Social Media: Harnessing the Power of the Qualitative

Since the rise of social media, companies have struggled with how to analyze usage data to gain real insights about their customers and leverage it in the best way possible. It’s natural for us to focus on measuring the quantitative metrics such as click-through rates and purchase conversion rates. These are hard numbers which can be used to justify what’s working and what’s not. But how can we tell what’s really driving the behavior of our customers? It’s clear that studying the quantitative data alone will not get us as far as incorporating qualitative means will, especially for certain brands and companies whose customers are not driven to interact as much in traditional ways.

When I think about the persona my team created for Nordstrom, Kirsten, I find that I share lot of the same attitudes and behaviors with her. She’s plugged in to every major type of social media, but she is not the “over-sharer” type who is constantly posting, tweeting, and commenting about every aspect of her daily life. She would rarely click on a Facebook ad or directly mention a brand on Twitter, so it may seem difficult for Nordstrom to glean any real insight about this customer from traditional social media. While updating and monitoring activity on Nordstrom’s Facebook page is important, it may be more fruitful for Nordstrom to interact and monitor customers on various blogs, and vision-board styled social photo sharing websites like Polyvore.com and Pinterest.com. The great thing about these two sites is the visual nature of the content. Pinterest, in particular, allows users to create various boards based on interests- for example, recipe, home décor, and craft ideas- and “pin” links to web content using a picture. No more emailing yourself links and organizing them on your own, likely never to revisit them again.

Like many other department stores, Nordstrom publishes a “look book” on their e-commerce website homepage to showcase new seasonal styles. However, this likely won’t have the same effect as seeing a pin of a Nordstrom look from one of my friends on Pinterest and repinning it to my “Spring 2012 Style Inspiration” board. I’m more likely to be drawn to looks that I see on my Pinterest feed from people I follow, assuming that my style aesthetic is similar to theirs, versus what Nordstrom stylists have picked to showcase, which is not custom to my taste. Our persona, Kirsten, is definitely influenced more by her friends and the styles trends in her locale than by a stylist whom she does not have a relationship with. Something like Pinterest makes it easy for Kirsten to see what her friends are pinning and discover new styles that match her taste. From Pinterest, she can easily click on links to that merchandise on Nordstrom.com as well as other retail sites to create an entire look.

Tech Crunch had an interesting post on five ways brands can leverage Pinterest now. The suggestion that stuck out to me most was to “Optimize Your Web Properties to Draw People to Your Pinterest Content.” As the tips suggests, this can be an effective strategy to segment your customers. People usually aren’t so narrowly focused on something such as a brand enough to follow them on Pinterest. Rather, we think of our lives in terms of activities- cooking, dressing, exercising, entertaining. The post mentions Lowe’s as a great example of a company that has optimized the way its Pinterest content is organized. If we take a closer look at Lowe’s Pinterest boards, we see theme boards (Craft Ideas, Unique Pet Projects), seasonal boards (Valentine’s Day, Christmas Tree Style), and boards tied specifically to Lowe’s merchandise (Bathroom Inspiration, For the Home). Some pins are linked directly to Lowes.com or Lowe’s affiliate websites such as lowescreativeideas.com, but some are linked to general home improvement blogs, decorator blogs, do-it-yourself blogs. Lowe’s could start to segment its customers by what types of pins on their feed are being repinned, and what types pins those users are pinning on their boards from other feeds. We could start to dissect who are the serious do-it-yourself types and who are interested in more out-of-the-box type of products, and target our marketing efforts from there.

Product reviews are also another highly qualitative measure that Kirsten may use to influence her purchase decisions. She values quality and wants to make sure she’s getting a good product, and she doesn’t have time to waste searching for the best. Nordstrom.com currently does a great job of this, allowing customers to not only review products, but also giving them a profile including location, age range, and favorite Nordstrom department. Readers of those reviews not only get an idea about the product, but also who the person reviewing the product is.