Press Releases
For Immediate Release
Higher Levels of Customer Engagement in Private Online Communities
Watertown, MA - March 20, 2007
Smaller, Private Communities Get Significantly Higher Levels of Customer Engagement, Says New Communispace Research
86 Percent Participation Rates Show the Value of Privacy and Customer Intimacy
In this new era of "conversational marketing", the measure for engagement in a community isn’t the number of people logging on. Rather, it’s how actively people participate in the community, according to research just released by Communispace, the leading provider of branded online communities.
"Everybody is talking about communities now, and so the question is no longer ’should we have one?’, but more ’what kind should it be?’ and ’how can we design it to truly engage customers and fulfill our objectives?’" says Communispace President and Chief Executive Officer Diane Hessan.
New Communispace research, which analyzed participation behavior among 26,539 members of 66 private online communities, provides an initial look at member participation in communities.
The study evaluated communities along three participation metrics:
Frequency - how often members contribute
Volume - the number of contributions made by each member
Bystander or "lurker" rate - what percentage of members are simply observing versus actively participating.
Key findings of the research:
The more intimate the community, the more people participate. Results indicate that 86 percent of the people who log on to private, facilitated communities (average community size: 300-500 people) made contributions: they posted comments, initiated dialogues, participated in chats, brainstormed ideas, shared photos and more. Only 14 percent merely logged in and observed, or "lurked." In contrast, on public social networking websites, blogs, and message boards, this ratio is typically reversed, i.e., the vast majority of site visitors do not contribute. In fact, in a typical online forum (e.g., wiki, community, message board or blog), one percent of site visitors contribute and the other 99 percent lurk. (Source: McConnell & Huba, 2007. Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message. Chicago: Kaplan Publishing). This disparity suggests that the more intimate the setting, the more people will participate and get involved in the online community.
"Big public communities may attract more eyeballs, but they may not be the answer for marketers who are looking for deep engagement with customers" says Julie Wittes-Schlack, Communispace vice president of innovation and research.
People get more involved when they know whom they are talking to and why
The study also compared participation levels of branded vs. unbranded communities. While the contribution and lurker rates were fairly consistent, branded sites showed a higher volume of participation.
When potential members were considering whether to participate in an online community, they were 30 percent more likely to log on when the welcome notice disclosed the company sponsoring the community. Branded sites had an initial log in rate of 71 percent, compared with 55 percent for unbranded sites. This suggests that transparency - being upfront about who's behind the online community - is a key factor for companies that want to engage with customers in a community.
Why people participate: social glue, shared passion, having a voice
Communities of parents get the highest involvement: of the 66 communities analyzed, parent communities, as a group, had the highest levels of participation. In general, the research found that the stronger the "social glue" - common interests and passions among members- the greater the participation.
Differences between how men and women participate: based on analysis of single-sex communities, the research found that although members of women’s communities participated more frequently than men, men seemed to have more to say when they did participate: 4.8 weekly contributions for men compared to 4.1 for the women.
Homogeneity triggers participation: the research found that communities based around a particular demographic tended to have higher participation rates. Women and men each participated more in single-sex communities than they did on average in co-ed communities. African-Americans participated at a higher overall level in an all African-American community than they did in other, multi-racial communities. This suggests that people have more in common and are more interactive with a homogeneous group in an online community setting.
Education and household income were not related to online community member participation. Again, the passion around the community’s purpose or its social glue appears to influence participation more than traditional demographics like education and income.
Having a voice, productive leisure: One of the implications from the research is that people may get more involved in private, intimate online communities because they feel like they can have a say and that community members and the sponsoring company hear their views. Another implication is that people may view the time spent as "productive leisure." They see participating as an interesting or fun outlet for communicating with other people who love what they love. It’s a bridge from what they do in real life to their passions.
For more on the "Community Participation Trends and Drivers" study, visit http://www.communispace.com/3_news/perspectives.asp for the forthcoming white paper.
About Communispace
Communispace Corporation, headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, is a leading social networking firm that specializes in creating online communities used by major corporations to build long-term relationships with customers. The company builds, manages and facilitates private branded communities that deliver the voice of the customer and enable businesses to generate continuous insights, drive faster innovation, and build loyalty. Founded in 1999, Communispace has created more than 250 online customer communities for industry leaders including: Kraft, Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, Hallmark, Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline, Hilton Hotels, General Mills, PepsiCo, Capital One and many more.
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