Jul 16, 2015
What we’ll cover today
Creating asuccessful online
community
Introducing OpenMic
Understandingonline and offline
drivers
What Sparkler does
Consumer-led brandstrategy consultancy
Online and offlinemethodologies
We’ll be looking today at online communities in context
Who are we speaking to?
Participants? Respondents?
Audience? Consumers?
PEOPLE
Firstly, let’s define ‘online social community’
X X
What is ‘success’?
THE ‘OLD’MODEL
Client
Researcher
Respondent
Brief
Response
THE ‘NEW’MODEL
Client Participant
Ongoingparticipation
Researcher
Ongoingparticipation
Ongoingparticipation
A guiding principle – people don’t change that muchA guiding principle – people don’t change that much
How this influences our methodologies
Complementing, not replacing
Existing behaviours
Digital methodologies
Some thoughts
Everybody needsa reason toparticipate
Peoplecongregate (andcommunicate)around content
People come andgo as they please
People (mostly)police themselves
People can betrusted
Participationbegets
participation
The question becomes ‘why should people participate?’
Content Love of the subjectmatter
Social contact withothers
Being a part ofsomething special
None of these things are limited to the onlineworld
Why people participate
“I love checking in every day. I seem to learnsomething new each day or at least each week,
whether it’s discovering new music or finding outfacts about music and its true origin or being
introduced to new music. I also enjoy posting onboth pages too – I often post my favourite tune of
the day: new, old, classic or even unheard of, itintroduces other members to music they may or
may not have heard before!”
Why people participate
Kwame Lisa
So what do you do about that?
Upload relevantcontent
frequently
Show and shareyour love of thesubject matter
Allow socialcontact with
others
Give it a visualidentity
Don’t be too ‘BigBrother’
Use offlinecontact strategies
The role of incentives
Mercenary?
Motivated by money?
Participation
Sociability
Relevant incentives
Introducing Open Mic
So what does this mean in the case of Open Mic?
Set rhythms
Newdevelopments
Staying on topic
Profile pages
Freestyle
Hall of Fame
Benefits to 1Xtra
“Open Mic is a unique way of obtaining creativeinsight, reaching out to a young underserved
audience who don’t communicate throughtraditional means and are therefore hard to reach.
The community has also helped us build arelationship with our core audience. The site hasinformed the station’s creative expression and
been used as a strategic tool across 1Xtra”
Ade Adeluwoye, Research Manager, 1Xtra
Konrad Collao, Associate Partner
e: [email protected] m: 07886 203 863