Private Communities - Defined

Today it seems like everyone wants to build a community.

But how do you make sense of all the noise? What type of community is best for companies trying to gain consumer insight?Conduct concept testing? And explore product innovation and ideation?

We recommend building a private community. According to a recent Forrester report these online communities will "turbocharge qualitative research".

A private community is limited to a small group of members who match a target profile, usually around 500 people or less. The company controls who they invite to participate in online forums, doing interactive surveys, responding to quick polls, uploading photos, and doing offline activities. Members then decide what they want to participate in and can also start their own conversations.

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

A key component of having a great community is a community manager with the know how to provide an environment to engage members online. See our list of top 5 engagement tips from our community consulting group.

A sign that your community is really taking off is when the group takes on a life of it’s own, going beyond the structured conversation and into the unstructured where members start their own conversations and  explore new areas the company can simply observe unobtrusively.

Take note, the ideas from the community are purely directional and not representative, that’s why we recommend establishing a custom panel along with your private community. Then you can take ideas from the community and go back to your panel to see how a representative sample would respond.

What’s unique about our technology is that we can drill down to specific postings on a forum and click on the individual to see how they responded to past surveys and tie together both qualitative and quantitative data.

Managing all the data and knowing who is posting it within the community is a big reason why private community works so well for companies.