FreshNetworks Blog

Time for a prediction: layered communications – a mixing of text, speech and video – will become a key issue for online communities in 2010 and beyond.

Two things this week got me thinking about the place for layered communications in online communities and social networks.

1. Seth Godin’s post: Reinventing the Conference Call in which he suggested“[voice] conference calls should be accompanied by an online chat room”
2. A podcast from SXSW: Strong Gaming Communities, text or speech.

Both of these look at the benefits of mixing a number of forms of communication. The mixing can be synchronous (i.e. at the same time) or asynchronous (one after the other). Either way, it highlights an interesting topic - how might people choose to communicate on social networks and online communities as the options for layered communications increase. And what additional benefits will it bring users and the owners of the networks?

Examples of layered communications

Layered commnications are a common phenomenon, here are a few examples:

1. In Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, like World of Warcraft, players often use voice and text to co-ordinate battles. The podcast above will give you a better apreciation for this if you’ve never taken part in an MMO.
2. TV News segments often mix video and the spoken word with text to reinforce points, as do TV adverts. That’s traditional media and arguably it’s simply part of the video, but I think text within a video alongside speech is really an example of layered comms, because your brain is interpreting two forms of communication at once.
3. Whether you use Webex or YuuGuu (my favourite online meeting app) you’ve probably already sat through an online conference call where you watch a slide show whilst listening to a presenter and seeing them read and respond to questions posed using instant messaging and chat functionality. A great example of layered communication for which best-practice is still evolving rapidly.

Layered communitions in social networks and online communities

Social Media is all about conversations. Why should those conversations be limited to text in one place and video in another? Here are three trends to look out for in how communications in social networks might change five years from now. Some of this can already be seen today, much as William Gibson would say “the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed”.

1. Flicking from text to voice in social networks – Just as built in speakers helped online audio take hold. Increasing usage of headphones, built in microphones and VOIP will drive many more ”click to speak” buttons. Some thoughts are better shared by voice and it will become common practice to flick between text chat and voice when communicating on social networks.
2. Layered voice and text in research communities – Online communities are a fantastic way for companies to carry out research. At FreshNetworks we freqeuntly build private communities for research. It’s a good tool for companies trying to understand their customers. The success of research communities relies upon making the research process engaging for participants. We’ve used layered communications to do just that and expect to see much more of it in the future. For example, a Research Moderator may ask questions using a webcast or audio link (much more engaging than a wrtitten questionnaire) yet respondents will be asked to use instant messaging or chat functionality to respond.
3. Video and voice in online communities – 2008 saw an increase in the number of sites that accept comments using video or voice as well as chat. It’s old hat for YouTube, but relatively new for blogs and rare on forums. I think online communities, especially those which have been built to engage members in story-telling and experieince sharing will start to see a much richer blend of layered communications in the future.

The key question is: What influences a user when deciding whether voice, video or text is more appropriate? and when will a synchronoous combination be the most useful thing for users?

Any ideas?

Nine museums in the UK launch Creative Spaces

This week in the UK saw the beta launch of Creative Spaces. An online community and federated search project across nine National Museums, part of the National Museums Online Learning Project (NMOLP) and involving the Tate, V&A, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Imperial War Museum, Royal Armouries, Wallace Collection and Sir John Soanes’ Museum. The core idea is to provide a way for people to find, discuss and be inspired by the collections of all these museums.

Creative Spaces Promo from Creative Spaces on Vimeo.

The project really has two components:

1. A federated search, allowing users to search and explore the collections across all nine museums in one place, online.
2. An online community, allowing people to create notebooks (their own collections combining objects from the museums with their own content), create and join groups and review and add comments to objects that they like (or otherwise, of course).

It’s been an ambitious project, running for a number of years and the outcomes are exciting. The ability to search across and explore the collections is of huge value. But the social elements of the site allow individuals to essentially curate their own experience. Bringing objects from the different museums together with their own content, annotating them and making their own notebook – an exhibition for others to view and comment on.

So what can we learn from this?

This is a great example of using social media and online communities in a museums context. But it is also a great example of When thinking about how to use social media and online communities, it is important for brands and organisations to explore what it is they can uniquely offer. What do they have that they can share with people, and why would people come to a site that they were running to interact.

With Creative Spaces, I think these nine museums have got it right. They have not just launched an online community, asking people to talk about art – there are many places you can do that. What these organisations can offer that is different is access to their catalogues, and by coming together to make Creative Spaces they are offering something even more unique – the ability to search the collective catalogues of some of the leading museums in the UK. They have something unique and of value that they can offer to people with this search, and also with the online community they have built to support this.

One problem with some online communities is that they focus too much on forums and verbal communication. Other media can sometimes be a more effective way of communicating: video can be a great way to engage some people, others want to express themselves with images or objects. In a museums context this becomes even more important. I may not want to discuss my reaction to an object, but I might want to upload an image of my own as a reaction to it. Creative Spaces lets you do this, and indeed let’s you curate your own collection (they call it a notebook) with objects from the collections alongside your own content or content you’ve got from elsewhere. This is clever, allowing people to react and respond in whatever medium is most appropriate to them.

Creative Spaces is a great idea, it brings social media to a museums context and creates a social experience online that centres on the unique content these museums have – their own collections. It’s easy to set up a site and expect people to come and engage there, but this rarely happens. You need to build a site that meets a need and offers something new, leveraging your own position to give a real reason for people to come and engage on your site rather than elsewhere.

If you decide to join up, feel free to add me as a contact: Matt Rhodes.

(In interest of open disclosure, I should say that FreshNetworks has done some strategy work with the NMOLP to help them launch and grow Creative Spaces. But it would always have been a great example of social media!)

Read all our Social Media Diary entries

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Museum lovers’ social networking (news.bbc.co.uk)

Last month I was asked if I would speak at as new conference in the UK focused on online research. The MRS and Research Magazine were looking to bring together different practitioners (both clients and agencies) to share best practice and case studies in online research. The Online Methods conference will be held on the 3rd June in central London, and I’m speaking about online research communities, specifically about how to work with clients to grow and manage them.

For too long, the online research industry has been focused on one thing: quantitative research. There has been a significant shift from telephone (CATI) research to online research over the last few years. Both panel-based and more adhoc quantitative research is being successfully delivered online. The ability to build and reach a range of people with these surveys is helping both the quality and the cost-effectiveness of this kind of research. But in the last few years, online research methodologies have moved far beyond just quantitative research.

Qualitative and ethnographic research have typically been difficult and relatively expensive. They have involved recruiting and then spending time with specific individuals who meet our criteria, and getting a volume and range of responses has often been prohibitively expensive. Developments online have changed this. Online communities and social media have really changed the face of market research, allowing us to both do old things in new ways and to do completely new things. If done correctly, it is now easier than ever to conduct qualitative or ethnographic research with a wide and often disparate respondent base. You can observe and analyse people in their social context, and get insight into not just what they think but also why they think it.

At the Online Methods conference, I will be talking a little about this, but more about how these changes are causing a fundamental shift in the market research industry and in the relationship between agency and client. The old divisions no longer apply. Previously a client would commission an agency who would go away, do the research and then report back. Now clients and agencies work together, each using and playing to their own strengths. This can make online research communities very cost effective for clients and removes the barrier an agency can sometimes place between a client and their customers. There are lots of ways that online methods are changing market research, but the changes in the agency-client relationship are possibly most fundamental of all.

In a nutshell: A one day conference for buyers and suppliers of online research taking a practical and solutions-driven approach to its uses and applications.

Where? Crowne Plaza – The City, London

When? 3rd June 2009

How to book: Click here

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Five ways to use an online research community in 2009 (freshnetworks.com)
• How to build an online research community: a podcast (freshnetworks.com)
• Maximising the insight you get from your online community (freshnetworks.com)

Agent Provocateur engages women consumers across multiple platform

Appropriately for the day before Valentine’s Day, this week saw lingerie brand, Agent Provocateur, launch a social media campaign to promote its HelloAgentProvocateur blog. As you might expect from a lingerie brand, the blog includes a range of posts from the relatively tame advice on relationships and dating, to the more provocative (appropriately enough). One recent post, for example, included a post featuring a chart of exciting and mood-killing things to say during sex.

Alongside the blog post, they’ve launched a Facebook page and also a Twitter stream allowing micro blogging from MsProvocateur. The idea, according to Scott Goodson, CEO of StrawberryFrog, the agency working on the project,

…is the first time a luxury fashion brand has launched a provocative social media campaign tying together their various data-linked platforms, like a multi-entry daily blog, Twitter feed and Facebook

With a launch tied into a new ad campaign (itself designed to coincide with Valentine’s Day), this looks like a real attempt for a co-ordinated marketing approach. Using traditional and social media and then tying together online activities with a central micro blog.

So what can we learn from this?

We wrote earlier this week about the continued growth of social networks in 2008, and in particular the tremendous growth for both Facebook and Twitter. What Agent Provocateur appear to be doing is to use the different social network tools and online community platforms to engage people in different ways.

• The blog is being used for regular posts that discuss issues of relationships, dating, and Agent Provocateur’s products in some depth. They run news and features alongside it and this really capitalises on the role that a blog can play as a content-rich information source.
• Facebook is being used to showcase content and ideas from the blog and the campaign, and to gather friends. It capitalises upon the networking aspect of Facebook by encouraging people to connect with it. This is much softer than some of the activities that take place on the blog and reflects the difficulty that brands have marketing directly in Facebook (and other social networks).
• The use of Twitter allows Agent Provocateur to bring together all of this activity and to broadcast what they are doing and saying on a regular basis. They can capture contacts in a way similar to in Facebook, but Twitter offers something really different. It’s not just a medium for releasing content (as is the case with the blog) nor on for accumulating friends and showcasing the best of what’s going on (as is the case with Facebook). Twitter allows them to actually engage.

It is rewarding to see that even with only 351 followers on Twitter, MsProvocateur is starting to engage and respond to people directly. When one follower tweated about the gifts their boyfriend had bought them, MsProvocateur responded with some thoughts on gifts that are good to buy in return.

The real value of Twitter is both in acting as a central portal to bring together and point to all social media activity, and also a true engagement tool. In fact, when brands use Twitter, it really is a case of the more you put in the more you will get out. It is worth finding people who are talking about your brand or the topics and subjects you discuss and following them. Do respond to people, give advice and  suggestions. And make this not just an overt marketing message. Really engage people and you will then reap the benefits of this activity in sales.

It’s not the use of Twitter that we like of Agent Provocateur’s campaign (although it is good), nor the topical nature of the subject. Rather it is that they are using a range of social media tools to engage people in different ways. A sensible approach.

Read all our Social Media Diary entries

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Facebook Determined To Make Twice As Much On Gifts This Valentine’s Day (profy.com)
• How to Twitter your way to marketing success (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• The Social Media Starter Kit: Facebook (altitudebranding.com)
• Whatcha Doing? Twitter, Other Status Tools on Rise (appscout.com)
• Social network advertising…my ambivalence is showing (myventurepad.com)

Some online communities are specifically built and managed as insight tools: online research communities. They are designed to help support the consumer or market research needs of the organisation behind the community. They may be public or private, but they are designed to deliver against specific research objectives and involve specific research exercises alongside the organic discussions and debates in the community.

Not all communities are online research communities, but all communities can be a useful source of insight. Just watching the conversations can be invaluable and bring real insight to any organisation, but there are ways that any community can get real insight value from the insight of your members. Over the last few weeks we’ve described eight ways of getting insight from online communities.

1. Profiling data:gathering the right information and then analysing the profiles of  your community members can bring significant understanding of the people who join your community.
2. Focused discussions: focusing the discussions in your online community make it easier for people to join the debate and also let you concentrate on those issues that are of most interest to you and likely to bring greatest insights.
3. Learn their language: the language community members use is often overlooked, but provides a real insight into their lives and their perceptions on a product, market or issue.
4. Rating and voting: not everybody in an online community wants to begin or even add to discussions, but we can start to understand what they think and get insight from them by offering and than analysing their use of different ways of communicating, such as rating an idea or voting for a piece of content.
5. Photo uploads: photos offer a real insight into what people think and also allows us to gather opinions people who are not as comfortable expressing themselves in words. What people choose to upload photos of, and the reactions to them bring real insights into the community.
6. Photo activities:by targeting photo content into specific activities, we are able to maximise the benefit we get from each upload. Get community members to upload photos on a specific theme or in response to a specific question. Isolate the most interesting photos by using rating, ranking and comments to harness the opinions of community members.
7. Discussion events:as your community matures, patterns emerge in use. One of these will be that people come to the community at similar times each evening. You can take advantage of this by offering discussion events where people discuss a different issue at a certain time each week.
8. Quick polls:any community can use some simple insight tools, and quick polls are one of these. They are a great way to get instant and top-level quantitative insight from your community, but you must make sure you word the question (and potential answers) carefully if you are going ot use them for real insight.

Of course, a greater depth of insight can be gained from a community that is designed specifically to get insight from your customers and others, and that ties straight into your internal planning, research and strategic fields. For this you need an online research community.

Read our series on Insight from Online Communities

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Five ways to use an online research community in 2009 (freshnetworks.com)
• Networking site cashes in on friends (Telegraph) (techmeme.com)
• How to build an online research community: a podcast (freshnetworks.com)