When online research communities don’t live up to their promise
We’ve written before about the real power that online research communities can bring to a brand, and also of the way in which you can get insight from any online community. The promise of rich insight is great – real people talking to each other about your brand, market and competitors. They provide a real hub for innovation and co-creation and give you access to real-time insight. But sometimes they just don’t seem to work, they just don’t deliver what you might expect.
At FreshNetworks we have built online communities from scratch, and also worked with organisations who have an incumbent online research community that isn’t living up to its promise. Through this experience we’ve developed the following four tips to help discover what the problem might be:
1. Do you actually have a panel, not a community?
Research panels and online research communities are very different. They work in different ways, deliver different types of research and insight and are useful for different business objectives. The biggest failing that we see with online research communities is that what you really have is a panel of people and not a community. The discussions tend to be between the brand or agency and community member, rather than peer-to-peer in the community. And you find that the majority of your traffic comes when you send an email about an activity, survey or discussion that you want people to respond to.
This can be the most difficult problem to solve. You need to think again about who you want to engage and why and build an engagement strategy alongside your research plan.
2. Do your community members actually want to engage with you?
Wanting to engage with people in an online community is really only half of the story. There are probably lots of things that you want them to do, but do they really want to do them? And if so do they want to do them in your community?
The difference between an online research community and other forms of market research is that you want to build and grow a community of people to work with to help you for insight and research. You can’t call through a list of people until you find those who want to answer your questions. You need to build a community that targets and meets the requirements of the people you want to engage so that they will be there to answer your questions when you have them. If they don’t actually want to engage with you, this can be difficult.
3. Are you incentivising in the right way?
The topic of incentives is one much discussed in market research – should you incentivise people, for what behaviours and with what reward? Get your incentive structure wrong and you will encourage and grow the wrong behaviours. People will only contribute to your online research community to an extent they think appropriate for what they are getting in return.
The signs that your incentivisation structure is wrong includes unusually larger churn-rates. Indeed you might see the higher rates of churn typical of a research panel, rather than the low churn rates we see in online research communities. You’ve moved people from the social context of the community to a market context where they aren’t engaging with you but transacting.
4. Are you part of your community?
The role of the brand and agency is changing with the growth of online research communities (a topic I shall be returning too at the Online Research Methods conference in London June). One major change is that rather than the agency and brand always asking the questions, and the respondent answering, the playing field is levelled somewhat. Online research communities only really work if you play a role in the community as a peer, rather than trying to lead or direct it.
You have questions to ask and activities that you want people to do, but you also need to join in the conversations. Don’t always ask questions, but answer some too. Join the forums, talk about yourself – give a face and a name to the research and the brand. This makes the experience better and fairer for everybody. And also more enjoyable for you. Where this doesn’t happen, where the agency or brand hides behind an ‘Admin’ name, or doesn’t engage in the community, you miss out on a whole range of real, rich benefits.
So, if you see an online research community that you think just isn’t living up to its promise then ask these four question of it. Of course, identifying the problem is less than half the battle. The next step is to fix it.
Some more reading
- The Best Market Researchers to Follow on Twitter (futurelab.net)
- Getting insight from online communities (freshnetworks.com)
- Maximising the insight you get from your online community (socialmediatoday.com)
For social media agency support get in touch or follow us on Twitter.
Jenni Beattie:
Great post. I agree that online research communities can have differing engagement levels and this can be challenging.
In my experience after running online research communities for Kelloggs, Kimberley-Clark, Sara Lee and others the length of the community is often a big predictor of ‘engagement’ levels.
In communities that are based on short durations that are very outcome-driven (with specific questions) the engagement levels can be as limited as the old-bulletin board style research.
In communities that are longer you see a much higher level of engagement as participants get to know each other, suggest topics, upload their own questions and drive the debate – or conversation flow.
I agree that the moderator role is key to getting the community engaged. You need to give over a part of yourself and engage on a personal level.
Once again in communities that are initiated for short durations its hard to get a personal feel to the site. In longer communities moderators are usually more hands off and conversation more organic – which ultimately leads to much richer insights.
Cheers
30 April 2009, 11:11 amJen
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30 April 2009, 3:03 pmAlison Macleod:
Very nice post and totally agree.
I think there’s a great deal to be said for understanding early dynamics in contributing, and managing that process carefully in order to encourage participation. Like you, I also think that moderation is quite a different beast online compared to F2F or telephone. You have to show what kind of moderator you are and what kind of interaction is expected. It’s a little bit like the move from face-to-face to phone – phone can be a tremendous methid in qualititive research but you have to exaggerate yourself as an interviewer in order to get the best out of the other person.
I worry that online communities are built by techies who don’t have a good grasp of qualitative approaches – you can then end up with a Q&A style community or even an unmoderated one which never meets the hopes of those who set it up.
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2 May 2009, 12:18 amMatt Rhodes:
@Jenni -I agree. It is very difficult to build real, long-term engagement in just a few weeks and I think this is why too many agencies resort to building what is, essentially, a panel. With little peer-to-peer discussions or real community activity.
However, even with a short-lived project, our experience is that you can benefit in some way from what is, admittedly, a nebulous sense of community if you nurture and manage it properly. It’s really all about the attitude you take. If you think just in the mind of a researcher – having a list of questions you want to ask and asking them – then you miss out on so many opportunities. If, even for a short community, you think both as a researcher and as a community manager you can start to really reap the benefits.
4 May 2009, 7:34 pmMatt Rhodes:
@Alison – It’s true that moderation (or indeed management) of an online research community is very different to other skills. For us it has to combine the core skills needed by any community manager, with detailed qualitative experience. After all, an online research community is very much about deep qualitative insight.
Agencies that don’t offer this kind of research experience are often cheating their clients out of the benefits they could be getting from working with them. At the same time, of course, research agencies without actual experience in building and managing online communities can also let their clients down and not get the kind of engagement and involvement that should be possible.
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