Web Marketers who are responsible for running online ad campaigns, with Google AdWords, for example, could benefit from a new way to find highly differentiated, non-obvious keywords for their campaigns. Semantic Keyword Discovery—A New Category of Tools I’m creating a new category of tools by calling ConsumerBase a Semantic Keyword Discovery tool to differentiate it from the existing category of Keyword Discovery tools. Keyword Discovery can tell you the search phrases people use to find products and services, as well [...]

Our last summer release is now live with two of the most requested features: copying chart images and exporting chart data. This will enable you to quickly create presentations and exporting data for your own analysis.

To give an example of a business-focused netnography done for marketers using our ConsumerBase tool, I’ve posted a recent PowerPoint of a netnography on Listerine. I’ll keep this post short because you can find all the in-depth information in the PowerPoint, but here’s a quick executive overview: • The study is an analysis of consumers’ perception of Listerine. The source data is social media, that is, content on the Internet generated by consumers in Internet forums, blogs, and microblogs. • [...]

I decided to supplement the work we’ve been doing with the Brand Passion Index to highlight ConsumerBase‘s ability to mine social media sources for brand-specific consumer ideas and verbatim. My brand of choice for this particular ConsumerBase adventure? The very recognizable, and apparently all-purpose, household name, Alka Seltzer. Using ConsumerBase to research brands and the chatter about them, I have access to an enormous amount of information, some of it very surprising and unexpected—who’d have guessed that Snickers pair well [...]

Affiliate marketers who want to become a “super affiliate”—one earning $10,000 per month or more in commissions—have to find keywords for their advertising programs that will bring consumers to their site. But there are a lot of merchants and other affiliates already bidding on the obvious keywords. So how do you find unique keywords that will pay off in site visits, clicks on ads and commissions? How Affiliate Marketing Works Affiliate marketing is a form of online marketing that uses [...]

Our first August release is now live with an exciting feature many of you have asked for: new ways to compare insights and brands automatically, to quickly and easily compare and contrast.

I’ve been studying innovation methodologies for years. My favorites include the Lead User Method, Netnography, Open Innovation, and Disruption Theory. While each is unique, one thing they all have in common is a defined procedure for finding or handling need and solution information. • Lead User Method has you find people with such a dire need that they actually develop their own solutions. • Netnography entails looking for people talking online about their needs (granted, Netnography encompasses a lot more [...]

While meditating on the train one day recently, I overheard two guys talking. It was a happy disruption because one guy was expressing the pain that I founded my company to address. He was a business development guy working at a Silicon Valley hardware company. He was saying he liked his job, and got to work on cool new technology. But what he didn’t like was that it was one step removed from the customer, which made it difficult for [...]

It’s almost the end of the summer, and as school buses gear up for their routes, moms, dads and kids are gearing up for school to start again. And for retailers across the country, that can mean only one thing: back-to-school shopping. To find out where consumers are doing their shopping–and who they’re talking about–we used our ConsumerBase tool to surface opinions, emotions and behaviors being expressed in the social media universe.  This month’s Brand Passion Index takes a look [...]

We’re putting together a best practices forum on netnography in collaboration with Rob Kozinets. If you’d like to be notified when it’s up later this summer, leave your email address at http://www.netnography.com. Be sure to tell us what topics you’re interested in discussing! Michael Osofsky Ideas still in the works and the latest thinking on Innovation and Netnography from Michael Osofsky, NetBase Chief Innovation Officer.