Welcome to the Mystery Shopping Learning Center Blog

Social media is taking off and changing the ways companies do business. For example, retailers and restaurants are using social media sites to engage with their customers. Customers are making use of online review sites, such as Yelp, Travelocity, and others to provide their feedback. We’ve also noticed a trend in how social media is used in mystery shopping.

There are many forums and message boards geared toward mystery shopping, but there has been an increase in use of other sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and My Space to promote new mystery shops and post jobs.

More and more mystery shopping providers are using these sites to recruit new shoppers, and it might be a good time to think about learning more about these features and how they work so you can learn of new companies to work with and find more shops to do.

Today’s post will focus on Twitter, and the next post will cover Facebook/MySpace and other similar sites.

Twitter

This site allows brief, 140 character messages to be sent to your followers. Mystery shopping companies use Twitter to post their registration page for new shoppers, talk about current shops they need help with, and more. Mystery shoppers can find out more about mystery shopping companies and meet up with other mystery shoppers to share their experiences.

How do I get involved?

Sign up for a Twitter account if you haven’t done so already. Make sure you use your name and your real location (Anywhere, USA or “The Whole Wide World” won’t be helpful). Once registered, you can find mystery shopping companies or other mystery shoppers to follow. When you follow someone, you will see everything they are talking about and you can join in the conversation.

Use twitter search and the term mystery shopping, mystery shopping company, or mystery shopper and see what comes up. You can click on their name to learn more, and then choose to “follow” that person.

To give you a head start, here are some mystery shopping companies on Twitter. Click on the company names to reach their Twitter page, or login to Twitter and follow them using the names provided in parentheses:

Ann Michaels & Associates (MysteryShops)

Insula Research (InsulaResearch)

Corporate Research (Corpri)

CI Mystery Shopping (CustomerImpact)

Kern Scheduling (KSSInc)

Shoppers Critique (MysteryShoppers)

DSG Associates (dsgshopper)

MarketForce (marketforce)

Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) Note: Their updates are private, and you may need approval before you can follow them.

If you know of other companies, editors, or schedulers on Twitter, feel free to share!

Until next time…happy shopping!