Audience research
Five neutral prompts for social media training interviews, starting with the last real task
Use five neutral, evidence-led prompts for social media training interviews, with a published method, consent boundary and inference limits.
What to take away
- Open every interview with the last real social media task the participant completed.
- Probe the decision, the evidence and the barrier before you ask about training.
- Keep research consent and marketing permission in separate records.
- Recruit against a written population and log every refusal.
- Code each answer to a predefined theme and report contradictions.
Run consent and permission as two separate records
GOV.UK informed-consent guidance lists what a participant must understand first: purpose, data use, recording and the withdrawal route.
Agreeing to be interviewed does not authorise a testimonial or a promotional follow-up. The ICO's guidance on direct marketing using electronic mail requires a separate assessment before you send email, text or direct-message marketing. Ask separately, or not at all.
The five prompts, in the order you ask them
Each prompt asks about an event that happened, not an opinion on a course nobody has taken yet.
- "Tell me about the last social media task you had to complete." Ask what happened, when, who else was involved and what the participant produced. Skills England's multi-channel marketer standard lists recognised duties such as creating, publishing and monitoring content. That shows what a role can hold, not what this person did.
- "Which decision depended on that work?" Find the person who accepted, rejected or used the output. This separates busy activity from a capability that changes someone else's work.
- "What evidence and access did you need?" Ask about approval records, account roles and emergency recovery; the NCSC guidance on protecting what you publish covers authorised access and recovery. Never request credentials or confidential content.
- "What made the task or the learning route hard to use?" Let time, language, device, confidence and access barriers surface in the participant's own words. Do not collect sensitive detail the decision does not need.
- "How was the last relevant training decision made?" Ask who raised the need, compared options, approved money and checked completion. Only the interview supplies that case evidence.
Run the same five prompts against each role card in your buyer persona set, so a manager and a finance approver are never blended into one voice.
How many interviews and where to recruit them
Treat five to eight usable sessions per distinct role as an indicative range. Stop when two consecutive sessions in the same role add no new theme. These figures describe saturation in your sample, not how common the problem is across England.
Recruit against a written frame: sector, size band, role and region. Note the access needs recorded at invitation, because a weekday-morning session excludes shift workers and sole traders. Write the frame before you send a single invitation.
| Recruitment route | What it tends to miss |
|---|---|
| Existing course enquiry list | People who never considered training |
| LinkedIn outreach to named job titles | Employers with no dedicated social role |
| Chamber of Commerce or FSB member list | Micro-businesses outside membership |
| College or apprenticeship partner | Employers who train without a standard |
| CIM or CIPR branch event | Practitioners outside professional bodies |
One route will skew the frame. The guide to researching training audiences without merging different groups shows how to keep several frames apart before you combine anything.
Example: coding one answer against a theme
Prompt: "Which decision depended on that work?" Answer: "Our regional manager signs off the campaign calendar, but she only sees it after the agency has posted."
The participant names a decider outside the content team and puts sign-off after publication. Code it as approval authority sits outside the content team, with timing noted.
One case suggests a briefing gap before posting. It does not prove a pattern, so hold the claim until a second session repeats it. Two coders can tag the same three transcripts independently, then compare tags and settle disagreements with a written rule.
Predefine the theme list from your five prompts, so a code is not invented to fit an interesting aside. Record the prompt number beside every code, so each theme traces back to the question that produced it. Keep raw quotes beside the codes in one file, and anonymise it before a second reader sees it.
When you later test whether training moved that sign-off step earlier, the four ways to evaluate training against one workplace outcome give you a before-and-after structure.
Reporting contradictory cases
Report how many cases fit a theme and how many contradict it. The ONS guide to uncertainty and how we measure it lists non-response and inaccurate answers as non-sampling errors, which apply to interview work too.
A contradiction often marks a different role or a different employer size. Name the contrasting case and say what further evidence would settle it.
Common questions
How many interviews do I need?
Treat five to eight usable sessions per distinct role as an indicative range. Stop when two consecutive sessions add no new theme.
How do I keep research consent separate from marketing permission?
Ask for research consent first, in its own record. Agreeing to be interviewed never authorises a promotional email, which the ICO treats as direct marketing.
What should I do with an answer that contradicts the others?
Keep it and report it beside the dominant theme. Note which role or employer produced it.
Which UK sources back these prompts?
GOV.UK informed-consent guidance, Skills England's multi-channel marketer standard, the NCSC social media publishing guidance, the ICO electronic-mail marketing guidance and the ONS uncertainty guide.
