A Rough Guide to Online Research Communities and Community Management

WHAT IS AN ONLINE COMMUNITY?

An online community is a website in which a group of people with a common interest or goal come

together to

socialize, interact, voice their opinions

& complete tasks in order to gain rewards – both physical

and virtual.

Ok, that’s all well and good but, what is an online research community and what

does it do?

An online research community uses the social elements, and web 2.0

tools, of an organic online community and focuses them on a

research brief.

Research communities are private.

Participants are selected via their demographics, interests and relevant criteria for individual projects.

All research communities have a goal that users will work on their own, and with other users, to achieve.

To achieve the goal tasks will be set for users to complete.

Tasks take on different formats and will ask users different questions relating to the overall objective.

When the project is finished users are rewarded for participating.

What is a Task?A task is a question/project/challenge you set your community members to complete.

Making tasks interesting, engaging and practical is vital to making sure your community is successful.

What is a Task Plan?A task plan consists of a set of tasks that you are going to ask your community members to complete of the course of the project.

A task plan makes it clear to users what they’re being asked to do & gives community managers guidelines dictating what they need to gain from the research..

How Do Online Research

Communities Work?

1) Clients

2) The Research Team

3) The Community Managers

4) The Technical Team

5) The Recruitment Team

6) Users

There are 6 different roles in an Online Research Community:

Client Has Brief Client Speaks to Agency About Brief

Agency Recommends Research Communities to Fulfill Brief

Client Agrees

Agency Briefs Research Team

Research Team Take Control of the Project and Brief Technical Team, Recruitment Team, and Community Managers

Recruitment Team screen and recruit

suitable users

Technical Team make sure websites are fully functional

& bug free

Research Team write community

task plan

Community Managers assist all teams and

understand all aspects

When all these tasks are complete everything gets handed over to the community managers and the community can begin

The Community Manager looks after the community helping

users with problems and liaising with all other teams. CMs also look for general insights and

themes.

The Research Team liaise with clients and feedback to CM, they also change the task plan with CMs

input.

The CM reports all bugs and issues to the Technical Team who solve issues and

report back to CM.

The CM reports all inactive users to the Recruitment

Team who chases them up, recruitment can also help

with user issues.

The Client Team view the community and feedback to the Research Team & the CM with suggestions

and changes

The Community Managers feedback the

insights and themes they found within the

community to the research team

After the community finishes The Research Team analyze the results and pull together their thoughts and ideas

The Recruitment Team check users participation and with the input of the community

managers decide who will & who won’t receive

rewards

The Technical Team receive users

feedback on the technology and with

the community managers decide changes to the

platform

The Research Team and Community Managers report findings back to the client

The client is happy

The project finishes

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How To Manage anOnlineResearchCommunity

Managing an Online Research Community is all about balance.

You are the voice of the community when speaking to the Research Team and the

clients.

But you are also the voice of the clients and the Research Team when interacting with

users.

It’s up to you to make sure that the brief is fulfilled and, at the same time, users remain

informed and happy.

1) Listen

2) Know Your Audience

3) Be Human

4) Stick To Your Guns

5) Reward Responsibly

Top 5 Tips for Managing an Online Research Community

Allowing users to be creative delivers better results.

If you want users to be creative you have to be creative as well.

If you ask a simple question, you will get a simple answer, but that will only get

you so far.

If you are clever with your task plan then you will reap the rewards.

Allowing users to express themselves visually produces exciting output.

EncouragingCreativeThought

Visual Content Has A Massive Impact, It Brings Users, Opinions & Ideas To

Life.

The Future of Online Research Communities

from insight to concept...

Thank You All For Listening

&Taking Part In

Project Vernors

please fire any questions to me:

matthew@facegroup.co.uk@mattsimpson1985

www.facegroup.co.uk