Jim Cashel and I hosted the "State of Online Community" webinar this morning.

The webinar is based on the research we've conducted as part of the Online Community Research Network, and highlights 10 key trends from 2008, as well as taking a peak into emerging trends for 2009. This webcast and slide deck represent a large body of work from the Forum One Networks team, as reflects input from over 2000 online community professionals from all over the world.

You can see an archive of the webcast (with audio and slides, requires short registration) here:
The State of Online Community: 2008 Archive

The slides from the webcast are here:



A .pdf of the slides can be found here.

What did I miss? What should we focus on next year? Just want to argue about something? Leave a comment or email me

I’ve been working with my research team at Forum One to put together a short survey about the effects of the economic downturn on online community budgets and strategy in the near term, as well as the effects on 2009 planning. If you currently run an online community for your organization, I would **love** to have your input.

The survey can be found here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=aIL0VzBCp03sc6az_2bu8t1A_3d_3d

If you decide to participate, there are few things to note:
• All participants will receive a copy of the final (aggregate) report.
• All data will be processed and compiled in aggregate. Data will not be reviewed or presented in a personally (or company) identifiable way.
• All participants are entered in to a drawing for 1 of 10 $25 Starbucks coffee cards.

If you have any questions about the study, please feel free to contact me (bjohnston@forumone.com). We hope to close the survey portion of the study by December 12th.

We initiated the Online Community Culture study in October of 2008, as part of the ongoing research agenda of the Online Community Research Network. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at the factors that influence online community culture, and the steps community managers and strategists take in cultivating, and in some cases influencing, a community’s culture. We had over 75 participants in the research, representing many sectors, including software, tech, traditional media, social media and online community, and non-profits. Respondents seniority skewed towards Manager (44%), Directors & VP's (12%).

Key Factors Establishing an Online Community's Culture
One key area we wanted to understand was the short list of factors that community managers thought were most important in establishing a communities culture. We asked: "What are the three most important factors in establishing and maintaining a community's culture?"

The top three responses (in order) were:

• Quality, up-to-date content
  
• Have a clear objective / value statement 11% (12)
  
• strong moderation / facilitation 12% (13) of the community site was a critical factor.

Key quotes from the respondents:

“Listen, and treat others as you'd expect to be treated. Be there - 24/7 coverage. Show gratitude to earn respect”
Director / Community Manager, Media Company

“Active moderation with a well informed host, participation at all levels of the organization and support by the executive level”
Director Internet Marketing, Tools/Service Provider

“Platform, (if you want the conversation to occur on a 1st party site, if not it may very well occur on a third party site), Recognition (supporting the achievements of the community members, and enabling through various interactions including events, content, and feedback interaction opportunities. Listening Mechanism (ensure that community members voices are heard)”
Community Program Manager, Software Company

“The community is open to all (even competitors. Speak your mind but respect everyone. Clear policies and guidelines dictate the rules/expectations of the community”
Social Media / Community Manager, Hardware / Software Company

“1 - Focus: Managing expectations from the outset as to what users can and cannot experience in the community 2 - Prompt response & closing the loop
3 - Rich & engaging content”
CEO, Online Community / Social Media Company

“1 - establish ground rules at the get go and enforce them even handedly 2 - respond to the evolution demands of a growing community by evolving your offering 3 - remember that you are not one of them, you are their advocate to the company and the company's advocate to them”
Senior Community Development Manager, Hardware/Software Company

“1- Always ensuring that the community comes before the brand behind it. 2 - Let the community create the culture and make tools and communications to enhance that, instead of trying to impose a culture. 3 - Prevent the community from going stale”
Online Community Coordinator, Non Profit Organization

“1) Providing differentiated and relevant tools, features, & content (why engage with 'product X' here, vs. anywhere else?) 2) Lower the barrier to participation / access as much as you reasonably can 3) Provide self-moderation tools”
Director, Online Marketing, Entertainment (Video Games)

Steps to Establish an Online Community's Culture
Another area we wanted to explore with this project was the set of key actions taken by community hosts to support the establishment of a community's culture.

We asked: ": What steps have you taken to establish a new community's culture?"

Respondents highlighted the following key actions:

• Recognizing positive participation
  
• Soliciting and Responding to member feedback
  
• Communicating with Members
  

Key quotes from the respondents:

“Active participation of internal staff - Reward programs for active participants - ongoing moderation - News and announcement on landing pages.”
Community Manager, Software Company

“For our upcoming community redesign, we are limiting the amount and importance of "standard" community features (friends, forums, "favorite books", etc.) and focusing more on making the resources, our organization’s knowledge and user's generated knowledge, as a visible and social part of the site. All articles and content can be rated and comment upon. Users will have access to a Yahoo Answers style tool. Users can contribute stories and best practices in a community blog. The "standard" functions are there to help make relationships made on these new functions easier to keep, but the knowledge and resources people create will be the most important part of the community.”
Online Community Coordinator, Non-Profit Organization

“Instituted simple but comprehensive rules and codes of practice. Engaged community members directly rather than leaving them to flail without response. Demonstrated that by following, new policies results happened.”
Community Development Manager, Hardware / Software Company

“Actively soliciting feedback from members. Publicly acknowledging and acting upon the feedback received. Clearly identifying desirable behavior as a model for others to embrace. Setting a positive example when posting as a member (not as a moderator).”
Analytics Country Manager, Agency

“1. Designed our primary social media platform to emphasize and reinforce our targeted audience -- business professionals interested in an exchange of information on business oriented topics. This includes, look and feel; community standards, user added content, involvement with other business oriented social networks. 2. Individual responses to feedback submitters, within one business day, from me or my team, providing information as well as our real names, e-mail addresses and office phone numbers.”
Director, User Participation, Media Company

“Listen, learn and adapt. It's important to remember that company's can participate in the community discussion, and provide a "the company's" perspective or view”
Community Program Manager, Software Company

Netting It Out
Based on synthesis of the respondents' answers, key activities and factors for establishing a desirable culture for an online community are generally:

Value Statement
Create a clear value statement for the community that includes all stakeholders (host and members). The host must offer a unique set of content, features, and access to personalities as part of the value statement. The value statement should be clearly communicated within the community overtly (via the code of conduct) and subtly through branding, user experience and moderation / management cues.

Clear Code of Conduct
A clear and concise code of conduct should be available on the community site, and should clearly describe the expected behavior of community members, and the consequences for behavior that is out of bounds.

Open Lines of Communication
The community host must be easily accessible, and responsive. As noted in the comments above, some organizations have an internal SLA (Service Level Agreement) for response times.

Host plays a visible (but different) role
Members of the host organization should play a visible role in the community. Being present, interacting with members and often times leading community initiatives or activities. It is important to note that the role of host is one of attending, not just participation. Just like the host of a good party doesn't just mingle, and good community host participates with intention, and keeps an eye on the overall mood of the community.

User Experience / Feature Set Should Be Tailored To Audience

If you subscribe to the design principals of the Bauhaus, then "form follows function". This means that, from the baseline information architecture of the community presence, all the way to feature selection and visual design, the community's online experience is shaped to be appropriate for the desired audience. A community designed for 3D artists working in the film industry (more visual, to share images) has a much different form factor than a site designed for application developers (more text-based, to share code samples).

Content
Quality, relevant and up to date content is key to many online communities. Unique content from the host organization is often one of the key "Why are we here" factors to attract community members. Ensuring that quality member content is highlighted on the community site (and elsewhere, if possible), helps with participation incentive and helps foster a sense of engagement.

Acknowledge Positive Contributions
Highlighting positive contributions and contributors helps encourage content contributions, as well as reinforce positive member behavior.

Create a "Welcoming" Culture
When new members are welcomed in to a community by the host or other community members, that member is more likely to come back, and to contribute.

For More Information

The full report "Online Community Culture: Establishing, Maintaining and Changing" (Published 11/08, 40pgs) is available to Online Community Research Network members, and includes additional information on:

• Factors that have a negative impact on culture
  
• Processes for collecting ideas, memes, and "stories" from members
  
• Managing external factors effecting culture
  
• Managing a negative culture
  

The Online Community Research Network is kicking off our next research project to study how online community cultures form, what factors effect change, and how hosts maintain a desired culture.

We have found that the best source of information about community best practice and strategy comes from the collective experience of real-world practitioners.

If you would like to participate in the study, you can find the research survey here:
http://moourl.com/occulture

Again, the survey is intended for experienced community managers and strategists only, please.

The Online Community Compensation study was initiated in July of 2008 as part of our ongoing research efforts with the Online Community Research Network. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at online community compensation, factors that effect compensation, and the current environment of the community team and community staff roles.

We received approximately 225 responses. Participants represent a healthy swath of the types of organizations participating in online community building activities, including: large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, platform providers, interactive marketing firms and independent consultants.

Key findings from the report:
• The majority of the respondents are: Female (55%) vs. Male (45%),
• The majority (61%) of respondents ranged in age from 31-50 years of age.
• Most of the respondents have more than 5 years of experience, completed a Bachelors Degree, and work 41-50 hours per week.
• The average Salary of the respondents was $81k with a median of $72.5k. There were peaks on both the low ($0-$25k) and high ends (more than $150k), and then also at $60-$65k.
• Women are earning only 91% of what men are earning; women averaged $77k, and the men averaged $85k. The average annual salary for all participants was almost $81k.
• Most participants are satisfied with their jobs with an average satisfaction score of 4.2 and a median score of 4 (on a scale of 1-5).


Gender
This is the first time we have asked a gender question in our research, but this answer, combined with anecdotal data from our events supports a slight tendency towards females being in community roles vs. males.



Age
Most of the particpants skewed towards the 31-40 y/o segment.



Department
The responses indicate Marketing “owning” Community teams, or organizations creating a dedicated team. “No formal structure” and “Throughout the company” were also popular responses. The placement of the community team seems to be very much in flux, with a bias towards the marketing department.



Experience
The respondents generally represented a senior and seasoned body of practitioners. The dip in responses in the 3yr to 5 yr range likely represents the general waning of interest in online community during the 3 years after the Internet bubble, and the relatively recent resurgence in interest and investment.



Salary
The average Salary the research participants was $81k with a median of $72.5k. There were peaks on both the low ($0-$25k) and high ends (more than $150k), and then also at $60-$65k. The salaries reported represent a disparate, but generally healthy, range. Spikes in the “$0 to $25k” can be accounted for by volunteers, part time staff and C-level staff not currently taking compensation in startup environments.



Salary by Gender
Women are earning 91% of what men are earning; women averaged $77k, and the men averaged $85k. The average annual salary for all participants was almost $81k.



Satisfaction
It is encouraging to find that overall satisfaction with Online Community positions is well above average. This indicates the combination of salary, benefits, work environment and subject matter is working for most of the respondents.



Full Report
The full Online Community Compensation report contains a good deal more information on the topic, including:
• Community team size
• Respondent education
• Hours Worked
• Benefits
• Salary by Country (US, UK, Canada)
• Salary by Title
• Salary by Experience
• Salary increases in last 12 months
• Full write in comments from Survey

The report available for free to members of the Online Community Research Network, or available to purchase for non-members here:
Online Community Compensation 2008

Over the last 3 years we've conducted research with over a 1000 organizations actively engaged with online communties, including Fortune 500 companies, cutting edge community-based startups and some of the world's leading non-profit organizations.

We are currently conducting 6 studies annually, and we typically release the research reports (for a limited time).

Currently available (free) research reports include:
Identity, Reputation & Ranking:
The Identity, Reputation & Ranking research project studied current practice with online identity, member reputation (including reputation systems and programs) and content ranking techniques.
Key findings from the study include:
- Members typically don’t fill out non-required profile fields;
- Slightly less than 1/3 of the respondents (32%) have, or plan on making member’s profiles portable in the next 6 months;
- Slightly less than 1/3 of the respondents (32%) have, or plan on implementing a universal ID solution in the next 6 months;
- The majority of respondents have, or are developing a reputation system for their communities.
Download this report (free).

Online Community Revenue and ROI Techniques:
The Online Community Revenue and ROI Techniques research project studied revenue streams of online communities as well as monetary and non-monetary measurements of value.
Key findings from the study include:
- Respondents generally valued non-fiduciary dimensions of value, like loyalty, over direct revenue.
- The most effective revenue generating techniques were advertising and charging for community subscription.
- A member-first attitude is needed when considering the addition of fee-based or revenue-generating services. The best way to find out what your members do or don’t want? Ask them.
Download this report (free).

Marketing & Online Communities:
The Marketing & Online Communities research project was intended to study the intersection of current marketing practices and online community building.
Key takeaways from the study include:
- A list of community marketing tactics that community hosts engage in;
- Feedback on the most effective marketing tactics;
- Host policies that marketers must adhere to;
Download this report (free).

Research Reports Available to OCRN Members:
Online Community: Marketing, Growth and Engagement Report / July 2008 (also available for purchase)
Online Community ROI: Models and Reports / February 2008
Online Community ROI Research Report / April 2007
Online Community Metrics: February, 2007
Online Community Metrics: Best Practices Survey / March 2006
Blogs, Wikis and Workspaces: June 2006

Our Research Calendar for this quarter includes:
Online Community Compensation (team structure, titles and compensation packages from over 250 community professionals): to be published August 2008
Community Vendor Satisfaction (Platform & Services): to be published September 2008

In addition to all the research reports, OCRN members get an active say in steering the research agenda, and also help shape the research instruments.

To find out more about the OCRN, please feel free to ping me.

We conducted the Online Community Marketing, Growth and Engagement research study in May of this year, as part of the continuing efforts of the Online Community Research Network. Our goal was to gain insight into how people are measuring engagement in their online communities and to understand how many organizations were using an elite / influencer program, and how those programs were structured.

One of the most interesting findings was around the concept of member engagement. Both the definition as well as the process of measuring engagement varied across the respondent organizations.

Highlights From the Report:

Most people determine the level of engagement based on the amount of activity and the amount of content created (forum posts, reviews, discussions, diggs, links added, comments and content, etc.). They also look at the amount of time spent on the site as one of the main measurements of engagement. Another important dimension, which only a few respondents mentioned is the number and quality of connections that a member has with the host organization (in some cases brand) and other community members.

Leading Indicators
A few respondents were using a set of "Leading indicators" to benchmark and track engagement:
• "1) Logged in/accessed the site; 2) Posted comments to the site; 3) Posted substantive content (e.g. conversation-starting forum topic) to the site; 4) Completed profile/member survey"
• "Engagement encompasses not only logins to the site, but activity: Digging/burying stories, submitting content and engaging in discussions on specific stories."

An ideal Engagement Metric
Based on aggregate responses, the following metrics would be ideal for rolling up into an engagement metric.
• Amount of activity on site: page views, logins, searches, feature usage
• Number and type of content items created: discussion posts, tags, shared content, etc.
• Number of connections / relationships created: friends added to network, or inferred via frequent discussion exchanges
• Time on site: Total time per month
• Frequency of visits: / per month
• Recommendations: Members referring new community members, passing along community content outside of community, blogging about / promoting community

A perspective on member engagement:
One Fortune 100 Financial Services firm that responded to the survey uses the following definition / measurements of “Engagement”:

“We define engagement in a few different ways.

1) Very tactically in the community. Tactically: How many have registered? What are their posting rates? How often are they are engaging in the community?

2) Strategically with higher-level brand metrics: looking at how this pays off for our overall brand goal. [Company] uses a Net Promoter Score to measure the health of the brand.

We ask “Would you recommend [Company] to your friends?” on a scale of 1-10.

Then we subtract the people who answer low (either 1-3 or 1-5), from the people who answer high (9-10) that yes, they definitely would recommend [Company] to their friends.

That gives us a percentage and we measure it for the [Company] brand and at each of the product levels.

The community is about overall brand engagement and how the community drives loyalty and membership within the [Company] brand.”

Fostering Engagement
All of the responses to the question about fostering engagement raise the point that as community host, you have responsibility for half of the conversation with community members. Themes of regular communication, active listening, strong moderation, fostering discussion and recognition emerged in the responses.

The most popular ways to improve member engagement include:
• Regular and easy communications:
“Send email – ones that are targeted and provide interesting news. We found over our 500 or so communities that those who send regular (monthly) email to members have 7x engagement numbers compared to those who did it less than once every other month.”

• Skilled moderation:
“Keep the forums on topic and firm but fair moderation. “

• Keep content fresh.

• Fostering discussion:
“Encouraging conversation. Sometimes, this means highlighting a potentially divisive, opinionated comment and inviting response. Sometimes, this means asking questions that everyone has an answer to, and nobody minds sharing.”

• Listening to participants:
“Seek member feedback and perspective, build meaningful connections”

• Recognizing members who participate:
“Create a sense of value to their participation.”

The full report is available to Online Community Research Network members. If you are interested in this report (and others), please consider joining the Network. Details are available here: http://www.onlinecommunityresearch.com

At the Online Community Unconference a couple of weeks ago, it became clear to me that we are at an inflection point with the "industry" of Online Community. On of the key issues community professionals face is that we (as an industry) are suffering from a lack of solid benchmarks, including compensation of online community professionals. The key purpose of the Online Community Research Network is to work in a collaborative way to research current practice and help establish these benchmarks.

We have put together a short survey about online community professionals compensation, team structure, and current job satisfaction.

The survey can be found here:
<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=dmkh9tZ6vZHyheMFqv2mcg_3d_3d>

If you are charged with community management, strategy or design at your organization, I would encourage you to respond to the survey. We are seeking input from all types of organizations, and all levels of seniority.

If you decide to participate, there are few things to note:
• All participants will receive a copy of the final (aggregate) report.
• All data will be processed and compiled in aggregate. Data will not be reviewed or presented in a personally (or company) identifiable way.
• All participants are entered in to a drawing for 1 of 10 $25 Starbucks coffee cards.

If you have any questions about the study, please feel free to contact me. We hope to close the survey by July 17th.

We just released (for a limited time) the Online Community Revenue and ROI Techniques research report.

The study was conducted last fall as part of the Online Community Research Network, and explored issues around driving revenue via online communities.

I've included highlights below. I would encourage you to download the report for the full result set.

Question: Based on your experience, what are the most effective strategies and tactics for generating revenue from an online community?

Summary:
Respondents highlighted several common themes, including:

The need for Advertising:
“Provide a platform for peer-to-peer interaction that advertisers can participate in. By ensuring that advertising content is relevant to the content the community is generating (through tools like contextual matching), we’ve seen high ROI for advertising partners for
branding and lead generation campaigns.”

The need for Subscriptions:
“In our context (most-valued content available only to paying subscribers), we provide high-quality community features – including access to experts – as a privilege of subscribership.”

The fact that Advertising and Subscription are the leading strategies isn’t surprising, given that the model was pioneered with content-based sites. Several respondents mentioned that revenue generation from communities was indirect, particularly with regard to brand affinity and advertising.

Categorized write in answers follow -

Advertising:
• “Ad impressions - both visit duration and repeat visitors.”
• “Ad placement has resulted in game downloads from our casual games forums.”
• “Advertising on member content.”
• “Advertising sponsorships.”
• “Identifying quality community connections to leverage for advertising targeting insights.”
• “Provide a platform for peer-to-peer interaction that advertisers can participate in. By ensuring that advertising content is relevant to the content the community is generating (through tools like contextual matching), we've seen high ROI for advertising partners for branding and lead generation campaigns.”
• “Thought leadership, lead generation, customer retention are top indirect revenue sources. Customer councils, ad revenue and member dues are the most frequent direct sources.”
Advertising, Brand Loyalty, and Upgrade Program:
• “Unfortunately, a lot of revenue generated through business communities is indirect. Brand loyalty, hyper-affiliation, user acquisition are all difficult to translate into real dollars - although some companies try. Advertising is probably still the most effective way to monetize a community though - and the more targeted the ads, the better. For instance, having an "upgrade now" button on the forums for an outdated device, etc. A while ago, we piloted an upgrade program through the dell community that was quite successful.”
• “From our viewpoint, it's really a matter of having a more engaged readership. We're strictly an ad business at this point, and getting more people to come back to the site more often and see more pages is only good for us.”

Brand Loyalty:
• “Clients need to appreciate indirect value of promotion, brand awareness, and loyalty. We work with many of our clients to develop their platforms in a way that the software itself could be resold/white labeled for resale.”


Subscriptions & Brand Loyalty:
• “Allow a big upsell jump. A super-premium level allows people to express their loyalty even if the benefits are almost the same as at the next level.”
Subscriptions:
• “In our context (most-valued content available only to paying subscribers), provide high-quality community features, including access to experts, as a privilege of membership/subscribership.”
• “Providing a base platform for free, and charging for a premium version.”
• “Where the revenue is part of a premium service, as a cost of obtaining value from the community or directly tied to the identity and ego of the community member. For example, some kind of payment to access premium content or tools to take better advantage of the social space. Identity creation is a powerful motivator to which money is a means, not a barrier.”

Sponsors:
• “Incite users to create valuable content that can be sponsored by interested parties.”
• “We have not succeeded in having individuals pay directly; we have had more success in getting supporting institutions to pay for their employees' access.”

Create a Strong Community:
• “I do not believe you should be doing community to generate revenue. Our objective is to provide customers/users a way to Learn, Share, and Explore Technology.”
• “The communities don't generate revenue. They provide us a ‘lock-in’ to using our service by showing the value of the "network effect" on our platform. They provide a richer user experience for clients' members and therefore providing greater support during contract renewal negotiations.”
• “Create a strong community, then monetize the activity, versus monetizing the capabilities early on.”
• “Our focus is not on generating revenue directly. We focus on enabling community participants to develop solutions, find answers, and gain knowledge.”



Question: What advice would you have for a colleague that needs to introduce revenue generating activities to their online community?

Summary:
Recommendations varied from the respondents, but several themes emerged from the content:
• Understand Your Community: Know what your community values, and what they expect from you. Let your community guide you on what they value, what they will pay for, and what types of advertising they will tolerate.
• Add More Features/Value: Don’t put roadblocks in front of features that are necessary for a healthy community. Think of value-added services that compliment the core community feature set.
• Be Careful: Your community is a delicate ecosystem. Make sure you don’t abuse it.
• Combine Revenue Sources: which techniques like “Target Advertising” and “Premium Upselling”
• Quality over Quality: Focus on a few effective revenue streams rather than several moderately effective ones. 1 well placed ad vs. 7 throughout the interface.

Again, if you would like to see the full report, I would encourage you to download it here.

The Online Community Research Network is kicking off our next research project to study online community marketing, member engagement and growth strategies.

The goal of the study is to get direct feedback from community managers and strategists about:
- most effective ways to market their communities
- the definition of community member engagement
- best practices for fostering member engagement
- fostering community health and and driving growth

We have found that the best source of information about community best practice and strategy comes from the collective experience of real-world practitioners.

If you would like to participate in the study, please send me an email (bjohnston@forumone.com) with your contact info, your organization, and a link to, or description of the communities you manage or guide.