An interesting Christmas experiment began last week as a survey of tweets and Facebook statuses began to find this year’s most popular Christmas wish. Social media experts have developed a piece of software known as the ‘wish list analyser’, which scans genuine messages to create a picture of what social media users are asking for this Christmas.

On the first day of use the service scanned over 40,000 messages, asking for everything from time with friends and family to a pet leopard. The software has built in spam detectors, so automatically removes blatant advertising and spam messages. Instead it searches for keywords which enable it to place messages into categories; and from there analyse them further to create a comprehensive social snapshot.

The analyser has been created purely for a bit of Christmas fun, and is not miles away from the technology Twitter uses to measure trends, but it does have interesting implications from a business perspective. One of the great things about social media is the level of informal interaction it allows with potential customers, this in turn helps you further understand their mindset and tailor your marketing accordingly.

Developing the idea behind the Christmas wish list analyser further, you end up with a potentially amazing tool for boosting your knowledge of customers’ wants and needs. The information is there, it just needs to be analysed in one place. Whether this will become a widespread tool, taking keyword analysis to a whole new level, remains to be seen, but if top of your Christmas wish list is customer insight, you may want to keep an eye on it!

I’d like to apologise to anyone upset by our current Radio Advert which features sleigh bells and festive overtones.  The fact that we started running it on September 1st (some 116 days before Christmas) has prompted a few people to question what we’re playing at…  “It can’t be Christmas already??”….

Listen to the advert

There is however a serious business message behind the advert -it’s not just a case of us wanting to be the first house in the street with fairy lights round the windows.

The fact is, billions are made by online retailers over the festive period, so anyone wishing to take a slice of that pie needs to plan well in advance….  Experienced online shoppers are already browsing their favourite ecommerce sites, and bookmarking (if not buying) their shopping list of gifts…  Leave it until the last minute before launching your new Christmas shop, and it’s unlikely your virtual tills will be ringing…  Get online now, and there’s still time to do some marketing, grab a few Google adwords, and actually generate some decent turnover… 

So what are you waiting for…  only 83 days left……..