Introducing Twitter Insiders

Today, we’re introducing Twitter Insiders, a one-stop solution for recruitment, design, and collection of live research — and its goal is to make consumer and market research more timely and accessible.

Twitter Insiders research helps take the guesswork out of important business decisions. Efforts that traditionally required long-term planning and costly resources can now be taken on more quickly and efficiently with the support of our Twitter Insiders network. And with a vibrant research pool, brands and agencies can break out of traditional confines of controlled environments and get unparalleled access to real audiences that represent the customers that matter to them.

How it works

Twitter Insiders is a network of more than 12,000 Twitter users that participate in research studies. Aged 16 and up, Twitter Insiders act as an anonymous virtual panel from across the US and UK, inspiring businesses to make more customer-centric decisions. Agencies and their clients can work directly with Twitter Insiders or design studies with the help of CSpace, a team of consultants who specialize in fostering collaboration between companies and their customers.

Tap Twitter Insiders at any time to test creative ideas, gather honest input, and uncover market insights. These real-world consumers enable researchers to observe people’s actual behaviors instead of taking survey responses at face value by using techniques such as online focus groups, video diaries, or eye-tracking glasses. The resulting qualitative, quantitative, and social data give agencies and their clients an inside edge when making business decisions.

Quick-win research projects

Whether you’re putting together the perfect pitch for a new client or you’re optimizing a campaign that’s already in motion, the ad hoc research Twitter Insiders enables is a powerful tool for agencies. When online, Twitter Insiders are always available – so they’re ideal for performing fast, continuous research. Our short-term projects take as little as few days to bring back actionable results, opening opportunities for unplanned research.

Twitter Insiders also help you to test insights from social listening tools and the lab out in the wild. So instead of launching campaigns and waiting for results to come in, you can evaluate customer perceptions while ads are live on Twitter, and fine-tune the message as you go.

Long-term custom research

For more in-depth research, Twitter Insiders and their CSpace consultant counterparts make what was once a very resource-intensive undertaking more accessible for a variety of uses. Consultants design custom studies, recruit from specified user groups, and report data on behalf of agencies and their clients.

Scoped for four to six weeks, these research initiatives are ideal for understanding the behaviors of different groups at various points along their customer journey. Research activities can be tailored for different audience segments and reveal how perceptions change over time and based on exposure.

Long-term studies like these are a particularly powerful tool to leverage when entering new markets. Understanding the competitive landscape and refining your positioning can make the difference between a product that thrives and one that never finds its place in people’s lives.

Ask Insiders to perform a wide range activities

Who are the Twitter Insiders

Twitter Insiders are recruited from Twitter users in the UK and US. With screening from third-party providers, the Twitter Insiders network is a representative sample of Twitter users as a whole and allows researchers to narrow in on audiences from various demographics. Twitter Insiders are 16 and older, have an even spread between genders, and come from a representative distribution of Twitter users’ locations in the US and the UK and socio-economic backgrounds.

Success stories

Since its launch in the UK in May 2015, Twitter’s research network has inspired business decisions that lead to improved results. Formerly known as #Birdsignals, Twitter Insiders’ launch in the US continues to build on the success of previous campaigns.

One example is a campaign that came through agency @CaratUK, which leveraged Twitter Insiders to optimize a @MasterCard campaign during the Rugby World Cup. The team used ad hoc research to refine content and dug deep with a six-week journal study where three different audience segments completed activities that revealed behaviors and perceptions around @MasterCard products.

“The real time nature of Twitter Insiders meant we could test creative ideas on the fly and get analysis to client teams fast enough to allow tactical tweaks to copy, targeting, and scheduling of Twitter posts.” – Andrew Fairclough, Head of Social Media Insight at Carat

Join the Insider club

Twitter Insiders is currently available to select agency and brand partners. Each agency receives a fixed number of small and large-scale research projects per quarter. If you’d like to find out more about becoming a Twitter Insiders partner, contact your account manager today.