Ray Poynter, Director of Vision Critical University, recently published a very thoughtful piece over at greenbook.org entitled "Why has social media analytics met with limited success in market research".

Social media use in marketing research is an evolving topic, and one that deserves our continued attention and exploration. In this article, Ray does a nice job of highlighting many of the challenges associated with social listening including attribution issues, the lack of comparability over time, and the poor quality associated with automated sentiment analysis.

For years I've been asked my opinion about the use of social media as a research technique and I've watched the space closely. I believe it provides the most use for PR, whose mission is more about listening than measurement.

Where I believe social media holds the most value for marketing research is in understanding context prior to a structured qualitative or quantitative study, and as an 'add-on' to traditional studies, adding color and texture to findings.