Bringing Qualitative Research Expertise To Forrester’s Market Insights Team

As the newest addition to the Market Insights team, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lindsey Colella, and I recently joined Forrester as a Senior Community Manager.

It is a pleasure to “meet” all of you, and I look forward to many future interactions and discussions regarding market research. My background is in qualitative research and, in particular, cultivating insights through online community management. I take great pleasure in showing clients the value of qualitative and online community research and bringing them to a new level in understanding consumer behavior.

As some of you may know, Forrester runs its own online research community for two purposes — to conduct proprietary research as well as to run custom client research projects, both of which I manage. Our proprietary research is a monthly document called Community Speaks that discusses trends in consumer behavior. This product provides a unique offering because I work closely with expert analysts who provide additional insight around the findings.

As an example, I published a document last month covering how brands should engage consumers via social networking sites. A key finding from this report is that for a brand, earning a “like” is in fact the easy part but keeping that “like” is even harder. The key to maintaining a “like” from consumers is to provide information and promotional offers that relate to their interests. As one of our community members shares:

“I have unliked a lot of brands lately. There are just too many on Facebook to like. I try to limit liking brands that I actually use and interact with often and would benefit from learning more about that brand.”

Senior Analyst Melissa Parrish elaborates on this point in the document:

“Many brands are still in the acquisition mindset when it comes to social media. They ask, how do I get fans and how many do I need? What the brand should be asking is how they plan on engaging those fans once they’ve acquired them.”

In addition to our Community Speaks documents, I develop, manage, and deliver custom online research projects for a multitude of clients. The projects range from simple projects such as understanding consumer behavior, to brand perceptions, to in-depth ethnography studies and shopping projects — I do it all! I look forward to implementing my expertise in online community management in all areas — from best practices to writing effective qualitative research to my ultimate passion: wading through a sea of data to create a clear and impactful story, complete with eye-catching infographics.