Much has been said about utilizing social media for market research, such as mining tweets for customer input but companies can use the concept of a social network to conduct market research more actively, with market research online communities (MROCs). Sometimes referred to as "focus groups on steroids," MROCs consist of a large group of people recruited to a private online platform to participate in research activities over time. Because MROCs are on-going, there's no need to start recruiting research participants when you need feedback on a particular question. Answers can be found in days rather than weeks.
MROCs are typically comprised of a few hundred people and require an on-going commitment, as participants need to be kept engaged. This is typically done with a variety of online activities, such as online discussions, photo diaries, blogs, contests and surveys.
Some examples of effective applications for MROCs include co-innovation (involving customers in the product development process), longitudinal input (obtaining information over the whole course of the decision-making process or input about product use over time), and even identifying trends.