As MROCs (or insight communities) continue to gather pace and mature as a methodology, so to does the way in which they are measured and the techniques used to manage them.

We've long been touting the benefits of small but focused communities where membership numbers are no more than 300. That's not to say you can't invite more people, but the quality of the participation and output will fall as you go much beyond these numbers, as will the time and cost of managing the community and analysing the output.

While there are still researchers and research departments that use the language of 'completes' when referring to the success of their insight community, we always push back and talk to them about 'engagement' and how you can get much greater value from a smaller number of participants, both in terms of their overall participation with the tasks and exercises but also their average number of contributions.

This metric becomes even more prevalent when you start to consider moving your insight community into a phase of co-creation where you are looking to collaborate with the leading 1% of your customer base.

Another reason why your community needs to be smaller in size and more focused is that consumers are now members of more networks and groups than ever before. To cut through the white noise is thus increasingly difficult, and puts more emphasis in the design of engaging, creative research and the need to make the intrinsic motivational factors (membership, connectivity etc) work even harder.

To find out more about how Dub can help you engage the top 1% of your customer base and build thriving communities for insight, innovation and cocreation, contact Stephen Cribbett on +44 (0) 20 7247 3327

Categories: Co-creation, Community Management, MROC, Online Communities.
Tags: cocreation, metric, MROC

We'd like to welcome you to the first in what we hope to be many posts from qualitative researchers across the globe that have used our software - IdeaStream, HeadsUp and UpClose - to deliver outstanding research. We very much hope that the series stimulates debate and discussion, and we encourage you to post your comments and questions back to the author.

So without further ado, please welcome Dr Alison Lyons from Counterpoint Research. Alison recently worked with Dub to deliver an study that looked into premium lager consumption behaviours. Being Scottish, Alison assured us she knew her subject and could hold her own in any forum, so we put her to the test. Here's what she had to say....

Say hello and introduce yourself to our readers, highlighting your online and offline experience.

Hi there, I'm Alison Lyon and I've been a researcher for over 20 years. My first job was lecturing in Research Methods and Education, after which I moved into commercial market research. I kept up an interest in new methods though, and established a qualitative telephone unit at Network Research, before setting up Counterpoint Research in 1991. We were one of the very first UK agencies to start offering online methodologies, so it's really exciting to see them incorporated pretty much across the board nowadays.

From your experience, what do you glean from online qual methods (communities, bulletin boards etc) that you don’t get from more traditional f2f methods?

Time, reflection and creativity. Face to face is brilliant for living in the moment, pushing respondents into uncomfortable spaces, in-depth conversations and visceral reactions. Online is much better when you need more time to track not only how people feel 'in the moment', but also once they've thought about it, talked about it with their friends/ family, changed their minds a couple of times and (usually) landed on a compromise opinion.

It's also great when you want to encourage a lot of independent interaction between respondents. Often the most fascinating discussions start when participants ask each other questions : questions you might not ask as a moderator.

The most often-cited advantage of online methods is that they don't require participants to be physically present all at the same time, in the same location, so it makes peer to peer interaction possible between a much broader range of the population.

When you choose to use online methods, what are the most common drivers?

Most experienced researchers will look at the research problem and consider what methods will work best, in what kind of combination - nowadays that should mean considering on and offline methods.

I'd say the most common reasons I have for recommending an online approach are :

- when the service/ product/ problem to be researched is also based online

- as mentioned above - when you need to give respondents time and space to reflect, look at the issues from another angle, talk about it etc.

- when you need a balance between the individual's story and group reactions (e.g. including diaries/ blogs/ journals as well as online discussions)

- and yes, logistics (geographically spread sample, professionals/ stakeholders who can't commit to being physically available all at the same time etc)

- when the topic is extremely personal, and/ or complex - so respondents will struggle to express themselves well without feeling under pressure in a face to face environment

What do you see as the difference, if any, in the way people express themselves online versus in person?

There are lots of differences, which obviously need to be taken into consideration when designing and analysing online content - but they also vary depending on who you've invited online.

For instance, elderly investors unused to having anything like a discussion online are much more like their offline selves. They take time and spell out all their words, include all the punctuation and get annoyed when they make spelling mistakes.

Young people used to social networking tend to express themselves much more emphatically online - their emotions tend to be bigger, and expressed very quickly. But they'll also change their mind more quickly and be open to others' points of view.

An enormous benefit of online with young people is that there isn't that difficult, awkwardness you sometimes get when you ask a group of strangers to come together, open up and be frank with one another.

What tactics and tools do you use successfully to manage the rivers of data produced in online research communities?

The best online platform/ software providers allow you to organise the content as you're reading through it to respond to it - I really like features such as IdeaStream's 'rating' and annotation facilities. They work really well and are brilliant visual 'breaks' in a sea of text.

It also allows you to analyse video / photographic / graphics content alongside respondents' stories.

BUT ... the absolutely golden rule is whatever happens in your life / work / relationship / library subscription (remember those?!), stay on top of the content. If you fall behind you will not catch up.

Do you think clients are more or less excited by online research communities than researchers, and why?

I've seen an incredibly wide range of responses to the whole online research offer from both clients and researchers. But it's rare that either researchers or clients have experienced online qualitative research without being excited by it ... and those who weren't were few and judging online options as "cheap" options. Which they're not.

What do you most enjoy about running online research communities?

Like with face to face research, it's the people. I absolutely love the way research participants will share their feelings, ideas, experiences, fears, aspirations in such a generous way. The difference with online is that we give them so many ways to explore and feedback - it's not just time limited and mainly speech-based.

I also love working longer term with participants and clients - that is incredibly fulfilling.

Finally, I enjoy the buzz participants get out of working in such cool and innovative ways, and being able to see what a difference they make as their ideas are acted upon.

How do you sell the benefits of online research communities to your clients, and what do you see as the ongoing challenges of encouraging clients that it’s the right fit with their objectives?

I talk about the frankness, the creativity and the depth they'll get from their participants, and about how involved they'll be able to get.

I also talk about the beautiful transparency of online approaches, and how they'll have a much closer relationship with their customers because of online communities.

I also talk about their responsibilities - if they're asking their customers to give so much to them, they have to think carefully about what they're giving back.

What participants do you think are the best fit with online methods and why?

Do you know, I've used online approaches with the least tech-savvy people and had absolutely fantastic results. But obviously the less the participants have been online, the more work needs to go into preparing an environment where they feel comfortable.

So I'd say don't rule anyone out, and don't automatically think that young people will always be right for online on every topic.

Do you have any examples of online tasks and exercises that have worked extremely well and exceeded your expectations?

I conducted a series of online forums on the topic of egg and sperm donation for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority recently. The target audience was the general public and those with an active faith. The forums took place over 5-6 days and were absolutely fascinating. By encouraging participants to talk with friends and family about the issues being raised in the forum we were able to understand attitudes on a much deeper level.

Participants also started interacting with one another in a fascinating way, sharing some very personal, private and difficult moments with one another, and providing support and encouragement.

At the end of the project I had received a mountain of personal emails from participants, saying how amazed they were that they were able to participate so easily and how perfect an environment online had been for exploring such complex, difficult and personal issues.

Whatever the task, the best online platforms make it fun, easy and quick for respondents to feed back what they've done in a creative, interesting and thoughtful way. It has to make them look good to keep them engaged and involved.

What are you most excited about in the world of online qual research right now?

I'm really excited about how online platforms are much more flexible, and how easy it is now to combine approaches: so a few key participants in a longer term community can be asked to participate in mini-focus groups, tasks can be analysed alongside forum responses, or blogs etc. In the past researchers had to decide on either a forum, or an online texting group, or a video-conference, or a community ... nowadays we can spec what we think is appropriate for different issues and participants, and the software/ platform can cope with it.

Categories: Community Management, MROC, Market Research, Moderation.

As those of you involved in social networks and online communities will know, it's the intrinsic factors that often motivate people the most, for example 'connectedness', 'membership', 'sharing' and generosity'. However, a fascinating and recent study by two economists, Xiaoquan Zhang and Feng Zhu, examined contributors to the internet phenomena that is Wikipedia. For those of you not familiar with Wikipedia then it can be described as an online encyclopedia that can be edited and managed by literally anyone. What's more, Wikipedia is a collaborative site that stores details of all of the edits ever made and by whom, and there's also a live chat environment where contributors can discuss and collaborate.

What they found was that contributions from regular users (editors and authors) strangely dropped by around 40%. As the normal rules of participation would have it, these contributors should be 'more' active in order to get the work done since they care enough about Wikipedia to cover the downtime caused elsewhere. The conclusions that this episode has drawn are that contributors are also motivated by the notion of someone watching them. Why contribute when nobody is watching? To back this up, it happened to be those contributors that regularly access the live chat pages that were most disengaged.

Categories: MROC, Online Communities.
Tags: contribution, motivation, wiki, wikipedia

We've built and facilitated over a hundred online communities purposed with delivering fresh insight, eureka moments and relationships, and we're constantly impressed by the energy, enthusiasm and creativity extolled by consumers. Not only does the convenience of these methods facilitate better results (than traditional research techniques), it brings out the creative best in people since the rewards and value is a combination of the emotional, social, physical and financial.

We talk to our clients about the merits of 'narrative journeys'; the creation of a beginning, a middle and an end to the story that results in co-created value. Give consumers room to manoeuvre and a multitude of ways in which they can express themselves, and combine this with the ability to continually iterate the exercises and you've got a melting pot of insight and ideas.

The most successful insight and co-creation communities are those that are led by skilled Community Managers - a new breed of research moderators. Community Managers are story tellers, conversationalists and relationship brokers, and they display bags of passion in order to inject enthusiasm and energy into the community. It's a fun and interesting role that many researchers new to the discipline and quickly falling in love with as they really get to 'know' their community as people they are and not just as 'respondents'.

One strategic intent of your insight and co-creation community should be to fish out the top 1%. These can be your leading advocates, the most creative, the most digitally connected etc. Finding them is critical, and this is where we move from research into co-creation. We must drop the argument about bias and representation and look further forward. As researchers we need to be part of the creation process as well as helping clients understand what went before.

Create the right environment within your community and the ideas and insights will flow, rapidly! Build relationships and your community will be engaged and motivated to co-develop new ideas without the need to financially motivate them. Listen carefully, talk clearly and remain open, honest and transparent and you'll do well. Goodbye focus groups, hello future. It's a brave new world we are entering into as researchers, but the future looks bright. Our skills and craft are not lost, they are developing and increasing in relevance.

Categories: Co-creation, MROC, Online Communities.

We've just received a lovely quote from a moderator that has just completed an online study using our IdeaStream platform. Here words were...

"I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the platform is so easy it saves a heck of a lot of time, encourages the participants to work much harder, and makes the moderator's job much easier"

Not sure what we can add to that, other than if you haven't experienced our online research platforms for yourself, your missing out!

Get in touch with stephen@dubstudios.com to find out more.

Categories: Community Management, Online Communities.
Tags: ideastream, Moderation

If you are planning your first MROC and are unsure as to how your members will respond, worry not. This is a common concern among budding research community managers, and one that can reigned in by reducing risk and starting small.

Hand pick only a small number of participants that fit your the criteria and invite them to join your community. Your first few activity should always be to engage them, but don't fell pressured to engage them straight away with research activities. Start slowly by building some profiling exercises and ask your initial members what would motivate them to participate in the communities activities, now and into the future. Not only does this technique get them talking about themselves - something we're all seemingly happy to do - it will help you understand their motivations for taking part and provide valuable information you can use to derive a strategy for incentives as the community grows and you look to build participation.

When your members start to become active contributors, you know you're doing something right and rewarding them in the right way. Remember, online research communities provide simple and convenient ways to share some of the insights gleaned with your members, so keep them informed and they'll reward you with greater levels of focus, interest and contribution.

Get the rewards and incentives right in the early stages and your community will thrive. And as a guide, think about not just cash incentives, but look into some of the softer rewards such as status, knowledge, responsibility and social connectivity.

Categories: Community Management, MROC, Online Communities.

Press Release:  London/Los Angeles - 27th June 2011

Dub appointed online qual technology partner to Decision Analyst following extensive review online qual technology partner to Decision Analyst following extensive review.

Dub, the leading provider of online research software and services, today announced a new partnership with Decision Analyst, a global marketing research and analytical consulting firm. The agreement sees Dub provide online qual technology for the coming year and provides new innovation opportunities for both companies.

A vastly experienced team of online qual researchers, Decision Analyst conducted a lengthy review of research technology partners and selected Dub having had extensive hands-on experience.

Stephen Cribbett, Dub co-Founder and CEO, comments ‘We are delighted to have been selected by Decision Analyst to support their global online qual research work. We share many beliefs on where online qual is going and our tools have a good fit with their team of experienced online researchers’

”Dub’s advanced technology and capabilities enhance Decision Analyst’s qualitative research and ideation services.  The services we perform for our clients demand the highest quality, flexibility, security, and integrity. Dub is a major contributor in helping Decision Analyst achieve those goals,” according to Gwen Ishmael, Senior Vice President.

Dub and Decision Analyst’s partnership comes soon after the announcement of Dub’s expansion into the U.S. market, with a new office in LA.

To find out more, contact Stephen Cribbett, +44 (0) 20 7247 3327 or email stephen(at)dubstudios(dot)com

Categories: Business, MROC, News, Research Tech.

When we build communities with our clients, we always recommend they give their community a name. But it's more than a name, it's an identity that establishes the purpose of the community. It is symbolic of something that is owned by the research community members and, over time, becomes the glue that binds members to the host.

Practically, the name should be used in most, if not all email titles as an identifier that are sent from the community to its members. This establishes the cause of the call-to-action and gains instant recognition in what these days are over-crowded inboxes.

When your research community members are talking among themselves, they will use the name of the community to refer to their activities.

Perhaps most importantly, your members won't react quite so positively if they feel they are simply a member of an 'organisations' community. They want to feel part of something unique, exciting, a place they have had a had in creating. What's more, they should feel happy in taking on the identity of the community for themselves.

One example of a great name that was derived for a recent community that Dub built for it's client Cafedirect was simply 'Cafedirectors'. It gave its member the notion that they were a select bunch, people who were going to have a voice and a say in the future of the brand. This example does not shy away from a direct association with the host brand, though in some circumstances it's good to put some distance between the two for reasons explained earlier in this post.

So you see, the name of your community IS important and it should be motivating and inspiring.

Categories: MROC, Online Communities.

We get asked the question ‘How long should I plan for my research community (MROC) to last?’ a lot, so I thought I’d share our thoughts and wisdom on this one with you.

First of all, there is no hard and fast rule about how long your research community should live on. It can be argued that a bulletin board focus group constitutes a community, in which case the community may last only a matter of days. But for the purpose of this discussion, let’s focus on thoroughbred research communities (ie. excluding community panels) of between 100-500 members.

There are several factors affecting the ‘life’ of your community, which can be summarised as follows;

Capital investment
Clearly, you should set out on the road to delivering a research community with a clear budget. Your budget should cover such elements as technology, skills, rewards and incentives, and finally, in some instances, recruitment.

Resources
When planning your community, you’ll need to make decisions on what is kept in house and what is outsourced. Naturally these will impact your budget, which in turn have an impact on how long the community can be kept alive.

Objectives
Your community may be designed to deliver just a single objective such as a piece of NPD or validation, but in a lot of cases they are built as a resource that can be tapped into by many people within the organisation over time. Therefore, objectives may change on a monthly basis and regular planning required to ensure these demands are achievable and delivered.

Participation
Not all communities are the raging success you’d hope for. For many good reasons, they can fail. For example, you may lack the ‘glue’ that you thought you had, the sort that keeps your community interested and engaged. There may be a cultural event or disaster of some kind that drastically changes the behaviour of your members. Or quite simply, you just not getting the level of participation required to justify the investment, the result being that the community is closed down.

Tasks and Exercises
You need to achieve a good balance between the volume and frequency of tasks and activities that you launch. Too many and you risk fatigue, the result of which is a fall-out of participants. Too few and you might see people’s interest wane and their attention drift elsewhere. Get it right and you have will engage interesting and interested people in creative ways you never thought possible.

So you see, there’s no one answer to this question, it’s all down to the careful planning and implementation of a sound research community strategy, business case and investment.

To find out more about how you can plan your research community for success, why not get in touch with us@dubstudios.com

Categories: Community Management, MROC, Online Communities.

If you’re a brand or organisation thinking of building your own online research community (MROC) as a way of regularly delivering fresh that can help you make the right decisions and helping you develop new products and services, then you’ll no doubt be pondering the role of the Community Manager.

There are of course similarities in this role to that of a Community Manager working on communities of a different purpose, ie marketing or support-led communities, but it’s the differences that are important to focus on. So we’ve taken a look at the typical activities and responsibilities you should be building into this role.

Recruitment & Growth
Unlike other community-types, the research community will have narrower membership criteria, including demographics and attitudinal. Over the course of time, members will drop out naturally and need replacing, so whether you are recruiting from a panel, existing customer data or social media channels, recruitment is one of the most important ongoing activities.

Content
Online research communities are likely to last several months or years, so retaining the interest of its members is tantamount to its success. The Community Manager will need to create ‘sticky’ content - that which is interesting, relevant, engaging and often unique.

Relationship-building
The best relationships are those that build organically over time, but deepening relationships with leading contributors - the most creative, outspoken, advocate, connected etc - pays dividends. These members can also help you with your activities. For example, make them Moderators or ask them to volunteer for various other duties which you can reward them for in a number of social and emotional ways.

Events
The best communities don’t just exist online. Punctuate your community with a range of live events, debates, presentations, parties etc, and you’ll see the participation rise and the relationships flourish.

Research
The power of your community is it’s ability to generate fresh insight and new ideas. So with the right training and tools, your Community Manager should be hunting for these golden nuggets every day. Tracking insight, trends and attitudinal changes forms part of this activity and should be supported with tools that allow them to annotate and organise the information for future reporting and dissemination

Insight engagement
One of the benefits of working with digital insight is that it can be shared quickly and easily, and can be bought to life in a multitude of ways (think data visualisation, video reports etc). Insight should be present at board level discussions, so the role of the Community Manager is also to ensure your people are engaged with it.

Moderation
This can be pre or post moderation, and focuses on making the community a safe and positive environment, weeding out the bad and highlighting the good.

Technical
Your Community Manager need not be a developer versed in the art of writing code, but it certainly helps if they can get involved in technical conversations and write specifications for new tools.

Support
Responding to questions and requests for help

Given the extent of the activities above, your Community Manager needs to be highly organised and motivated. As your community launches, they’ll spend more time on recruitment, but over time this might reduce, so they’ll need to strike a balance while sustaining a focus.

Your Community Manager needn't be a full-time position to begin with, but as your community extends, it may be worth considering the optimisation of this role to ensure your community meets it business objectives. Research communities are major commitments, so don’t take them lightly and be sure to consider all the elements, not just Community Manager, but also technology, style and content, design and investment.

Categories: Community Management, MROC, Moderation.