I was talking with an old colleague yesterday and she asked me how moderation in a research community is different than traditional focus groups or other online qualitative tools (e.g. bulletin board groups, chat groups). As I was thinking about my answer, I realized there are quite a few differences:

Depth through variety

As a whole, communities are far less regimented (or at least should be) than typical qualitative methods. With discussions especially, you want to minimize the layers of questions and think about topics as a whole. That's not to say you can't go deep. There are ways to achieve this depth through a series of related community activities (e.g short polls, discussions, sentence completion activity), but the way you approach this depth is likely from multiple activities and not through one post alone.

Mix it up 

Communities are typically long term in nature, so mixing up the types of activities you post is very helpful for users, and even for us moderators!  It keeps things interesting and less monotonous which is very important in these ongoing research communities where you want keep people engaged over time.

Open up

One of the great things about communities is that they allow people to share their real identity through profile pages, photos, blogs and other tools. As a moderator, it is crucial that we use these same tools to show the community who we are and what is going on in our own life. The better you are able to do this as a researcher, the more the community in turn will open up about themselves and contribute.  

Let go

One of the hardest things for me to learn initially was the idea of letting go of control of the conversation. As moderators we want to "ask, ask, ask," but in communities it is really important to listen to the community and circle back on topics of interest. If there is a particularly interesting comment or user generated discussion, incorporating it into a future activity (and acknowledging the member that posted) reinforces the fact that you are listening to what the members are saying. Also, this approach is much more effective for "probes" and follow-up questions. Creating a new discussion and engaging the community as a whole is oftentimes more effective than trying to follow up inline with individual members, plus it opens up the opportunity to hear several opinions rather than one individual opinion.

Build community & fun

Equally as important as designing compelling research activities is the task of building community (which could be another post altogether). Responding to, acknowledging, and engaging members is crucial to establishing a sense of community as well. Also, proactively posting "community building activities" is important. These can be simple blog posts about a new game you found online, a gallery of funny Youtube videos people can contribute to, ridiculous celebrity death match surveys or even a book review of the month. Mixing in the fun goes a long way.

Know the outside

No matter how advanced your community platform is, it cannot possibly include every feature known to man. That's why it is important to have a list of sites and tools that you can link to for compelling content. Whether it is a collage tool, virtual avatar creator, or card sorting tool - there are a ton of clever and insightful tools out there that are only a link away. These items also break up the monotony for users as well and keep things interesting inside your community.

Time is relative

For our continuous communities, we try to keep the weekly participation requirement to about 15 minutes per week. However, for shorter term communities, participation can go as high as 30 minutes, depending on the duration of the project. This is not a hard/fast rule, but generally speaking the longer the initiative, the lower the regular participation requirement you want to place on your members.

Be regular & spontaneous

Inevitably, whatever the mix of activities you choose to launch, launching these at fairly regular intervals helps set the expectations of members that new content is released at a specific time. This will get them in the habit of checking in on a regular basis. Also, mixing in the spontaneous along the way let's them know that community activity has a sporadic nature as well. This will hopefully encourage members to check in throughout the week and months when they get a free minute. Breaking news and current events are a great source for this more "spontaneous" activity.