Published by Olivier January 15th, 2008
in market research.
In a recent post, I expressed my skepticism about the fad of branded social networks, where marketers expect people to “engage” into “authentic conversations” with a toothpaste or a new checking account. The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel covered the topic today. While Emily’s article is a nice introduction to the WSJ’s general business readers, I would like to add a few comments:
Social networks are not online communities (and vice versa): a community exists around a center of interest, while a social network is about connecting people who know each other already. There is no Facebook or LinkedIn community. But there are strong online communities without networks: pregnant mothers, scuba-divers, etc. Ten years ago, the Internet was a community because only a few people had access to it (the same way one can argue that the twittersphere is a community). In a community, your common interest is at the center of the discussion although it may result in other discussions. Like in the real world, you will listen to people in your online community because you can trust them. You make friends on communities, you keep in touch with offline friends in networks. The tools that support communities have been around for a long time and are free most of the time: message boards, forums, chat rooms, Yahoo/Google/Facebook groups. The tools that support networks are newsfeeds, pokes and thousand of third party applications that update you on what your friends are doing.
To whom is research useful?: why would you try to build an online community of dog lovers when there are so many other destinations already? The marketer’s answer is that it gives the brand more control. Ok, that’s the brand’s benefit - now what is the user’s benefit to join your private branded network instead of going to Facebook where he actually has friends, or instead of going to the BabyCenter forum to share useful tips about his newborn child? Control is neither natural or useful. As Teresa puts it in WebCommunityForum, the “cardinal rule” is: “be useful”. If you want your site to be truly useful, you will have to invest (a lot of) money and time to try to build something good. Being a successful online publisher is not easy - there are already a lot of good sites on the Internet. If your site adds little to no value and relies on incentives and sweepstakes to get people to talk, forget about “natural conversations”. With a little bribe, you will manage to get “authentic interviews” using controlled research tools (online or offline). Be true to yourself: if you site is really useful, it will grow organically. If it doesn’t grow and requires incentives, it may not be as useful as you think. Keep it simple: create short fun surveys with a compelling reward and it will work. Online panels (private or not) that give rewards for opinions have been around for years, and do not pretend to add you as a friend…
Disclaimer: OTX manages proprietary panels (branded or not), which some might consider as competing products to private networks. Proprietary panels are simple programs where users opt-in to participate in research projects (quant or qual) once in a while for a particular brand.
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