FreshNetworks Blog

Yesterday we wrote about how to maximise the insight gained from profiling data in online communities. For the second in our series on how to get insight from online communities, we’re looking at how to make the most of the core of most online communities – discussions and forums.

Most communities have some form of discussion area. This may be in a traditional forum, or may be focused on media, features or other pieces of content. But the basic concept of allowing community members to discuss, debate and share ideas is a critical part of an online community. These are the spaces in which people will probably spend the most time in any online community they join and are the parts that get most involvement early on. It’s easy to see how and where to contribute and  existing discussions encourage people to add their point of view.

Whilst it’s great to allow discussions to grow and develop depending on the interests of the community members, it’s important not to overlook the power of this simple tool for insight. Many brands and organisations enjoy being able to watch how people discuss things. What their opinions are and how they express them. What language they use and what they choose to discuss. How they interact with other members and how they discuss things with each other. Forums and discussions can offer a vibrant source of insight and with a little bit of focus can be even more valuable.

To gain maximum insight from discussions and forums it is best to build them as part of a larger research process and series of activities, something that an online research community is ideal for. However, any online community can make the most of its forums and discussions from an insight perspective. It’s about how you frame and focus the discussions that go on and the four points below will help maximise the insight benefits you get:

1. Keep your discussions focused at first and build them round issues that are of specific interest to your brand or organisation. Community members find it easier to join conversations if it is obvious where they can add their opinions and so focusing on the issues of most interest to you will help them take part and help you gain insights where they are needed most.
2. Provide a space for people to discuss any other issues, and mark it specifically as such (one of our communities has a ‘Juice Bar’ specifically for this). We don’t want to discourage people who want to participate and can gain a lot from knowing what people what to discuss organically. Sometimes the best insights come in areas you couldn’t predict.
3. Make sure the brand or organisation responds to people in the forum. The best insights often come when you iterate ideas with community members. They suggest something and you tell them what your reaction is. They then respond, and it is this response which starts to yield real depth of insight you wouldn’t have got otherwise.
4. Think of ways you can use discussions for innovation or co-creation. Thinking of a new product? Start a discussion about your ideas and see what the reaction is.

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Some more reading

• Five ways to use an online research community in 2009
• Why Facebook really can’t be your online research community
• Business media: trends for 2009
• Ted Mininni: Is Some of Nike’s Current Success Due to Its ‘Running’ Social Network?
• Blogging 101

There are many ways to get insight from online communities. Some communities are built specifically for this reason – online research communities, but all online communities offer great ways for you to gain insight into your product, brand or market, into issues and opinions, and into the people who form the community. Over the next two weeks, we’re going to be presenting ten different ways in which you can gain some basic insights from any online community, as part of our series: Insight from Online Communities.

A first, and often overlooked, area of insight is in the profiling information you gather when people join your online community. Profiles play a number of roles. They help other community members to find each other, they emphasise the public face of the community, they help those managing the community to check the identify of members (if this is needed) and they offer the community owners and managers a way to find out more about their members.

When thinking about how you design and build your online community, it is important to pay particular attention to the profiling information you capture. You need to make the most of this opportunity, but not ask so much that you will dissuade potential members. And you need to decide which of this information will be public and which is just between you and the community member.

There is considerable insight you can gather from profiling information from any community, be one with a few hundred or many thousand members. You can learn more about who your customers are, or who is interested in the subject and focus of your community. You can gather demographic information to help with segmentation, locate where people are geographically and detailed information about their use of products or their opinions about issues. But perhaps the most information can come from allowing people to tell you a little bit about them. Offering a free hand where they can write about themselves. If you then code and analyse this data you can build a valuable and rich data set which lets you understand much more about your community members.

But perhaps the most valuable role profiling data can play is to let you understand and analyse all future contributions to the online community. If you can gather and code information in profiles then you start to build up a picture of individual members and the community as a whole. This will let you analyse and understand better future contributions and conversations. Let you get much more value and insight from your online community.

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Some more reading

• Body of Work: Community and Social Network Research
• Getting insight from online communities
• Business media: trends for 2009

People build and join online communities for many different reasons. They may want to create and use the most comprehensive hotel review site in the world. They may want to feedback to a brand about their product. Or they may want to help other people get the most out of their mobile phone. The common thread that goes through online communities is that they are issue-, goal- or topic-focused.

Within this environment conversations and discussions flourish. People are there because they share a common interest and they want to discuss this. Some of the communities that we build and manage at FreshNetworks are online research communities. These are communities that have been specifically built as a tool for consumer or market research. They are a great tool for understanding both what people think and why they think it, allowing you to explore the social context in which decisions are made and give you an instant and enthusiastic research resource.

However, even online communities that are not specifically built for research can be a valuable source of insight. Alongside the planned research and activities you get from an online research community, any online community is a fantastically rich source of organic insight. Organisations and brands that run online communities are able to get a range of benefits, whether or not they specifically intended the community to be a source of insight, including:

• understand how customers talk about you, your market and your competitors
• see what issues are currently of most interest to them
• get reviews and feedback on your product or service, and those of your competitors
• learn the language that customers use
• know the questions and concerns that your customer base have
• find out about new competitors, new ideas and new products

All of this, and more, just from having a successful and well managed online community.

We at FreshNetworks think that there are huge benefits people can be getting from their online communities and hope that people are doing so. With this aim in mind over the next few weeks, we’re going to be sharing our thoughts and  experiences of getting insight from online communities, specifically those that were not built in the first place as a research and insight tool.

In our experience, good online communities can have a great benefit to brands. We’re going to help you make the most of them.

Read our series on Insight from Online Communities

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Do we tell the truth in social networks? Does it matter?
• Paying people can be a bad way to motivate them
• Why online communities benefit from our desire to be heard
• How to build an online research community: a podcast