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What beer and online communities have in common

Australians males like to think of themselves as experts in many a field and this Babel Tower of wisdom peaks around a few particular topics... namely sport and beer.
Working for a company that specialises in a number of areas including FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods - basically what you find on the shelves in your supermarket) and sensory research, a colleague and I thought that we would go out and ask certain beer drinkers what they thought about, well, beer.
Actually when I said "go and out and ask", as keen as I was for an all Australian road trip, time was limited so we started an online discussion instead.
Now this colleague of mine is a pretty phenomenal researcher. I started the conversation and he then did things with the information that I  have never seen before and probably illegal in more than one Sovereign State. But none of that is relevant here. What came out of it was that for all the talk about fancy brewing, magic ingredients and blessings by Armenian grandmothers, if the water is no good the beer will be relegated to teenage party games that involve a length of hose, a funnel and promiscuous naked mole rat. But when you start with a good source of water, you have the ability to turn out the worlds finest brews. Just ask those vowed-to-silence Belgian monks.

Left: The effects of using poor water to make beer (http://brianakira.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/african-naked-mole-rat-heterocephalus-glabor-03.jpg)

So what does this have to do with Social Media? There are some fantastic platforms out there. Some like Ning are free, some like Vision Critical's are for corporation with budgets or the cashed up aristocrat looking at starting his or her own political party. Add to this all the apps that are out there and there is no shortage of tools on the market. But the main essential ingredient of your community, the water, is the members. For all those great tools and platforms, if the conversation is not relevant and engaging to the target member, then you can forget about having a fan base to rival Harry Potter. There are people out there who believe that they can create this audience simply by pouring cash into the community, but that is like making beer from water sourced from the sea and run through a desalination plant. The water with the certain je ne sais quai cannot be bought or manufactured. It requires an investment of time and preparation to go out of your way to find it.
But why does throwing money at it not work? Sure people will come and participate and interact with your brand, but it is in a shallow manner. They have no real interest in your brand and their responses and interaction in any discussion will likely to be short or simply making statements that they believe you want to hear. Their attention is pretty dead. As for true, if any, interaction between other members you can forget it. Like respect, honesty is earnt.
Social media can mean huge cost benefits but it also requires putting a different type of effort in. Throwing the thousands of dollars you saved from reducing your traditional marketing and research approaches into buying "fans" for your social media efforts is money down the drain. Instead of signing cheques, it means thinking laterally and creativity. Most of the highly succesful strategies succeed on very small budgets, such as the Tourism Queensland best job in the world campaign or the Blendtec adverts that started on a US$50 budget. So instead save your money for something useful.

Sidewiki gaining more attention

After writing about Sidewiki a few weeks back, I noted that some of the mainstream media are starting to pay closer attention to Google's Sidewiki. It will be interesting to see what comes of it over the next few months.

Rules of Engagement in Market Research Online Communities

OK, this is not actually a set of rules, more some observations from running communities. See engagement is perhaps one of the hardest and yet most crucial areas in which to be successful when using communities for primary research purposes. For most in the market and social research industry it means thinking outside of the square, ceding some (or in some cases a lot of) control and involving as many stakeholders as possible. Ideally this would include brand’s creative agencies and senior decision makers. When we fail to engage, community participation drops, responses become shorter and the ability to gather meaningful data fades.

It is important to remember that in almost all cases members do not come to a site to participate in research. It is paramount that the discussions which are being had are relevant and of interest to the members and to a large extent, driven by the members.

@congbo

Typically, unless your brand is deemed in the "sexy" category (think Apple, Nike etc), conversations that generate the richest content are those where members have opposing views or group together out of want of achieving a common goal - as Seth Godin said "People eagerly engage when they want something to improve". Controversy can fuel great conversations, as does negativity, humour and to some extent, a “feel good factor”. Discussions initiated by and specifically around the brand broadcasting itself in a positive light are likely to be viewed as trying to pull the wool over the members eyes and may fuel anger. Members should be the ones to drive positive sentiment towards the brand. As we are discussing research communities specifically, it should be about gathering insights rather than positive PR and spin which can be left to "traditional" communication methods.
Allowing community members to talk about what may be deemed as “controversial” subjects is paramount in the brand gaining their trust. A good community always lets their members generate their own conversations. It allows the brand to discover what topics are important and relevant to the members and what are not so relevant, removing our need as researchers to make assumptions about who we are talking to and what is relevant to them.
No topic should be off limits except those that will cause harm or upset to community members. Any negative sentiment towards the brand should be discussed frankly and openly to build trust. If a member is heckling, the community should be the one to raise the issue to the community manager as being inappropriate rather than the brand trying to silence an individual.
It is worth bearing in mind the reasons individuals come to private branded online research communities:

data from Your Source/@daniel_ah

These are just a few key items to ensure that engagement can occur and allow the community to thrive and the client to gather credible research findings. I am interested in what others have found to be successful in terms of building engagement without having to resort to financial incentives, whether it is for research or other purposes.

ESOMAR Chicago Online Conference Paper - It Works For Us But Does It Work For Them? An Investigation Of How Online Research Communities Work For Consumers Invited To Participate.

I have inserted the joint paper that was led by Steve Cierpicki (and because of his dedication to the paper, earnt a nomination for ESOMAR best paper for 2009/2010). Love to hear any thoughts on it.

View more documents from Daniel Alexander-Head.