It hasn’t died yet, but I feel there is a shift in the marketing world away from traditional market research methods like focus group facilities to non-traditional methods like Twitter.  For those who have not gotten out much lately, Twitter is a micro blogging site that asks the simple question, what are you doing.  Active users have grown over 900 percent over this past year.

With the average number of tweets growing each and every day, it is no wonder that companies are looking for ways they can leverage the “twittisphere”.  In tight economic times, companies must be resourceful, and I feel Twitter can be used as a global focus group facility.
What are the benefits of a Twocus Group over a Traditional Focus Group?

1. No travel, facility and recruitment costs.  All you need is Internet access and a Twitter account.
2. No long discussion guides required.  Forget about the filler questions and get followers discussing the important questions sooner.
3. The number of seats in the back room or use of expensive video conferencing equipment does not restrict attendance by interested parties.  Anyone interested can view the responses in real-time from their own computer.
4. Worldwide access with Twitter’s global list of followers.
5. No fear about participants being influenced by an artificial, sterile setting.  Twitter reaches people in their own environment.  Some may even be on the go using a mobile Twitter app.
6. No more disinterested participants only showing up for the incentive.  Only those who are engaged in the discussion will tweet responses.
7. No longer struggle to get contact information from the facility so you can contact that one great participant in the future.  With Twitter you will know who tweeted what and be able to easily follow up with responders directly.
8. No worries about gaining weight in the backroom on all the candy and food the facility tempts you with.  (Disclaimer – this may not be the case if the food stash at your desk is just as bad).

If these benefits resonate with you, take a risk and conduct a Twocus Group.  Here are 10 easy steps that will help you uncover new ideas you hadn’t even thought of.

1. Create your “screener” identifying who you want to reach.  Search for individuals based on keywords or brand names.  Twollow makes this easy, or use the Advanced Search feature to find tweets based on criteria related to people, places, dates, words.
2. Follow those individuals identified based on your screener criteria so they will hopefully follow you back.
3. Plan for no shows.  Keep in mind that similar to a traditional focus group, not everyone who sees your message will respond and not everyone you follow will follow you back.
4. Create a hashtag such as #trackvia for responders to include with their replies.  This makes it easy to search for all replies.  Do a search on hashtag before posting to make sure it is unique.
5. Determine what question you want to ask your followers.   Keep questions fewer than 100 characters to allow for re-tweets and hashtags.
6. Similar to a traditional focus group, keep in mind there are no wrong answers and once you ask the question it is out there for all to see and is publicly indexed for future views.
7. Update your Twitter account with your question and hashtag.  Encourage re-tweeting.
8. Monitor your responses through setting up search criteria based on #hashtag.  Tweetdeck is great for this.  Also monitor direct message replies.
9. If you want to prevent groupthink, request responders to send replies via a Direct Message (DM).
10. Focus group participants are used to receiving an incentive for their time so consider offering a prize or incentive for best reply.

BONUS: Track your replies in a powerful online database that will make searching and identifying trends easy.  It will also provide a great archive.

How have you used Twitter as a focus group to generate new ideas or concepts?