just what you’re selling.

FACEBOOK INSIGHTS

“Facebook Insights provides Facebook Page owners and Facebook Platform developers with metrics around their content.”
as described by Facebook.

Insights is kinda like Google Analytics for your Facebook Pages (not personal profiles). It tracks the activity on your Pages covering comments, likes, views. Since people must be logged into Facebook to interact Insights also give you information such as users country, age group, gender, language and more. This is the difference with regular website tracking. Being able to see when you run a certain type of promotion that this appeals to mainly X age group in X location. You can really being to build up a clear profile of the type of people interested in your Page.

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