The Research Practice

Research that treats humans as rows will teach you how to hunt. Research that treats them as people will teach you how to belong.

You're going to take notes this week. I know how that sounds. Clipboards. Funnels. "Content pillars harvested from comments." We're not doing that.

You're going to take notes the way you might after a good evening with people you like: what they said, what made you laugh, what made you sad, what you want to remember so you don't talk over them next time.

That's research. The minute you add a column called "likely to buy", you've changed jobs. You've become a hunter in a cardigan.

I want you a little bored of hunting by the end of this lesson. Not ashamed. Bored. Hunting is actually quite a dull way to use a mind. Hanging out is richer. You'll come away with language, jokes, sore spots, and a sense of when to shut up. That's more commercially useful than a sheet of maybe-buyers, and it has the advantage of leaving you able to look people in the eye.

If you've done "market research" in old affiliate programmes, this will feel underpowered. Good. Power was the problem. We're swapping power for literacy.

What you are actually looking for

Not usernames to pipeline. Language. Questions. Tiredness. Joy. Timing. Taboos. Humour.

Language. Do they say "cards" or "my deck" or "I pulled". Do they say "mental health" or "my head is a washing machine". Do they swear. Do they talk in lower case. When you speak their language, they relax. When you speak guru, they put the shutters up.

Questions. The ones they ask each other, not the ones a coach would put on a webinar slide. "Is it normal to cry at the Three of Swords when nothing has happened." "Can I use a journal if my handwriting looks like a spider." Those questions are future posts, future stories, future conversations — and they're also just questions. Don't instantly content-farm someone's vulnerability.

What they are tired of. You met this in 2.3. In research, write it down until you can say it without looking. Tired of being sold sisterhood. Tired of perfect moons. Tired of being told to rest by someone posting at midnight.

What they celebrate. Tiny wins. A child sleeping. A shift ending. A card that finally made sense. If you only study pain, you'll only ever sound like a medic.

What they mock. Mockery is a boundary. If they mock "hey hun", don't hey-hun them. If they mock fluff, don't fluff. If they mock people who never shut up about their affiliate life, don't make your affiliate life the plot.

How to take notes without becoming a creep

Use the research-log. Three rooms. For each room, four headings: laugh / worry / tired of / ask.

Write phrases, not identities. If a story is very specific, blur it. You're learning a dialect, not building a dossier.

Don't screenshot people to mock them later. Don't keep a list of "hot leads". Don't slide into DMs with "I saw your comment about your divorce and I have a journal that might help" unless you want to be a cautionary tale.

If you catch yourself thinking "she looks like she would buy", write that thought down as a warning, not as a task. Then go back to the comment and read it again as if she were your friend.

A week of research that feels like hanging out

You're not writing a dissertation. You're becoming fluent.

Day one: choose the three rooms if you haven't. Write why each one might be yours, in one sentence of honesty. "They sound like my group chat." "They're night people." "They hate fluff and so do I."

Day two to five: fifteen minutes a day, no more, in those rooms. Notes after, not during, if during makes you robotic. During is allowed if you can still laugh.

Day six: read your notes out loud. Circle repeating language. That language is how you'll write this month.

Day seven: one comment in each room that uses nothing from your shop and everything from what you heard.

This is the Week 2 challenge, slowed down so you don't turn it into a raid.

What to do with what you find

You'll want to turn it all into content immediately. Slow down.

First use: better comments. You'll know what not to say.

Second use: better posts, later, when you're talking to people rather than into a void. "I don't know what to post" starts to dissolve when you have a page of other people's actual questions. You still write as yourself. You don't paste their pain into a carousel.

Third use: better boundaries. If a room runs on panic and buying, you now have evidence. Leave.

Fourth use, much later: knowing which product stories even belong. A crystal kit walks into a conversation about 4am fear differently than it walks into a conversation about aesthetic shelves. You can't know that from an avatar. You know it from hanging out.

Research is complete when you could sit down at their kitchen table and not talk like a catalogue. It isn't complete when you have enough names to message. Next we look at the follow list itself, and the quiet difference between genuine and transactional.