You’ve heard the news: Web (insert number) is here to stay. There are new ways to connect. Customers are talking about their experiences with your brand every day. There is this hidden, rampant conversation that you need to be a part of or else you will be left in the dust. Great - if you are talking about huge public communities or aggregating conversations from hundreds of separate resources, but what about smaller, private online communities?

Reality of Online Communities

Let’s be honest. In private communities, even at sizes in the thousands, are people consistently talking about you without direction? And, more importantly, are the things they are saying revolutionary or completely changing the game for you? We know community engagement typically spikes in the beginning and even in a heavily facilitated environment, tends to trail off over time (without proper refresh measures), so how durable is this unprompted conversation? Even by conservative estimates, <10% of people blog and <10% of people create discussions. These numbers will increase, but where does that leave us in the research community world today?

Real Customer Insights from Community

In a perfect world, we as researchers could sit back and listen to these conversations as they happen and dazzle our clients with the customer insights that emerge. But, reality is just a bit different. It takes work. It is about researchers/moderators crafting exercises that dig deeper and are truly in touch with the needs of their clients. It is about mapping and planning very specific exercises to meet client expectations, but also being able to adapt on the fly if needed. It is also about creating an environment that fosters creativity and aligns people with a common purpose so that the content they create has a chance to be insightful. I’m not saying that unaided ideas and feedback/conversation won’t happen… just that we can’t sit around waiting for it to happen.

Reporting Customer Insights

I’m all for listening, but I think it is as much about the “activities” that elicit conversation as it is the tools/venue of expression. Oh yeah, by the way, this is only half of the equation - what about community reporting? How are you experiencing the insights? Who at your organization has access? If these conversations happen but there are only a few people listening, doesn’t that defeat the purpose? More on this in future blogs. Sorry, I need to lay off the coffee and hop down from the soap box. In case you are wondering, winter has hit the Northeast. It’s not my fault!