Community & Forums

Whether it’s Facebook, mySpace, Lavalife or Craigslist, a lot of people are spending time in online communities: spaces where people can exchange ideas, opinions, and issues with no regard to geographies, cultures, or demographics. And it's because so many people are participating in communities that businesses are trying to use similar forums to gain insights from their customers.

Podcast: How do I use an online community as an effective research tool? 

What is a community?

A community can give you great insight into a select group of people, whether it’s your customers, potential customers, stakeholders, audience or members. Usually, we recommend about 25 to 50 people as an ideal size. The community gives you their perspective without filters and lets you dig deep to find out the reasoning behind their feedback. If they say they don’t like the color of your new product, ask why.

The beauty is, when a community is coupled with a proprietary panel you can compare community feedback with answers from surveys in the panel. The thing to keep in mind is that the community is not typically a broad representative sample, it’s a small group of people. It can be an ideal environment to throw around ideas or gut-check existing ideas, but it won’t necessarily represent your entire market.

From a research perspective, insights from a community are qualitative, so they will need validation using some type of quantitative mechanism like a survey. Once you validate the responses, go back to the community and figure out how those insights should be used. There are also more things to consider before diving into creating a community: take a look at our section on community management and moderation for some pointers.

What is a forum?

A forum is a group of people, typically 50 to 100, who come together for a specific purpose. For example, an airline would use a forum to get respondents talking about service from flight attendants. The forum is usually for a shorter period of time than a community because there is a known finish date.

Imagine you get data from quantitative studies and something comes up that you didn’t expect. A forum can be a great way to dig and learn more about the dislikes around service. For instance, if none of your first class airline travelers like the service on their flights, as a moderator on your forum, you can ask questions and probe more. What about the service didn’t they like? You might see moderator-driven or organic conversations about the snacks they were served, or the long lineups to the bathroom.

Of course, once you get the feedback either from a community or a forum, you’ll have to digest it too. Take a look at our research partners section to see more.