With 3.96 billion people using social media today, sampling on social channels is the next research frontier

According to Hootsuite’s latest Digital Statshot Report, more than half of the world’s population is now on social media. Not ever in human history have we had such vast access to information, people, news and interconnectivity. The implications of this are numerous in terms of human communication, how people interact with brands and businesses worldwide and how companies extract consumers’ insights.

When I started building Potloc in 2014, I recognized the power social media had to gather people’s thoughts about what was going on in their immediate vicinity. We helped local businesses identify what offering, location and combination of customer experiences would appeal to their trade area. It didn’t take us long to realize we were sitting on a real gold mine of insights. The samples we were getting through social channels were on point, with relevant respondents answering our surveys with no other incentive than their desire to be part of the conversation. Through testing and trying different approaches, we soon discovered that we could leverage the targeting capabilities social platforms offer to reach any person with a social account, anywhere in the world. This realization allowed us to scale our operation and offer our services anywhere you could find someone “thumbing-up” through their social feed. This approach might seem obvious but the reality is that sampling in social media as a methodology has been largely overlooked as a great way to reach niche audiences and fresh respondents on a global scale.

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