Sometimes it takes a Village: Practical Lessons for Conducting Communities
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Communities, MROCs, Consumer Advisory Groups–whatever you want to call them, they are become more and more popular. According to the 2014 GRIT study, 44% of clients currently use them and 38% are considering them in the near future. While this relatively new approach to research involves basic research principles and practices, there is an air of mystery surrounding the methodology that creates an almost tangible fear to get involved. Drawing on years of community design and management experience and recent advancements in online platforms, I will offer up practical advice and considerations for conducting communities from design through to analysis and reporting. This is aimed primarily at the supplier, but will include useful knowledge for support supplier like recruiters and project managers as well as client-side researchers. Based on a presentation from the QRCA’s 2014 Conference—a presentation that got rave reviews—the topics covered will enable attendees to walk away from this presentation feeling comfortable with the idea of conducting a market research community regardless of their role.
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Sometimes it takes a Village: Practical Lessons for Conducting Communities
- 1. SOMETIMES IT TAKES A VILLAGE PRACTICAL LESSONS FOR CONDUCTING COMMUNITIES Brought to you by: Ted Kendall
- 2. Keeping the Villagers Happy Client Engagement Moderators and Community Managers Recruitin g Platform Choices Architecture & Design The Big WhenDrivers Scary Speed
- 3. com mu ni ty /kə‘my͡ o͡ onitē/ noun 1. A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. “Rhode Island’s Japanese community” Synonyms: group, body, set, circle, faction 2. A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, or goals “the sense of community that religion can provide” 44% using* 38% considering* 952% terrified** * According to GRIT, Techniques of the Future, 2014 ** This stat is completely made up for humor purposes
- 5. THE BIG WHEN
- 6. CLUES TO COMMUNITY Customer respect/nurt ure Variety Learning curve avoidance Time Small stuff Iterative development Ambiguous/cha nging objectives
- 8. How long? How many? What? What exactly? IT’S ALL AN INTERCONNECTED ECOSYSTEM
- 9. Rule of 50%
- 10. Outline steps to reach ultimate results Steps to get results
- 12. Digital photo ethnography Ideation Discussions Bulletin Boards Phone groups/interviews
- 13. STACKING PLATFORMS TO CREATE A PLACE TO LIVE ENGAGEMENT OF PLACE
- 14. IdeaScape (Dub) Revelation Constant Contact MailChimp Emma PLATFORM CHOICES VisionCritical Excel 20/20 Research Focus Forums IdeaScape (Dub) Facebook LinkedIn Pinterest Instagram Instant.ly SurveyMonkey FluidSurveys SurveyGizmo
- 15. RECRUITING Some things to keep in mind: the similarities and differences of recruiting for communities and other qual studies
- 16. SAME Use a screener Basic structure of screener Recruit by phone or online
- 17. TWEAKS Interaction/Engagement Invitation Administrative Safeguards Competitor screening Recruiter Understanding
- 18. REAL LIFE Space Bags Customer Advisory Community
- 19. REAL LIFE ✔ Over-recruit ✔ Watch for quality
- 20. Be clear in the invitation
- 21. REAL LIFE Use a home page to reiterate the invitationREAL LIFE
- 23. COMMUNITY MANAGER: Incentive management Technical support Logistical support MODERATOR: Moderating Empathy
- 24. Incentive management Technical support Logistical support Moderating Empathy Engagement Communications Rapport
- 25. EMPHASIZE CONNECTION REAL GETS YOU REALITY The key to the mystery: CONTINUITY CHARACTER
- 26. ENGAGEMENT ✔ Absolutely key ✔ Combats mercenaries
- 27. INCENTIVES ✔ Balance ✔ Don’t rely on cash
- 28. ACTIVITIES & TIMING ✔ Question of the Week ✔ Keep it predictable ✔ Stick to a schedule
- 29. VOICE ✔ Real person ✔ Real voice ✔ Real personality
- 34. GETTING FAST: FREQUENT & FOCUSED REPORTING
- 35. GET FAST
- 36. FOCUS
- 37. DIVE IN
- 38. COLLABORATE
- 39. SET EXPECATIONS
- 40. 39 It may take a village, but with the right tools and accurate plans, communities don’t have to be so frightening
- 41. QUESTIONS ANSWERS Ted Kendall 303.325.6705 ted@triplescoop.biz @TripleScoopPMR & Now or Later
Notas do Editor
- Key takeaway: Flexibility and focus will help you leverage your qual skills into communities. Yes, you—yeah, I am talking to you—can run a community if you want to.
- Topics for the next hour Notice that this has 9 sections. Baseball has 9 innings. Coincidence? Drivers When to use Communities Architecture & Design Platform Choices Recruiting Moderators and Community Managers Keeping the Villagers Happy Client Engagement Scary Speed
- Communities, MROCs, Consumer Advisory Groups--whatever you wan to call them, they are become more and more popular. According to GRIT, 44% of clients currently use them and 38% are considering them in the near future. While qualitative communities draw from the QRCer's skill-set, there is an air of mystery surrounding the methodology that creates an almost tangible fear to get involved. Drawing on years of community design and management, I will offer up practical advice on how to conduct communities from design through to analysis and reporting--with real-life examples, practical considerations and a focus on the how to that gets audience members behind the curtain and beyond the mystery.
- Why are clients suddenly so enamored with communities? What are they getting from communities that they couldn't get before? Deeper understanding = Because you have the same people with you for a longer time, you can get past the top level and dig deeper without prolonging the questionnaire or the discussion Decreased complexity = At some level, clients appear to be done with “complex” methods – they just want answers and better decisions. The focus of a community sort of forces that onto the research. Innovation = Different methods produce new insights and ideas. A need to get out of the same old answers. Lower Cost = Or more cost effective – amortizing costs, especially recruiting costs, across multiple surveys, discussions and ethnographies Speed = What needs to be said? Clients need it faster and faster. Because recruiting is done, naturally faster, though there are other ways to increase speed too
- The Big When: For what reasons and in what situations are communities a good solution, and when are they not such a great idea. In-home usage ethnography over 6 weeks Getting to know customers over 6 months A year of quick turnaround qual
- Architecture: Designing the outline of a community based on client objectives--determining optimal timing, sample size, types of activities, etc. Certain level of planning needed YOU CAN’T JUST WING IT!
- It’s important to remember that all these pieces work together—they are interconnected and as you detail one area out it affects another.
- In a good community, where you engage the participants you should be able to achieve 50% or better response to each activity; and 80% engagemnet - % of participants taking part across activities.
- Basically a process of outlining the steps to realize your ultimate goal Outline the actual step you will need to take to get to where you need to be. “Need to spend 2-3 weeks understanding the customer, then vote on their needs, then brainstorm, etc.” Consider client deadlines and milestones. If they need to present a concept by Nov 15, then that helps you understand timing in a very clear way Your budget, especially for incentives, impacts timing. Time really does equal money. And there is an impact of timing on sample size. The longer you go, the more you need to over recruit.
- What should you look at doing? Consider the objectives. Often outlining those starts to point towards general activities—so translate those objectives into general ideas for activities.. For example, we need to understand customer needs. Well, then you will likely need to do some photo journaling to see what they see, and then maybe a survey or discussion to understand what they feel. Then map out on a calendar the general ideas.
- It’s good then to go into more detail. You can start to define the activities more specificially—at this point we want to do some photo ethnography, or ideation in a board format, or hold a discussion where we can cover a number of issues around this topic, etc.
- The philosophy behind the platforms is you are creating a place to engage and house discussions, activities, etc. The key is that this is a “place” where community members can mingle. Typically, regardless of the size of the community, you will engage members in the platform with activities and qualitative questions or polls in this area. (This makes it a great area for some of the more surprising and organic insights.) For example, in one of our recent communities, every Tuesday and Thursday we posted a topic for discussion among the 60 plus participants. Sometimes that topic required picture taking.
- Recruiting for communities is similar yet different from that for most qual recruiting.
- Same: Use a screener and Basic structure of screener the same Options to recruit by phone or online
- Tweaks: Interaction/engagement: Where you may be looking for articulation, now you are looking for more. Sometimes you may need to include questions to assess creativity, willingness to share with others. Invitation: Need to be clear and upfront about what is going to happen. If they think it is just a survey or just a focus group, they will take part once and then drop out. Administrative safeguards: Have rules for incentives and be clear. (Usually good to have a bonus for taking part all the way through.) Have clear opt-out instructions even if it is just emailing the host Have a privacy policy Competitor Screening: Go extra hard on this. It’s one thing for a competitor to get in a focus group, but imagine the damage if you are building a new product. Recruiter Understanding: Make sure the recruiter understands what you are doing. This is the biggest issue. With consumer panels, sometimes it can be a showstopper. With phone recruiters, it’s going to be so different they won’t know what to say. Remember, you are in charge here.
- We recruited around 90 people to be a part of the 6-week community, expecting drop-out, which happened: we ended up with 60 participants in the end, which is exactly what the client was looking for. Many of these people just dropped out because of loss of interest, not wanting to invest the time, and one was taken out by our community manager – they were posting pictures from pinterest that she claimed were of her own home, which is a HUGE sign that the participant is mercenary or competition.
- We made sure to be very transparent in our invitation: there’s no manipulating people into a community. WE tell them what it will look like on their end, how the activities will be structured, and what sort of incentive to expect. We also want to be clear about the time frame, since that is unusual to qual studies, so we are sure to be very clear about what to expect there. We also include a statement in the invitation that should make our communication with them clearer (we don’t want our reminder emails to go into the Spam folder)
- We also made sure expectations, guidelines, and how-to-particpate was included on the Focus Forums project home page: our home-base platform for the project
- 6. Moderators and Community Managers: Much talk in the last conference was the question of how does moderating differ from managing a community. We address that here--where skills overlap, where a moderator fits in and where does a manager best fit. Also, when does it make sense to let your client become part of the moderating/managing team.
- These things all come together best when you have the same person both moderating and managing
- How do you keep the villagers happy and engaged? Engagement is absolutely key. If you can’t keep them engaged then you will lose them over time and that is not a good thing—it adds to your costs and it creates frustrations and annoyances on their side as well. Engagement is also key to combatting what I call the mercenaries. So many are just in it for the money. And they will answer your questions—but just. Getting people engaged will help them shed the attitude or get rid of them.
- Clear expectations about what participants will need to do help set the stage for a successful community. There is also a fine balance to make between monetary incentives and engagement. Too much and your participants become mercenaries. Too little and they lose interest. We have found that one of the best incentives is to show that you are really listening. So when participants’ feedback impacts an ad, show them the ad after it is finished. Have also found that if the community is not blind, actual product is a better incentive than cash. Frankly, cash is the worst incentive. Even gift cards, drawings based on participation, cool prizes like DVDs, gift cards, night outs, etc. are more highly valued than cash.
- One way to engage participants is to host activities for them to take part in. For example, in a recent community we had the Question of the Week every Wednesday. Or you might have a poll. Or a set of questions. Of course the key activities are those that are providing your client with the info they need, like the surveys and discussions. Or journaling. Community members love predictability. If they learn to expect a survey on Thursday, their response rates go up. We try to keep activities on a schedule that participants can get used to. Not that we aren’t flexible--just that regularity is good in communities too. While a regular schedule is important, try not to overwhelm participants with too much. Some community providers do 3 activities a week. I think that is overkill and the reason their communities only last three months before needing to be refreshed. The timing is also dependent on your ability to report and on your client’s ability to digest the data. My recommendation is at most one big activity and one small “engagement” activity per week.
- A real person, a real face, a real voice and a real personality is the glue that holds a community together. The host’s rapport can dramatically impact engagement in a community. We always try to match the demographics of the community itself in our selection of our host. A Millennial makes a much better host for Millennials.
- 8. Client Engagement: It's not just the participants that need to be engaged. How do you engage your clients and prepare them for drinking from the firehose.
- One scary aspect is the need for frequent and quick analysis and reporting. This is a new paradigm for researchers in general, and I have found especially for qualies.
- The first thing to consider is that you need to change your mindset. No longer is the priority on thoughtful, wide ranging analysis—there is an urgency that must be met.
- First thing that helps is to have a real focus on what the client needs. By taking the time to narrow down objectives and find focus there, you now have the ability to zero in on what matters most. Know your objectives Stick to them – like glue
- Then jump right in. You really don’t have the luxury to let things percolate or to ponder life philosophies that were found in the research. Depth of thought and analysis
- I have found collaboration to speed things up dramatically. If you are working in a team, using tools like GoogleDocs to literally write the report together can help. I like GoogleDocs because rather a separate review session, I can review the report while in progress. If your client is of the mindset that they want to collaborate—that’s great. Then you get buy-in and buy a little time because they don’t need it as early to review it first.
- Clients may be used to detailed reports. You will succeed best if you move them to succinct reports without the extras. With Kraft, we did 1-2 page reports—as required by the client. With one we are doing now, though there is no page limit, we know that to keep it to 3 pages is generally best. Templatizing the reports also helps save an immense amount of time.