I recently came across an online community for online community professionals called "Commania" and just had to share what they did for their profile pages with readers of this blog...  

When you click to sign-up for the community, the default avatar is one scary looking hybrid human-pig-mouse thing.  If you don't change it, you're stuck as the "pig guy" for the rest of your time in the community.  I think this is a brilliant little trick.  Granted, it's a little extreme, but it helps address a real challenge in online communities - getting people to take that initial step in customizing and sharing something personal.  If you can get your members to upload a custom profile picture, fill out a bio and at least introduce themselves to the community, you're going to have much better odds of keeping them around (provided, of course, you don't drop the ball as a moderator after that).   

Compare this to the current default avatar we use for the PluggedIN Platform...  Still annoying to have as a default, but downright benign compared to the "pig guy."  A better approach might be choosing to use your company's logo as the default avatar, or perhaps use a simple text message to indicate the profile picture needs to be change.  Nonetheless, I like the "creative" approach of the "pig guy" if you can get away with it :-)

-- Matt 

OK, so maybe we didn't really launch a Web 0.0 market research methodology this week, but we did recently open up our proprietary online community platform for qualitative researchers to use for their own market research online community initiatives.

We've been really excited by the response from fellow qual researchers from around the world.  It's promising to see that so many people recognize the value of using online communities for market research, independent of their location and background, the audiences they work with and even the methodologies they traditionally use...  

For more on the news, check out the PluggedIN Platform launch press release, or visit our company news section.  If you're interested in learning more about the platform, check out our platform page or contact us for a demo.

A while back, Forrester Research released their "Social Technographics" report that grouped consumers into six categories of participation within social technologies (e.g., communities, blogs, social networks, etc...).  If you haven't checked it out, here's a quick overview...

The report categorizes consumers into six different categories as follows:

• Creators (13% of US adult consumers) - People who publish web pages, blogs, upload video, upload photos, etc...
• Critics (19% of US adult consumers) - People who comment on blogs, post ratings/reviews
• Collectors (15% of US adult consumers) - People who use RSS (really simply syndication) and tag web pages
• Joiners (19% of US adult consumers) - Those who use social networking sites
• Spectators (33% of US adult consumers) - Those who read blogs, watch video and listen to podcasts
• Inactives (52% of US adult consumers) - Anyone who does none of the above activities

I'm sure since this report was first published (2007) that these percentages have changed a bit.  For example, I'm willing to be that the "Spectators" category has declined, with more moving up the ladder to the "Joiners" category, especially with the continued adoption of social networking sites like Facebook among "mainstream" internet users.  However, the categorization fits well with how we've seen people participate in private online research communities, and here's how...

How does this apply to participation in research communities?

While the report itself is interesting as a whole, the question is how this translates in the online research community environment...  Here's our take on it:

1. "Critics" are different - In our experience, "Critics" are more like those who participate regularly in all discussions and surveys. 
2. "Spectators" actually participate - While the social technographics report has "spectators" as merely observers, in our experience these types of users will also take surveys and polls fairly regularly, since they don't require the "one-to-one" interaction of a discussion or blog and are still fairly anonymous.
3. "Collectors" are less relevant - "Collectors" play less of a role since much of the content in the community is structured around the research activities.  While we use tags, they aren't typically the way people find content.  In addition, RSS is something that we usually don't employ in our communities (for security reasons - we want to keep the data in the site as much as possible).
4. There is some overlap - Our experience has been that there is a general overlap between some of the categories.  For example, we have members that frequently could be categorized as creators, critics and joiners.  Forrester acknowledges this fact as well in their report...  

How does this apply to designing research community approaches?

Forrester suggests that companies should design their approach to social technologies around this knowledge of participation, and choose the technology that is going to be most effective for their target audience.  I would say this advice applies to online research communities as well...

For example, "Boomers" in a research community might take to the more "conventional" areas of the community, including the "discussion" and "survey" sections of the site, whereas a community of Millennials might be slightly more open to blogging, sharing photos and creating in-depth profile pages.  Depending on the research community platform you are using, you may want to arbitrarily pick and choose the feature set to include at launch and add to it if people request more.

That's not to say that there is a definitive generational divide in the way people use these social technologies (we've had 65 year old members sharing photos in our research communities); rather, it demonstrates that you should take a few educated guesses about your audience and work from there...  

In addition, knowing this general categorization of social technology/internet users can help to determine:

• The features to use in a research community
• The incentive strategy you employ (and what you choose to weight heavily in your incentives)
• Who to invite
• How to recruit members
  
• How to position the community in the initial invitations
• The mix of activities to run

Chris Brogan had an interesting post today about how to “Sell Benefits Not Features” of social media. He uses one example of how Twitter itself isn’t amazing; rather, it’s the ability to connect with many voices in a collaborative way that is valuable. Anyone can build Twitter. It’s who is there and how it is used that matters… His post got me thinking about the features and corresponding benefits of online research communities, as well as the role technology, moderation and analysis/reporting play in the delivery of a successful research community.

All too often we have a tendency to focus on the “features” and software (especially given the wide variety of community and SaaS research platforms available) at the expense of taking a step back and looking at what the benefits really are. It’s a fairly trivial marketing concept, but one that is easy to forget when everyone is in the race for the “latest and greatest” features and functionality inherent in a community platform. So without further ado, here are a few “features” of an online research community and the real benefit of those features…

Feature: Discussion forums - Benefit: Run qualitative activities on-demand and explore customer needs in-depth

Let’s face it. A discussion forum is a discussion forum. Even though we have little tweaks in the PluggedIN Research Community Platform that help us run research activities more effectively, at the very core we’re really just running ongoing conversations with a targeted group of people. That’s the feature. However, the benefit to a company using a research community is the ability to run a 24/7 conversation around a their brand/product/service in a manner that is more convenient, efficient and effective than many other research methodologies. That’s the real benefit that companies should be focusing on, as well as how they intend to apply the feature to create research value and insights.

Feature: Blogs - Benefit: Keep an ear to the ground on what your customers are saying

By now, most all community platforms have some type of blogging capability for members to keep an ongoing journal/diary of their thoughts, stories and experiences. Again, that’s the feature to advertise (which is pretty consistent across the board). The real benefit is the ability to listen and learn from community members, and guide your conversations from there. You don’t have that luxury in a focus group, for example, since you don’t have an ongoing venue to listen.

Feature: Photo Albums - Benefit: “See” and really learn about your target audience through the images they share

It’s been a long time since Flickr and other early photo sharing services were first launched. By now most community platforms have something resembling a photo sharing feature. That’s the feature. The benefit is to learn about what customers or prospects are like through the photos they choose to share of friends, family, hobbies, places they’ve visited, etc… It’s about structuring the sharing of these photos in such a way as to produce insights that wouldn’t have been attainable in other research methodologies. That’s the qualitative “color” that just doesn’t emerge through other methodologies, and is one of the real benefits of having a photo sharing feature available.

Feature: Research community platform - Benefit: Stay plugged in.

You get the idea… This list could go on and on with features, but ultimately it’s not about the software or the platform. Our developers will kick me for saying this, but most any community software can “get you there” (or at least most of the way there). It’s about how you use it to stay plugged in to the needs of your audience, stay on top of trends, collaborate with customers to build innovative new products and services, etc…

What’s the takeaway?

In the long run, the features don’t matter. With the advent of free/low cost social media and collaboration tools, the features are largely ubiquitous - especially in the “online community” space. Instead, focus on the benefit of these features to your organization, and concentrate on how you (and the company you’re working with to get you there) plan to apply these features to create real value for your business.