All About Communities

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The Price of Indifference: Re-examining the Role of Incentives in Online CommunitiesBy Katrina Lerman and Julie Wittes SchlackWhen thought leaders like Robert Kozinets question the quality and authenticity of insights derived from intentional, incentivized communities, it’s a positive sign that online communities have come of age.  When the dust finally settles, practitioners in the field will likely reach the same conclusions articulated by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in Groundswell, which is that there is no one “true” form of community, but rather various forms of social networks to serve various purposes.  Meanwhile, these are healthy and productive discussions to have in both the business and academic communities.
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10 Best Practices for Managing Online CommunitiesBy Jen Adams, Siobhan Dullea, Andrea Galen, and Beth McCarthy

Done right, online customer communities can help companies deeply connect with their customers and prospects, capture marketing insights, and build brand advocates. From our experiences facilitating online communities over the past seven years, we’ve found that panels, chatrooms, blogs and focus groups just skim the surface compared to what marketers can learn from continuously engaging with customers in their communities.

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Research & Innovation

Leaving our comfort zone:
21st Century Market Research

Advances in social media, the empowerment of everyday consumers, and the need for more actionable insights fuel a mandate for market research to do more, faster. These developments create great opportunity for researchers to exercise strategic leadership, to inspire and innovate by bringing the voice of the customer to life, to apply new insights to complex business problems, and to produce creative, timely and actionable recommendations to drive business results.

But the use of social media-driven research also fuels the quality debate that’s been raging for years, creating worries about declining response rates, questionable respondents, sample size, and projectability. Market researchers need to consider and address these legitimate concerns, while also recognizing the ways in which online, social, community-based research can actually strengthen validity and enhance quality.
 
To take that leap, it’s helpful to think in terms of tradeoffs, to understand what researchers are risking—and gaining—by shifting their focus and methods.

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